It all starts with a business IDEA. What’s your business idea? What problem do you want to solve? Subject that idea to the following questions:
- Is the business viable?
- Is it low cost to establish?
- What’s the break-even time frame?
- Will it generate residual income?
Then you have to consider 5 phases to building your business from scratch to reality.
Phase 1: Investigation/Research
The first law of any investment is investigation. You need to do some underground work to ascertain that your business idea is worth it. These are few key action plans among many others to get you started.
Feasibility Study
Feasibility study is the critical and systematic examination of all factors relating to every aspect of a new venture with the view to determine its viability or otherwise.
Some of the major aims of feasibility study are:
To gather enough information about a proposed project, to reduce risk of investing scarce resources in non-profitable venture.
To know the amount of resources needed for the venture and to reduce loss to the barest minimum
So, in order to commence your business you should carry out feasibility study and a feasibility study covers at least the following:
Demand for your product or service
What data do you have about the demand for your product/service? Producing products that no one is interested in will definitely guarantee no sales.
So you need to investigate and research deeply to get the right information before you start executing tasks that will bring your business idea to reality.
Target Audience
Who are your customers? What is your target audience? Is it young people between a certain age, old people, residents of an estate, your teachers, or class mates?
Discerning your target audience soon enough will help you to better craft your product and offer your services well enough to make more profit.
SWOT Analysis
SWOT is an acronym for Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat. As an entrepreneur, you must critically assess your own abilities.
What are your strengths in relation to your business idea? What are your weaknesses? For every business opportunity, there’s a threat in form of risks. What are the risks attached to your business idea?
Examining this will prepare you ahead to face the challenges that may arise when you start your business.
Technical Analysis
The technical area study of your business idea emphasizes the production process required, Plant and machinery layout, location of equipment etc.
This aspect gives an idea of various costs (start up and manufacturing costs) that will be involved in getting your product to your final consumer.
Phase 2: Planning
Planning is a bridge between now and the future. What do you want to achieve with your business?
Plans are made to achieve goals, so you need to set goals and make plans to achieve these goals. (These goals could be financial, growth focused, expansion, customer base, etc.)
For your business idea to come to reality, you need a business plan. A Business Plan in its simplest for is a guide – a road map for your business that outlines goals and details of how you plan to achieve those goals.
Check out a Quick One Page Business Plan Here
Phase 3: Start Up
If you have done your business plan and every resource set. You can now worry about starting your business. This phase will include:
Funding
How do you intend to fund your business? (This could be from your savings, friends and family, or loans from financial institutions).
This phase is where you get your business open to your customers.
Phase 4: Operating/Monitoring
Here, you need to set policies on how you intend to operate your business. Put in control necessary control mechanisms to compare actuals and standards so as to ascertain the performance of your business (financially, customer satisfaction etc.).
Phase 5: Problem/Challenge Resolution
For every business venture, there’ll be unforeseen difficult situations that need to be tackled.
As an entrepreneur, you should make financial plans for unforeseen financial situations and also be able to tackle problems that may occur in the course of running your business.
If you go through the 5 phases diligently, you will have your business running in no time and you may even expand or sell your business for a greater reward.
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