So, You want to start your own business? Now What?

thanks for the uh introduction those always seem a little strange to me when people introduce um introduced me it seems like they're talking about somebody else but uh it uh it's it's always uh it's always interesting so um welcome everyone and um we should have a uh an informative and fun session this evening it'll be um because it's a webinar uh format we can't have total interactive like we do on um if we did in person sessions here but what we're going to talk about is understanding how you uh start a business what are the basics uh what are the components of a business uh what are some critical success factors and then we have a self-assessment uh that we have that you can do that will sort of give you an idea of whether or not you're ready to start a business so the audience for this would be people who are thinking about starting a business or who have started a business and are thinking about growing the business um and then as always The Next Step would be to get a score mentor and start working with them uh on on specific items business plans um various other aspects of the uh of the business here so what we're going to talk about is some myths um we're going to talk about some types of businesses uh we'll talk a little bit about funding and we'll do the self-assessment we're going to run through these fairly at a fairly high level and fairly quickly there's a lot of different components to starting a business and um it is um uh it it's definitely an adventure uh having started a business myself um I can say that the first time I started the business I wasn't particularly successful but after um a lot of work uh my second attempt at doing this was uh it was a lot more successful so um that happens people start businesses and sometimes they work out well sometimes they don't shouldn't prevent you from starting another one and we there we go here so here's some myths um you know all I need is a is a good idea to be a successful entrepreneur um that's an interesting idea but you really need an idea that people are interested in so the um uh you know the fact that you have a good idea is a great start the fact that you have an idea that people are interested in is even a better start so here's another thought if you go out on your own you won't have to work so hard or such long hours well that's uh definitely not true um you work harder at your own business than you probably ever had at any other business that you've been involved with um one of the reasons for that is that you're it you're the person that is needs to do everything so I always tell people that in my company I'm the CEO and I also take out the trash uh and so you have to do a little bit of everything third myth is you're going to be able to deduct everything so you don't have to pay taxes and we just refer you to the accounting professionals that um that are around and know you can't deduct everything you can deduct a lot of things um and you definitely need to make sure you separate out your business uh expenses and your business um from your personal uh finances but uh you can't you can't definitely deduct everything uh here's what I like if you work independently you won't have to report to a boss now you know everybody has a boss uh even if you're the CEO of a company your boss a lot of times is the board of directors of that company or the stockholders shareholders the financial Financial people who have given you the money to do the business so everybody has a boss um and um again you're going to be the boss but um you're also going to be the the worker in many cases here so business owners get to do the work they want to and only what they find interesting uh so that's uh that's a nice idea but uh definitely not true you need to work on things that um definitely that you find interesting but if you don't enjoy them or don't like them uh one of the best things to do is to actually find someone that does enjoy that and have them become part of your business so delegation as in any management effort if you don't enjoy doing part of the job see if you can get somebody else to do that or to help you along um so the last one is if you choose to be self-employed you'll be limited in what you can achieve since you'll be working alone and that's true if you have a well it's true you'll be working alone if you're the only one in the business but you don't have to um small businesses a lot of times will employ other people and to me that always puts a little bit more pressure on the CEO or the founder of the company because now you have not only your mortgage and your groceries at stake but you have the mortgage and the groceries of the people that work for you so all of a sudden your perspective changes uh and so that's these are some of the myths some of the things that people think about when they start a business but are not necessarily true here so um here's here's some business fundamentals so so the interesting thing here if you think about it is that the critical success factors in other words what would make your business a success there's two aspects to that there's the business aspects and then there's the personal characteristics so you have to mail those two in order to have a successful business and it's not always easy but it is definitely something that comes into play so you know first of all you need to have some experience in the field um it is very difficult it's not impossible but it's very difficult to start a business if you have not worked in that field um you know you you need to understand what it is so for example you don't want to start a restaurant if you've never worked in the restaurant business um you don't want to start a retail operation if you've never worked in retail because doing that gives you a lot of background information that you need to to be successful here so um the other thing is that you've got to understand sales we'll talk about that a little