The steps to start a new business are not as linear as they may appear on this page. Your own sequence of steps may involve jumping around between some of these topics, building up and improving each area of your business over time.
State your business purpose. This purpose is the reason you are starting or operating the business. The business purpose can inspire you, your customers, and your employees to keep going in difficult times. It might affect what kind of business it is and how you manage it.
NOTE: try one of the industry starters for a quick series of steps and come back to this more general page if something looks promising.
Find a problem
Identify the community. Who will you be serving?
Identify what the community needs. What problems do they have?
Identify the market. The combination of a community and a problem for which they would pay money to solve.
Create a solution statement. Summarize who you will serve and what problem you will solve. Ironically, a “solution statement” describes the problem and the desired end-state after solving it, not the solution itself.
Get to know your audience
Market research. Find how much they are willing to pay, what the size of the market is, what solutions already exist, and who the competitors are.
Ideal customer profile. Figure out who would find your products to be a perfect fit for their needs, and that would be receptive to your marketing and sales efforts and be able and willing to buy from you.
Identify the target audience. Figure out who you need to reach with your marketing efforts.
Connect with the target audience. Talk with people in the target audience to validate the market research including the needs and problems, willingness to pay.
Imagine a solution
Describe the solution. Is it a product or a service? How will be be packaged? How does the customer obtain and use it?
Product positioning. Is it cheap or expensive? Common or luxury? Typical or exotic? Boring or exciting?
Design an offer. Price your product and design the offer, including any upsells and cross-sells and guarantees.
Sales page with pre-order. A sales page presents your offer and asks for payment to pre-order it.
Collect payment. Figure out how you will collect payment (Stripe, PayPal, etc.) and set that up.
Improve the offer. If there is not enough traction, check what can be changed. Even if there is some traction it might be possible to improve it.
Develop a solution
Product development. Develop a solution, and test it with the market until you find a product-market fit. This process may involve prototyping, customer interviews, pre-orders, and even actual sales.
Logistics planning. Figure out how you will deliver the product to customers and how you will make the product (and get any materials you need). Will they order online? Buy it in stores? How do you make your product?
Revenue
Sales pages. A sales page presents your offer and asks for payment. There may be multiple sales pages in a sequence to handle upsells and cross-sells, or they may be on a single page.
Landing pages. Create one or more landing pages. A landing page introduces you to potential customers, tells your story, qualifies your customers by checking if they need your solution and are willing to pay for it, and directs them to the sales page when they are ready. It’s a self-service, public communication page where the call to action is to buy your product.
Content marketing. Figure out who to address, what to say, where & when to say it, to lead them to the appropriate landing page.
Sales route tracking. Track leads from content marketing to landing pages to sales pages to conversions (visitors who became customers).
Customer support. Put in place a customer support system so your customers can reach out for help.
Operations
Market assessment. Figure out if this is something you should move forward with.
Create a business plan. The business plan defines your business and includes plans for each aspect of your business including personnel, research, marketing, sales, operations, logistics, innovation, and finances. It also involves a comparison of what is needed to operate this business with what you have, and a plan for getting whatever you don’t have yet — including money to start the business.
Execute the business plan. This involves the day-to-day operation of the business.
Learn and adapt. Identify problems in your business and solve them. Add what is missing. Remove what isn’t needed. Change what isn’t working. You can go back to any prior step to apply what you learned.