Hello to all new entrepreneurs! I am glad that you continue to read my articles on the site.

Today I have an article for everyone who is just going to open own business.

Let's look at what questions we will have to solve in order to start our business from scratch:

What kind of business to do

The very first thing that needs to be resolved is the issue that radically affects your business, namely the field of activity in which you open your business.

• Choose a field of activity related to your professional skills, that is, in a topic where you feel like a fish in water, you know most of the intricacies of a business already at the beginning of its construction;
• Choose a field of activity related to your hobbies (hobbies). Such a business will not only bring you income, but also moral satisfaction. And once you choose the topic of your hobbies, then you should not have problems with knowledge of this business area (its technical part);
• Study on your own in a field of interest to you. Fortunately, the Internet is now filled with all sorts of videos that you can learn from. I did not accidentally put this item at the very end, the fact is that it is the most problematic and by choosing it you can make many mistakes until you step over all the pitfalls.

After you have chosen the field of activity in which you want to be engaged, you need to choose a business idea for this direction.

Business idea for starting a business

It is the business idea that is born in the head of the future entrepreneur. When you have chosen the direction in which you will start your business, you need to choose a business idea.

To do this, conduct a little market research, determine what exactly the residents of your city lack and find a less competitive niche. For newcomers to business, it is advisable to choose a niche that is less competitive.

Perhaps you will have several ideas for a business at once, in which case choose the one that suits you best, or you can simultaneously engage in several activities. It is only desirable that these business ideas be in the same direction, so the development of the business itself will be more fruitful.

Teaching business through courses, seminars, programs and business trainings is gaining popularity. Increasingly, people are realizing that the growth of their income at work is very limited and go to study the basics of business, opening and managing, organizing business processes and development. The most famous players in this market are Business Youth, Synergy, Like-Center.

At the same time, business trainings have a polar reputation, there are a lot of positive and negative reviews on the Internet. Some call them a scam, while others consider it the best way to learn how to do business. They cover different topics: they help to find an idea for starting a business and create a company from scratch, they tell how it is done. There are paid and free, offline and online courses for beginners and experienced entrepreneurs in various fields. Read my personal ranking of the best business courses in 2019. At the end you will find links to free courses.

1. Business training from GreenSales and Petr Ponomarev

3. Antistartup - online course by Arkady Moreinis

Once upon a time, Arkady Moreinis and Evgeny Chernyak launched their own IT companies, and then decided to invest in startups and make money on it. It turned out that the ideas of novice startups about business are too far from reality and they have to be trained from scratch. This is how the Antistartup online course appeared, which dispels illusions and directs entrepreneurs in the right direction.

The cost of the course is from 90,000 rubles. Duration: 8 weeks of active learning + support. Antistartup program and details at this link.

4. MZS or "A million for a hundred" from Business Youth

The BM premium program is not for those who are just starting out. MHS for those who already have stable income and seeks to increase it. They promise, albeit with reservations, an increase in income at least twice. Duration: 2 months. Details and registration.

5. Training program TSEKH from Business Youth

The workshop is one of the most massive business trainings from one of the most famous business schools. Business Molodist offers to master the tools for starting a business and put them into practice. Term - 2 months. Details and registration at this link.

6. Online course "Entrepreneur" from the Like-center

The Center for Entrepreneurship Development offers a hands-on online business course. Details and registration.

7. Business Plant School of Business Synergy

Another three-day intensive for starting a business, but already from the Synergy business school. The offline event takes place in Moscow, but you can participate online from anywhere in the world. After three active days, participants will be accompanied for several months on a special platform. You can sign up and learn more.

8. Courses in business and management from Netology

Searching and downloading business courses on torrents is not relevant. Today there are free projects or individual classes. For example, in Netology, a separate block of programs and courses is dedicated to business and management, including some for free. You can check them out at this link.

9. Business environment from Sberbank

The Business Environment platform has collected the knowledge and experience of successful entrepreneurs and business coaches from the most popular business schools. In the bulk, the content on this site is free, but at the same time quite High Quality. Follow this link and check for yourself.

10. IIDF pre-accelerator

The Pre-Accelerator course of the Internet Initiatives Development Foundation will help you learn business as a system quickly, free of charge and effectively. This online course, but very practical - it is designed for startups who quickly work on a project, its prospects and investment attractiveness, watching video tutorials and filling out a questionnaire.

Then this questionnaire is considered by the fund's specialists in order to invite worthy projects to the accelerator, to give investments, a place to work, mentors in exchange for a share in the project. The course includes such topics as: product, economy and demand, team, competitors, market and promotion. Record.

