Starting Your Business 2.0
It’s the best time to start a business. If you are ever hit by a spark of inspiration, you can go from budding idea to getting your first assignment in no time whatsoever. And in most cases, you don’t even need to leave the comfort of your chair or house. Once you have sorted out the legal necessities of registering your business, you can build your business empire from your desk sipping a warm cup of coffee.
As soon as you come up with that ‘lightning in a bottle idea,’ you will start thinking about a company name. Your brand needs in encapsulate what you stand for, what your business stands for and convey the dominant emotion you want people to have seeing your brand. This is a good time to check if your domain name is available. There are plenty of domain name registrars that allow you to check multiple top-level domains (TLDs) in one go, i.e., if yourname.com, yourname.org, etc. are still available. And just to make things more complicated, you would want to check if your handle (or a reasonable alternative) is available on social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to name a few. Also, consider how people will find you online. Don’t pick a name that is synonymous with other, unrelated businesses, or chooses a name that is miles away from the product you are delivering. Avoid having a brand name that is so generic, that people will accidentally come to your site without intending to (e.g. ‘lee’ could refer to the jeans brand or a common name people go by). Once you have your brand name, it’s time to sort out your online presence.
Getting a website doesn’t need to be the time sink it used to be before. It was hard enough to get a reliable developer who would deliver on time and within cost, or to avoid the whole ‘a friend will build it’ situation. It might just be enough to get an online presence live, with nothing more to it than to function as your online digital business card. There are plenty of online services around that can get you up and running in a few clicks. The key to all of this is not to be tempted to all the up-sells and add-ins these services try to make you believe you sorely need. Stick to the basics, a minimum requirement if you will, and get that running with the least amount of recurring monthly cost. Just think of it this way, when your business takes off, you will want to re-platform anyway, to something more bespoke. The most common progression for most start-ups will be 1) an online drag-and-drop website service, 2) an individual WordPress deployment on shared server space and 3) a specialist CMS deployment on a private rack on a server.
And the process above is not exclusive to service-only businesses. Even if you are selling physical products, a fully-fledged e-commerce solution is not far off. There are specialist online service providers that can take care of your online store, even WordPress deployments can be upgraded to shop functions with plugins such as Shopify and WooCommerce. Be aware of what you buy into though, what seems reasonably cheap at the start can work out quite costly if you discover that functionality you need comes as a premium add-on.
And for some, there is even the option to go website-less completely. Having a business page on Facebook might suffice, which will cost you absolutely nothing. The only downside of this is that you can’t control the way your page looks besides from a few background banners and pictures. But for a no-cost, rapid setup option that isn’t a bad trade-off.
Once you have sorted out your online presence, it might be time to think on who is answering when potential clients reach out to you. Sure, at first it will be easy to do it yourself, but once your business grows, you might not want to spend a fair chunk of time just answering DMs on social media, picking up the phone every time it rings or deals with a truckload of online queries and emails. And especially for budding businesses, you might not have the finances or steady income stream to be able to afford a staff employee as pure overhead. This is where you can consider getting a personal assistant or online reception service. You can control how much you spend every month and contracts are usually flexible. Having no one to receive phone calls and the occasional fax is a luxury you can’t afford when you are just starting out. Potential customers will easily discard you as a possible supplier if you don’t react quick enough.
As with your email, phone, and fax, you can also get a delivery address for letters and packages that don’t need to be your home address. There are services allow for a PO Box or your country’s equivalent to being registered and used as it were a real address. And as we are on the topic of physical addresses, what if you need to meet a client face-to-face? In most cases, you will opt to visit the client on-site or use online video chat/conferencing solutions. But in those cases where you need to host the client, investigate business room hires in your area. There are plenty of room hiring services around for business purposes. Most cities will have business incubator services which offer great rates for business just like yourself. That could also be a step up for yourself, having a desk, reliable Wi-Fi and coffee facilities will kick up your own expectations and can be an excellent motivator to get your business to the next level. Incubators are also a great way to meet other start-ups and network. And it might not be the case that these other start-ups will or are in the position to become clients, but by helping people in your network, they can help you as well. Most of the early business is done via referral business from your network. So, consider the networking opportunities of spending time in an incubator facility.
Networking is not restricted to those situations described above. There is also plenty of opportunity to network at events and, as an extension, LinkedIn. The latter is a tricky one, as most people just use it as a modern Rolodex. LinkedIn becomes a much more powerful networking tool when you start actively using it. Providing content by writing something insightful related to your business is a good start. Establish your expertise and get people to share it with others. Smart usage of platforms such as LinkedIn will lead to DMs from people interested in working with you, ranging from a lot of suppliers, but also the occasional prospective client.
And if you are making all the right moves to get your name out there, it might be worth considering boosting that effort. So-called amplification can be done on social platforms such as Facebook, or more directly on search engines such as Google. Facebook gives you fantastic targeting methods, but you do need to be patient as success relies heavily on seeding interest and creating your pool of prospects (e.g., enlarging your cookie pool). Advertising on search engines works well as you can make a reliable connection between what someone searches for (search query) and the relevance to what you offer. Both Facebook and Google are good platforms that are completely accessible for anyone who wants to advertise online. With even a small investment you can start getting in front of the right people and generate interesting leads.
Once you start getting business through the door, it might be time to consider business tools that help you deliver. There are plenty of online project management tools that offer free service to small teams. These services allow you to generate tasks, assign people to it and establish a due date. If you are using contractors, this particular is a reliable way of ensuring delivery and quality. Speaking of contractors, you might need the occasional work done by an expert. It could be that you need a logo when you are putting together your brand name. Or you might need specific assets when your website is coming together. Or you need a display ad for online advertising. Getting a contractor is as easy as going online and posting a job on one of the many freelance websites. You control how much you want to spend and the brief. Make sure you are clear on what you want and decide if you’re going to pay someone by the hour or milestone results.
So, there you go. Just a few options on how to get your business underway in a manner that is entirely of this time. No longer do you need to tie yourself in with sunk cost investments, and almost anything can be purchased and used on a credit or subscription basis. And this can only be good for business. It allows agile firms coming into established markets, where they can disrupt and crystallize the relationship between a customer’s problem and the best market solution. And that’s the core of it, old or new style business, the businesses that succeed provide the best fixes for problems customers have.
Credits: Photo 1 by rawpixel on Unsplash, and Photo 2 by rawpixel on Unsplash