Small Business, Big Mindset

The 4 Critical Steps to Starting a Business

June 22, 2021 Muscle Creative Season 2 Episode 65
Small Business, Big Mindset
The 4 Critical Steps to Starting a Business
Show Notes Transcript

This week, I wanted to go over critical steps you need to take when starting your own business. So some of you may have already started your own business, and others might be thinking about it but haven't taken the plunge. 

 

You might want time flexibility while earning an income, you might you love your full time job, but want to have a business in addition to that that you want to build. 

 

And maybe you're curious as to what it would entail. Perhaps you've launched your own business, but need a nudge in the right direction. 

 

So I thought, let's do an episode about a few of the critical things, the critical steps that you should take when you're starting your own online business, such as:

  • How to come up with a business idea
  • Clarity on vision and why you want a business
  • Validate your business idea - ensure it's sustainable and profitable!
  • Identifying your ideal client/customer

 

Hope this episode is helpful! For more support check out my Online Business On-Ramp course here: https://www.musclecreative.com/course It's the direct, no frills system to managing the often missed yet critical logistics to launching your online business.

Unknown:

Welcome to the Small Business big mindset Podcast, where we dive into tactical strategies to grow your business. And to make an impact on this world, a huge part of success is keeping your mindset and vision on track. So this is a major part of our process. And this podcast, let's do this. Hey, Erin here, welcome to the small business, big mindset podcast. This week, I wanted to go over critical steps you're gonna want to take when you're starting your own business. So some of you may have already started your own business, and others might have been thinking about it for a while but haven't taken the plunge. You might want time flexibility while earning an income, you might want to maybe you love your full time job, but want to have a business on that kind of on the side that you want to build. Maybe it's a passion project. And maybe you're curious as to what it would entail. Excuse me, maybe you've lost your own business, but you kind of need a nudge in the right direction. And so I thought, listen, let's do an episode about a few of the critical things, if you have the critical steps that you should take when you're starting your own online business. So the first thing you're going to want to do is obviously have a business idea. So I'm going to assume that you have a business idea, and then we'll, we'll go from there, if you don't, there are a few things that I recommend people do. It's a lot of it is a brain dump, like, like I've talked about in other subjects. But basically, you know, you just do a brain dump of things that you're interested in skills that you have. And then after that brain dump, kind of go through and circle three or four of them that resonate the most to you. And then you're going to want to validate that business idea. Okay, so we're going to go over that, as well. Okay, so, and when you're identifying your online business idea, you might remember people telling you like, oh, gosh, I wish I could do that as well as you can, you know, think about those times, because maybe those are things that you do really well that you could turn into business, maybe people ask your expertise, they ask your help for things, maybe whatever that is, that could be a business for you to go into. Or maybe you yourself are like, gosh, I wish there was a way to do X, Y, or Z? or Why doesn't someone come up with a way to do this or that right. And maybe there's a service or product out there, but you know, you can put your own spin on it, and you have ways to improve it. Excuse me. So all of these can help you kind of jog your mind of a business idea for you. And so once you have a business idea, you want to identify your ideal customer avatar, right, your or your ICA. And that could be it's really your perfect customer, right? It's kind of like the the moon and the stars aligned? And do you have a solution for their pain points, okay, so your solution is exactly what they need. Alright, so you're going to get laser focus. And you're going to define, I used to say you can define in one person that allows you to get crystal clear on who you are serving. But now I'm like, you know what, you can identify a community, right? So think about a community that that you want to serve. And think about what their pain points are, think about what lights them up inside, put yourself in their shoes, walk their walk, listen and connect. I'm not going to dive too deep into this because I do have a separate training where I do dive further into defining your ideal customer avatar, the community you want to serve. And I've done it as live trainings before, maybe we'll make it a podcast episode for you guys to to tune into. But there's basically it's like a bunch of different ways to really hone in on exactly who you're serving, and to get very, very clear on who you're serving, what keeps them up at night, and how you can help them out. And even if it's like, oh my gosh, I just write fun books, or I sell jewelry. Like that's not keeping them up at night. No, but you know what, those can help them increase confidence, those can help them kind of like unplug from the world, and it has some joy in their life. So it definitely has a purpose as well. And you're going to want to research your audience. So you can hop on Amazon, look at Amazon reviews or products that are in your line of business, or Google business reviews, Facebook, business reviews of people and in a similar business. What are people saying about them? What challenges did they solve for them? And obviously social media groups, blogs, podcasts, all of those are a wealth of information of what your audience is into what questions they're asking, what's making them happy right now, or what solutions they need or problems that they need solves. And of course, you want to be very crystal clear on why you want your own business. What's the purpose of it, what's motivating you to do it? Is there a story behind why you're starting this business? You know me I'm all about a good story. So you know, people are going to connect with that if you're like, I started this business because this thing happened to me or because I heard this person say this, or I saw this person being impacted by this, and I wanted to step in, it's always great to have a story behind why you're starting your business. So once you've come up with your business idea, you've identified your ideal customer, and you're crystal clear on why you want an online business, you got to validate your idea, because your passion, I hate to break it to you, your passion might not be a viable business. Okay? You got to make sure that