First, the basics: a business plan serves as a guide for every aspect of your new business. It’s a road map that takes you from a simple inspiring idea to a successful company. Business planning should start well before you open your store or begin marketing. Of course, there are always influences outside of your control, from changes to manufacturing or design to unfavourable events. Here are some steps you can take to help your new business succeed.

Planning

Planning your opening or first year in business, there is everything to consider... consciously categorising a few basics will ensure you start off on the right footing.

Define your business goals

Start with establishing essential goals for your company. You can ask yourself some questions about your business idea to refine it:
•    Why? It’s important that you know the purpose of your business and what motivates you.
•    What? This question helps you establish what product or service you’ll be offering.
•    Who? Who is your ideal customer or client? Pay attention to specific demographics, such as age and location.
•    How? Describe steps that you need to take to develop your service, and establish how you’ll deliver it to your customers.

Have a cohesive business plan to serve as a guide for every aspect of your new business.

This is a road map that takes you from a simple inspiring idea to a successful company. Conduct market research as it is important to understand your competition and who your target consumer is. As a start-up, you need to be aware of your completion, however, once you have tasked this, don’t worry yourself of their success. Concentrate on YOU only. As for your consumer, you need to know their likes and dislikes...strategically and deliberately market, negotiate and influence them! Have a full business structure, stating how you do ‘stuff’, who you want to help you do the ‘stuff’, what your circle of influence looks like and how to create effective partnerships – the people who are going to support and cheerlead you through this incredible chapter in your business life! This should cover marketing, legals, PR, design, branding, ethics and socials.

Jo’s ‘hacks’ for start-ups and young businesses

Think increasing revenue vs. decreasing expenses and stay true to your business mission. Look at your labels, inventory, rent, wages, electricity, marketing, and time. Be clever with your precious time; enable the ‘goldfish’, everyday tasks to be completed quickly and effectively while ‘shark’ tasks (heavier loads of work) are completed within a strategic time frame that helps streamline the logistics. Delegate if you can - entrepreneurs are generally not perfectionists! Eliminate anything which is not working for you today and embrace a growth philosophy: carrying this into your digital and physical world of market saturation with strong profit margins. When growing a business, repetition and consistency are key to creating predictable outcomes.

Let us talk a little about recruitment (my bag and something I am very passionate about). As earlier mentioned, entrepreneurs are generally not perfectionists – modern day warriors yes, but not always perfectionists. I believe to grow you need people! People who match your vibe and can help you attract the consumer. Scary stuff, I know, so set some early boundaries for yourself.

The recruitment process is a minefield. A part-time member of staff on a three-month probation will work well initially. Firstly, to build a team (albeit very small) initially you want a right-hand person who has characteristics of integrity, loyalty, ethical behaviours and trust - all essential character traits for our early dream team members! Start small if you need to but invest in these people with your time, vision, mission and love. People will make your business succeed and grow, so be aware and take the time to hire the right person for the right role, at the right time in your business. Be thoughtful and intentional about your new team: you are not just filling seats for the short term. Fabulous is a magnet; it attracts fabulous people! 

Sales – there are two risk factors for why people buy:

• The degree to which they believe that your product or service will solve their problem (and they will be better off for having worked with you), OR
• The level of risk (monetary, likelihood or getting a result with you, ease of use, the most maximum level of satisfaction and maximum hospitality) associated with buying your product.