Business From Scratch
Find your big Idea
- Find a problem to solve
- Find paint points in existing products / businesses
- Listen to customer complaints / read negative reviews
- Identify inefficiencies in processes
- What gaps do you see in the market
- Comp shop
- AI market research tools
- Competitor analysis
- Assess the market size
- What’s your competitive advantage
- Identify your interests and skips
- Have clarity on what is your Unique Value Proposition
- Look for product trends
- Social Media
- Overseas trends
- Ads Spy Websites
- AI market trend tools
- Look internationally for new trends
Validate your Idea
- Is there product market fit?
- Is there enough demand
- Look at the market and competition
- Check Google trends
- Keyword volume search
- Validate your ideas early
- Use surveys and feedback tools
- Conduct interviews
- Leverage social media and online communities
- Seek expert opionions
- Conduct prototype testing
- What is your Unique Value Proposition
- Assess the operational viability
- Assess the scalability of the business model
Validate your Idea (cont’d)
- Create a Minimal Viable Product(MVP)
- Create a Landing Page
- Use this to test how market will respond to your value proposition
- Describe your product / solution and include a call-to-action(e.g email sign up or pre-order) to measure interest
- Run a crowdfunding campaign
- E.g Kickstarter or Indiegogo
Remember to constantly test, validate and iterate at each step on your journey
Set your Price
- Understand your margin and costs
- Review competitor prices
- Determine where you want to sit in the market
- i.e are you affordable, mid or premium
- Consider your offer and whether this aligns
- Analyse your target market and it’s sensitivity to price
- Understand unit economics
- Use a unit economics calculate to ensure you have enough margin in your product to be profitable
- Choose a pricing stratergy
- Cost-pplus - adding a fixed margin
- Market and competitor - based on competitor’s prices
- Percieved value - based on how customers percieve your value
- Test your pricing. Monitor and adjust
Create your Brand
- Define your brand identity
- What’s your brand personality
- What do you stand for
- What are your brand values
- What is your tone of voice
- Understand your target audience
- Create your visual identity
- Logo
- Brand colors
- Typography
- Content Style
- Packaging
- Define your tone of voice
Remember when it comes to branding, consistency is key!
Source Product
- Ways of sourcing product
- Wholesaling
- Manufacturing
- Private labeling
- Drop Shipping
- Consigment
- Find a supplier
- Online sourcing marketplaces
- Alibana
- Global Express
- ThomasNet
- Trade shows and fairs
- Google or Linkedin
- Online wholesale directories
- Sourcing agent
- Industry contacts and networks
- Online sourcing marketplaces
- Organise freights and logistics
- Implement quarlity control measures
Remember to start small and scale! (Start the lowest MQQ you can)
Set up your Website
- Domain name registration
- Website design and registration
- Choose a platform
- Choose a hosting service (normally included with website platform)
- Just use an existing template when you’re starting out
- Set up payment processing
- Set up analytics and reporting
- Existing analytics tool within platform
- Set up Google Analytics
- Lauch an MVP website
- And then gradually optimise your conversion rate:
- A/B testing
- Heat-mapping
- Landing page optimisation
- Content optimisation
- Site speed optimisation
- User testing
- Mobile optimisation
- And then gradually optimise your conversion rate:
Operations and Admin
- Set up your warehousing and logistics
- Send yourself vs use a 3PL
- Choose an outbound freight carrier
- Register your business
- Open a bank account
- Choose an accounting system
- Budget planning
- Tax registration
- Trademark, copyright and patents
Market your brand
First you need to decide what you can do yourself in-house vs outsource to a consultant or agency
- Social Media
- Craft your cotent pillars
- Focus on storytelling
- Influencer Marketting
- Brand alignment over vanity metrics
- Paid vs gifting options
- PR and Brand Activations
- Digital Marketing
- Social ads
- Search ads
- SEO
- Email && CRM
- Affilliate marketting
Focus on nailing your content creation to grow an organic community on social media + that content can be used to make winning social ads!
Grow your business
- Develop new products / services
- Expand your categories
- Merchandise planning
- Focus on customer retention
- Focus on storytelling about what’s unique to your brand
- Cross-selling
- Upselling
- Bundle offers
- Free shipping to increase your Average Order Value
- Improve the post-purchase experience
- Create a loyalty program
- Get customer testimonials
- Get user-generated content for social proof
- Improve data analytics to make more informed decisions
- Continual website and conversion rate optimisation
- Collaborations & partnerships
- Outsource to agencies with more expertise (e.g. digital marketing)
- Automation tools in customer service, marketing and operations
- International expansion
- Target new demographics
Getting a Business Idea
Finding a Problem to Solve
- Find pain points in existing businesses
- Draw from your personal experiences for where existing products or services are not satisfying your needs
- Identify inefficiencies in processes
- Listen to cstomer complaints
- Read negative reviews
- Social media platforms like Reddit, TikTok and Twitter as forums for customer complaints and discussions
- Find an existing business to do it
Ad Spy Websites
- Ads Spy websites track ads on various social media channels (e.g Facebook, Instagram and TikTok), search engines (Google) and digital platforms
- Using filtering tool, you can find what the top performing ads are across various industries to find something that is trending
- Work out if this is a business that you are interested in and then
- Do it better
- Do it faster
- Do it cheaper
AI Market Trend Tools
AI tools that search the market to see what is getting a lot of attention online to find trending and interesting topics
Social Media Trends
- One of the best places to source the latest trends
- Just start scrolling away because the algorithm will serve you more and more within the niche you’re interested in
- Branstorm ways to combine various elements from different trends can lead to innovative business ideas
- Reverse engineed to find the early adopters of trends
- E.g find who were the first people to talk about the Stanley Cup and see what they’re talking about now
- Follow influencers and thought leaders
International Trends
- Travel overseas to look for what’s different and trending
- Attend international trade shows and expos
- Follow international social media influencers to find more country-specific trends
- Browse other country specific platforms, e.g
- Weibo and Xiaohongshu for China
- VK for Russia
- Line for Japan
- Browse other country specific platforms, e.g
Find your Competitive Advantage
You can also look at what you have a competitive advantage in and what you have a genuine interest in. Building a business around your special skill set and your genuine area of interest will of cource give you a big leg up above the competition.
Don’t discount your abilities. You may tell yourself that you’re not the best at something, but you don’t need to be the best. Focus can you offer something that is different to the market and how you can offer genuine value to your customers.
Comp Shop
- What gaps do you see in market
- Use competitor analysis tools
- Mystery shop with potential competitors to find customer pain points, products and process inefficiencies
Have an OK Idea and Start anyways
Just start!
Have a go, experiment and learn with an okay idea
- Start and it may lead to other opportunities as you understand more about the market, gaps and what customers need
- Take a MVP approach and invest very little money so you have ccash to pivot into new areas
- Starting a business is a skill that improves with practice and experience. Once you’ve done this, you’ll be able to jump on new business opportunities much quicker and better