Owning your own business comes with great benefits. Most people launch their businesses to be their bosses. When a person starts their own business, they get Financial rewards, Independent control over the business, a huge amount of flexibility, and most importantly, a person feels pride in building something of their own.
Though the start-up process seems to be exciting, one needs to follow some basic key steps to start a business from scratch. Here are ten steps that you can follow to start a business.
Self – Discovery
First of all, the Entrepreneur has to learn what they enjoy doing. Next, they have to examine their strengths, weaknesses, and work experience, and then finally relate everything to the potential opportunities.
Develop Business Idea
Before launching a business, one needs to develop a business idea. Generating ideas is an innovative and creative process. Initially, it seems difficult to think of many ideas, and it will also take some time. However, it enables you to expand your range of ideas beyond your current range of thinking.
Must Read: All you need to know about Business ideas.
Write a Business Plan
Planning can thus be defined as “thinking in advance, what is to be done when it is to be done, how it is to be done, and by whom it should be done.”.
A business plan is a formal statement that includes what goods or services your company will offer, your target customer, how much you charge, and how you’ll fund and market your product. A business plan gives adequate clarity to the entrepreneur, investor(s), and the government.
It’s well said that “writing a good business plan can’t guarantee success, but it can go a long way toward reducing the odds of failure.”
Must Read: How to make a Business Plan.
Fund your business
Finance is one of the most essential requirements for establishing an enterprise. The entrepreneur’s availability of finance facilities brings together men, materials, machines, and methods to produce goods/services. First, determine how much you’ll need and where the money will come from. Once you know how much start-up funding you’ll need, it’s time to figure out how you’ll get it. Either you can fund yourself, or if you are planning to approach investors, perfect your business plan and your elevator pitch. Consider government-backed loans, venture capital, research grants, and newly popular crowdfunding sites, in which your network of family and friends contribute to start-up costs.
Determine a Business Structure
Every business entity needs to select an appropriate legal structure or framework to work in. This legal structure determines the extent of ownership and responsibility of proprietor(s). A proper form of the organization strongly influences the enterprise’s success and prospects. Once selected, changing the ‘form’ is quite a complex, time-consuming and costly affair.
Business enterprises may be broadly classified under three categories.
- Private sector enterprises – Sole Proprietorship, Partnership, Joint Stock Company, Hindu Undivided Family Business, Co-Operative Society.
- Public sector enterprises- Departmental Undertakings, Statutory Corporation, Public Corporations
- Joint sector
Select an appropriate business name
A name represents your business in the world and beyond, and it provides information about your business to the customers, competitors, and employees. But only selecting a catchy name is not enough. Remember that it should not clash with any other business entity’s name. The title should be clear and easy to remember when choosing the name. Once you are ready with a name, get the name registered. Select a DBA (Doing Business As) along with the business name. A DBA name is required when one person does business with another name, and the company name is different. The next step after the name registration will be getting your logo trademark. After registering your entity name and DBA name, one needs to get your domain name registered too. Domain name protects your business website address. After all name registrations are done, a business is ready to print its business cards and issue a prospectus for marketing.
Open a Bank Account
Business is a separate unit so never mix personal account with the business. Instead, use a business bank account for all business-related transactions. It will avoid confusion too. Open a Bank Current Account on a Business name.
Get Licenses and necessary permits.
Every form of business demands different Licenses and Permits according to the nature and purpose of the company and the goods or services offered. First of all, the founder of the business has to create a Founder Agreement, GST Registration, Permanent Account Number (PAN), Tax Account Number (TAN), Shop and Establishments license (License for physical Premises). These were some of the general registrations required for a start-up. Specialized registrations include FSSAI License (For Food Business), IEC Code (For Import and Export Business), and many other licenses for different goods.
Get an Accounting System
Accounting plays a vital role in running a business because it helps us to track our income and expenditure. When you start your business on a small scale, start writing about your expenses and incomes in an Excel Spreadsheet. Later on, you can start with a formal set of accounting systems.
Build your Business
Promoting a business and establishing a good marketing plan is important in building a strong business. Thanks to social networking sites, promoting your products and services becomes pretty simple. You can expand your company’s online presence by creating a website, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account, using Instagram and many more. An entrepreneur should regularly interact with their customers and should update their website and social media accounts frequently.
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