Start Your Business: 5 Free Things You Can Do Today

1. Welcome!: Hi. If you've been dreaming about having your own business but don't know where to start, this causes for you. I'm carrying and I'm all about micro business that is, locals to start low risk life, stressed small business. I want to inspire you. Today we find free things that can start doing right now to help make your business journey easier and more successful and fun, So let's get on with it. 2. Pay attention!: So you want to start your own business? It's never too early and it's never too late to start. So congratulations on taking the first step. Before we go any further, go to the resources section of this class and download the work shape that you say he thes work shape will help you get through the class with riel actionable steps. And it's also you project for this class, the number one thing you can start doing today to get ready to start a business ease to pay attention, I want you to pay attention, particularly to opportunities. Specifically, you should be paying attention to on looking out for problems that you and your friends, family and colleagues have that haven't been solved well, so you shouldn't be looking for ways to make money, but you should be looking for opportunities to solve problems. Next time you have a problem that wasn't easy to solve. Pay attention to it. Could you solve it for others? If people will pay to have the problem solved, then you found yourself a viable product of service. So other opportunities you should be paying attention to ah, ways to grow your skills and particularly. Grow your skills by doing things. You're going to name new skills to be successful in business, and the best way to learn new skills is by doing if he can learn your new skills before you starting business, you already have a great head start. My main business grew from an opportunity that I found while trying to launch a service for food quality personnel. I wanted to learn how to complete a new type of risk assessment, and I realized there was no and doing a good job of explaining how to perform these new assessments. Meanwhile, there were compliance deadlines. The clock was ticking for food businesses and people were desperate to get learning and get started on this new type of risk assessment. This was a problem that I could solve. So I created templates, tools and trainings to solve the problem. And Lola, I ended up with a profitable and quite niche business. So while you were paying attention, you're going to see lots of opportunities. Be sure to write them down, using night book or use memos in your fine Our profession is Elektronik rather than paper nights, because they're searchable. My favorite method is to use Trillo because it is searchable, easy to organize using dragon Drop, and he can easily upload images as well as text from your phone or your desktop or your laptop. You never know when a great idea is going to come to you, so it's good to always have it available. He's a screenshot of my skill share ideas board on Trillo. By the way, Trillo is free. You can check it out. A trail o T r E l L o dot com So the number one thing you can start doing today use to pay attention. 3. Do the math: Their second thing you can do today is to do the maths, but for making a business plan, you need to know where you are with your numbers. There are two really important numbers at this stage of the game for you. So how much money are you prepared to lose? And how many hours do you want to invest? Money and time? It's surprisingly easy to skip this step if you have already found a fabulous business idea that you're really excited about. So it's actually a good idea to write these numbers down before you even start before you've even found your great product or service idea form A. Since I had no idea where that my idea was going to work with my business, I was only prepared to lose $300 at the most when I started, and I was actually able to start up my business for less than that, which was awesome. So how much money are you prepared to now? I'm not going to say invest here. Since 90% of new businesses fail, I'm going to say lose, how much money are you prepared to lose? Are you willing to lose $200 or $1000. Do you have that much money now? Will you need to say for it? How painful will it pay If you lose it, would you be prepared to take out a line? And if you did take out a loan, what would you use as security? Next up? How many animals do you want to invest? Do you want to spend save two hours per week or 10 hours per week? Maybe at the moment you have 40 hours per week to spare. Don't forget to consider what else he could be doing with that time, whether you could be earning other money from other sources or not. For May Some weeks I have plenty of free time and feel very inspired to do lots of work in my food safety business. But some weeks I put in almost no hours at all. Like all businesses, I had to put many hours in at the beginning. But my goal was to make sure that business time came in place of sedentary leisure rather than family time or sports Time I outdoors time. So for me it replaced Facebook online games, reading novels, watching TV, that kind of thing. These days I track the hours that I have invested vs my monthly income because I know I don't want to kick going in my business. If I'm unless in a certain amount per hour, I do have a particular dollar amount in mind. So if I have a month that falls below that dollar amount that I know I should start to worry. So while you were thinking about the numbers here, some other things to keep in mind. If you want to be in business with the bricks and mortar store, you're going to gain quite a lot of money. Likewise, of food, business or business. Selling actual products is going to require money up front. Online businesses like consulting jobs, work from home and freelancing jobs have much lower start up costs. So these are things to keep in mind. I have a question for you now. Are you good with numbers? If you think you're not good with numbers, you better just go ahead and build a bridge. Sorry, that's when terrible picture, woodbridge that and get over it fast. Understanding numbers is a skill you absolutely must have if you want to your own business 4. Start collecting: The next thing you can start today is to stop collecting. So I want you to make a collection of website designs, brand designs, collis games and add designs that appeal to you. Here's some that I've collected. I also used trailer for these because it's really convenient to snip screenshots straight from your phone and saved them to a card using the trailer up. Now a bit of a word of warning here. Don't get too hung up on a particular look off feel before you know your customers will be in your business. If you personally do not represent your ideal target market, then having designs that appeal to you is not going to be helpful. So just keep it list. For now, the ideas will need to be refined when you know more about your target audience. Now, you should also be considering your personal brand, particularly if you're going to do something like consulting or freelancing or any sort of , um, training or teaching. Do you have a personal brand? What will it look like? And people gonna like it. Here's some examples of some sort of looks for people that might sing your business type they could be relaxed, professional, and you'll notice that there are also color schemes in each of those pictures. So make a collection of ideas for your personal brand, your website in your color schemes that you can use when you start your business. And don't forget to make a noted him in your work shape. 