Until now, people who have not understood and accepted the digital realities of the modern world are looking for courses in their cities: St. Petersburg, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Rostov, Kazan, Chelyabinsk, Omsk and other cities.

It seems to me that the best experts today are still concentrated in Moscow, but at the same time they strive for maximum coverage in the regions via the Internet, so I think that it is not worth signing up for any local courses.

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First of all, it is necessary to answer three main questions: - What kind of business to open from scratch? - How to do it? - Where to get money to start a business or how to open it without initial investment?

Zero business: what kind of business to open

There are actually a lot of business ideas: just enter the appropriate query in the search engine, and it will give you dozens of recipes on how to start a business. However, first of all, you need to ask yourself a question and answer it: what can you do and do better than others? What are you an expert in and what are you very good at?

Start by analyzing what you are currently doing, where you work. By applying the knowledge and experience that you have gained in the daily habitual hired work, you can in the best possible way use when starting your own business. Consider examples.

You work at a construction site as a laborer, foreman, supplier, etc. If you have a desire to open your own business from scratch, you can succeed exactly in this: organize your own construction company, do the finishing, logistics.

If you work as a system administrator in some organization, then you are an expert in this field and, accordingly, you can no longer work in your organization for a salary, but serve a dozen other companies. Income, of course, will also be different.

If you are a young mother sitting at home on maternity leave and you have free time and a desire to earn money, you have everything you need for this. Of course, you understand everything that concerns babies: clothes, feeding, procedures, medicines. There are several directions for commercial activity at once: paid consulting for other young mothers who need appropriate assistance, including with the involvement of narrow specialists; organization of sales of children's clothing, shoes, toys, for example, by purchasing them from well-known manufacturers from abroad, you can open your own children's clothing online boutique. There are many examples in every major city when proactive mothers on maternity leave opened groups on social networks for the same mothers on maternity leave and make good money from it: from advertising in the group and sales of children's goods.

If you have a car, you can work as a taxi driver, save money, buy another car, then another and start your own new taxi service. There are examples when women opened taxis. A feature of these firms was that women were always behind the wheel. All of these new businesses have been and continue to be successful.

If you are working in trade organization and you know better than others how the trading process works, you know how to put sales methods into practice better than others and have the gift of persuasion, then you can open your own store, then a supermarket chain. There are many examples where people started out as shuttle traders or were ordinary sellers in food stalls, but later turned into the largest retailers with billions of dollars in turnover.

Always, when you are going to open your own business, you need to pay attention to what you understand and not be interested in what you are not an expert in, no matter how much you want to. If you have been a foreman in a construction trust for many years, it is unlikely that you will become a successful restaurateur. At least not right away. If you are a programmer or a talented writer, then you are unlikely to become the owner of a large media holding. Naturally, having enough financial resources, you can acquire any type of business. But we are talking about something else, about how to open your own business from scratch and preferably without initial investment.

At the same time, most likely, your business, opened from scratch, will be associated with the provision of services or the performance of work, since these industries do not require significant capital investments, when you do not need to build new factories, buy expensive equipment, and success depends on your knowledge and skills.

Note
Dear readers! For representatives of small and medium-sized businesses in the field of trade and services, we have developed a special program "Business.Ru", which allows you to maintain full-fledged warehouse accounting, trade accounting, financial accounting, and also has a built-in CRM system. Both free and paid plans are available.

When you have decided what you want and are going to do, spend a simple but effective SWOT analysis. This is the method strategic planning, which consists in identifying factors of internal and external environment and dividing them into four categories: Strengths (Strengths), Weaknesses (Weaknesses), Opportunities (Opportunities) and Threats (Threats). This analysis, named after the first letters of English terms, is universal and applicable to all areas of activity, including small business. It allows at the initial stage, before you open your business, to consider from all sides the future of your enterprise and yourself, as an entrepreneur, from the point of view of strengths and weaknesses, as well as existing opportunities and threats, so that these opportunities and strengths are used to the maximum, and threats and the impact of weaknesses, on the contrary, are minimized.

How to open a business from scratch, where to start: practical advice

Many start doing something to start their own business, while still working as a hired job in some organization or commercial firm. Tip #1: Don't rush to quit your job. Try to make it so entrepreneurial activity at the initial stage, it could be combined with regular work. Realize commercial activity in addition to the main work is often possible during non-working hours. For example, you work during the day, and in the evening and on weekends you control all processes in your own recently open store, a flower shop or a tailor shop or a hairdresser.

