Today we’re talking about one of the most popular and common questions I get, which is how to start a business from absolute scratch.
Now, whether you have an idea about this or you have no idea, or you already have an established business, the things we cover today are gonna be equally applicable.
Because they’re gonna help you to build a brand new offer or a brand new service or product based business, using proper fundamentals and proper foundational concepts.
When properly applied, these concepts are gonna give you the most opportunity for success, the highest probability for profitability and you’ll have the most fun doing it.
Quick disclaimer:
You do need to be at least somewhat proficient in what you’re trying to sell here for this to work.
After all, businesses that don’t know what they’re doing don’t last long.
So we’ll start from the top and working all the way through the process.
The first thing is
you have to pick your business.
Now, when choosing your business or your new service or offer, there’s three crucial ingredients that are going to ensure that you’ve got the greatest likelihood of success.
And all three are equally important.
Number one is you need to find something that you like doing.
If you choose something that you hate doing, you’re not gonna wanna do it and you’re not gonna wanna dedicate the amount of time necessary to building a thriving business.
Number two is that this should really be something that you’re good at or at least something where you can hire someone that’s good at it.
Again, businesses that don’t do a good job, (no surprise here) they go out of business.
And number three and maybe most importantly of all is that there needs to be market demand for what you’re trying to do.
Just because you like something, just because you’re good at it, doesn’t mean that the market wants it.
It’s a tough pill to swallow but it really is important to understand.
So, when choosing your business idea, pick something that you like, pick something you’re good at and pick something that people are willing to pay you for.
All right, we’ve got that covered; let’s move on to number two
which is choosing your niche.
Now, when trying to choose a niche and how deeply you need to go into deciding what kind of market you’re gonna serve, there are a couple of factors that come into play…
First of all, the larger and broader your audience, the more specialized you’re gonna need to be.
But if you’ve got a really small market area or a small local area, you can afford to go a little bit broader on your services or on your offering.
A really rough rule of thumb is that the more specialized you are, the higher you can charge and the more in demand you’re gonna be.
If you have no idea where to start, my advice is to start small.
Keep your specialty down and you can always broaden out later once you’ve capitalized and maximized that part of the population.
All right, so we’ve got our business, we’ve got our niche…
it’s time to pick our ideal target market.
In this case again, you’re gonna wanna start small and get bigger.
You’ll want to hone in on exactly who it is you’re trying to serve by uncovering their demographic, geographic and psychographic variables.
Now, demographic details are gonna be the obvious things, like age or gender or occupation.
Geographic is obviously what size you wanna target.
It could be small local area like a neighborhood, a larger city, maybe an entire state or province or maybe an entire country–or maybe you wanna go international.
Again, start small, get big later.
And then lastly, you’ve got those psychographic variables which are really important to hone in on.
This is what’s really gonna enable you to create marketing that matters and messages that resonate with your ideal target market.
Psychographic variables are questions like what their attitudes are, what their interests are, what behaviors they have, etc.
When you really get clear about who it is you’re trying to serve and their pains and their problems and all the things you’re gonna be able to help them solve…
Well, the better you’re gonna be able to target them, using some of the advanced targeting options we now have available through all sorts of social media advertising.
All right, so now that we’ve got all that covered,
it’s time to pick a name for your business.
Now, when it comes to naming your business, here’s the reality: it really doesn’t matter as much as you think.
I know, I know.
When I first started my business, I went over this again and again.
I spent many sleepless nights trying to decide: should I name it after my own name, should I come up with a catchy name, should I be really direct and literal…
I was all over the map and I read everything I could get my hands on on which way to go.
Like most advice, every time that I was swayed one direction, I’d come across another piece of content that said to go this way instead.
So after years and years of doing this, I’ve uncovered the reality.
And that is that it doesn’t matter as much as you think.
Sure, there are benefits to using your own name and using a corporate name, but at the end of the day, it’s gonna come down to your personal preference, and where you wanna take the business.
A couple real quick tips:
Using your personal name will make it easier to market and to get your name out there because people like doing business with people more than businesses.
But, if your plan is on global domination and you wanna expand and grow the business, well then you’ll wanna go with a corporate name because it’s gonna allow for greater scalability and greater growth.
All right, so now that we’ve got all that covered,
it’s time to design between one and three packages.
Now, the reason that you wanna design one to three packages is it’s gonna make it clear what your business does and for what price point.
This is going to make the decision process a lot easier for your customers and it’ll make it easier on you to communicate this.
Now, without knowing what market or industry or business you’re in, it’s hard for me to just pick a number out of thin air but, you’re gonna wanna have that low, medium and high price point.
The high price point is effective because you will get about 20% of the market that wants it.
But it’ll also price anchor the lower priced products, making them look like a better value.
So typically what you wanna do is make your best value, or the one that you want people to go to the most, right in the middle.
Then, of course, you can offer that budget option and that premium option.
But if you’re just starting, three tends to be the magic number to go for.
