If you have ever dreamed of building your own business from the ground up but are unsure of how to get started, you are not alone. You have the passion, the idea, and the ambition, but no plan, strategy, or blueprint. While your business may be unique, there is a specific formula and checklist for how to build a successful business.
If you are looking to make your dream a reality, Jeff Ber is here to help you get started. Jeff Ber has well over a decade of experience as an entrepreneur and business management professional. As the current VP of Operations at OneBall, a charitable organization providing meaningful assistance throughout the testicular cancer journey, Jeff Ber is known for his resilience. From brainstorming to business planning and marketing, he outlines everything you need to know to build your business from the ground up.
Come Up with an Idea
The first step happens to be the most fun one. Jeff Ber suggests that before starting a business plan, conduct a brainstorm session with your team where the sky is the limit. Every idea should be written down, including marketing ideas, product features, branding, suppliers, staff, and more. This is when you get to sculpt a vision of exactly what your business is going to look like. If you already have a team of partners or collaborators, get as many of them on board for this brainstorm as possible. At this stage, there is no such thing as a bad idea. Once you have completed your brainstorm, ask yourself this: does your product or service solve a problem for the consumer? If not, you may need to return to the drawing board. If you are unsure, you may want to move onto market research.
Perform Preliminary Research
Prior to building a business plan, you may want to conduct preliminary market research to ensure that there is a demand for your product or service. While you can start with your friends and family, Jeff Ber suggests opening it up to acquaintances and strangers to get the most objective feedback you can. In order to showcase your product or service, you may want to put together a website, video, or PDF outlining the basics of who you are and what you do. Depending on what it is your business is selling, you may want to conduct a survey or send out samples or trials with requests for a review.
You can get innovative with the way you gather market research, but be sure to make it anonymous and ask questions that allow the participants to be objective. Additionally, Jeff Ber suggests collecting demographic data to build a customer profile for your business. A customer profile will outline some key details about your target demographic embodied in a single individual. What do they like? Where do they shop? What is important to them? This will help create clarity and focus as you move onto your business plan.
Construct a Viable Business Plan
Once you have done your market research, you can now start building your business plan. Your business plan will include an executive summary, objectives, market research, operational plans, scope of work, supply chain, financial projections, SWOT analysis, and more. The specific headings of your business plan will depend largely on what it is you do but should be able to answer the basics of who, what, when, where, why, and how. Jeff Ber explains that a business plan needs to answer every question a potential investor might have.
Amp Up Your Marketing Efforts
Next up: marketing. It is one thing to have a product that your target demographic wants, it is another thing to reach that target demographic. First things first: build an unbeatable website that embodies who you are and what you do. Your website is your business’s primary hub, and all marketing traffic should be driven towards it. From selling your products/services, encouraging newsletter sign ups, and providing original, engaging content, your website is your digital business card. Using the customer profile you created, Jeff Ber explains that this will help you ascertain which platform will be best to reach your audience. If you are selling customizable pop sockets, you are likely going to want to focus on Instagram and TikTok. If you are selling wellness plans for major corporations, you are likely going to want to focus on LinkedIn.
Always Find Ways to Improve
Jeff Ber explains that putting pressure on yourself to learn every new skill at the start of a business can take the focus away from moving the business forward. If you find yourself learning 10 new things every week, consider outsourcing help. Whether it is a virtual assistant or an accountant, ensuring that no detail is missed is crucial when you’re starting a new business.
Jeff Ber also recommends finding a mentor or network of entrepreneurs to lean on for advice, be a sounding board, and provide valuable resources. The road of entrepreneurship has been paved thousands of times, and while every journey is unique, there are best practices that every business must follow in order to be successful. Having a mentor or network for support will help you make those challenging decisions, connect you with suppliers or potential partners, and help you avoid some of the pitfalls of starting your own business.
Lastly, Jeff Ber encourages you to keep track of everything you do. If you just launched a campaign to introduce your product, keep track of website traffic, social media conversions, ad spend, and more. When you are building a business, every move you make needs to be based on quantitative and qualitative data. If something worked well, you want to know why. If something did not work well, you will want to know why. Once you have launched your business, be sure to keep an open line of communication between your customer service representatives and your clients.