bit later um but you um you're you're the sales person so I know a lot of people who say well you know I want to start a business but I'm not a salesperson well maybe you are a salesperson you just don't think of yourself that way because you're going to be selling your ideas you're going to be selling your products you're going to be selling your services um you're going to be doing a lot of a lot of selling here and then the other piece is that you've got to put some skin in the game you've got to have some money usually to start a business and you have to have a lot of time and then last in the business fundamentals you've got to be able to multitask and manage a lot of different things that are in the air here now on the personal side you really are taking a risk when you're starting a business sometimes it's a larger risk than others but it's usually a risk because all of a sudden if you've been working you have a paycheck that comes in every month or every couple of weeks if you start your own business you don't have that paycheck you have Revenue that needs to come in and that can become a paycheck but you need to work and get that Revenue going you're also going to be able to take the lead and to and to lead your business because any business no matter how large how small has a culture and you as the leader of the business are the one that sets the culture so you have to uh you have to make sure that you're up to the challenge there in terms of being able to take the lead then a strong work ethic is definitely something that you need as we said in the myth section there you're going to be working pretty hard on your own business so you really do you need to be well organized effective at time management and the last part here is you're going to be able to are willing to ask people for help you can't do anything by yourself like this maybe you can but by and large people need assistance which is why people come to score it because there are people that score mentors who have started businesses who have succeeded who have failed who have started again who have worked in Industry as a as an employee as an executive and so they've got a lot of good background information a lot of good input and sometimes um one of the one of the one of the challenges here if you think about it is if you're the head of the business you've got no one to talk to um as an employee you always have your boss that you can talk to but as the head of the business you're pretty much it and so if you have a board of directors which is always a good idea on a business um you can talk to your board of directors but the idea of getting input from others that could be score mentors it could be other people in the industry it could be friends of yours uh it could be any number of people it's important to bounce ideas off people that might be customers people that um know nothing about your business and so if you're trying to provide a service to people it you want to make sure it's something that people understand so getting help from others is a key aspect of being successful in business here so talking about selling the picture on the left here is a thing called the sales funnel and what that shows you is that you've got a lot of prospects you've got a lot of things that go on the top of the funnel here these are called leads sometimes they're called prospects um and then what you do is you do some sales calls and that can be formal or informal and then you follow up on those and you have some conversations with your potential clients and you may have many many conversations with your potential clients and then eventually you make a sale so you start with a hundred of these you may end up with one you may end up with 10 but you're not going to end up with a hundred and so if you have what's called a qualified lead meaning someone that you understand is interested in your product or service and is willing to buy your product and services uh that's called a qualified lead and that it may be a three to one ratio so getting qualified leads is a is a great way to to get your business starting and if you are have a network you have a lot of people that you know um some of those may be qualified leads here so the last aspect is um solution selling so people often try to sell a product and people don't necessarily want a product they want a solution so solution selling fundamentally is you're selling a solution you're selling the overall experience the overall end product as one of the gurus of marketing says people don't want a quarter inch drill they want a quarter inch hole they want the outcome they want the result they want the solution they have to buy the drill in order to get the whole but they don't really need to buy the drill they really need just the hole so if you can provide a solution and and part of the challenge of of small businesses you may not be able to provide a total solution but what you do is you can partner with other people to do that so think about what is the end product of what your customers might need and that's it that's that's the key selling a solution as opposed to a product and um always focus on closing so marketing is getting people interested in your product selling is actually getting them to sign on a piece of paper and give you money for your product so what kind of person starts a business usually they're hard workers usually they're someone who is driven to succeed they are a doer as well as a thinker I've I've known a lot of people who think that hey I'll just start a business I'll become a consultant because I've been in the industry for a long time but you know I'm used to having an admin assistant and I'm used to having somebody in the finance department doing the budgeting and I'm used to all this and I think well hey guess what you're going to be responsible for that stuff so you have to be able to do this stuff as well as um as well as just think about the uh the stuff here so persistent