The 21 Steps on How to Start Your Own Business book is full of such precedents, as well as tried-and-tested formulas in starting, sustaining and succeeding in a business.
Dean Pax Lapid of the Entrepreneurs School of Asia, and self-help guru and motivational speaker Ping Sotto combine their vast experiences and share the formula to business success in this user-friendly workbook.
Are you ready to learn the how to start your own business in 21 steps? Here are the summary of the steps mentioned in the book 21 Steps On How To Start Your Own Business.
Master Self
1. Ambition
Big dreams are important, but it is more important to have the commitment/passion and right attitude/effort to pursue that dream till it become reality.
2. Believe
Commit to what you believe and have the passion for your idea.
3. Choice, not Crisis, not Chance
Your decisions, not your conditions, determine your destiny. So Choose then Change.
4. Dream Big, Start Small
DREAM BIG is an amazing principle. When you have a BIG DREAM and you believe in it with enthusiasm and conviction, then you can achieve it. Take and break your plans into bite-size pieces that you can handle and chew.
5. Employee or Entrepreneur? Both!
While you’re young, build your skills and network in the industry that you plan to do business in.
6. Fear of Failure
To live a life in fear is to live a life half-lived. Maximize what God has given you in term of talents and abilities.
7. Go Master Self
All it takes to have mastery of self is to dream, believe and achieve. Vision must be accompanied by passion and action towards goals. The secret to business success is commitment to get started and to keep going despite the odds. This is the thing that divides the ordinary from the successful ones.
Master Opportunity
8. A Compelling Reason
One of the most important factors for success (whether in business or in any personal endeavor) is to understand clearly your reason for doing what you are doing. So, you need to be very clear about your reason for starting a business. There is nothing wrong with going into business for financial reasons, but you have to go beyond the money. Your reason should be personal and compelling enough to motivate you to make your business happen, and to push yourself to overcome future obstacles.
9. Bright Idea
Bright ideas run the world. Can you imagine a world now without light bulbs, airplanes, cars... and more recently cellphones, computers and the Internet? What are your bright ideas that you can turn into a product/service that will add value to your target end-user? You can focus now on which of these ideas you love to do and what you’re good at.
10. Choose Your Market
Know WHO are your best customers. What are their life stage and income level. Where your customers will come from and why and how your customers might buy your product or service?
11. Differentiate or Die
Now that you have a bright ideas and have a chosen market, you need to differentiate to stand out from the rest, otherwise competition can kill your business.
12. Estimate Your Sales
Your idea is a successful business opportunity if anchored on a product or service that adds value to the customer (market) where DEMAND (SALES) is big and sustainable (so that you may earn profit).
13. Fit = Value
There will be TWO THINGS that people will value. Solutions to their PROBLEMS/NEED + A HAPPY and GOOD FELLING.
14. Go Master Opportunity
7 Final Questions to Master Opportunity
1. What potential opportunities/trends do you see in the business you are going to enter?
2. What are your compelling reason for going into business? Which business set-up are you going to go for: own start-up, franchise, or taking over/expanding an existing business?
3. What do you currently know about the business you are going into? What is your distinct competence or advantage?
4. Who are your target customers? Have you observed or talked to them already?
5. Can you described in detail what your products/services would be like?
6. How are you different from dominant competitors?
7. Can you estimate sales for your product?
Master Set-up
15. Actual Product
In order for the bright idea to be a big hit, the actual product must be able to compete first in the customer’s mind. After competing in the mind of the customer, you must compete in the customer’s heart. Once the heart is won, the hand automatically goes into the wallet to get the money to buy your product.
16. Business Model/Set-up
Here’s the definition of the various business models you can start with:
Manufacturer – Involved in the manufacture of industrial or commercial products like food, clothing, metals, chemicals or printing materials, et.
Producer – Involved in the growing of agricultural crops or livestock like rice, corn, vegetables, fruits, cattle or pigs, etc.
Warehouse/Distributor – involved in the storage or transfer of products from manufacturer/producer to point of sale (wholesale or retail)
Wholesaler/Traders – involved in the bulk sales of products as agents of manufacturers/producers; they repackage products into smaller units which, they sell to retailers (e.g., meat products to wet market vendors, branded TV sets to appliance shops, newspapers to newsstands, etc.)
Retailer – selling through its own shops where end-user or consumers buy the products.
Exporter/Importer – involved in the buying/transporting/selling of products to/from abroad.
17. Customer Count
To be able to sell, you need to count many buying customers you can attract. The market does not come by through miracles. It happens by choice.
18. Do it Right, Do it Legal
In a business set-up, you don’t want your business to be illegitimate or be copied/taken away from you by someone else in the future. To be legal is easy! Just choose a name and then visit the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). Just be ready to pay the business registration fees. You also need to get Barangay clearance, get business permit from your municipality or city and register your business with the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) and apply for your business’s taxpayers identification number (TIN), registration of books of accounts, and authority to print.
19. Equipment, Employee, Extras
This part of business set-up can either make or break the wannabe entrepreneurs’ passion for the upcoming business because by this time he’ll be swamped with all the M’s. MATERIALS – MACHINE – MAN – METHODS - MONEY.
20. Funding the Business
The biggest reason why people with good business ideas cannot go into business is because they do not have the money to fund the start-up of their business. Smart entrepreneurs use their savings as leverage for BANK LOANS from friendly savings bank. Other sources of funds are parents and very close family friends, local cooperatives, company savings and loans associations, microfinance institutions, government agencies like DOST, DSWD, government banks like DBP, PNB and LANDBANK, and quasi-government finance corporations like Small Business Corporation.
21. Go Master Set-up
The challenge in Master Set-up is: If you cannot make profit with little money, then you won’t make profit even with lots of money. One you put your own money in the business, you will make all the effort and time to make the business successful.
Source: 21 Steps on How to Start Your Own Business (GoNegosyo)
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