Something You Need to Do Before You Start Your Business
By Desty on Aug 8, 2007 in Meta Business, Offline Business
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Over the past few months, I’ve written several articles about starting a business
Today I had a young lady come to me about starting a new work-from-home business. I do have some experience in this, so I was willing to help anyway I could. She started going into how she was going to make and sell gift baskets. She was associated with several distributors so as to be able to include several products in the baskets. While we don’t make or sell gift baskets, our business is also based off of working with several distributors to offer several products to our customers. So far so good.
After going into the various different products she would have in the baskets, she asked what I thought. Generally, when I’m trying to help someone, I try to see everything from their point of view. I want to know what their plans are and what they’ll do in certain circumstances. So I asked, “Who do you plan to sell these baskets to?” She didn’t know.
How was she going to market these baskets? She didn’t know. I got the feeling that she really didn’t know what I was asking, so I tried again. “How do you plan to let people know that you have these baskets for sale?” She didn’t know, she was hoping that I would tell her what do to.
At that point, I suggested that she really needed to think about to whom she was going to sell to, and how she would get the word out before she actually invested any money into this, beyond maybe a enough materials for a single basket. The conversation went downhill from there, and probably ended up with some hurt feelings and a bruised ego.
It’s difficult when people ask for help with their business. People are extremely attached to their ideas. It’s a huge step just to tell someone that you’re wanting to start a business and to lay it all out for them. For the most part, my experience in talking about starting my own businesses with people who have never owned or ran a business is always the same.
- You’ll lose money!
- Don’t do it, I know someone who got sued!
- You don’t know how to do that!
- You can’t do that!
My problem is that I’m not a people person when it comes to advice. As hard as I try, I tend to express myself as blunt and to the point. Ask a question, I’ll do my best to answer it as fully as I can. Don’t expect alot of handholding from me. That’s what my wife is for 
As you get the courage to talk to someone about your business idea, stop and ask yourself, are you truly ready for what they have to say? I remember going to my CPA with my very 1st business idea (which never got off the ground). He asked the very same questions, what was my target customer base, how would I market the business, how can you compete with similar businesses, etc. This was several years ago, so I hadn’t really thought things out that far beyond I wanted to start a business and this was what I wanted to do.
After you find a mentor who is willing to help you with your business, be willing to listen to what they have to say. They’re there to help you, not to plan your business for you.
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When consulting friends, family or clients on new business start ups I ALWAYS send them to the SBA website first, have them complete the business plan outline to discern strengths and weaknesses of their idea before going into details.
Often just this process and being subjected to the tools presented at the SBA website puts much more in perspective then I can with two or three counseling sessions.
The SBA also offers mentoring from established business owners with local availability and email contact. It has always been one of my top resources and recommendations.
Ah, the old SBA website. Can’t stand it. I remember going there back when I was looking to start my own gym. Everyhing read like stereo instructions, not very user friendly.
Helping newcomers to the gift basket business is especially challenging. Most focus on the products and beautiful designs, but do not want to consider the target market. Worse than that, they often don’t want to think about the unglamorous side of business: create a business plan, learn accounting and obtain adequate insurance.
Even though being blunt may be taken as negative, it’s the kindness thing you can do.
Just as you said, so many people focus on the baskets and what goes in them. I guess they think if you build it, they will come. It’s like McDonalds. Can you make a better burger than McDonalds? Most people say sure. OK, they’ve sold over 1 billion bugers, how many have you sold?
Excellent comment!
Coming up with a strategic plan should be a part of the planning process in any business and I don’t see it mentioned in the article above. I’ve seen how strategic planning really assisted my company in becoming more focused and effective. I found some strategic planning software at http://www.mystrategicplan.com on the internet that assisted in getting us started as well as maintaining/tweaking our plan.
Good luck,
Jason
My article “Plan Your Trip for Your Business” (linked to in the article) is a great read on strategic planning for your business.
Jessie…
Thanks for this, I’m writing an ebook about starting up businesses right now so this post was very informative….