How To Succeed In Business By Working As If Your Life Depended On It

Let's say you have an idea for a business. This idea, this germ of a thought, is something you are sure you would enjoy doing, and it is something you believe would earn you a decent living.

You may then find yourself pondering the thought: "What do I do next? What steps do I take to go from the idea to the actuality?"

Well, I have a simple answer for you.

Do whatever it takes. 

That answer may seem a bit pat, as it does not address the actual "How do I go from my idea for being in business for myself to completing an actual transaction with an actual customer in my own actual business?" question that you really want the answer to, so I will elaborate a bit more.

In 12 simple steps, this is what you need to do to go from idea to opening the door to your own business.

1) Get a binder full of ruled paper, or a notebook of some sort. Something that will allow you to write down notes and refer back to them as needs dictate.

2) At the top of the first page of the binder/notebook, write down what it is you want to do. Let's say you want to open up a hot dog stand. Write: I want to open up a hot dog stand.

3) Directly below that write why you want to do what it is you want to do. Example: "I make the most delicious bacon-wrapped pepper-jack cheese-infused jumbo polish dogs any human has ever tasted. All of my family and friends tell me I could make a fortune if I opened up a hot dog stand and sold them." Or maybe you could write, "I hate working for other people and the happiest time of my life was when I was hawking 'dogs at the County Fair as a teenager." Or "I want to spend more time with my family and the only way I will ever have time to do that is if I build a business we can all participate in. We all love hot dogs and we will all be able to work together serving them up." Or maybe even "Anything is better than the crap-ass job I have to drag my ass to every morning, and hot dogs are easy-breezy to make."

Write whatever, as simply or elaborately as you choose, but make sure it's the truth. This will be your motivation, and your motivation is what you will need to refer back to when you feel you can't accomplish what it is you want to do. No one else will ever see it, so there's no point in lying to your own eyes.

4) Turn to the second page in your binder/notebook, and be ready to write. This next step is the single most important step, and it is the one that will require the most from you. It cannot be skipped, which is why it's one of the first steps. If you can't do this step, you can just stop reading this little blurb and go back to your frustrating shit job.

Here it is. You need to learn everything there is to know about what it will take to do, regulation & licensing -wise, what it is you want to do. Everything. Using the hot dog stand as an example, you would need to know first and foremost what rules and regulations the area you want to operate the hot dog stand in requires of you. Will you need a special hot dog vendors license? Are there restrictions on the size of the stand? What will the health department require of you and any employees you might hire? Are there state and federal regulations you need to follow? What about tax laws? (Trust me, you'll want to know those). Learn it all - Do. Not. Skip. Anything. And write it all down.

There are a great many resources available to you with which to learn all that, btw - the internet for starters, and your local library. The Small Business Administration has a boatload of helpful pamphlets and seminars available FREE.

Your city or town hall probably has a licensing bureau/department, maybe you should pay them a visit. Might want to get a part time job at a existing hot dog stand for awhile, too - wouldn't hurt.

Okay, so now you've taken the time, made the effort, etc., to learn everything you need to know about what the governing authorities have to say about your proposed venture, and you have it all written down - now it's time for step 5, getting down to brass tacks - the logistics.

5) On whatever page you're on in your binder/notebook after you wrote down all the licensing/regulation stuff you have to abide by, you need to draw up a list of all the equipment and supplies you're going to need in order to open up for business. 

Back to the hot dog stand example. Hot dog stands are usually self contained operations that can be purchased new and used (I just checked on Ebay - there are some nice propane powered stand alone hot dog stands available for $1,000 to $3,000, depending on condition, features, etc.), but you'll need to find sources and prices for everything, from napkins to spare tires to condiment bottles. 

Make up a list of everything needed along with what it cost, total it all up and stare at that number. Does it look like an amount you'd be comfortable risking? If so, proceed to step 6.

6) If you've got the ready cash for your endeavor  you're golden. If not, you'll have to find funding. Do you have a generous rich relative that would be willing to lend you the money? Do you own a house with a enough equity in it to qualify for a loan for that amount? Do you have a collection of rare baseball cards you can readily sell?

If none of those apply, it may be a bit difficult for you to get your dream off the ground. Unless you have excellent credit (and I'm talking Bill Gates level credit scores here), financial institutions are not much for gambling on people's unsecured dream.

Of course, you can always try to get a bunch of credit cards (again, excellent credit would be necessary for this) and charge everything on those. That is not something I would advise, as credit cards are the Devil's tools.

