Operating a Business: Where should I start?
Business is a funny thing. Today in 2019, there is a never ending push of online influencers telling us we should “follow our dreams” and “just do it.” No one ever tells us how to do it though. Once you decide to pull the trigger on starting something, you are faced with an infinite amount of decisions from the legal structure of your business down to the logos and branding, and don’t forget about advertising! “But wait I haven’t figured out the legal struc“— exactly; it’s a lot to think about. The minute you register a business with the Feds, all these random numbers start calling you offering payroll services and other business packages, and it can be overwhelming. This blog post is going to be a resource for you, the new business owner or someone looking to start one, and hopefully help answer some of those questions. Keep in mind this list is not in any definitive order, and is just a basic guideline. All businesses are different and need to be structured differently depending on the product or service. This article is also mainly aimed at online or e-commerce businesses, but can be adapted to a physical shop with the caveat of getting a location and business real estate and all that which we can chat more about later. Let’s get started:
Part 1: Business Set Up
What do you love to do?
Stop trying to get rich quick. Stop trying to come up with the next big viral thing. It works for some people for a short period of time, but statistically the trendy things that go viral fall off because the wrong person owns it and doesn’t know how to scale the business behind it (Anyone remember Silly Bandz?). Sit down and really ask yourself, what do you LOVE? What gets you out of bed in the morning? Do that. People that are successful generally start with something they love that maybe they aren’t getting paid for yet, but would like to. If you have passion behind what you do, it makes it a lot easier to work on it every day. Now, if you love to create viral products and just chase that high of the next big thing, then hey, you do you. That is risky but can be very rewarding if you are down for the stress.
Create a product or service around that thing you love to do
Notice how we haven’t even gotten to legal structure yet? Because you don’t have a product! Before you even think about selling to customers, make your product as close to perfect as you can get it. Test it. Do product demos with friends and family. Get feedback and adapt and make necessary changes. Once you have a product ready to roll, line up manufacturers (if you need one of course- just check google and you will be able to find them easily) and get all the pieces in place so you can get your product brought to life.
Get an LLC or Corporation Business License
This step is a bit subjective but has helped me tremendously come tax time. You can start a business as a Sole Proprietor if you would like and keep all your income together with your personal, but it makes things just a little bit harder. If you are just making cinnamon buns out of your kitchen and selling a few of them at your local farmer’s market, you may not need to worry about doing all this and it should be considered more of a hobby; but if you ever want to scale up and make something out of it, I would always suggest getting a legitimate business license with an Employer Identification Number. This makes getting business financing and separating out your expenses from your personal life a LOT easier, and is required by most, if not all, banks when looking for a business checking or anything like that.
There are also major tax benefits from doing things this way. You get a Schedule C at the end of the year on your taxes where it separates everything nice and clean for you. I am not a tax guy by any means, but I do my own business taxes every year and haven’t been audited yet, so big shout out to Turbo Tax or H&R Block for how easy their programs are!
Again, this step isn’t next for everyone, but going ahead and taking care of this part of your business will set you up for success in the future.
Part 2: Getting ready for Operations
Self Awareness is KING
Do what you are good at, DON’T do what you aren’t good at. This is where things get hairy. You have UNLIMITED different options for getting your products into the customer’s view. You could, if you wanted to, sit down for months and learn how to build a website, create a logo, do product photography, set up your e-commerce (if that’s what you want), create advertisements for Facebook and all the various socials. I advocate for learning it all, honestly. The truth is, however, not everyone is going to be good at that stuff. You don’t want your business to suffer because you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. You have to have a level of self awareness when it comes to your business and use that self awareness to succeed.
Pay someone to do the things you are not good at so you can focus on the thing you love - your product or service. It will save you multiple headaches and a lot of stress to just delegate that out. If you don’t have the money, save up, or sit down and really learn how to do these things. Here at Morrisette Media, this is one of the services we provide for people in that exact situation. We love branding and marketing and making things look great so you don’t have to worry about that. Let’s talk more about actual steps and what those look like in the next section.
Get a website
If you are looking to sell products online, get an e-commerce site. If you are not selling online and just want brand awareness, get a normal informational website. Moral of the story, you HAVE to have one or customers won’t take you seriously. Shopify and Squarespace are good for all types of sites. There are plenty of other cheaper options as well, but it is tough to find a company with as much support as these two. Websites are typically going to run over $200 per year depending on the package you get for hosting, so jot that down as a business expense for your taxes. If you need help choosing a site or getting one up, feel free to reach out to us!
Get social media
You have to go where the people are if you want customers. Simple as that. Get a Facebook business page, get an Instagram account for your business, make a page on LinkedIn. Whatever socials make sense for your business, go do those. Post every day. Have aesthetically pleasing images and videos. For the love of God, get your photos and videos done right. I see so many commercials that I always ask myself “Why did ANYONE pay for that?” Don’t have those commercials. We do offer social media packages as well, and are more than happy to provide the content for your socials. Shoot, we will even run your socials if you don’t want to. Just let us know what your goals are and we will get you set up.
Other options you can dive into are YouTube, podcasting, etc. All of these are good and can drive traffic. YouTube is a different beast because most brands that do well on there already have a creator behind it that has a community that supports them. If you already have that or are working toward that, then market your business through that channel. Either way, it never hurts to put out more content.
