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Seven Steps to Starting Your own Business

by Palo Alto Software

Question

I’d like a basic outline for the fundamentals of how to start my own business. Please include some insight on financial management, legalities, literature that may come in handy, etc. Thanks!

Answer

What is interesting about this question is that, while many businesses are indeed created after much thought and planning, probably just as many are started on the fly; the guy who has had the itch to go solo but gets fired from his day job before actually doing so is apt to just wing it and hope for the best.

By the same token, there are many companies that start out planning to be one thing and end up doing something quite different. This is not to say that forethought and planning are a waste of time when starting a business; that’s certainly not true. Rather, it points out one of the fundamental laws of successful entrepreneurship –be flexible. For example, a 15 years ago Microsoft had no Internet strategy at all. Seeing the folly of that, they shifted much of their focus almost overnight. That’s a good lesson for all of us.

That said, here are the seven steps to starting your own business:

Step 1: Personal evaluation.

Begin by taking stock of yourself and your situation. Why do you want to start a business? Is it money, freedom, creativity, or some other reason? What skills do you have? What industries do you know about? Would you want to provide a service or a product? What do you like to do? How much capital do you have to risk? Will it be a full-time or a part-time venture? Your answers to these types of questions will help you narrow your focus and pick a business.

Maybe you don’t know what kind of business fits your goals. If that’s the case, there are many places to get business ideas. Do some online research. Look through the Yellow Pages. Go to trade shows. Buy industry magazines. Check in with the Small Business Association. Read the business section of the newspaper.

Step 2: Analyze the industry.

Once you decide on a business that fits your goals and lifestyle, you need to evaluate your idea. Who will buy your product or service? Who would be your competitors? You also need to figure out at this stage how much money you will need to get started.

Step 3: Make it legal.

There are several ways to form your business ––  it could be a sole proprietorship, a partnership, or a corporation. As I have discussed several times previously, although incorporating can be expensive, it is well worth the money. A corporation becomes a separate entity that is legally responsible for the business. If something goes wrong, you cannot be held personally liable.

You also need to get the proper business licenses and permits. Depending upon the business, there may be city, county, or state regulations as well as permits and licenses to deal with. This is also the time to check into any insurance you may need for the business and to find a good accountant.

Step 4: Draft a business plan.

If you will be seeking outside financing, a business plan is a necessity. But even if you are going to finance the venture yourself, a business plan will help you figure out how much money you will need to get started, what needs to get done when, and where you are headed.

Step 5: Get financed.

Depending on the size of your venture, you may need to seek financing from an “angel” or from a venture capital firm. Most small businesses begin with private financing from credit cards, personal loans, help from the family, etc. As a rule of thumb, besides your start-up costs, you should also have at least three months’ worth of your family’s budget in the bank.

Step 6: Set up shop.

Find a location. Negotiate leases. Buy inventory. Get the phones installed. Have stationery printed. Hire staff. Set your prices. Throw a “Grand Opening” party.

Step 7: Trial and error.

It will take awhile to figure out what works and what does not. Follow your business plan, but be open and creative. Advertise! Don’t be afraid to make a mistake. And above all, have a ball! Running your own business is one of the great joys in life!

SOURCE: http://help.bplans.com/seven-steps-to-starting-your-own-business/554/

TIME AND TIDE WAITS FOR NO MAN

It is quite easy to postpone even when we claim to be passionate about our dreams. Every human being no matter how unreasonable the person might be did have some dream of a sort. The challenge is that we mostly entertain the notion that the time is not yet right for full action if we take any action at all. What is your definition of the right time? Until you are able to clearly define what the right time means to you, it will take some time if not a lifetime to be able to initiate a move to action. 

The sad truth is that, no one can move to the fore from some idealize spot in the future that has not yet arrived. If you are to make progress in your situation, it is essential to start from where you are now. Nobody is saying you are going to be excellent at it just from the word go. Though it may not be perfect, it is enough to take you from the ground and get you moving towards your goal.

