Things to do Before Starting a Business

Starting a business takes a lot of planning, hard work, and a considerable investment of your time and money. It’s an exciting undertaking, especially if it’s your first time doing so, but it can also be a relatively scary and nerve-racking adventure.

And, failing to have the right game plan from the very start can make it more difficult than trying to help your child with “new” math.

You should do many things before starting a business, much more than could be included in this article, but there are two key ones that you should definitely remember.

2 Things to do Before Starting a Business

Plan For Unexpected Expenses

Starting a business generally requires a decent chunk of money, and a good portion of entrepreneurs start with a very limited amount of capital. If you don’t do your best to save some of it and plan ahead, unexpected expenses could blow past your budget and derail the whole project.

Here are three you may not have planned for yet.

 

1. While you may have already considered payroll, what about the property, city, county, state, and federal taxes? Various factors will determine when you have to pay and what it will cost you, and failing to deliver fully on time can be quite costly.
2. How are you going to draw in new customers? Will you need a large advertising campaign? Surely you’ve planned for a website, and with today’s great tools, it may seem as easy as a DIY Halloween costume, but what about today’s all-important SEO services? Odds are, a good portion of your potential customers use the web to find things they need. Even if you have the best-looking website in the history of websites, they will see your competition long before finding you if it isn’t professionally SEO optimized.
3. You know the equipment that your business requires but will someone on the payroll have the skills to maintain the equipment? If it’s used and unexpectedly breaks down immediately after launch, will you have the funds for parts and repair costs?

 

Just like buying your first home, if you don’t earmark some of the budgets for unexpected expenses, you could be in for some serious issues.

 

Research

Have you thoroughly checked out the industry that your business falls within?

Who are your direct competitors? Even if you’re “certain” that this is a totally new idea, there could very well be someone else out there that had the same brilliant idea.

If you’re attempting to squeeze into an established market, is your area saturated with options? Are you going to be offering a product or service better or cheaper than your competitors?

Next, you can’t have a business without employees. If it’s going to be a family business, do they have the education and skillset for the various aspects of the company?

Aside from hiring family, are there enough people looking for work in your field? Are your competitors always hiring because of expansion, or do they have issues retaining enough skilled workers?

If you’re going to use a staffing service, what do online reviews say about the available companies? Your research needs to include calling them and asking if they have enough potential employees on hand to ensure you have a choice.

You don’t want to have to “settle” for under-skilled labor because you failed to research and inadvertently shot yourself in the foot.

 

The Bottom Line

You want your new business to be successful, but without planning for unexpected expenses and not researching the above in the very early stages, you could be setting yourself up for failure. Take the time to look over the considerations mentioned above and start organizing for the best outcome.