Email sign up on your site
Capturing customer data is huge, especially if you are marketing a product or service. If you capture customer emails and information in general, you can use that for targeting in your marketing strategies, build Facebook audiences from them, etc. You know these people are already interested and these should be your easiest sales. Mailchimp offers a lot of good resources for this. I personally use HubSpot and they have built in tools that you can incorporate into your site to capture these things.
Try a CRM (Customer Records Management)
Speaking of HubSpot, they are considered a CRM. This is a great place to track your leads, your projects during all stages, and really anything else you want to track. Best part is it is free for their basic usage of their platform. Check them out and use their resources to get it all set up! If you are truly a new, small business, it may not be absolutely necessary right away, but if you start out on it, scaling will be easier and you won’t have to learn later.
Try to get a few reviews from friends and family
If you have given your product or service out to friends and family for testing, ask them to write a review. A recommendation from another human being goes a long way when a customer is looking to purchase something. Think about it, when you go buy something from Amazon, do you ever buy before checking the reviews? That would be insane.
Part 3: Launching and Operations
Schedule a launch date
Put a cover page on your website that shows a launch date and generate some hype on social media. Run ads on your launch (more on ads below) and push it to all the people near you through Facebook. People will sign up for your email list and have an email ready to go when you launch as well. If you are running a physical location, have signage and exciting activities planned for launch.
Launch day
Congrats - you are officially running a business! Orders are hopefully coming in, and fulfillment has started. If you are using Shopify or Squarespace, again, they make this part very easy.
Capture your takeaways from launch
Learn, learn, learn. You will learn something new every day running a business. Ask for customer feedback if you are dealing with any directly. See what you can do better and adapt and change things as you go.
Listen to the Market
The market talks. If no one is buying from you, you know you need to change something. Keep changing and pivoting until you get the perfect recipe to get and retain clients. It’s possible your product just sucks, and again, that’s where self awareness comes in and you have to be able to pull the plug on a product if it doesn’t work and go back to the drawing board. Ideally, if you have been following the steps, family and friends would let you know that it sucks, but that doesn’t always happen.
Part 4: Scaling Up
Create more products
See how your initial products and services do. If it goes well, create more and do it again. Keep customers in your funnel and keep them coming back for more.
Hire employees
Once you get to this stage where you are making enough to hire someone to help, this can be a big turning point for your company. You can hire for any position you want and you are the boss. You can put a post up on Indeed and have someone hired in 3 days, easy. Now you can have them do the things that already have a good process and you can focus on more complex issues.
Reduce costs
As you get more and more orders, find ways to get deals with your distributors or manufacturers. Most places if you order in bulk they give discounts. Find those deals, reduce those costs, and increase your bottom line.
Run Advertisements
Facebook and Instagram (all socials) can be huge for your businesses. Use those outlets along with basic ads like Google search (super easy to set up) and generate traffic to your site. On Facebook you can create ads that target things down to the most specific detail. If you have a flower shop for example, and you want to increase sales, you can literally target people in your area that have anniversaries coming up. Facebook has an INSANE amount of data because people put their whole lives on it. Use those things for your benefit and give Facebook money to run those ads and boost those posts. I wouldn’t recommend just boosting anything though, work with someone that knows Facebook advertising to come up with advertising strategies, or the more expensive but more educational process would just be to try it out and do it yourself. You can run A/B test ads, throw a couple hundred bucks into both, and then choose the lower performing ad to shut down and invest the rest into the other one.
Think differently about it
Business is hard because we are all so wired to think about how much things cost, but from a business perspective we look at it backwards. Yes, this will cost money but the projected return from this is way higher. Say you have $10,000 to spend on advertising for the month - your product/service costs $50. You can make an ad on Facebook, or let’s say you reach out to an influencer on YouTube with 1 Million Subscribers for an ad read. You know they get an average of 250k views on each video they post. So while yes, you are initially out the $10,000, you would only need a small percentage of those people that watch the video to convert and buy your product to get all your money back. Specifically, if 1% of those viewers convert at $50, that’s 2500 customers paying 50 bucks - so yes, $125,000. From your $10,000. Imagine that. That’s why advertising is so important! But what if 10% of those people convert? Now we’re talking. Look into all avenues and learn from what works and what doesn’t. The name of the game is ROI (Return on Investment) when thinking about business.
The bottom line
From here, it is rinse, wash, repeat. The good thing about business is that it is totally binary. Black and white. If you are TRULY doing EVERYTHING you can do to succeed, and no one is buying, then the market is talking to you and you need to change something about your product or your business. If you are NOT doing everything you possibly can to succeed and get in front of customers, then you have to take a hard look at yourself and realize that you might not want it that bad. Do you see the self awareness theme going on here?
Shameless plug time: With all of these things that I wrote about today, we can help you with all of it here at Morrisette Media. This post is me doing what I am writing about. I want to help other businesses scale up and do what they love. I am always happy to take a consult call or come into your shop to shoot a commercial or Instagram images. Please reach out if you need anything at all when it comes to your business and we are more than happy to accommodate. Contact us here if you would like to work with us!
Ultimately, business is an incredible journey and you will learn a LOT about yourself and what you are capable of if you truly go for it. It is not for the feint of heart, and if you would rather work for a cushy corporation for the rest of your life with great benefits, then do that. Do what makes you happy at the end of the day.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below or if you would add or remove anything!
Best of luck to everyone reading this,
Tim Morrisette