So you want to start a business? GREAT.
You are about to embark on of the most incredible and rewarding journey of your life.
The issue is… what do you want to start a business in?
It can be very hard to decide which direction to go down. Maybe you’re someone who has a kazillion different ideas bouncing around or maybe you’re someone who has none. OR maybe you have one but you’re not quite sure whether it’s going to work.
I have been through those rollercoasters of emotions of excitement, fear and then confusion. It’s hard to know where to start because you’ve never done it before. Every person’s journey is unique so it’s very hard to find the information to start your own journey because, well, no one else has been on it before.
The best I can do is give you the tools, knowledge and processes I have gone through to spark your own ideas and creativity which is the best way forward. That way your journey becomes your own and your processes sticks with you for life.
Step 1: Build Your Community
The idea here is to just start your business before you know what you want to do. Start with what you love doing. Start by talking about what you love doing, posting what you love and talking to other people about what you like. Start building a community ASAP. Why? Because starting can be a roadblock itself. This gets you on your toes and making those baby steps towards your goals.
How can you do that?
- Start a Blog
- Join a forum
- Create/Join a Facebook, Linkedin Group
- Create a social media account
How can this help?
If you don’t have an idea you’ve probably scoured the internet already searching, looking for tips and tricks to come up with an idea. Whether it’s meditating, reading, doing spider diagrams, enrolling on digital marketing courses or going through our free How To Come Up With Business Ideas eBook. You’ve clearly done your research and nothing is helping.
Have you spoken directly to the type of people you want to work with? If you haven’t researched enough you won’t be able to help them as best as you can. Solving a problem is the fuel for a great idea.
Once you start engaging with people like yourself through your hobbies and your interest you will start sparking ideas. This is because when someone reveals their problems to you – you can see it from an objective point of view. When you’re stuck in your own head it’s hard to get a new perspective on things.
Building a community can also help you spark new ideas, connect with others and speak to people like you to see if your idea is worthy of launching.
Step 2: Plan Your Strategy
Once you have a rough idea of the pain points you want to solve you can start planning your strategy.
I found that you need at least some research of your ideal customer, your problem, your ideas, core values and skills ready before you start planning.
To plan your strategy you first need:
- Audience persona profiles
- To assess the Market
- SWOT Analysis
- Core competencies
- Strategic Filters
- STRATEGY
We’ve missed a couple out of processes out but going through this process will really help you solidify a strategy to start you off on your path 🌸
Step 2: Test Your Idea
You can create a quick and cheap landing page using WordPress with your service idea and direct all your marketing to this page to collect email sign-ups and see if anyone is interested. This will help you test the waters.
Once people sign up you have a viable proof that your product or service is of interest to someone besides your friends and family. Then you can start developing it out, tweaking and refining. This can save you time launching something that might actually flop.
We are launching Madhat Academy with micro-learning courses to help step-by-step build your strategy, set up your website and build traffic to get you started.