Let's continue on the premise that you do have the financing in place, and then some (the "then some" is the extra cash you have for your regular ol' bills - you know, mortgage, utilities, etc.), and move on to step 7.

7)  Research the location you wish to set up shop. A good location is a plus for just about any retail operation (not so important if you're wholeselling or manufacturing something, though access to major transportation hubs would factor in with those).

In the case of the hot dog stand example, you would probably want to have a lot of walking traffic, especially the type of walking traffic that may be hungry - maybe office types on lunch breaks, or people going to a ball game.

There is the chance the ideal locations for your business will already have similar businesses already in place (which is not necessarily a bad thing - the reason fast food restaurants and gas stations seem to all cluster together is to take advantage of each other's advertising efforts and customer spill). If three of four corners of an intersection near a baseball park have hot dog stands, you may want that fourth corner.

Then again, you may not. Over-saturation can kill a business venture.

This is why step 7 requires you to know more than whether an actual physical site is available that draws customers. You have to be sure that you will be able to get your fair share of the customers who can and possibly will buy your product. You need to get some specific numbers, what the people with college degrees call "demographics."

What I'm getting at here is, you want to leave as little to chance as possible. It would be foolish to open up your hot dog stand away from a population center in the belief that people will come to you. Not when there are other hot dog stands much closer to home they won't.

Okay, all the location research is done. Your binder/notebook should be full of notes by now. That takes us to step 8.

8) Review your notes, then review them again. Everything make sense to you? Can you readily see the idea going from what you want to do and why, what it requires legally to do it, what you need in terms of physical supplies to be able to do it (and how much it's going to cost), where the money to do it is going to come from, and where specifically you are going to do it?

If not, clean up your notes a bit so that you can see it readily. Then we'll go to step 9.

9) Attracting customers. This, it goes without saying but is going to be said anyway, is crucial. How do you attract customers to your product? One word: Advertise.

Advertising can be done simply - using the hot dog stand example again, hand made flyers printed at home or FedEx Kinko's offering a two-for-one lunch deal or a free drink with the deal-of-the-day placed under the windshield wiper of every car within a six-block radius of the stand might do it, or giving a stack of hot dog club cards to every office building within six blocks, or offering some kind of show us your game ticket and get a free bag of chips with a dog purchase dealio.

Whatever it takes to get people to come to your cart to purchase your hot dogs.

The world is full of advertising ideas. Look around at how other similar businesses are doing it, and maybe adapt a few of their ideas.

But make no mistake, you must advertise. Every single successful business advertises. The single most recognized product name on the earth, Coca-Cola, spends just about 3 billion dollars a year advertising. Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, spends about 2.5 billion on advertising a year. Professional sports, ventures that have an entire section of the daily newspaper devoted to their product for free, spend billions advertising.

Again, as there is no way around it, you must advertise. You may have the best bacon-wrapped pepper-jack cheese infused jumbo polish dog in existence, but if nobody knows about 'em, you ain't selling jack.

BTW, your customers can be your best and worst advertisement. Never forget that. Make them happy, they come back and probably tell their friends. Piss them off, they probably will never comeback, and will most certainly tell their friends.

10) Keep records. Diligently keep records. Every penny you spend and every penny you bring in will need to be recorded. If you are not friends with Quicken, you need to introduce yourself. Poor record keeping ruins more businesses than any other factor.

You are going to have to find an accounting service to handle your books if you can't do 'em, because they must be done, and efficiently.

11) Hire yourself - that is, treat yourself like an employee. Assign yourself a specific salary, whether it's an hourly wage or a commission based on net profits (net profits, not gross profits Mr. Enron), you must actually write yourself a paycheck that is structured, and pay all the necessary taxes that are required to be taken out of it.

Trust me, doing that is a whole helluva lot easier than watching tax officials shut down your business and auction off the assets to pay your tax obligations.

12) Everything's up and running now and looking dandy at this point. But stay alert. Look for opportunities to improve or grow (growth is optional, of course, but resting on your laurels is not - in business, there is always competition. Remember Montgomery Wards? H. E. double toothpicks, I can rattle off the names of 38 furniture stores that have shut down in Denver since 2005. None of those stores wanted to shut down, but they could no longer operate at a profit, so...).

There you go, the basics of going from an idea to be in business for yourself to actually being in business for yourself in 12 easy steps.

You're welcome.