Opening a business is not a piece of cake nowadays. As the competition is immense, you have to follow certain steps to succeed. You may think of opening a restaurant, an online store, or anything in between. Whatever it is, there are specific steps that you must take before opening day. These will help ensure that you have a successful opening.

1) Business Plan 

This step cannot be emphasized enough when starting any business venture. Why? Because having a plan can make or break your success. Opening day for any business is hectic. Everyone wants their product or service to bring sales immediately after opening their doors, and consumers want to receive what they paid for.

While it is most likely that you have already done some planning before coming to this step, a business plan must be made to outline all aspects of your business. A business plan highlights different areas of responsibility and how they will be divided up amongst the team.

Why You Need A Business Plan?

You need a business plan when applying for a business loan or grant. Writing a business plan provides a lot of ease, as below:

• The process of writing a business plan forces you to think about your venture and how it will succeed in the marketplace.

• It enables you to anticipate problems before they arise. Thus, reducing downtime from trial-and-error ventures; this makes your effort more productive and efficient.

• The planning stage can help determine whether the idea is attractive enough to pursue as an actual business, making the experience more fruitful and rewarding for everybody involved.

• Creating a personal or professional development tool that captures your vision of an enterprise enables you to communicate effectively with other people involved in the venture.

• Preparing a business plan forces you to identify potential problems and opportunities so you can proactively manage them. It also provides a means for measuring progress against results.

• The process of creating a business plan may uncover information that you did not know before, either about the available opportunities or about yourself as an entrepreneur, which could result in personal growth.

• A well-written business plan becomes a marketing document. It can be helpful to convince banks, friends, family members, partners (if applicable), third parties (e.g., suppliers), and others of your idea's validity and success potential.

• Share it with other people within your venture to give them an idea of the business's future direction.

• A basic business plan can help you organize and focus your goals, objectives, strategy, and tactics to succeed in your business.

2) Funding  

Funding is the most crucial step when starting any business venture. Why? Because having a plan can make or break your success. But money can only be raised after you start up your company.

It’s much easier to grow when you have the cash reserves ready and available to plow back into operations without taking on debt or signing expensive repayment terms. No matter how good your idea is, you won't get very far if you don't have enough money to implement it.

So how do you get funding? There are several sources:

• Friends and Family:

It can be a good source of early investment capital, but it has its limits. Most friends and family members will only invest relatively small amounts, and they may also expect unrealistic rates of return on their investments. You should view this as a short-term solution that may provide the initial capital you need to get started, but not much beyond that.

• Angel Investors:

An angel investor is someone who makes investment capital available to entrepreneurs and wishes to remain anonymous. In contrast, a venture capitalist (or "VC") usually has an office and employees and often requires some level of publicity.

• Self-funding:

If you have enough personal savings that could support your living expenses for a couple of years while running your company, you might keep it going without any outside funding at all.

• Loans:

This funding source will only work if you have good credit or a co-signer with excellent credit. You'll probably need collateral as well.

• Venture Capitalists:

These folks are interested in more significant deals that promise higher rates of return than angels do.

• Grants:

This type of funding comes from private foundations and federal (or state) government agencies that give away money for purposes related to their goals.

• Crowdfunding:

With this type of funding, you seek multiple small investments from anyone who wants to participate. Instead of one angel investor or VC putting up big bucks for a large percentage of the company's equity, each person contributes an amount they can afford in exchange for some reward.

3) Location  

If you are opening a restaurant or an online store, this step is pretty simple. But if you are opening any retail location, there can be many places that would make sense for your business. Some factors you should consider when choosing a location are:

• traffic flow
• distance from other businesses
• parking availability
• signage requirements, etc.

Before coming to this step, you may already have a place in mind. But, you must know precisely where you want your business. This way you won't waste money when making rent/lease agreements. To help your client access your business premises conveniently, consider adding your business location on google map. To verify your business on Google Maps, you can visit theredmarker.com, and you will get assistance.

4) Design   

Once you decide on the location, it's time to think about how your business will look. Think of what customers will see when they arrive on opening day. You may already know what style and colors you want for the type of business you are opening. However, there are many different ways that an architect or interior designer can help by using their talents.

Many digital tools assist with this step. For example, an online store's design/layout generator. Or, the building/architectural rendering software used by architects (3D renderings).

5) Staffing 

This step should be taken seriously because having well-qualified professionals running your operations behind the scenes ensures success for your business. This step has varying importance depending on your industry.

If you run a restaurant, then your staff is everything. If they don't create an excellent experience for their customers, many people may choose never to come back. Thus giving them a bad reputation. The business then ultimately fails because there isn't demand for an establishment nobody wants to visit.

Failure at this step could also hurt your entire team when working towards other steps. Having well-qualified employees can help drive future revenue by referring family and friends or even themselves.

Finally, if you are opening your own business, be sure to think about how much time and money it will take before committing. Do not forget to research the industry that interests you the most.

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