5. Your online time: The fourth thing you can do today to make it easier to start your business is to start using your online time wisely. So how do you spend your online time right now? Are you watching videos of kittens on YouTube and Facebook? Mm. Instead of doing that, I recommend you start poking about in the online world to questions and answers so that it be forms and groups. If you spend a little time in these places online, you will quickly get a feel for pain points that people are feeling. So these will be the questions that they're asking. When people are feeling a pain point, they're effectively having a problem that needs solving. And if people will pay money to solve those problems, there's a potential product or service that you could offer. You might find yourself wanting to jump in and answer questions in these online forms and grapes. The questions that you are most excited to be answering those that you have most confident to answer, and those that you are most interested to enter can give you a really good indication of topics about which you are both knowledgeable and passionate, and that's really a sweet spot. If you want to be in a service based business, you want something that you knowledgeable about and that you passionate about as well. Here's my D's for places to look Professional groups on LinkedIn are really quite good, especially the sales groups. For some reason, they're amazing, lots of questions and lots of great answers as well. Other places to look of Reddit and Cora from my business. I got huge benefits from this group, which is the International Food Safety and Quality Network. It's people specifically by my particular customers in my particular nation. So for me it was really useful to be part of that really nation forum, where people were asking really specific questions that I could answer. So the other thing that you can do when you're online is to practice, becoming a really great engaging on social media, create a second account of Facebook or one on Instagram, and stop posting for strangers rather than people that you know you're gonna practice making posted a really engaging. You could try Twitter as well. And if you're not already on LinkedIn and you're thinking of having a service based business that's targeting professionals than I recommend. Linked in a swell. When you make posts, you will be practicing the art of copyrighting, choosing great photos, choosing colors and choosing branding. And this is great practice, So a great way to have an excuse to do meaningful posting get good. Meaningful practice is to volunteers. They may be at your local sports club or kids group, Boy Scouts or church. You could do some social media published City for one of those groups. I actually learned how to use WordPress after offering to help out someone who built a much needed website for our sports association, and he needed someone else to do some content. I posted some content and in the process, learned WordPress. So it's important to remember for this purpose. When you're posting on social media, you should not be posting about in you. You're trying to make post that people will engage with that about them. I recommend instagram and Pinterest because on those platforms you can promote to and engage with people that you don't know, so you don't need to impress your colleagues or your friends or family. You can be completely anonymous and practice just making post that people will respond to because of what they like. If you think your business is going to be solving problems for professionals or businesses , then definitely do some posting and sharing on LinkedIn. It's a great way to increase your exposure and grow the number of connections that you have , remembering that each new connection is a potential new customer for you. When you do start your business on your work shade, you should be running down. Which forums and groups you're going to join which new social media accounts you sit up and you can also make a note which types of post people are responding to the best. There are almost no businesses these days that don't need a great online presence to succeed. So don't be shy. Get out there, find some strangers to interact with on the Internet and just give it a try. 6. Become a sponge: the fifth. And for me, the most fun thing that you can start doing now few business is to become a sponge. By this, I mean, learn everything that you can. Sistani today make a commitment to sign up for free webinars, click on ads for free courses and e books, go to Meetups and just generally trying new things. This isn't only about learning new things, but it's also a great practice for putting yourself out there and let me to become more confident in yourself. Subscribe to podcasts and YouTube channels about entrepreneurship and small business. I recommend side hustle dot com because they're syriza podcasts that are really inspiring. If a small business ideas that don't require a lot of money or time to stop now, you can also get in the habit of Lenny things say, maybe it work. So perhaps the social club at work is looking for somebody to write their emails for them. Maybe there's an internal newsletter that you could contribute to. Perhaps there's a charity committee being formed, and that might provide an opportunity to learn about a new social media platform, for example, rather than trying to avoid more work take advantage of the chance to learn something new. You can also do some reading about starting businesses or taken entrepreneur cause Now, warning These courses can be really expensive. And although you will learn a lot, many people never actually recoup the money that they're spent on these courses. There actually quite an attractive way for people to feel like I am making progress without actually having to start doing anything. Most importantly, don't worry too much about finding the right business idea. In my experience, it's really a lack of ideas. That is the problem. Usually it's a lack of doing. That's the problem. There are so many amazing opportunities to learn these skills here on skill share and out there in the rest of the Internet, So don't let them pass you by. But don't forget that at some point you will need to start doing this well. Is landing if you need any help with the doing, just getting touch with May at the A m l. A gist. He on the scream. I want to see you succeed 7. Next steps: you'll project for these class. It's pretty simple. One down, like the work shade from the resource is section of this class typing your ideas. What can you do today that will help you to get started in your business and then apply? Joe completed wake shape to the class project section of this class. I can't wait to see yours. Thanks for watching. I'll see you next time.