You want to be your OWN boss?


GOOD!


Starting your own business is easy. Begin by answering these questions and checking off these tasks. Have fun with every step and reflect along the way of how you can incorporate your personality into your business. When you let people like you, trust you, and know who you really are they’ll become your loyal tribe of customers and followers. 

  1. Write a list of your strengths and weaknesses. Use your strengths to determine your business type, the tasks you’ll want to do yourself and outsource the ones that are not in your strengths.  Focusing on the things you’re good at will make you more confident in your journey. When you have time try to enhance your skills to get better at the things you’re not strong with.
  2. Choose your business type. Are you a service based business or physical product sales?
  3. Will you sell in person or online only?
  4. Is your product digital or physical?
  5. What is your why? Your why is the reason you want your business to be successful. It is the thing that will drive you on days that feel too hard to handle. 
  6. Choose your business name- Choose a name that isn’t registered with your state or nationally registered. Make it something that makes sense to your personality or goes along with your business product. Imagine googling it or saying it out loud a million times. Is it too generic or confusing? Click here to try a name generator.
  7. Make or buy a logo. Etsy is a great place for logo designers. 
  8. Start a fb page.
  9. Start a fb group if you have a subscription or need a private community.
  10. Buy business cards. I think Vistaprint is a good place to start. If you can use a local business or a fellow boss mom you get bonus points. 
  11. Start networking in groups to share your business or mail out business cards to other businesses in your circle of influence. 
  12. Decide which social media platforms you want to try to manage for your business. Focus on 3 or less to start with. 
  13. Will you be a brick and mortar store or will you work from home?
  14. Do you need to hire employees?
  15. Do you need capital for your business or is it a service based business you can start for free?
  16. Figure out your credit score and finance ability if you need to take a loan to buy a building or printers, hire employees, etc. 
  17. Get professional quality photos of your products to list them on your site.
  18. Get professional headshots and branding photos for your business. 
  19. Create a business plan and a set of goals that are measurable and realistic. Set a 1 year goal, 5 year goal, and 10 years. What things have to happen to make these goals a reality. 
  20. Get a website. 
  21. Start growing your email list. Jenna Kutcher has great courses on email list building. Mailchimp is a great place to start. 
  22. Learn basic SEO to make yourself extra findable online. 
  23. Learn as much as you can about your field and the products you sell including what they’re made of and how they help the customer by improving their life. You will become someone who is known in their field as an expert. 
  24. Host a launch party and collect emails for your business to use for promotions and new product alerts as well as industry related news. 
  25. Create a template for email newsletters you can send for releases and information your customers need. 
  26. Set up an email and address you can get business mail to. PO Boxes work great for using as an address if you work from home and don’t feel comfortable giving out your home address. 
  27. Download Canva for creating graphics for your business. 
  28. Use Tailwind or Planoly for managing your IG account and save time on social media. 
  29. Use Calendly to let people schedule meetings and appointments with you to save time for yourself in the scheduling process. Calendly allows you to create different types of meeting types, set your availability, limit meeting types in a specific day and it even creates a zoom meeting for you as an option. This calendar integration tool even lets you take payment for your meetings to make your life easier. 
  30. There’s more but you can always do them after opening and while in business. 
  31. Register your new business here —> https://amandasiggins.com/lady-business-registry/
  32. OPEN and START SELLING!

If you need help with your business journey please contact me. Starting your own business should be fun. Let’s have fun with it!

I offer free consultations and business coaching services to assist you with your business and getting it started. Book a free consultation with me by clicking the button below.

business coach. michigan business consultant. female business owner. minority owned business
Join the business tribe!