A Mom Entrepreneur's To-Do List
So! You want to start your own business but don't know where to begin. You think that you don't have the necessary knowledge, capital or talent. Good. That means that I'm not writing this page for nothing!
We'll get to your actual To-Do List in a moment.
Firstly, let's discuss how scary it is starting up a business, especially when you feel like a newbie at everything. Your husband or family or friends might be downers about your ideas. Maybe everyone has a long list of why-nots. Forget them. Know that you do need to take some risks in life. Tell them that! Sending your kids off to school or even to your own front yard to play is a risk (possible bullying or kidnapping). Buying cantaloupe from your grocer and eating it is a risk (possible e. Coli contamination). Wearing high heels is a risk (possible sprained ankle). Agreed?
Starting a new business is a risk. You risk some money, some time, some reputation, some peace of mind, yes. But the risk potential is not a fixed figure. YOU control the majority of that risk. With good planning, great support, perseverance, and reasonable expectations, you can make this work, and learn a lot in the process. It really is a fun and exciting adventure!
Keep in mind my 5-point "My Dog -ATE My Fear" Strategy:
1. Formulate
2. Educate
3. Tabulate
4. Participate!
5. Re-evaluate.
Formulate Obviously, you need to come up with an idea of what you are going to do. Then figure out what you find appealing about these business opportunities. Who will be your market? How much space do you need for this business? Can it operate from home? Are you planning on staying "cottage industry" or do you plan to have your product wholesaled out to large distributors? Will you be making something for which you'll need a factory? What's your plan, Stan?
Educate Find that factory. Find that wholesale source for fabric. Figure out if you can start your own website or if you'll need to hire someone. How will you market your business? How large is your market? (You can get great info from census information.) All those things that you don't know that are stopping you from taking the leap: learn them! Ask around, visit PinkPowerSuit.com's message board, do your research. Once you've done a good part of that, you will feel so much more confident and the risk will be greatly minimized. Also, if you are going to need funding, you'll need the answers to at least these questions in the form of a business plan before you can expect anyone to give you dough.
Tabulate If you have a husband or male partner, this is probably what he is bugging you about: money! Men are like that. It's in their DNA.
How much will your start-up cost be? Can you operate any way on a small scale until you make some profit? Can you do your business with a partner who can also offer up part of the start-up costs?
Make a list of all the grants you can find and apply for them.
Can you get a hold of a zero percent interest credit card for a year? Can you get a small line of credit? Could you renegotiate your mortgage? Can you make more homemade meals and save cash in other ways to set aside funds? Can you sell some things on eBay?
Participate!
Once you have some funds set aside, wet your feet in the waters a little. Create some product and sell on eBay to see what kind of a reaction you get. Take your wares to a craft show or farmer's market. Donate some product to a silent auction as a fundraiser. If you know a friend who is having a get-together with some girlfriends, ask her to show them your product and get some honest feedback. Your friend can relate back to you what everyone said. Ask for the email addresses of the people who bought your product. Tell them that you'll put them in a large pool of customers and send them one survey for them to fill out with the answers remaining anonymous. You can even offer a small bonus or discount for their email address and then another for them to fill out the survey. (Mark these expenses down for your taxes!) See How to Write a Survey for free help.
Re-evaluate
Do you like what you are doing so far? Are you proud of your product? Are you making enough of a profit? Do you have some tweaking to do? If the feedback is good and you are enjoying what you are doing, then get started on your TO-DO List!
TO-DO List
1. Name yourself. Settle on a business name and see what I have to say about picking a domain name before you go buying one.
2. Buy your domain name. Buy other domain names that are so similar to yours that you think someone will enter them by accident. Hostway has the cheapest domain names I've found, but it changes all the time. They offer great customer service and your login area won't be as difficult to navigate than some other companies. A lot of people recommend Go Daddy but I find it more time consuming to buy anything from them because they do hard up-selling. The login area with them can be confusing too.
In Canada, you can pick up cheap .ca domains at Netfirms.
3. Categorize yourself. Decide if you are going to be a sole proprietorship, partnership, LLC or corporation. The main benefit of being incorporated is that the business becomes its own legal entity. Were someone to hit you with a lawsuit, they would be suing the business and not you. As my 2-year old would say, "That be good!" The corporation can buy real estate and enter into contracts.
An LLC is a Limited Liability Company, which is pretty much just like a corporation except more costly to implement but easier to maintain. This option has only been around for about 20 years.
To accomplish either of these things, you can contact My New Company.com. They have a lot of experience and a great reputation. Or you can visit MyCorporation. You can incorporate with them for $99 in all 50 States and it seems easy. They are an Intuit company, which has a great reputation. (They make those tax software programs that you've probably seen or even used!)
4. Register your business. In Canada, you have to register in your province at a registry (usually the place where you can get a driver's license) and your town. This is to see if anyone else is already using your business name and to protect it in your province. This is also to grant you a license to operate provincially and locally.
In the US, this registration process keeps anyone from using your name and is done at the county level.
5. Get a Business Number or Tax Id Number or EIN. If you are in Canada, phone Canada Revenue Agency to get a BN (Business Number). This is an easy and quick process. You don't need a GST number unless you break the $50,000 threshold in a single quarter (three month period) or in 4 consecutive calendar quarters. If you will be importing or exporting, you will need such a number. It will be the same as your business number with a different suffix tacked on.
If you are in the US, you need a taxpayer identification number, which is just your Social Insurance Number. You need an Employer Identification Number if any of these points apply to you. You can appy online by filling out this form, but be sure to read this first to raise the chance of having your application accepted the first time.
6. Consider trademarking or servicemarking your name. I know of a WAHM who did not trademark her business name and then someone approached her saying that they owned that name. She was forced to change her business name, which meant a new domain name, which can be death to a business. It means starting again from scratch. You do not want to be in this position!
Trademarking also establishes a professional appearance.
USA: If you get a lawyer to trademark your name for you, it can cost you hundreds or thousands. If you go through the maze that is the USPTO, it looks like it would be $275.
Canada: You can file at the Strategis office. Online it is $250 to file. Otherwise, it is $300. There is a lot of reading on the subject that you should do first.
Some tips: when you enter the name for trademarking, use all caps. Be specific about your services and products and list everything you can possibly think of.
Even if you make a mistake and end up having to re-file, it will still cost you less than a lawyer.
7. Insurance is necessary before you begin business, if there's any chance that you could be sued if something goes wrong with your business.
8. Decide on how to build your website. There are webhosting companies that allow you to build your website with Dreamweaver or some other program and then upload it to their server. This is the harder way to build a website, if you are a newbie. Then, there are other webhosting companies that also offer a webbuilding product. They allow you to quickly and easily build your site by choosing a template and just typing in your info and clicking a few buttons here and there to decide where to put what on your website. They are usually integrated with a shopping cart already.
By far, the easiest that I know of (and I have tried many) is PowerSuit Hosting. Yes, this is the hosting that I offer and it is because I found the easiest website builder around and wanted to bring the technology to you.
9. If you're shipping items, figure out how. What kind of packaging materials are you going to use? Get those together. Consider giving the environment some props by using reused materials. Recycle boxes, use newspaper crumpled up for stuffing or shredded paper.
Are you shipping outside your country? Your post office and customs office will have the information you'll need about how to do this. If you are just shipping things to customers in other countries, you do not need
10. Have a friend or two visit your website and click on all the links, read all the info to try to spot things that you may have missed. Have them try to buy a product from your website.
10. Get some marketing materials together. You can get some free business cards from Vista Print.com and Vista Print.ca. Click here for some free marketing resources.
11. Read my article on How to Advertise on the Internet.
