What one piece of advice would you give to someone starting a new business?
To help you receive guidance on starting a new business, we asked experienced entrepreneurs and business owners this question for their best advice. From dedicating time to choosing your business name to equipping yourself with the best tools and software, there are several pieces of advice to help you start a new business on a sound footing.
Here are 12 pieces of advice for starting a new business:
- Dedicate Time To Choose Your Business Name
- Optimize Your Website To Compete Online
- Be a Leader Who Inspires
- Identify Your Purpose and Identity
- Don’t Be Afraid To Try New Things
- Develop a Marketing Plan
- Follow Your Heart To Stay Strong
- Build and Work With a Strong Team
- Track Your Finances and Spend On Essentials Only
- Do Your Research
- Learn To Delegate Work
- Equip Yourself With The Best Tools and Software
Dedicate Time To Choose Your Business Name
It can be easy to just use your first and last name as your official business name when getting started. The challenge behind this is that you are limiting the growth potential of your business down the line. If you foresee your business growing beyond you as an individual, my advice is to take a few days to brainstorm your deeper mission and choose a business name that represents what you are setting out to accomplish.
Audrey Hutnick, Smallwave Marketing
Optimize Your Website To Compete Online
Optimize your website to increase your conversions and reduce your bounce rates. Users respond best to sites that are easy to navigate, well-organized, fast-loading, have attractive visual content, and offer potential value to the user. Optimizing your site is one of the most effective conversion strategies because it has a one-hundred percent ROI. Navigating online commerce as a business means outdoing the competition’s presentation and making users’ experiences as smooth and enjoyable as possible. When it comes down to it, businesses that prioritize user experience and strategic marketing content perform the best.
James Shalhoub, Finn
Be a Leader Who Inspires
Be a leader who inspires your staff to produce their best work. Every team looks to the leader for words of wisdom and advice. It’s essential for managers to motivate by consistently being an inspiration to team members. Through the best of times and the hard times, it’s important to keep the team moving no matter what. Not only does this create a more productive office environment, but it also builds relationships.
Sara Adam Slywka, Nestig
Identify Your Purpose and Identity
A business must have a clear identity and purpose to attract its targeted audience. Try to establish a unique identity that sets you apart from other similar businesses. To aid in this process, you should also consider your brand’s tone and voice. Determine how you want your business to sound and what you want your audience to feel while engaging with you. No matter what type of products, service, or value you offer, you’ll want to establish a unique identity to become easily identifiable and relatable to consumers.
Datha Santomieri, Steadily
Don’t Be Afraid To Try New Things
If you’re starting a new business, here’s one piece of advice I’d give you. Don’t be afraid to try new things. In fact, if you don’t try new things, you’ll never get anywhere! You might think that your business is going well and that there’s no need for change—but really, the only way to know for sure is by trying something new and seeing how it goes. So go ahead: try something new! You’ll learn so much more about your business by doing so than any other way.
Nick Cotter, Growann
Develop a Marketing Plan
A marketing plan is essential to advertising success and bringing in new customers. The plan lays out goals, objectives, and the tactics you will use to achieve them. For example, building a robust email list is one tactic to reach $500,000 in online revenue. Companies that take the time to create this foundation for their marketing efforts tend to see more success.
Amrita Saigal, Kudos
Follow Your Heart To Stay Strong
Remember the spark that started it all. When you’re building your business, you’re responsible for so many technical and strategic decisions that sometimes you can get lost in the deluge of paperwork and choices and want to call it quits. But when you’re feeling lost or overwhelmed, just return to why you wanted to create this business in the first place, be it your love for the product, your need to change the system, or your urge to help others, and you’ll find your way. You won’t go wrong in building a strong business if you follow your heart. A business with heart has staying power.
Staci Brinkman, Sips by
Build and Work With a Strong Team
Teamwork makes the dream work. When you’re starting your business, you need to find a strong and enthusiastic team who can grow with you. A strong and enthusiastic team will give you the support you need to clear the many hurdles when starting out. And when your team grows with you from the beginning, there is an organic sense of ownership and a commitment to the business. It’s all about teamwork when it comes to the success and sustainability of your business, so finding the right team for you should be your priority.
Tony Staehelin, Benable
Track Your Finances and Spend On Essentials Only
A large number of businesses out there have been forced to shut shop only inches away from their breakthrough points due to a lack of financial resources. This only goes to show that irresponsible and reckless spending of investments is a risk that no new entrepreneur should ever take. The resources that an entrepreneur has, especially in the form of investments, should only be spent on core business needs that are crucial for survival and growth. Only after a business has been stable for a while and starts to make profits should an entrepreneur think about extravagant spending on aspects such as a lavish office, top-notch facilities, etc.
Konstantin Kuligin, K5 Mortgage
Do Your Research
Knowledge is power. There is a market space for pretty much anything you can think of, but getting your piece of it is going to require some effort. Proper market research is going to be vital if you plan to make a stand in your ground in a busy market. You’ll need all the information you can get to formulate a proper business strategy. You need to understand your audience, and where best to reach them. You’ll want to research your competitors so that you can find a niche within your market. If you can’t explain clearly what makes you different from the competition then you aren’t likely to win over many customers. There is a lot to think about when starting your business and leveraging properly conducted research is pivotal. Don’t do guesswork, get hard data that you can build around. It’s key to starting off strong.
Caleb Ulffers, Haven Athletic
Learn To Delegate Work
Starting a new business is an exciting process but it can be overwhelming. When an entrepreneur finally takes the leap, it can feel more viable to tackle all aspects by themselves. However, this is not a sustainable approach. Your journey will go through a number of phases, and as your business grows, it will seem almost impossible to handle everything on your own. Therefore, it is always best to allocate some areas of work to trusted employees who share your vision and can add value to your business. This way, you are able to excel in the areas you are handling and also have time to think of strategies for growth in the long run.
Chris Roth, Highline Wellness
Equip Yourself With The Best Tools and Software
To set yourself up for success, it’s imperative that you invest in the best tools and processes to streamline your everyday operations. Trying to do everything manually is only going to complicate your workflow and cause you to miss out on the finer details. Try to automate everything that’s repetitive and unnecessary so that you can free up more of your precious time to focus on high-priority tasks and projects that need your urgent attention.
Brian Casel, ZipMessage
Brett Farmiloe is the founder of Terkel, a Q&A platform that connects brands with expert insights. Terkel creates community-driven content featuring expert insights. Sign up at terkel.io to answer questions and get published.
