Member Article

Starting A Business: Tips To Get Your Company Off The Ground

Starting a business isn’t an easy process. It can also be confusing at times, as everyone wants to tell you how it should be done. Keep in mind that many of these individuals have the best intentions but do not know anything about heading up a business.

If you go online, you’ll find a ton of information to weed through, and you will likely feel overwhelmed just looking at it all. Don’t get too stuck in this process. It really isn’t that complicated; if you take a few tips to heart, you’ll be well on your way to getting your company up and running.

Have a plan.

Before you do anything else, come up with a plan for how you are going to proceed in the weeks and months ahead. Make sure you mention any opportunities that you know of, include your mission statement, explain who your target is, come up with measurable goals and make sure you have deadlines for meeting those goals. The plan is crucial, but you also have to have flexibility going forward because everything may not work out exactly the way you thought.

Put together an amazing team.

Spend some time putting your team together. You want to hire intelligent individuals with a creative spirit and a desire to go far in life. These people should also believe in the company just as much as you do.

The people that you hire can have a huge impact on whether your business succeeds or not. They can also affect how fast the company grows. If you hire people that see the glass as half full, they will be willing to work together and take the company to new places.

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Network.

Professional networking is important to getting your business up and running. Any established company will tell you that making professional connections is important at the start and continues to be important throughout the life of your company. Because no one has heard of you yet, you need to work extra hard to let others know what your business can bring to the table and why people want to be connected with you.

There are a lot of opportunities out there to take advantage of. You can go to trade shows. You can network with others in your field while online. You never know when a connection could turn into something more, like a partnership, so keep at it.

Know what’s coming.

It is hard not to get so consumed with what is happening each day that you turn a blind eye to the future. However, you have to know what is coming up for your industry in the weeks and months ahead. If you pay attention, you will not get lost in the crowd. Make sure you take a look at trends to figure out what might be the next big thing. You can then make sure that your business is ready for it.

It is also a good idea to regularly follow blogs and websites and read through trade magazines. These will all help you keep an eye on the future so that you know what your customers will want one day. This will give you a jump on the competition as well.

Maintain a home life.

You business is your baby. You are going to want to invest a lot of time and energy into running it. However, you still need some down time as well. Find a balance that you can be happy with; you still want to maintain personal relationships and have a little bit of time to do the things you love. In addition, you want to stay happy and healthy, for yourself and for your business as well.

Get cash flowing ASAP. Cash flow is the lifeblood of business, and is absolutely essential to feed bottom-line profits. So you need to find ways to jump start cash flow immediately. How do you do that? In a professional services business, you can ask for deposits on work up-front, with balances due on delivery. You can do the same in retail, especially on high-ticket or specialty item and position it as an added value and a way to insure delivery by a specific date. You can also add value to generic items by creating private labels, and develop continuity programs where customers pay an up-front monthly fee to insure delivery or availability of items they will buy on a repeat basis. Of course, the key is to make sure there is little or no gap between when you pay for labor, stock inventory and when you actually get paid. Ideally, you’ll find ways to get money up front, and your cash gap will never be an issue.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Cormac Reynolds .