All right, so now that we’ve got all that covered, it’s time to
get your business online
This means building a super basic website.
Now at this stage, your website does not need to be fancy and you don’t need to spend 20 or 30 grand having it built custom right from the ground up.
In fact, you can get by with a few hundred or maybe even a few thousand dollars, depending on how customized you want it to be.
The point is to remember to keep it clean, professional, and mobile responsive, which means that it’ll look good across any different screen size.
Now when it comes to building your website, my advice is to probably go with something like WordPress.
Then get it professionally hosted; either build it yourself or have a designer do a really basic theme for you.
But if that’s not up your alley, there’s a number of really quick and really easy commercial options available too.
So, now that you’ve got that central hub where you can send people to, it’s time to build out the social media marketing around it.
And when it comes to social media marketing, most people get way overwhelmed and they start doing way too much when they really don’t need to.
My advice here is to pick one or two channels that best resonate with your audience.
Now the key here is to clearly identify the demographic that you’re going after and then identify the channels that best associate with that.
Typically, you really can’t go wrong with Facebook, but after that you might wanna look at Instagram or YouTube or Twitter or maybe even LinkedIn if you’ve got a professional market.
So now that that’s covered, it’s time to get some results and showcase the work that you’ve done.
If you’ve never worked in this business before, you have no clients, no customers, no case studies and no testimonials, don’t be afraid to work for free.
Because at this point of the game, your goal is to amass massive success and massive results for your clients and customers.
And this means you’ve gotta get some results under your belt.
So don’t be afraid to work for free or really cheap to get those few initial case studies and testimonials, which will provide the social proof necessary to grow your business.
Now that you’ve got your business kind of set up, you’ve got some testimonials and some case studies under your belt
it’s time to further expand your marketing.
And this means beginning some initial outreach.
My advice here isn’t to sink a lot of money into paid advertising, but rather to leverage the free and organic options available to you: primarily through your personal Facebook page.
Yes, I said personal.
Not business.
And the reason you want to do this is multifold but, again, we like doing business with people more than businesses.
And you’re gonna have no greater opportunity for referrals in that initial business than through your friends and family and their network as well.
So don’t be shy.
Get out there and make a post about what you do, about your new business and who you might be well positioned to help.
Your goal here isn’t sleazy sales tactics, but rather serving and offering value.
And, again, remember, you’re in the early stages so your prices might be a bit lower so this is a great opportunity for someone to get to work with you.
So now that you’ve got that done,
it’s time to go a little bit further with your marketing
And I really can’t stress just how important and just how crucial marketing is for the success of your business.
I mean, have you ever seen a business that is absolutely terrible and yet they’re booked out for months in advance?
Or seen a great business or heard the story of someone who’s really good at what they do but they just can’t seem to get enough clients or leads or sales?
Well the reason that never happens is because of marketing.
And it shows the true power of marketing and what it can do for your business.
So, now that you’ve got those initial clients and customers, those initial sales, and some revenue coming in the door, it’s time to reinvest and double down on really mastering marketing for your business.
The options here are nearly endless, and it’s a truly exciting time to grow your business.
So rather than list them all out, make sure to take a look around the blog, as there’s a ton of other videos here that could help you.
At this stage, you’ve got your business, you’ve got your name, your website, you’ve done some marketing, things are running smoothly…
Well I wanna cover just a few really advanced tips for if you decide that you really wanna expedite your results.
Now be warned: this isn’t for everyone, and you definitely do not need to do this to build your business up right away.
But at some point, and probably sooner than later, you’ll at least want to consider what I’m about to tell you.
So let’s dive into the advanced tips now.
Tip number one is that you may wanna consider starting a podcast or a YouTube channel and inviting some of your ideal clients as guests on the show.
There are many benefits to this.
First of all, you’re gonna be creating valuable content in audio or visual form.
Also, by inviting potential clients as guests, it’ll allow you to learn their story, to provide them some value and then to leverage that as a marketing asset.
Next, you’re really gonna wanna double down on content marketing.
This means creating as much valuable content as you possibly can, showcasing your expertise and helping the market.
This is gonna position you as the expert as well as bring in new leads and new sales almost on auto pilot.
After that, you’ll wanna commit to learning about the paid traffic options available, like Facebook ads.
Facebook ads are fantastic and they’re like gas on the fire, but they won’t get that fire started.
So you wanna make sure that your offer and your sales funnel and all of that is in place before you throw money at it.
Next, if you happen to be working in a local area, don’t be afraid of putting on a live event, doing a question and answer period, or doing some sort of tutorial.
Getting face to face is incredibly powerful and it’ll allow you to overcome any objections so much quicker.
Next, look for others in non-competitive markets who have a similar target audience to you.
There may be collaborative opportunities here and you may be able to help each other grow your businesses.
And lastly, and maybe most importantly,
keep improving and keep getting better every single day.
Starting a business from scratch is no easy task, but the rewards are well worth the effort, as I’m sure you know or you wouldn’t be reading this.
