Step Eight: Get
Rolling
Date Added: June 3rd,
2002
By Chris Stallman
| E-mail
Okay,
you've come this far. Take a breather and give yourself a pat
on the back. Many businesses fail to even get started because the
owner either decides it's too much work or they lose interest.
If you're this far, you're obviously ready to get the ball
rolling. So here goes…
Get all the forms filed
If you're forming
a sole-proprietorship, be sure to get it registered with the county.
The form(s) takes about 2-3 minutes to fill out and costs a few
bucks so it shouldn't be a big deal.
Set up the business
so that it's efficient
You'll need
to find a way to minimize the amount of work required to run the
business. For example, if you have an internet business, you'll
want to find a way to make the site pretty self-sufficient so you
don't have to sit at a computer for 12 hours/day keeping the
website up-to-date. When TeenAnalyst.com was first started, it took
many many hours each week just to keep it up and running. Nowadays,
it's pretty turnkey.
Prepare all the paperwork
ahead of time
If you
plan to have paperwork and whatnot for your customers to fill out,
have it ready ahead of time so that you look like you know what
you're doing. For example, I run a web design business. Before
I even talked to my first client, I had already created information
packets and order forms to present to my customers. Trust me, being
organized really pays off!
You might also want to create some business cards.
A lot of places offer to do it for you for a certain fee. But they
usually require you to print a couple hundred business cards. Unless
you plan to be ridiculously successful, I think you should just
go to a local Staples or something and buy the kind that you make
on your own computer. I've done that for the past few years
and it really pays off. From time to time I'll change my e-mail
address or I'll want a new phone number listed on the business
card so by only printing out 10-20 at a time, I've saved myself
a lot of money because I won't need 200 professionally reprinted.
Open up shop and get the word
out
Okay, now it's time to start the business. If you
have your own store, open up the doors. If you have a website, launch
the website. If you're making something and selling it from
home, start doing that.
Be sure to tell everyone you know that you have a business
and tell them what you do. If each person tells a few people then
before you know, people will become interested. In high school,
I created a business and told only a few people about it. I would
say that I told about 5-10 people in the entire school of 1600.
Those people continued to tell other people about my business and
how successful I was and now, as a senior in high school, I would
say that about 50-75% of the students know about my business.
And the beauty of it all: I didn't have to pay a single dollar
for that kind of advertising.
With your business started, you're one step closer
to being a millionaire. But this is just the beginning...the true
excitement lies ahead.
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