HY Accounting Blog

What You Need To Know Before Launching Your Small Business

If you were wondering how to start a small business. This short step-by-step guide will help you get it started quickly and easily.

Starting Your Small Business

So, you’re interested in starting a small business? You want to be your boss and control your destiny. Well where do you start?

You can have all the ideas in the world, but without taking any action, those ideas will go nowhere. The first place to start is to take your ideas and put them onto paper and start the planning process. The more detailed and thorough your plan is, the higher the chance you’ll succeed.

Think on Paper

This is as simple as it sounds. Take all of your thinking and put it onto a piece of paper and begin to write your plan for your new business. A standard business plan can be pretty overwhelming, which is why we suggest a plan that centers around these key business units:

  1. Administration 
    This section is all about the key administrative areas of your business. Things like your place of operation, hours and name. 
  2. Finance
    This is where a small business accountant can make all the difference in building out your budget and forecast to ensure that your business has the best chance of success
  3. Sales
    Forget Sales, you’re in the business of helping people, and here you want to document how you’re going to help people. What will you say? How will you say it? Sales Scripts and your sales process are key for this section 
  4. Marketing 
    Before somebody can buy from you they need to like you and trust you. Marketing is about building trust and rapport with your target market so they are confident in making a purchasing decision. So how will you go about building that trust? 
  5. Operations 
    This is all about the doing. This is where most businesses owners are most comfortable because they enjoy what they do. The reality is that operations while extremely important, doesn’t drive long term success. 

Decide on a business type

What are you passionate about? What do you love to do? What could you do every day and it wouldn’t feel like work? The common saying is if you do what you love you’ll never work a day in your life. At HY Accounting we love business and we want to make accounting sexy by showing businesses what accounting really is. Don’t be disheartened because there may be many businesses doing the same thing as you. That only tells us that there is a big market for that type of product or service, so there is potentially plenty of opportunity.

Market Research

From this day forward you are forever a student to your market. The most successful businesses don’t assume what their customer wants. They spend as much time as they can asking their customers what they want. It’s that simple. The minute you begin to assume you know your market is the minute that your competitor takes over. Spend time understanding your target customer and what drives their decision making. This is very important when you’re marketing your product or service.

Find an industry leader.

Any small business can benefit from an experienced leader. Ensure that whoever you hire has the fit qualifications and abilities you need for your business. Finding a leader in your industry to act as a mentor is like adding race fuel to your business. It will accelerate your success. Learn from those who have ‘been there and done that’. Learn what to do, and what not to do. Build relationships and networks with the businesses that you aspire to be like and eventually you will be one of those businesses.

Business Plan

It would be best if you also had a solid business plan. A new business owner who is just starting might not have all the time necessary to write up an elaborate business plan. If this is the case, make sure that you take the help of an expert. HY Accounting provides a helpful business template that you can use right away, and most importantly, you’ll be guided every step of the way through the entire process.

Your Budget

The last part of your small business idea is your budget. This part of your business plan should be handled with care. Many people make the mistake of not creating a proper budget until the very last minute. It is best if you have a detailed budget laid out even before you seek financing. Take the time to create a budget that doesn’t include anything that you won’t be making payments on and stick to it. This will make it much easier when you do need money to fund your new venture.

Marketing

When considering starting a small business idea, you should also consider how to do an excellent job with your marketing and advertising. For example, if you want to sell enough books, make sure that you have a well-developed book marketing plan and work hard at building an email list.

Once you have created your email list, you can use that list to make your online mailing list and run surveys and offer special deals and incentives to your potential customers.

Start Your Venture Today!

The best businesses are simple, so keep that in mind. Keep your process simple, keep your marketing simple. Many successful companies start as something seemingly straightforward, but as they grow, their business idea changes. Therefore, if you have an excellent idea for a business you want to get started with, you must choose carefully.

To ensure that your business is on the right track, make sure that you have done all necessary things to be taken care of, especially when it comes to your small business accounting needs.