um the other thing that's sometimes people don't know about is you need to be healthy and you need to have a supportive family um around you family or friends you need to have support because it's going to be frustrating you're going to find days that are really good you're going to find days that are not so good um kind of like playing golf right you have a good round and you have a bad rap and so having a business is it's helpful to have people that are there for support and the reason I say you need to be healthy is because look back hard worker I even put that in the list twice because you're going to have to work hard in order to get your business to succeed and if you're having health problems of any sort um that can be a challenge um not not something that's impossible to overcome but it's definitely something to think about here so before you think about what your business is going to look like and I see this a lot we we all see this as mentors people come in and say I want to start a business I'd like to copyright this I'd like to get a trademark I'd like to do this or that and it's like well let's think about why your business should exist let's think about why people would want to to buy your product or service before you talk about the embellishments before you talk about all the stuff before in effect you spend a lot of time and energy getting things structured when people may or may not be that interested in your product so the idea here is that your product your business should solve a problem and if it's a common problem then you have a large Market if it's a specific problem then you might have a smaller Market but you may have a smaller the smaller Market might be more qualified leads as we talked about earlier okay so um you know I have a friend who who likes to do business with small manufacturing companies with operations in Vietnam that's pretty specific but that's where he has an area of expertise and so he doesn't want to do things with people who have a business operation in China or in Brazil or in Eastern Europe he is very comfortable in doing things with um in in Vietnam he speaks the language he knows the culture he can help your business in that area so that's a very narrow Focus but what happens is that he can isolate uh who it is that should be interested in his business by doing a little research so um the idea is okay who's going to buy your product and you need to be able to describe what it is that you're providing from the perspective of a problem that's being solved and as I said up here a little bit earlier it may or may not be a known problem I don't think anyone ever asked you know went up to Steve Jobs and said hey could you uh invent this iPhone thing because I I'm really looking forward to that well he did a lot of research he looked into a lot of different things before he created the iPhone and he created it because it solved a problem it wasn't necessarily a problem what people thought about but once it came out wow people were really interested in buying it and that's the kind of thing that you want you want to get people interested in your product or your services so here's some here's some stuff a little bit of an interactive thing here so use the use the chat if you want to but let's think about those of you who are wanting to start a business what's your idea um what's your business idea very briefly um you know one sentence what's your business idea and then what business what value does it provide to the customers and third why should they buy it from you okay so take a couple of minutes um and uh again it should only be a one sentence here and um talk about that and we can have a bit of a conversation here okay so uh let's see Brian says the chat option is currently disabled I think it's um I think we've had some people doing chats here so um maybe uh Jim could look into that so anyone um anyone game to uh put your business idea out here it could be a new idea no ideas or bad ideas uh all ideas are worth being explored and so that's really what we're what we're looking at here foreign so uh let's see here we've got something oh okay so uh chat should be enabled now so if we have people raring to go on um uh asking the uh oh here we have so long uh their business idea let me go back to that business idea is woodworking Furniture Home Decor okay so the um the person is is looking at doing a you know building furniture for people to put in their homes and so the the the thing with that is it's interesting it's a it it's not necessarily something that people have to have if I understand correctly it's something people would like to have and so um you know you have options you want to buy a piece of furniture you want to buy a chair you want to buy a bed you have a lot of different options for that this this uh particular business is looking at doing this with handmade Furniture here so here's another one dog sitting business great experience to give you peace of mind while you're gone so there we have a an idea of it's it's dog City okay that's a fairly identifiable uh business idea and what the problem is people are not always comfortable leaving their animals at home especially after covid when a lot of people I think there's been some studies on um animals um being having what do they call that wouldn't uh their not happy when people are gone um because during covet a lot of people work at home and they were there with their animals all day long now they're not some people still are but a lot of people are not so this is a this is a good idea so there's a defined problem in peace of mind while you're gone so that's really a good a good idea because that's a that's that's a value and that's looking at it from a customer so meal catering for aging demographics particularly in nursing homes and communities so that's good okay so we're bringing in food catering for the um the Aging population here and uh that's a that's another clearly defined problem so these