Step 4. Your Business Style

Having a style is important. I find it important personally. 

Your personal style is the way you handle things around you: family, friends, job (if you have one), etc. That's your way of reacting to things, your way of being polite, friendly, social and many many more. Your personal brand that makes community around you build a theory what kind of person you are.

Your business style is the way you lead your business to success: how you communicate with your customers, partners and suppliers, how friendly and reliable you are, how efficient you do what you offer, how good your goods/services are and how nice you are when dealing with customer problems. Think on 20% unhappy customers creating a lot more negative buzz around your business than 80% of happy ones.

Your product style: if you are selling a product, make sure the package reflects what kind of business you are. Try to be creative (especially in case of handmade) and select your colors and style here. Try to think of SIMPLE things. Avoid complexity. Even a business card if you are offering services should contain information and WHAT is in it for the person to keep it. Think of that. Always put yourself in the shoes of your potential customer.

Think website was quite simple. Brand style. Nice article. Welcomes readers!

Step 3. Get Feedback

You have the plan and the goal in front of you. Well done for now! Let's come to another important step - feedback. 

There several way you can do that:

1. ask your friends and relatives
2. get the survey and ask people what they think.

Asking your friends and relatives is pretty much interesting feedback to have. And I tell you why :) People will try to cheer you up! Go for it to get it and get inspired!! That's important and this is something to important to have when you start new venture in your life. You can't though 100% rely on this feedback and I would go always for second option too.

How to conduct the second one?

Target audience: get people from your professional networks (linkedin, xing, etc) or social networks to participate, ask your friends to share the link to survey with their friends by e-mail to have as many responses as possible.

Tools: you can use free online surveys as a vehicle for that. SurveyMonkey is one of those tools that will be helpful for you.

How: if you have never created any questions for surveys in your life, here are some tips and free resources for you: resource 1, resource 2 and resource 3. There are a lot more, of course. These are just to start with.

After you have a feedback, have a careful look. It's great, then cool and well done! If you found it a bit different from what you thought, why not to have a look what needs to be modified there? what market really expects from you? Use it as a piece of advice.

I would say Dalai Lama's quote about saying something matches a good product/service to offer:

Love the Article! Share with you

5 Key Characteristics Every Entrepreneur Should Have

As an entrepreneur who's attending college, I am often approached by classmates who are seeking to start their own business. Some have great concepts, yet when I ask them what they’ve done to advance their ideas, the answer is usually nothing.

Anyone can start a business, regardless of his or her age. After growing my own companies and mingling with successful entrepreneurs, I’ve come to realize that most entrepreneurs share these are five common characteristics:

Related: Five Creativity Exercises to Find Your Passion

1. Passion. A startup founder is often driven by the quest for deeper purpose beyond the sheer mechanics of operating a business. My mission for my startup, Yes Man Watches, is to empower people to consider the most valuable asset in their lives: time. I rise early every morning because I don’t want to waste my day. If you have passion for your startup, this will drive you to turn your idea into a reality. Without that missing spark, you'll lack the necessary motivation to put in all the early mornings and late nights to get your business off the ground.

2. Perseverance. Entrepreneurs need to be able to deal with obstacles. A business does not get built overnight, and turning your idea into a reality will take time. You'll have to become accustomed to people saying no to you. What makes entrepreneurs great is having the perseverance to grow regardless of how many times they are shut down. When creating the supply chain for my startup, we screened two dozen watch manufacturers. After approaching through about 10, I became quite frustrated at hearing that my company's patent-pending buckle couldn’t be made. Without perseverance, I would have given up.  

Follow-up is key. People might present plenty of excuses for not getting back in touch with you. Yet if you show persist in trying to make things happen, you’ll probably succeed. For a Kickstarter campaign, I contacted dozens of writers at a single media outlet in the hopes of reaching one who might write about my company. Even though the conversion rate may be minuscule, it only takes one person to make a difference.

Related: Shoestring Budget? No Problem. Just Be Creative.

3. Resourcefulness. A vital ability for an entrepreneur is knowing how to make the most of what you have. Your assets as an entrepreneur will be limited, so use them to the fullest. Tapping into a network is key. When looking for a photographer, I reached out to the photography department at my university and the staff sent an email blast to students looking to build their portfolio. Within a week, I had professional-looking photos.

4. Open-Mindedness. As an entrepreneur, you may think you've zeroed in on a business plan, but you'll need to learn to take in the opinions of others. Then if it appears that your plan won’t work, then adjust. As Mark Cuban once said, “Follow the green, not the dream.” If your dream startup won’t make you any money, you may need to change your focus. When my friend Morgan Schwanke started OnMyBlock, he originally wanted to focus solely on a social platform for college students to find off-campus housing. He now concentrates his startup on every aspect of renting an off-campus space; it provides tenant listings to landlords and facilitates the making of rent payments.

