How to start a business from scratch: practical advice from those who could

Determine if you can pull

Because of the info business people who sell courses for entrepreneurs, the illusion was born that everyone can start their own business. This is not entirely true. And the problem is not only in personality, but also in the right time, place and availability of resources.

Your business, especially at the very beginning, will take a huge amount of effort, time and money from you. The profit will have to wait, there will be no quick result. This means that you must be ready to work hard and receive practically nothing in return for some time.

If you want to start a business just to get out of a boring office or pay off debts quickly, you will be disappointed. If you are the sole breadwinner in a family and have no airbag for an extended period of time, this can end in sadness.

Stories when a future entrepreneur put everything on the line and became a billionaire are certainly inspiring. But this is where the typical survivor's mistake. Films and books are written about isolated cases of success. Thousands of failures are silent. Therefore, you need to sensibly assess your opportunities and the consequences of a likely failure, as well as tighten up basic entrepreneurial skills.

Many people enter a business with the thought “we'll figure it out on the spot”. You don't need to do this. It is necessary to understand financial and legal aspects in order not to make mistakes in simple things and not to slow down the process because of this. At the same time, you should not waste a lot of time and try to become an expert in everything, attend 100 seminars - most likely, this will not be useful. Knowledge must be obtained at the moment when it is needed.

Sergey Kofeynikov, CEO AirNanny

Think over a business idea

The success of the business will depend on its relevance to clients. So it is not necessary to offer them something new and ingenious, it is enough to give them what they need. And for this it is necessary to research the market and target audience.

Ideally, creating a product or service should be together with future customers and employees. You can put together a chat from focus group representatives who want to work on a product. Ask questions, look at feedback, test different options.

As a result, you should clearly understand what problem of the consumer you are solving, what is your unique selling proposition, who your competitors are and how you detach from them. The thought that one can “just try to be the best in everything ”, save for an interview in a business magazine. Now your idea needs to be grounded and rooted as much as possible, only then will it grow. In addition, you will find growth points during testing that you cannot do without if you want to succeed.

The one hundred percent way to survive in the market is to constantly change, and primarily in the product. For example, if you buy and sell bananas in bulk, you may one day offer a very rich assortment: banana flour, banana cake, banana chips, banana candy, banana masks for faces. Your product will change as your customer and market evolve.

Alena Krishevich, founder and managing partner of a business scaling company, investor, business analyst

Create an action plan

A business plan is needed, in which you will accurately write down what and when you will do, where to move, how much money is needed for this and how soon it is expected to turn into a plus. Consider all the nuances. With a high degree of probability, life will make its own adjustments to the implementation of what was conceived, but at least you will have something to compare with, whether you succeed.

It is easier to work with such a document, to look for partners and investors, to track at what stage you turned the wrong way.

Find money

It's great if you managed to save enough money to start a business. If not, consider different options. It can be lending, raising funds investors, crowdfunding.

Responsibly approach the search for partners

If you start a business with partners, it is important that they are like-minded people. A common goal minimizes disagreements and helps make the right decisions along the way. It is important to remember that partners are equal in experience, knowledge, achievements and ambitions.

Due to the fact that I made a wrong agreement with my first partners "on the shore", after our separation, my company suffered losses of 3.5 million rubles. They were followed by clients, specialists and third-party contractors. Then I realized that when choosing partners, it is important to determine in advance the functions of each, the conditions of entry and exit and secure them with an agreement. It took me a year to recover from our breakup and get the company back on track.

Alena Krishevich, founder and managing partner of a business scaling company, investor, business analyst

Be prepared to spend money on promotion

At the start, you will have to invest heavily. Even if your production costs are minimal, and the product is genius, no one will know about it without advertising. And it will cost a lot of money.

And here you may face a difficult choice: on the one hand, you do not want to take loans for a business that is not yet working. After all, there are no guarantees that it will be possible to pay off at the expense of profits. On the other hand, if you save on advertising, then all other investments will be in vain.

If I could go back in time, I would start promoting the product at the development stage. We closed one of the first projects, simply because we were hoping for word of mouth, we got to the marketing component carelessly, we didn't bother with PR at all.

Alexander Bochkin, General Director of the IT-company "Infomaximum"

Be picky when looking for employees

You will need an accountant and a lawyer. It is not necessary to include them on the staff, especially if you have a tiny company. But you need to have people on hand who will do their job in the best possible way for your money. If the accountant makes sure that you reported in front of the tax office on time, and a lawyer will read the template of the contract, in the future this will save you from many problems and expenses.

When I opened my first company, accounting became a headache for me. Either the documents were not drawn up correctly, or the reports were submitted at the wrong time. Receiving threatening letters from the tax office, I trembled, and when the current account was blocked, I thought it was the end. For novice entrepreneurs, I would advise to spend the first profits on high-quality accounting support. This will save time, save money, and later help you earn money.

Natalia Storozheva, General Director of the Center for Business and Career Development "Perspektiva"

It is equally important to find excellent specialists for other jobs. At the start, you have no room for risky maneuvers, so you must understand who is doing what. Delegating doesn't just mean pushing all the work onto others. You need to be in control of the process.

If I could go back in time, I would not hire specialists without first understanding their field of activity at least at the initial level. I and many of my colleagues faced this problem. The system of reviews, recommendations, excellent portfolios does not always work, the risk of stumbling upon an incompetent person is very high. And the consequences for your business will be dire: if you are lucky, you will only lose money, and if not, you will also lose your reputation.

Alexander Kuklev, founder of BENKONI company

Experiment

If a problem persists in the traditional way, try non-standard methods. This is logical: if there was only one correct instruction for business, then everyone would cope with it. In market conditions, laurels go to those who were able to resolve the issue more efficiently.

I started my business in 2012 with a corn sales outlet. The first saleswoman turned out to be a drinker. On the second day I came with a black eye, on the third - drunk, I had to be fired. The second said that she was an athlete and a traveler, and in the evening she stole a bottle of vodka from a warehouse in a store where we rented part of the premises. We decided to change something and realized: we need grandmothers-sellers. And they submitted an advertisement for hiring to the newspapers "Kurochka Ryaba" and "Pensioner". The rates were closed in a day, and since then we have had a steady stream of quality personnel.

Alexey Voitov, businessman, co-founder and owner of the Kapibara sushi bar franchise

Learn to work with reporting

Accounting is important. But within its framework, as a rule, you receive reports on the company's activities when it is too late to change something. This is especially true for small businesses that need to understand in real time how decisions affect financial performance.

I would highly recommend any beginner to figure out which metrics are really important to your business and how you can track them. After that, it is worth organizing the accounting of basic operations so that you can see important indicators in real time. This is how you learn to detect cash gap and to distinguish the fact of availability of funds from the real profit of the company.

Anton Aksenov, founder and CEO of Basis Genotech Group

A loss-making company may have enough cash for some time (advances received from clients, reduced stock balances, owed money to suppliers), and vice versa, a profitable company regularly lacks finance. Both of these situations are dangerous to business.

Tune in for a marathon

If you are starting a business, you need to immediately rely on your strength for a long period.

When you enter a new business project, you need to focus on at least five years. Because it is simply impossible to build a sustainable company faster. A large-scale business is being built for 10-15 years. Even if business incubators promise that their methods will allow everything to be rolled out in two weeks, this does not work.

Sergey Kofeynikov, CEO AirNanny

You will have to work hard in the coming years. And if everything works out, you will already be telling about your success story.