are good uh good ideas for people to uh to come up with here um let's see any advice when there's not a traditional sales funnel selling used items online considering growing it further so far the challenge is finding inventory not actually trying to contact potential clients so um you know one of the things that you have to think about here is um in a in a business that has inventory you have to decide what you're going to do with the inventory you know but um the um the sales funnel there's there is a flow there are resale shops there are other places around where uh looking at used items so there are some examples of that and that's a that's a way to do your research so one of the things you need to do if you're starting a business is you need to be good at research or need to find somebody that's good to research one of the things you can do is go to any of the libraries that were co-sponsors here they have either reference or business Librarians that might help you identify any number of let's say retail or resale shops uh you might want to go talk to them you might want to just go visit and see what they're doing how they're selling things and how they're advertising so think about if you uh if you have an idea you can always take a look and see what someone else has done you don't necessarily have to do that but it can give you some ideas here so the last one we'll do is resin and Driftwood arts and crafts and it's directed towards those in the lgbtq community um who are into role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons so you have a very specific audience there which is is good it's good in that it's very specific it is um it could also provide a challenge because it may or may not be a as large a demographic as people looking for um you know a chair for example but it's definitely something that you can advertise and it's definitely something that what you would need to think about here is the last one number three why should they buy that why should they buy that from you so um you know that's the thing to think about you've identified you've identified the market um you have identified a potential problem that they need to have solved uh role-playing games but why would they buy from you as opposed to buying from say Amazon or someone else so good brand new idea you can get your logo you can choose your location uh you can look at various markets and that and and basically you are the one creating the business a disadvantage is that you're starting from scratch it's a little bit bigger risk than let's say buying an existing business you have no track record so if you want to get financing you um need to have customers it's not a 100 but people that are willing to invest in the business are a lot more comfortable investing in a business that already has customers so if you're just starting your business what you may find is that you may [Music] you may need to fund that for a while on your own or with friends and family but the idea here is that it's not all it's not all roses here with starting a business it can be a uh it can become a nightmare but with good planning with good research with good advice with some good mentoring from uh from people you can make your business come true here so buying a business now I've got a a little qualifier down at the bottom here so you really need to have professional advice if you're thinking about buying a business and it's still same thing with the franchise but buying a business has its advantages and that it's already going it's already there it's a proven formula um and um so what happens is you can review what the records are but in many cases you're much better off if you have a professional an attorney an accountant and a business Banker so one of the things we always tell people to do is to line these people up the business banker and you know there are certain business banks that are relatively to specialize in in business or you can use your own personal bank and ask them if they have business bankers and that'll be a different person usually than your purse National Banker but that person will have understanding of let's say how to think about financing or how to set up the business accounts and so you really do need to have some professional advice here so an established business sounds like a great idea it can be a great idea it can also there can also be things that um like it's like buying a bit buying a house or building a house right you have hidden um little hidden gems in there for either one of those so that's why you would look at a professional to understand the finances and there's there's no guarantee that an existing business will continue so one of the things that that people often do is if someone is wanting to sell them a business um you want to maybe keep them on board for a while because a lot of times especially if it's small business they have a personal relationship with all the customers if you take that away You're the new person you're an unknown quantity they may decide hey it's a good time to start looking around at other at other options so if you keep the person who started the business or who grew the business there and have them help for let's say a year or a specific period of time that's a that's a good approach to doing that um so a spying a franchise is a specific business in um that is a in effect it's a it's a grant that you have for a company's goods or services so a franchise could be a McDonald's a franchise can be a sign company a franchise can be let's say maybe a car wash or you know there's a there's a variety of different things that can be franchises um the advantage to that is that you already have marketing you already have potential brand um and that you can often get training in professional help from the franchise owner in starting your business um you know so so that's uh that's good you could also talk to other people who have done this franchise and that's different than talking