Related: 50 Signs You Might Be an Entrepreneur

5. Spongelike nature. Being an entrepreneur involves a learning process. If you’re not willing to learn, think about leaving the startup world. You need to be able to soak in everything and anything you can, just like a sponge. The more you learn, the better. A saying I'm fond of is “One who knows all the answers has not been asked all the questions.” When starting Yes Man Watches, I honestly didn’t know anything about watchmaking. I looked up everything I could and soaked in all the information. Now I know quite a bit about watches, from the types of stainless steel used to make the watch case and the variety of battery powering the watch movements.

Entrepreneurship is much more than a 9-to-5 job. I don’t breathe without thinking about progressing my business aspirations. If you have an idea you'd like to turn into a reality, go for it. You'll never know the outcome if you don't try. 

SOURCE

Step 2. Your Goal

You have on paper already the action plan, you have some steps you have thought ahead about? Well done! Now, make sure the business idea you are bringing to the market is going to do something good definitely. So far you have a proof that the idea could be implemented and you have the action plan to do it. 

The service or the product should do something good to other people, right? You are not only for money? Money is coming along. It shouldn't be the goal. I find it really important. 

Just imagine two cleaning ladies. Both are cleaning same office. One is cleaning with the idea to get a salary end of the month and another one is cleaning for the office to be clean and people feel comfortable at their working places and there's no dust anywhere. At the end of the month both of them are getting same salary however the thoughts of the people differ and the aim differs. It's up to you which aim to have. My point here is that aim to make something good for other (product or service) is a lot better rather than striving for money only. Concentration on your product or service will help you, in first place, to improve it and make it better. Pay will follow and great customer feedback as well.

Step 1. We Plan the Work then Work the Plan

As I have decided to describe the steps on how to build you own business. Here you go with the first one. 

When you want to do something you plan either on paper or in your mind. Even arranging a party, you put a little plan on paper what to buy, what to do, who to invite, etc. And that's the way to go.

When you plan your own business make sure to sit down and do the following:

1. Plan what you do (products, services)
2. Plan the name of your business (preferably short, remarkable, easy to memorize)
3. Plan events to visit to spread the word
4. Plan social media to use to spread the word
5. Plan you virtual presence (in case you plan offline presence, tick the box there as well)
6. Plan how much money you can invest
7. Plan how much time you can invest
8. Plan: Which skills you have? Which you need for implementation of your project? Where to get them from? At which cost?

Try to make your plan clear, using notebook, using pen, highlighting and going into details (why? because better to imagine little obstacles straight away and try to find the solution for them rather then facing them+those you haven't thought about as well and trying to find all possible ways out). Try to put clear steps and actions in place.

When you feel you are done, go ahead and work your plan they way you put in on paper :)

Surfing the internet I have found this very useful and interesting matrix for planning (sorry lost the source). Find it really nice and clear with instructions. Handy thing for your thinking arrangements!

And last but not least, I always try to plan several ways of reaction on different obstacles and try to leave them on the paper. You never know and even the most perfect memory is never 100% perfect. And I love the idea of having plan A, plan B etc. There are so many letters in the ABC, just be optimistic and write down your great ideas!

The Importance of being..

Important is to have an idea and even more important is to know how you plan to implement it. Take your time and gather your thoughts and try to select the direction (what do you want to do). The direction is the product or service you want to offer the market. Let's imagine we are knitting socks. Great! You are smart, creative and really good at handmade. You can knit outstanding socks. Now after making the socks you need to figure out how to sell them and where to find people who will buy your socks.

And here we come... to well known Ps from Marketing :)

Product: handmade socks

Price: good question :) Handmade cannot be cheap and there many reasons why. Make your affordable and good price where your customers will see that they are getting value for money. Fair value for fair money.

Promotion: get known through social networks and posting in groups that are valid for your information.

Place: get online with our digital world. So use any social platform of platform that offers your market place among similar goods on its own terms and conditions.

Let's stop for a while! That's the way to got and we are talking about importance. So what is that much important:

• take a paper and a pen
• sit down and write as much as you can about your product, all characteristics
• think about how much time you need to make it ready for sell and calculate month in advance
• think about fair price for fair value
• write down events to pop up with your product (online and offline)
• be different and remarkable and tell your friends about your contribution to the creative world
• write down all the ways you can market your product
• find the way to position it differently, in a special way
• get to know options on placing your product online (many people are taking initiative to help creativity get promoted, find the best option for you)
• be inspired
• be motivated and remember, you will do it!

Take a pen, write what you want to do, make a plan of actions for 2-3 months (taking into account your budget and going for zero cost in first place!)

Inspiration

How important inspiration is for you? For me it is VERY IMPORTANT. I get my inspiration from my family and friends who believe with me that I'm doing the right thing :) That's important when someone believe in you and what you do. By the way I do find inspirational quotes really useful. Here you go with some of them!!

AND....

what inspires YOU??