In this era, the number of people who wants to start a business has increased immensely. It has been a dream for those who had idealist and creative ideas of how they want to become and what things that they want to create. You may have started your own business today, but you maybe want to improve it, restructure it, or create another one. Or maybe you are just about to start a business but do not know what to prepare and how to start it. Here I have several essential things that you may need to consider before you start your business:
#1 Fill in the Business Model Canvas (BMC)
You may already have heard of this term somewhere, maybe in your lecture, if you had a subject in business during your school. Business Model Canvas or BMC is a strategic management template consisting of nine segments that form the building blocks for the business model in a nice one-page canvas. It was proposed by Alexander Osterwalder based on his earlier book: Business Model Ontology (see: https://canvanizer.com/new/business-model-canvas). This BMC was very helpful, as I have used it often when I’m about starting and helping someone to start a business. For me, it has helped me in describing what kind of business I want to create and how to start and run it later on. In other words, it is a must-have template before starting a business.
#2 Test the Product
When you start the business by knowing what kind of product that you want to sell, then that is great. However, you should know that whether the product would be matched with the needs of your customer or at least whether it is already decent or reasonable enough to be on the market. If you are selling food and beverages, you may need several times to do trial and error to find the exact amount of the ingredients and how you process and store it, so that your food or drink would be consistent in terms of taste and quality. Finding the right amount of ingredients would surely help you as well in creating and choosing the budget and pricing strategy. It will then help you to set the expected profit better after all.
#3 Brand Identity
Brand identity is a set of elements that you create to portray the brand image to the consumer. This brand image will distinguish your brand from other brands. Therefore, you may need to understand what kind of identity that your business or your brand wants to have. I think it is important to be understood in the beginning, because brand identity has a connection between the business and its consumer. To create a brand identity, you can start by answering these kinds of questions:
- Why do you start a business?
- What is your vision and mission?
- What beliefs drive your business?
- What do you want from customers to perceive your business?
- How do you want to communicate with your consumer?
- What differentiates your business from other businesses?
After answering these questions, you may think of the tangible asset that had a correlation with these questions, such as the logo, colour, unique shape, and font for your branding materials. These things then will associates with your product packaging, offline or online store design, business card, marketing content, and so on. It is fine if you can’t set up your brand identity in the beginning, but try to consider and think of it. I am sure that you will get the benefit by creating and improving it.
#4 Set Up Schedule and Priorities
There must be various things that you need to do when starting and running a business. In order to make it easier for you to track and evaluate your performance in running a business or how your business is running, you need to make a schedule and set your priorities. Make sure that you already know what you need to do and understand what kind of targets that you want to achieve before setting up your priorities. Setting up a schedule and reminder may help you in doing things orderly for your business, however, it would be more efficient if you can understand the right priorities to make your business succeed. To set it up, it is surely depending on your targets and your position. Since every business has its own priority, make sure that you know what your business priority is. So then you can create a strategy and schedule on how to achieve your target.
#5 Mindset
Running a business is a tough one. Especially when you are about to start it, there must be numerous things you need to think of and prepared for. Moreover, business does not always succeed but not always failed too, well there must be a reason behind it. However, you need to prepare yourself for whatever might happen for your business in the future. My suggestion is to always try to focus on what is good for your business. For example, if there is something that makes you angry, scared, or whatever horrible feeling that you might get from the internal team or external affairs (vendor, supplier, etc), try to hold your anger and keep being professional for the sake of your business. Because in the end, it may affect your business if you lose control. So stay in control, keep your strong and positive energy against the bad luck that might occur inevitably.
Besides staying in control, the attitude to always learn and improve is needed if you want to maintain and sustain your business in this era. In the following years, things surrounding us will change gradually, the technology will become savvier than today, the needs would become diverse than ever. Encourage yourself to always be aware of what’s changing surrounding you, do the research that correlates to your business, make amends if needed, improve the quality of your product or service is a must. I am sure it will take time to do all these things I have mentioned and to always learn and improve. However, give it a try, always keep trying to develop your growth mindset. It will surely develop through your dedication and hard work.
I wish that these essential things I mentioned above would be useful for you who wants to start or run a business. You actually can start your business right away without following the things I mentioned. However, don’t you think that it would be great to be prepared from the beginning? Whatever your decision is, I wish you good luck anyway!
Commenti