to other people who may have started a business similar to what you're doing if you're buying a franchise you're talking to people who have actually started a business exactly like what you're doing so they can give you some really good advice um so a lot of times you have to look at that is that you're not always the boss on a franchise there may be limitations there may be restrictions um there may be different ways for example I believe in McDonald's you cannot go out and buy your own supplies for example or food that has to be bought by McDonald's so um you know you you have those restrictions you also will need to pay the franchisor royalties or you need to pay them a startup cost or both and so that's a challenge when you have a franchise again there are challenges to every business so there's no business that comes without challenges but it's always a good idea to understand what are the specific challenges for your type of business that you're looking at so looking at a non-profit it it basically gives you a status non-profit status is in effect um you know you you have different types of non-profits and some of them are tax-exempt some of them are not but um you know you can only be tax accept if you're in that sort of category here and you may have grants various other things that may um that that may be an advantage if you're starting because if you're starting a non-profit you may have a specific cause and there are people who are interested in that cause that may want to provide you with funding um so the um the the profits for the reason it's called non-profit is that the organization is not something that makes a profit that doesn't mean to say that the employees of that organization which you would be one of them um would be able to have a a good salary but the organization itself needs to run as a non-profit in other words you can reinvest that back in there's a variety of ways to do that but back to get some professional advice on this there are attorneys and there are accountants who specialize in non-profits there are specific rules for that so if you're thinking about doing that that's definitely something you should uh you should take a look at so online businesses um this is uh this is all the region in fact we have a very interesting webinar in our YouTube channel about selling on Amazon so um Amazon I'm sure everyone's familiar with Amazon but I'm not sure everyone's familiar with the fact that 50 of the things sold on Amazon are sold by other people other than Amazon it's called Amazon Marketplace and so that's why you may see the same product sold by two or three different people potentially at a different price um what that does for you with an online business is that you may have lower startup costs because you don't necessarily need a storefront um you have a um you know you have an existing business you have a an online business it's a lot cheaper to build a website than it is to build a store you have some more flexibility in that it could be open 24 hours a day without you being there but it's a different way a different way to do that so that's another business here so here's some just some brief thoughts on what makes up a business so you've got as we've talked Marketing sales products Services you've got branding you've got price and look at this you've got competition um the um somebody out there may have already had that idea and so that's the um that's the thing that that you need to be aware of but the other important aspect of this is you may be all of this because you're the business owner so make sure when you when you start your business you're able to do that so talk a little bit about marketing marketing is creating a desire to purchase sales is actually asking for the order and hopefully processing the order so people sometimes um confuse marketing and sales marketing is awareness it is branding it is setting the stage for the sale but you've got to close the sale here um products and services you have to think about maybe packaging if you're doing specific products you may have to think about um you know who it is that needs it we talked earlier about that you may need to think about uh quality if you're doing an actual product if you're selling coffee cups or you're selling something else you mean make sure that they have a standard of quality here branding is something that identifies you within the market and sets you apart so that's what you can do um you know Classic Brands Coca-Cola Harley Davidson those are two uh of uh two famous Brands but they have spent years and years developing those Brands so it's not something that uh that that can that can be done easily but it's definitely something that can set you apart here so pricing it's always an it's always a challenge to to think about pricing what do you charge look at what other people charge um you know do you want to give discounts do you want to give credit uh do you want to have a subscription model for your service um versus versus a purchase model and subscription models um are very popular these days because what it does is it sort of locks in your customers so think about um something as crazy as ink cartridges right you can go out to Best Buy or Office Depot and buy ink cartridges or you can sign up for a subscription service with the manufacturer of the printer and they will send you ink cartridges every once in a while um it's convenient it's a good idea and it's recurring Revenue which is always good think about the other thing is what is the competition who's out there doing the same thing you're doing so you have to distinguish yourself as we said earlier you've got to find a problem uh you've got to find a solution to that problem and you have to convince people that you are able to do that better than the competition but in order to do that you got to know something about the competition and so that's again some of the research that you should be doing if you're thinking about starting