what your business have, it has is, it's needed, and it's profitable. And it's, it's really, you can see it happening being successful in the long game, right? So you need to know what you're selling, and what exactly, people are paying you for it to be very clear about that. Because I've seen, you know, some people describe their business of like, you know, I help women find confidence and their purpose. And it's like, I don't know what you do. What do you mean? What are you exactly are you doing? What exactly are people paying you for? How do you help women accomplish that? You have to be very, very clear. And you got to look at like, what's the day in their life? What do they love about what they do? What are their pain points? You know, you've probably heard that phrase, like, if I had a magic wand, and I could solve one problem, what would it be? Right? And so that's a good a good question to ask your ideal customer, or you can do it through phone calls, if you're a phone person, and they like to communicate via phone, direct messages, text voice messages, you know, I always recommend between like six to eight people, you're going to want to talk to them. What's great about that is that you can use some of the messaging the answers that they give you to those questions or in your conversation, you can use that in your messaging, so that when they when they kind of read your messaging that's going to immediately Connect, right, they're gonna be like, Oh, my gosh, this person gets me How do they get in my head kind of thing. And when you're talking to you, your ideal customer, and trying to figure out how you can best serve them and communicate with them. It's not like a third degree, you're not like peppering them with questions, it really is a conversation. And you're, you're really listening, okay, so they're doing all the talking, you're listening, and taking notes. And again, the messaging and responses you get from this will help you craft your own messaging, if you use their words, it will speak to them and they will connect better. And these conversations, the whole thing is to validate your idea. So they're going to give you insight into if your idea is spot on, or if it needs to be tweaked. Right. So it's better to know from the start, whether you're going down the right path, or you need to course correct a little bit, I always suggest maybe writing them down on colored pieces of paper post it notes could work. Because as you start to identify trends with what you're talking about, then you can put them up on the wall. So when you notice colors on your post, it's like you can put Oh, you know, so and so said this and stick it on a post it now maybe is a pink post it note. And then another person that you're talking to maybe they said something similar. So then you put that on a pink post it note and before you know it, you can identify trends by the different colored post it notes that you have on the wall. So that's kind of a cool thing, too. And you want to look very be very clear about your vision. So what does your life look like once you attain your short term goals and your long term, right? So you've identified what business you want to go into, you've identified your ideal customer, why you want to go to business, you validated your idea. And now it's time let's look forward. Okay, so what goals are you going to accomplish? Right? And it's great, I always recommend to people to have a success routine. Just like in your daily routine, or in your weekly routine, have something kind of like fills, your cup gets you going, it could be working out, it could be writing, it could be playing music, it could be meditating, whatever it is for you, maybe it's playing with your kids, something that you have in your routine that kind of gets you going and gets you gets you energized, right? And so you want to avoid common pitfalls to lack of confidence, growing overwhelm, and overpowering skepticism because as you go along in your business, you're gonna start to question yourself and you're gonna have what they call imposter syndrome and be like, Who am I? Somebody else knows more about this than I do. Or someone else is better than this than I do or someone has already done this. Who cares? You know about how I can do it. And so you're what I do is I surround myself by positive supportive people. And then I also read books I listened to podcasts to kind of feed my brain have like, more kind of confidence boosters, you know, so that I kind of quiet that, that voice in my head that that questions myself Okay, so and then I should define your niche as well, because I know that I made this mistake, too, when I was first starting my own business, I was like, I have all these skills, I'll do it all, I'll offer everything. And that was not the right way to go. And so you want to like look at your business idea and kind of niche it down. And I know people are like, Oh my gosh, that my audience will be so much smaller. Sure, maybe, but then you know exactly who you're talking to you and you'll be amazed, the more clear you are as to exactly who you're helping, the more success that you will see. So after you do all the steps that I went over, you're going to want to choose a website platform and email provider. And and you're going to start to create free content, and get it in front of the right people so that you can grow your email list. Okay, so I know you've probably given your email address over to someone in order to download a free guide or something that's going to help you out. Or maybe you took a fun online quiz, and you wanted to know what your results were. So those are just some examples of growing your email list. And with the right people through free content. So that is a whole other podcast episode. So I will record one that kind of goes over like what you should look like look for in a website platform and an email provider. And then probably even another separate podcast episode is like, how to create free content, what kind of figure out what you should create, how to get it in front of the right people and kind of steps to grow your email list. So I hope this gets you started when you're thinking about starting your own business or if you have started, and maybe you skipped over some of these fundamental steps to go back so that you're growing a business off of a strong foundation. So we will see you next week. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for tuning in to the Small Business big mindset podcast. To keep the fun going. Check out our Facebook group start and scale an online business For even more free trainings and resources from fellow entrepreneurs. If you haven't already, head on over to Muscle Creative calm and click subscribe and join our email list for weekly updates. And if you've enjoyed this podcast episode, check us out on your favorite podcast platform to follow us and give us a review. As always be authentic bring an insane amount of value and keep crushing it