As the saying goes, a journey of a thousand miles, starts with just one step and the other step follows as it continues like that till the final destination is reached. In fact, you cannot but make full use of what is already available to you in small way. After all, God is in the details. Wishing for more, or feeling resentment because you don’t have more, will only waste your precious time. However, time and tide waits for no man. You might be tempted sometimes in such s situation to rely on procrastination as a solace and still waiting. But procrastination might comfortable only for a short while and the consequence of not acting will last a lifetime. 

Don't loose sight of the fact that there is no guarantee and there will never be a guarantee that your actions will be effective even if it does happen in the future. Yet you are certain to not be effective if you take no action at all. The time is now and not in the future. Give yourself a chance and open yourself to the fullness of your possibilities. Step positively forward using what you have, from where you are right now. Gently and thankfully accept where you are. And tap into the unique richness that has always been yours and patiently waiting to be launched out.

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CEEREA 2011

Overworked? 4 Signs You Need to Recharge

Take a cue from endurance athletes: Here are four ways to tell you're about to hit a performance wall.

By Jeff Haden |  @jeff_haden   | Nov 11, 2011

 

Sometimes it’s obvious we need a break, but in most cases we figure it out too late. When you work double-digit hours and Sundays are no longer a day of rest, feeling overworked can become the new normal. Even so you’ll eventually hit a wall, and when that happens it can take days and even weeks to recover the enthusiasm, creativity, and motivation you’ve lost.

Fortunately a few of the same techniques endurance athletes use to detect the need for additional recovery can be used to indicate when you need to recharge your work batteries. Where elite athletes are concerned, chronic overtraining can actually defeat the fitness purpose and result in decreased stamina, power, and speed; sometimes the harder they work the slower they get.
The same thing happens to us when we’re overworked. We put in more hours to compensate… and get even less done. So how can you tell the difference between feeling overworked and really overworking yourself?

I asked Jeremiah Bishop for some simple techniques anyone can use to avoid hitting a wall. Jeremiah is a professional mountain bike rider for Cannondale Factory Racing. He's a twelve-time member of the U.S. national team and is to mountain bike racing what an NBA All-Star is to basketball (except he’s currently not out on strike).

Here are ways to ensure you stay at your professional best:

Check your resting heart rate. Every day, before you get out of bed, take your pulse. (There are plenty of free apps that make it easy. Some even log results.) Most of the time your heart rate will stay within a few beats per minute. But when you’re overworked and stressed your body sends more oxygen to your body and brain by increasing your heart rate. (The same thing happens when athletes overtrain and their bodies struggle to recover.) If your heart rate is up in the morning, do whatever it takes to get a little extra rest or sleep that night.

Check your emotions. Having a bad day? Feeling irritable and short-tempered? If you can’t put your finger on a specific reason why, chronic stress and fatigue may have triggered a physiological response and sent more cortisol and less dopamine to your brain. Willing yourself to be in a better mood won’t overcome the impact of chemistry, and in extreme cases the only cure is a break.

Check your weight. Lose or gain more than a percent of body weight from one day to the next and something’s wrong. Maybe yesterday was incredibly stressful and you failed to notice you didn’t eat and drink enough… or maybe you failed to notice just how much you actually ate. Lack of nourishment and hydration can put the hurt on higher-level mental functions (which may be why when we’re overworked and feeling stressed we instinctively want to perform routine, less complex tasks.) And eating too much food—well, we all know the impact of that.

Check your, um, output. Urine color can indicate a lack of hydration (although sometimes it indicates you created really expensive urine after eating a ton of vitamins your body could not absorb.) The lighter the color the more hydrated you are. Hydration is a good thing. Proper hydration aids the absorption of nutrients and helps increase energy levels. If your urine is darker than usual the cure is simple: Drink a lot of water.
The key is to monitor each of these over a period of time so you develop a feel for what is normal for you. Pay special attention on weekends and vacations, and if you notice a dramatic change, especially a positive one, that’s a sure sign you need to change your workday routine.

Don’t say this sounds like something only elite athletes need to worry about. We all want to be the best we can possibly be, no matter what our profession, and whenever we slam into the workload wall we are far from our best.