a business so any questions so far here's some um here's a question for everyone so um if you had to choose which one of these would be the most challenging in other words marketing sales defining your product or Services Brandy price competition what would you say is your biggest challenge for you personally so that's a that's a key thing to think about as you're starting to think about your business here let's see how to price how to price my products yep that is that I think we got three of those now that's exactly right it is um here's one sales uh sales sales is often is often a challenge it is a it's a particular mindset with sales that that you need to um now here's uh the mechanics the the taxes the benefits uh so that's the um operation which was part of the of the something else here so how those things all fit together Randy um yeah right when when to uh when to leave a W-2 um job that pays you uh on a regular basis and go full time for yourself that is a that is a big challenge so um but again pricing is is um is something that the um the price you know pricing uh you know pricing is a challenge for General Motors right right it's a challenge for everybody uh do you put your you know do you have your your things that uh an average price do you have things that are luxury items uh uh when when we talked about the um uh The Dungeons and Dragons um uh things those are potentially a a luxury item you could charge more for one that's really well made really well designed looks really cool then you can for one that's just mass produced and so um you know think about what is the value and the best way to think about selling the best way to think about price is what is the value that that's offering your customers and what is that worth to them so you can um you know you're not you're you're if you're selling tools or you're selling uh something that is relatively a commodity uh you're going to want to stay within a certain price range but thinking about tools if you if you buy a Milwaukee uh drill that's going to last a lot longer than if you buy the Home Depot brand drill however if you're just a homeowner and you don't need to use the drill every day eight hours a day then the Home Depot one is fine so what's your Market what are what are people um um you know the last one here is um is marketing and marketing marketing can be a challenge because you really do need to find who you want to Market to so good good um so we have some organizational structures here um there's some simple structures uh there's some legally recognized structures again you know please think about this talk to the mentors talk to an attorney um you can start up with just a sole proprietorship that means that you have a business and it is not incorporated or legally recognized in any way but you're separating your business from your personal assets um you don't have the protection that you have with a limited liability company or an S corp but you're able to distinguish that you have to get a tax number uh there's a certain number of things that you have to do as a sole proprietorship but you don't have any formal structure and that's fine um it can be fine for starting out it can be I've known people that have had a sole proprietorship for years and years and it's it's perfectly fine with them um if you want to legally recognize business entity in other words if in addition to separating your assets uh you want to separate your liability your risk um then you would go with something like a legally recognized company that way if there's any liability the liability is with the company not with you personally so they can take the assets of the company if people sue you for something but they can't take your car or your house and that's one of the reasons why you would want to have a legally recognized entity here um let's see there we go so um here's some thoughts on the on the simple um simple structures here um general partnership is same as a sole proprietorship it's just with multiple people um and um again it it can be a good way to start or it can it can be something that you may want to use to experiment that way you don't have all of the costs of setting everything up but you also don't have the protection of setting everything up and these days setting up an LLC in the state of Illinois is just a few hundred bucks and you can do it yourself there are plenty of um forms from the Secretary of State or the state of Illinois to do that foreign for your personal liability the legally uh recognized um is whoops here we go is that the LLC a lot of times is the most simple structure um S Corp is a a little bit more complicated structure here um and you know what I found in talking to people because when I started my business I was doing I want to be an LLC do I want to be an S corp um the thing that I ended up on is what does my accountant feel most comfortable with and if my accountant feels most comfortable with an S corp then let's do that um you know it it is um uh it's it's definitely something back to get people to help you uh and if your accountant wants you to have an escort and you don't want to then you either have to change your accountant or you have to convince your accountant to do something that they may or may not have that level of experience with so um back to consult your attorney and your accountant and see what they see what they would recommend some of these structures are better for specific companies uh types of companies and and some are some are not here so other things to think about insurance um a lot of people there's a lot of business insurance um people out there that you may need a license you may need certification if you're selling food you may need any an inspection um and as we've said all along you might need a team here and these don't have to be full time you don't have to have um you know you don't have to consult with uh with these people all the time but you do have to consult with