Starting your own business is certainly the dream of many young people who have high ambitions in business. However, the journey and obstacles that must be overcome to start your own business are certainly not easy.
Many people withdraw even before their business starts due to the many risks that come with starting a business. Starting from large business capital, uncertain results, fierce competition, and various other reasons make many people cancel their intention to start a business.
However, those of you who want to start your own business don’t need to worry. In the following article, Jababeka will outline some tips to help you and how to start a business from scratch.
Tips on How to Build a Business from Scratch
There are 11 sure tips that you can apply when you want to build your own business, including:
1. Determining the Products to Sell
The first thing you have to do before starting a business is to determine the product or service that you will sell to consumers.
To determine it, you can do research to see the trends in the market. Sell useful or unique goods or services to make them stand out and be different from other brands.
In addition, you can also sell something that you like or are interested in. This will make you more enthusiastic in running a business and willing to face various obstacles so that the business can succeed faster.
2. Develop a Clear Business Plan, Vision and Mission
When you are about to start a business, you must prepare a mature business plan so that you can achieve the vision and mission that you want to achieve through the business.
Business plans and visions and missions are three important elements as the key to the success of a business. By defining your business plan and vision, you can stay on track and stay focused.
These three elements give you an idea and goals that you want to achieve in the future, such as the target market you want to achieve, the marketing plan that will be carried out, and others.
In addition, you can also take out loans and assess the possibility of starting and developing a business if you already have a clear plan, vision and mission. In addition, a clear plan and vision and mission can also lead you to find investors who are in line with your business goals.
Identify the advantages and uniqueness of the products you want your business to offer in the business planning process. This advantage is what you then need to highlight in business promotion and marketing later.
3. Planning and Preparing Business Capital
Large capital to start a business is often something that makes many people afraid to start their business.
In fact, not all businesses require large capital. You can start a small business at home if you have difficulties in preparing capital. You can also get around effective marketing strategies without requiring too much capital, for example through social media to launch product promotions.
Detailed records and calculations of the funds needed are also important for you to prepare. You can then use this as a basis for what you need to start a business, which you can then work around to make this cost more efficient.
For example, using used resources that can still be used, using cheaper alternative resources, reducing the number of workers but still in a number that supports effective and efficient work, and many more.
You can also reduce the costs needed by choosing raw materials at low prices with the best quality. Make sure you go around to different places and compare prices from several raw material providers.
4. Strengthening Network and Relationship Capital
Not only financial capital, to start a business from scratch you also need a good network and business relationships.
Networks and relationships are very important to support the continuity of our business. You can get various benefits with the right network and relationships, such as getting quality raw materials at a lower price, easier distribution to regions, wide collaboration opportunities, and many more.
In addition to networking and relationships with other businesses, it is also important to build good relationships with consumers. Treat consumers as ‘partners’ with obligations that we must fulfill. By building good relationships, we can have loyal consumers and continue to use the products and services of our business.
5. Cultivate the habit of taking notes
When doing something new, it’s natural that there are one or two things that we forget in the process and of course there are some things that are confusing. One of them is when developing a business from scratch.
In the business world, it is important for you to have the habit of taking notes. Starting from the details of goods, operations, activities, to the challenges you face in starting a business.
You can use this note as a capital to remind you of things that you may have forgotten, determine what to buy, priorities to do, and also as a material for business evaluation.
6. Avoiding the Fear of Failure
As mentioned earlier, building a business from scratch is certainly not easy. There are many risks that you need to face during the business.
However, one of the most important things in starting a business is not afraid of failure. Because if from the beginning you are afraid of failure, then it may be that your business will fail in the future.
Convince yourself and let go of the fear of failure. The risk of starting a business is indeed great and failure can indeed occur.
As a true entrepreneur, you must be able to learn from those failures and bounce back. If the business is not going according to plan, you should not back down.
7. Start by Focusing on One Business
Running many businesses at once can indeed bring double profits. But this can make you lose focus which then leads to losses.
Before starting a second business, make sure you have built your first business until it is completely stable. A stable business can be seen in terms of capital, human resources, and other needs.
Don’t rush to start a second venture if you want to increase profits. Take the right steps by creating a detailed business plan.
To be more mature, you can also take a seminar or online course to learn the steps of business planning after you have determined the type of business field you want to start as a second business. Do research to see market and consumer demand in order to get a variety of fresh and new product ideas.
8. Study Diligently
The next tip for how to start a business from scratch is to always learn. To be a successful entrepreneur, you must be willing to learn continuously.
As a beginner, you’ll definitely learn a lot of things to build a business from scratch. Whether learning from social media, websites, exchanging ideas with other entrepreneurs, participating in various trainings, or so on.
However, it is important for you to keep learning as your business grows, not only at the beginning of business development.
A good entrepreneur must be able to be a person who is open to various criticisms and suggestions from others. These criticisms and suggestions will be capital for business evaluation so that they can develop properly.
Market research is also important to do before starting a business. You must learn well how the dynamics of the target market, who and what are the characteristics of the consumers you want to target, who will be your business competitors in the market, and many more.
9. Good Time Management
For beginners in the business world, time management can be one of the difficult challenges to do. Starting a business from scratch will definitely take a lot of time.
Adopt the mindset of ‘people will be able to do it when they get used to it’. This way, you won’t take good time management for granted.
Both for small and large businesses, time discipline is one of the elements of how to start a business effectively.
Develop discipline towards time by determining business hours. This will also help you to be more productive every day.
10. Managing Finances Well
Good financial management is very important in the business development process.
Starting from a new business where the capital, raw materials, and production are still small, you have to start managing your finances well without waiting for the business to be big. By managing business finances from the beginning of its development, the process of developing a business will be easier.
Record all transactions made, from before to after the sale.
Conclusion
These are various tips for how to start an effective business for business beginners. Remember that it is important to have a well-thought-out business plan and strategy. Do thorough market research to be able to choose a type of business and see business opportunities that suit your needs.
