The Top Small Business Must-Haves Of 2023.
Best Resources For The Coming Year.
“A Big Business Starts Small”
- Richard Branson.
Starting a business can be a gruesome task in the initial phase. It can be pretty overwhelming when trying to decide the right and proper steps to take when trying to build a business that actually produces value.
Most start-up businesses fail within the first 5 years due to the fact that starting a business is such a complex task across multiple niches and it is overall a “learn as you go” process for the most part.
These days, Business owners make the mistake of starting businesses and not weighing in all the factors or considering only half of the required elements that will help the business run successfully.
Now when it comes to starting a business, there is no one size fits all how-to guide which is why most of those are usually full of crap. There is however a great amount of must haves and resources that you can grab to make sure that your business is starting in the right way. Today, I’m here to reduce the amount of BS that you will have to go through later on if these resources aren’t actually put to use in the first place.
Basic Documents
To Begin, there are three basic documents that you need to legally run a small business.
- This includes your EIN which is essentially your business ID.
Where Can You Get it: IRS EIN Online Application (usa-taxid.com)
- You Must Get A Business License; This is a permit required by the state in order to do business.
Where You Can Get It: Inc Authority — Home of the Free Corporation or LLC
- You Must Purchase A Domain Name, which is essentially your website address if you plan on making a website and trademarking your brand.
Where You Can Get It: Domain search — WordPress.com
I need to mention that these business documents are very important and you should always value having a good secure space to keep them and of course a place that is confidential to you.
For this matter, I recommend Stellar. Best Paying Software Affiliate Program — Join Stellar Data Recovery Marketplace (stellarinfo.com)
This is the best data recovery software to store all your business documents to ensure you don’t lose them.
Being a business owner you have to keep track of a lot of information and hold that information to be confidential so I recommend having passwords across several platforms for whatever needs to be stored.
Dashlane is another company that I recommend as it is known to keep and store all passwords in one place. This software works across multiple platforms such as your desktop, tablet, or mobile device. It allows you to change your password across all channels, and suggest the strongest passwords for you.
Business Plans
The next priority that will aid you in starting your business is establishing a secure typed-out business plan.
What is everything that should be included inside of a business plan?
The Top 3.
- Name
- Mission Statement
- Logo
I suggest picking a logo that you value and you can see yourself embodying the company for ten years plus. A lot of companies that have built a loyal customer base do end up doing a logo redesign for their company when the company has matured but keeping your same logo design is important for brand recognition and subconsciously teaches your audience that you are confident, consistent, and easy to trust.
Note: If you want to receive OVER 5000 Business Templates and Tools, learn more here about how to do that.
Here is a link to a few logo creation tools that you can utilize, some are free and some are paid if you would like to pay the extra buck for what will be representing your business.
Creating a mission statement is what creates your brand identity. It tells the people that work for the company, why the company holds value and will continue to carry it. It is completely different from your slogan and is held within the company rather than pushed upon your consumers. For example, Nike’s slogan is “Just Do It.” but their mission statement is “Our mission is to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world.”
Now in order to create your mission statement, I suggest asking yourself what your company is and brainstorming the three biggest reasons you started the company than compile that into a simple mission statement.
Target Audience
Next is your target audience.
You need to ask yourself who is going to be buying my product or service and get very specific here. You need to write down a whole paragraph describing your ideal consumer, and ask the important questions. I cover the five main important questions to ask in order to really break down your customer in my course but below is actually a free and paid tool that I have included for you.
- Audience Segmentation (pulsarplatform.com)
- Participate In Facebook Groups tailored to your niche.
Goals
You need to set short-term goals and long-term goals and realize that all of these goals are bound to change, and need to be constantly re-updated.
The goals should be limited as well so you can really experience tunnel vision. You need about one to two goals when starting out your business. These should be in the SMART goal format which stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based.
Business Timeline
The last three things would be your action plan and business timeline.
- Action Plan on a Weekly, Monthly, and Yearly Standpoint.
An action plan should just include your weekly to-do list for the next few weeks that align with your monthly and yearly goals.
- Business Timeline.
Your business timeline stretches up to a 2–3 year period of the next steps that you should take after you accomplish your initial goals for this year. This can be any future ideas or ideas that you can’t afford at the moment but will be able to afford later on, as you grow your company's income level.
For example, I would like to start promoting my business on a time square billboard in NYC but that would probably cost me around $30,000 and be a terrible financial decision so I just put it in my business timeline for later on.
A tool that I recommend: Asana Timeline: create and view project timelines • Asana
Questions to ask when generating your immediate action plan.
How are you going to generate consistent positive cash flow and increase your business revenue over time? You need to assess what you will do during the busy season, or what will need to happen during the slow seasons. These are all the dreadful things that you need to think about BEFORE starting your business.
Your action plan should consist of ways that you are going to add more and more value to the company.
How do you correctly facilitate an action plan?
Write out three important tasks to get done in the first, second, third, and fourth week. (12 Total Important Tasks.)
Come up with a Plan B for every task if you fail to complete it.
Repeat this every month.
A business timeline as I mentioned above is very important as well.
You need to figure out what is it that you need to accomplish within a realistic time frame and you need to shoot low. The problem with people that start a small business is that they shoot too high, and get discouraged when they don’t meet their own expectations. The honest truth is that you need to expect that anything that can go wrong in your business will go wrong and you have to be prepared for that. You need to set certain goals that are very achievable in order to build that business confidence and foundation within your business.
As Elon Musk has said in an interview, starting a company in the first 6 months is the most exciting time, but after a while reality sets in, and a lot of the issues and self-doubt start coming along.
This is where pain tolerance is important and knowing how to manage stress, within the first one to two years of starting your business. I mention more techniques in my course, but coming up with an action plan full of plan Bs and timeline to give you direction, aids you in increasing your pain tolerance.
To conclude, when starting a small business you have to have a strong why and bet on yourself and your abilities. This is translated through giving up and sacrificing certain things so your company can continue growing.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk rented an office instead of an apartment and worked all day on his business then took showers at the YMCA when he first started his first business. This amount of sacrifice showed him and the universe that he was going to be successful because he wouldn’t do all this if he wasn’t going to be successful. He would’ve done all that for nothing if he just sat and quit, so him sacrificing something major to him which was comfort was a big factor in him continuing along the journey. Be ambitious in your pursuits and never give up; utilize these tools because they will maximize your chance at success.
Thank You For Reading!
Soon I will be releasing my Online Business Starter Kit.
It will give you essential tools and even offers you a checklist to make sure that you get everything needed to get done in the correct order.
Read My Other Articles On Entrepreneurship Below.