Ready to start your own business?
According to research data, the numbers of new small businesses during and since Covid have risen dramatically. If you’re considering it too, good luck! As a fellow small business owner, here’s some advice that will be useful for you, some of which will apply further on and some throughout your journey.
Research – before you get too involved, do your homework and find out who your competitors are both locally and further afield. Find out what products and/or services they offer that you don’t, yet, and what they charge. If no-one in your area does what you do, is there a demand or need for your product/service?
Find out how much it’s going to cost to set your business up. Whatever your business, a good website is essential, as it will be your shopfront, particularly if you’re not on the High Street.
Established business – If you’re looking for ways to work smarter (some of the info below may be helpful) or change your strategy following Covid, I can help you. Please feel free to contact me on 01825 761890 or sue@sjemarketing.co.uk. Your first half hour consultation is free.
Factors include:
- Landline phone, mobile phone and Broadband.
- Business insurance
- Bank account
- Taking payments
- Accounts and end of year income tax.
- Can you work from home (at least to begin with) or will you need to take into account the cost of an office or workshop?
- Will you potentially require transport?
All of these points need to be considered, and will eat into your profit if it’s not managed carefully. If you can work from home, that’s a good start.
So, now you’ve done some research, what’s next?
- Build your network of contacts, particularly those you may be able to collaborate with. The best ways to do this are networking online and offline. Face-to-face is always best, but meeting times are not always convenient. Online sources such as Linkedin and Facebook are a good starting point. Start and build your contacts and find other business owners to collaborate with.
To be successful at running your own business, ideally you need to be self-motivated, dedicated and it helps to have a business mindset.
If you’re worried about making the first leap to self-employment, you can always start off slowly, part-time, alongside working as an employee, then re-visit your business plan as your business progresses.
If you’re already getting clients by word of mouth, that’s great, and it’s the best way to get clients, but don’t rely on it. It takes time to expand, partularly if you don’t have a good budget.
Here are some pointers:
- Brand or logo: you don’t need a brand or logo right at the start, but it does give your new business a professional feel, and you can use your new logo across everything that you do, to keep things consistent. If you’re creative you can make one yourself, using Canva, or similar.
- Website: A professional-looking website is a great start, and will be your online shop front. WordPress is the most popular platform out there, followed by Wix and Godaddy if you’re on a limited budget. The investment required is anything from about £300 to £thousands, depending on whether you decide to diy, which platform you use, or what web designer to choose, if you go down that route, and lastly how complex your website needs to be. Wix and Godaddy are easy to use, and ideal for start-ups, however, their templates are very limiting. WordPress is great, very flexible and can easily be used for a simple website through to an ecommerce one. There are lots of templates to choose from and lots of plugins that will increase functionality. You can even sell products and services direct from your website and optimise it for SEO (vital!).
- If you want to learn how to do it, SJE Marketing can help with that, or manage it all for you.
- If you don’t have the budget or you’re simply not ready for a website, then a Facebook page, Linkedin, and Google My Business are the next best options, and they’re all free. The downsides are they all take time to set up, manage and make them work for your business, by using good images and content that appeals to your audience.
- Networking & exhibiting: depending on the nature of your business, these are by far the best ways to find new clients.
