Start ups fail all the time. It’s a simple fact. Around 20% of new businesses fail in their first two years. It gets worse. Then only 45% stay open during the first four years. The worst statistic is that only 25% of businesses survive beyond 15 years. That’s the challenge you are facing. So why wouldn’t you do all you can to future proof your business before you launch? It doesn’t matter what kind of business you’re opening. It could be a restaurant, B2B, or product services. Whatever it is, you need to put effort and research into starting right. You can bet your bottom dollar that those who fail in the first two years make mistakes. These are mistakes you can avoid by making sure things are in the right place before launching. It’s an easy mistake to make to get excited and launch too early. Business owners want to get out there. To see what people think about them and it drives owners to push themselves out when there may be certain elements of the business which just aren’t ready. The tips below can help you ensure your business is in the right place, but each business is completely unique and conducting your own research is absolutely essential . Setting up your own business can be incredibly rewarding. Good luck
Plan For Differing Eventualities Before Launching
A lot of people do this the wrong way around. They’ll start drastically planning for eventualities as they occur. This is being reactive instead of proactive. If you think about some of the things going wrong before they happen, you can plan for the right actions to take during certain situations and ensure you have the right business continuity management. Just look at how many business owners struggled when CoronaVirus hit. Now, no one is expecting you to be able to seamlessly manage those kinds of worldwide pandemics. But if you look closely you’ll see, even within niche industries, there are businesses doing better than others. Mainly, it’s because they scaled to the online platform better than others but there are other factors in play too. Think about acts of god like floods and storms. It might be buying the right insurance, or potentially ensuring your staff have laptops instead of desktops computers, meaning they can work from home if you had to close your office space. Spending some time on these kinds of problems will only do your business good, even if your business never ends up encountering them.
Website Woes
Another key element of being able to launch with success is having a stellar website. This is always the case, but it is especially important if you’re doing all of your trading through your website. You need to think of the landing page as a store front. The first thing most people will see when they land. So many startups don’t think about this. Instead they get a website done and go. They don’t test it properly. You have to test it. A good developer will do this properly but it doesn’t hurt to check yourself and to ask a few questions. Is the navigation logical? You don’t want customers having to go through too many pages before they can buy your product. It’s annoying. Is the layout right. Does it look just as good on a smartphone? You must make sure all of the links work too. Don’t just go for the first design you see either. Have a look at a couple and solicit opinions from people you trust, make sure they’re all great.
If You Need To Hire, Consider Doing It Before You Launch
This may seem counterproductive to a lot of people, because you haven’t got an income from which you need to pay your staff. But if you’ve got enough startup capital it can be worth it. This is because you can invest time in training them when you’ve got little else to worry about, meaning you don’t have to focus on your main trade when training people. If they’re ready to hit the ground running as you launch, you’ll have more people to drive sales and keep things ticking over. Having the right people in your team, whether they be freelance or employed with expertise that compliments your own should improve your chance of a successful launch. It also means you don’t suddenly realise you need extra staff and have to worry about a recruitment campaign when you should be focusing on your trade. Try to forward plan. Think of the extra work which will come your way if your business is really successful in the first few months. How many will you need to take on? You could do it on a temporary basis to start out with, which you can make permanent if things go well for you and your business.
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