them regularly on some a regular basis here so funding you can use um your own credit rating um you know you can use friends and family um the idea here is on business finance again we've had some very good um webinars specifically on business finance and on what sort of metrics you can use so we're not going to cover that today but I'm just laying out these are the things that you need to think about when you start your own business here you may need to fund for six to 12 months before you start making a profit when you start a business you may need to dip into your own savings you may need to have a startup costs um you may need to have salaries if you have employees or contractors working with you uh and so again these are things to think about if you want to start a a business that involves selling a product you're going to have to have some on the manufacturers that product unless you're the one that does that uh you're gonna have to have someone that may ship that product uh and so what we're what we're saying here is there's a bunch of stuff to think about in terms of getting your business started and um you know we have some good resources at uh at score here so the um the next part here is a sort of a quick self-assessment so it's kind of like the question I asked a few minutes ago um but what it is is it is um it is a bit of a spreadsheet and what you do is okay my services product Services serving an unmet need in other words it's solving a problem um uh I know who my potential buyers are you know I have a clear value proposition I understand what it'll take to obtain funding so these are some things to think about under a score from one to ten and this is something to do on your own not necessarily here but this is a checklist for you to think about okay these are the things I'm really good at these are the things I really need to do more research on and these are the things I need to get someone else to help me with so as you go into business you'll keep in mind record keeping is is very important metrics are very important in terms of how your business is doing a business plan is very important in terms of planning what your business is going to be doing uh and so take a little bit of time and um and go through these here so um we've got some time for questions here um let's see oh so we've got some questions about mentoring that's good there are as Jim said eleven thousand mentors out there uh that have all been um through a lot of these things we have people specifically uh on franchises we have people specifically on um looking for funding for businesses here so think about um one or two things that might give you an advantage think about one or two things that might give you a challenge okay what might keep you from starting your business okay what are your roadblocks and what's your next step what are you going to do after this so this is sort of a call to action here um you know are you ready to start a business uh if you are then a good next step is to get in touch with score Mentor who can help you with a lot of these details that we talked about marketing uh getting things set up those are all important aspects of the business and those are all things that um that we have done here there we go so any other questions score webinars are a good place um creating a business plan we have templates for those um there are one page business plans there are 20 Page business plans uh and um as we always say start small and expand from there and that's the uh that's the advice that we have uh the PowerPoint um if you want to get a copy of the PowerPoint just let me know my um um my email is in here there you go John dot Fisher at scorevolunteer.org and I can give you a a copy uh here are some uh score resources so we have Financial projection templates we have business plan templates um lots of lots of different things as Jim said earlier at the uh at our score website and here's a couple of books if you're thinking about the business model canvas is a one-page business plan uh and that is a good way to start out to think about that um Lean Startup is a very good book if you're thinking about starting up as the title suggests they're using the principles of lean manufacturing to think about what's the minimum viable product that you want to do the minimum viable service so it's not the perfect service it's the minimum one that you have here um Consignment work into selling products so Consignment is when you have someone that you're working with let's say a store sometimes you know let's say a Hallmark store if you're willing to sell um some things that would you know that would that would work in there they will sometimes sell your products on a consignment in other words they're not buying your product they're saying I'll put it on my shelf and if somebody buys it I'll give you eighty percent seventy percent of the price here so um that's a um that's a good thing to think about in terms of getting your brand out without having the expense of having your own store any other questions we are at the Mark here so I'll turn it back to you Jim well thanks John that was uh a lot of information very good information these resources are excellent resources we will have this a link to this recording up in a few days and we will make sure that all of you get a copy of it where you can stop the video at this portion if you didn't get a chance to put a note in your files on this any other questions that you have you can reach out to North Chicago score and we'll be happy to take your questions if you have additional questions John gave you his email so he can certainly answer questions that way and of course if you're looking for a mentor in your area or one on your subject matter we could we would be very happy to find a match for you John great great presentation lots of good questions from the audience and I'm going to wrap it up here

2022-10-30 06:51

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