If you’re looking to turn a bright idea into a business, you’ll be full of excitement and anticipation. The first weeks and months of your fledgling entrepreneurship are some of the most thrilling and challenging of your entire career – starting from rock bottom, with a blank slate, and slowly building a business that you take to the market. But the process of starting a business is actually a relatively complex one and certainly worthy of in-depth explanation. So, here’s a step-by-step guide to how you’ll get your business set up and off the ground.
Table of Contents
Staff
At the outset, you’ll not have any staff. You’ll just have founders, or yourself as a single founder. Now, you can set up a business entirely on your own if you wish, but you’ll eventually need help in getting all of the administration completed in a timely fashion. So, it’s worth, from the very start, thinking about who you might be able to bring in or the people you know who might be interested in helping you set your business up.
Here, you’ll not need to make hires and draw up contracts right away. You can pay people on a casual basis, or you can offer them a small stake in the company, seeing as they’re going to be with you from the start. The latter option is brilliant for motivation: it really helps your workers pull together in the same direction.
Branding and Name
When you first think of your business idea, you’ll naturally begin thinking of your company name. That’s something that all entrepreneurs do, seeing as a part of their job is to effectively communicate what their vision entails in as few words as possible. But the name of your firm needn’t reflect what you do: it’s more important than the branding is on-point, telling a story about the way your business is going to approach the market and consumers.
Branding isn’t in everyone’s skillset. So, at a relatively early juncture, you’re going to want to consider hiring someone to help you make a brand image that reflects your values and business approach. If you hire a freelancer, you’ll find that their rates are relatively modest – and the end product they produce impressive.
Business Documentation
The first task that you, and perhaps your employees, will undertake as a new business is getting certified and documented. You cannot create a business without also making a legal entity under your business’ trading name. And that means contacting the relevant authorities in order to register your business and begin the path to being a professional, official outfit that’s ready to open its doors to the world.
Be aware that trading in different countries requires you to jump through different hoops. For instance, getting an Australian Business Number is imperative if you’re to trade in that part of the world, while in the US, there are incorporation rules and regulations that you’ll have to adhere to. There’s a comprehensive guide to the ABN online to help you navigate the registration process. Always think geographically about the areas in which you intend to trade when registering your firm.
Your Cash
When you’re starting a business, you’ll be aware that there’s a certain amount of money that you’ll have to invest in getting it off the ground. For some firms, this is a relatively small amount, with a few thousand dollars getting them set up with stock. Others have an idea that will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to put into operation and will therefore need to get investment before they can progress with their business plans.
If you’re more aligned with the latter example than the former, then you’re going to want to get out with your pitching deck and ask for funds for their cash. You could, of course, get a large loan, but that has the peril of repayments attached. It’s preferable for most businesses to accept funding in exchange for a percentage of your business. That’ll help you start building right away without worrying about when and how you’ll pay back a loan. Look also to grants, which can be very generous for businesses with an interesting proposition in the technology or renewable energy space.
Where You’ll Work
There are dozens of stories of some of the largest firms in the world, starting from a garage, an attic space, or a shed. These are inspiring tales of determination, starting from nothing to achieving huge success. But you needn’t work in a shed in order to progress your business plan in the early months of your entrepreneurship. Instead, you’ll just need to pick an adequate location from which to work – and be open to that changing as you hire more staff.
Plenty of new businesses does choose to set up a home office. If you have one or two staff members, you’ll be able to ask them to work remotely, with the odd in-person meeting helping to get everyone on the same page. But if you have a little more cash to invest, you might prefer to hire a section of a co-working space, which will give you all the trappings of a modern office without the obligation to stay there long-term.
Digital Assets
Finally, new businesses need to amass digital assets in the form of a website and social media pages. While this requirement isn’t necessarily something that all businesses ought to do straight away, it is a task that you will eventually be compelled to perform – and getting a head start will help you look more official in the eyes of investors and more professional in the eyes of your very first customers and clients.
Social media, meanwhile, is a great way to get your friends and family behind your business idea. Keep things light-hearted and personal as you set up your business. You may even find that your contacts online are interested in lending a helping hand – or even becoming a full-time worker for your new company.
These steps are vital for all new businesses working through the set-up stage. So, take note of them, and work through them in order to make your vision a reality in 2022.
About Carson Derrow