And don’t say you don’t have the time to take a short break or get a little more sleep. You owe it to yourself to find a way.

Eventually your mind and your body will hit a wall and make you, so why not do take care of yourself, and improve your performance, on your terms?
 

SOURCE: http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/overworked-4-signs-you-need-to-recharge.html 

Young, Fast-Growing, and Adding a Social Mission

Nikhil Sethi graduated from Northwestern University last year with an engineering degree, a job offer from Microsoft, and a decidedly "that was yesterday" attitude. He moved to New York, got an office in Start-up Alley, and hired 22 people in two weeks to help him break into the advertising industry. Today he's 23 years old, and his company Adaptly—which has amassed $2.7 million in investment—is reportedly on track to generate $10 million in revenue this year. While Adaptly works primarily on social-media advertising campaigns for traditional businesses—and is not even two years old—it's taking a step usually associated with more mature companies: building in a social mission. The structure is simple; Adaptly is taking on a second string of clients: social enterprises and non-profits. For instance, after Japan's catastrophic earthquake, Adaptly's targeted advertising drove 3,000 targeted donors to the American Red Cross in two days—for a cost to the organization of less than $1,000. That's in part because when Adaptly takes on a non-profit client, it matches the client's budget dollar-to-dollar. Esha Chhabra spoke with Sethi about starting a company in the classroom, building a social mission into his start-up, and teaching non-profits some business sense.

So, tell me, how did you hatch the idea for Adaptly?
In college. We were engineers used to developing these kind of tools and this posed a challenge with an engineering solution. So we built it in our spare time. We locked-up in a room, loaded up on caffeine, and started working on it. Then, we took it to business incubators until we received funding for it.

What was it like starting-up in college, before you got into an incubator?

This is actually funny because the project started in a class at Northwestern where business school students come together with engineering students and collaborate. The business school students looked at the market intelligence and told us that this was a bad idea, not a good market, and not likely to be profitable. But we had a gut feeling telling us that it was worth pursuing. So, we did. And I think I got a C-minus in the class.

But at a time when many companies already have a social media expert, how do you compete?
The social space is vast. There are the paid advertisements. Then there are the social-media experts who'll be managing organic content on Twitter and Facebook accounts. I got a lesson from a nine-year-old in social media that summed it up. Either you can play a bad football game with a full stadium or you can play an awesome game in an empty stadium. So, you have to strike a balance between the paid and the organic—they're two peas in a pod. And we help with that.

 

When did you build in the social mission?
I saw that social online was an environment that had global activity, but so many of the social-media platforms were separated from one another. So, how does a change-maker plug into the approximately two-billion people online who are tuned in but disconnected? These are platforms that are toppling governments, so it was only natural to think about how we could help these change-makers. So we built a tool that would let these organizations take an ad online, in print, or in film, and expose it to these mass audiences in a smart, strategic way.

The difference between working with non-profits and working with for-profits?
Non-profits usually don't have the budgets of for-profits. But I tell them that sometimes a product, put out by a company doesn’t resonate with people but a message, like what non-profits are generally focused on, does resonate and very strongly. So, you don’t need large amounts of money to get traction for a campaign. For example, $5,000 for an ad on a social-cultural issue goes much further than a $50,000 one for a traditional for-profit print.

What would you say is the biggest mistake non-profits make in the online social space?
People tend to think that if you build a Facebook page, they’ll come. Then you’re just focusing on the organic content and that’s one sided. Rather, they should think about online much like they do about TV, print, and radio. It’s more holistic and you’ve got to think about the various other platforms online.

Do you have to be a programmer to start a tech-based venture?
No, not necessarily. In fact, there are so many resources available these days to get the basics. You don't have to go to school for four years and become an engineer.

What's your goal for the next few years?
Become a trillion-dollar company and help all these great organizations along the way.

SOURCE: http://www.inc.com/eshhttp://www.inc.com/esha-chhabra/social-media-advertising-with-a-social-mission-adaptly.html a-chhabra/social-media-advertising-with-a-social-mission-adaptly.html