When you combine your usual work and entrepreneurial activities at the initial stages, this will be a kind of insurance. Firstly, there is a possibility that your business will not develop and fail for one reason or another. Second, very often new business, small business at the initial stages does not bring profit, but only requires investments. And while it will reach the usual rate of return, time will pass. Having, in addition to the business you started, a regular job and a regular salary, you will insure yourself well. Of course, this will not always be possible everywhere and not always, but if this opportunity exists, use it. In the event that you had to quit your previous job, do not burn bridges ahead of time, leaving the opportunity to temporarily return to salary if the first attempt to open a business failed.

Another tip in the same section. Save money by saving part of your salary. When you open your own business from scratch, any amount of money will not be superfluous.

Become a partner with your boss . Any organization has a need for third-party services, in the supply of goods, the performance of work. If you agree with your line manager that your new, greenfield firm will be one of his suppliers, then it will be beneficial for both of you. There will be a new one for him. reliable partner, for you a stable source of orders, revenue and, accordingly, profit.

A variation of your own manager's partnership is the opening of a branch of the company in which you work. You will open this branch and organize the execution of all business processes in it. To do this, you need to show your commercial and leadership abilities at the same place of work and enlist the support of the manager.

Get a job with a competitor. If you apply for a job at successful entrepreneur, who already has his own successful business in the industry in which you are going to work, then this will be useful for you. In practice, you will not only see how he manages all business processes, but also learn how to do it yourself. In addition, you may acquire in this work the necessary business connections that will be useful to you already in your own business.

Do everything yourself first. When you just open your business and start working, you will probably have to take on many business processes: accounting, reporting, transportation of goods, goods, Courier services, repair work and security services. In the future, when your business gets on its feet, you will hire the appropriate staff or outsource this work. At the initial stage, the independent fulfillment of these duties for you is both saving financial resources and experience that can always come in handy.

franchise business . Opening your own franchise business is opening a business under a well-known and successful brand. For many, when starting a business from scratch, this is getting rid of many problems. In this case, opening a franchise business means not only a recognizable sign, but also the purchase of the entire complex of knowledge and experience gained by the owner of this brand.

At the same time, the franchisor (business owner) transfers the model he created to the franchisee (for example, to you) for money successful business. For example, this is the well-known commercial network, and you open a retail outlet under the brand of this network in your city or in your area. Representatives of the franchisor will teach you and your employees how to run a business and all business processes, starting with determining the location of the store, assortment, product display rules and ending with corporate phrases that the seller of your outlet will be required to operate when communicating with buyers. Statistics show that a franchised business goes bankrupt less often than others.

Surround yourself successful people. This pure water psychology, but this theory finds support in real life. Try to communicate more with those people who have achieved various successes in their lives, no matter what: in business, in personal life, sports, etc. Communicate with those who feel happy, smile sincerely.

And limit as much as possible to people who are nothing. If possible, exclude them from your environment altogether. Even if they are good childhood friends.

The more you communicate with successful people, the more it will motivate you to become the same. Once you follow this advice, you will feel the difference very soon.

Trainings, books. Now there are many trainings and even more books on the topic successful development any business, starting with recommendations for opening it. Since in any book even a line will be useful, and in any training you can always hear at least some useful thing, you need to read books and go to trainings if you have free time and money for this. But you shouldn’t really count on the fact that a book, training or master class will make you a billionaire.

Where to get money to start a business from scratch

It may own funds that you have saved, for example, by saving from your paycheck. This is the most the best option, because the accumulated money means that when you saved it, you denied yourself something. Your attitude to investing your own resources will be the same: careful, thrifty and prudent.

Credits. Attracting bank loans and loans is more often justified when it comes to the development of an already operating business, for example, its expansion, when additional resources are needed to purchase new equipment or build new premises.

If we are talking about lending to a business at the stage of its formation, then in most cases one of the requirements of the bank will be the obligatory participation of the borrower in financing in some amount established by the bank, for example, in the amount of at least 30 or 50%. That is, in this case, again we are talking about the availability of own funds.

Still, it is better to open a small business from scratch either without money at all, or by investing your own resources. Because it is highly likely that open enterprise may go broke even before you can pay off the loan.

Relatives' money. For example, wife (husband) or parents. These resources are similar to bank loans, but have a number of features. Firstly, these loans are in most cases interest-free, and secondly, they are not limited by strict repayment periods: they can often be repaid when the opportunity arises. And thirdly, relatives can often forgive a debt. Naturally, in this case, it is already on the conscience of the entrepreneur who borrowed the money.

Subsidies, startup funding. You need to constantly study various kinds of state and not only state programs to support small and medium-sized businesses. Perhaps your business meets the requirements of a particular state program. And if you have a really unique idea, no matter what field, you can count on financial support from some venture fund that finances attractive startups.

How to start a business from scratch without investment

This is also quite possible. Especially when it comes to areas such as training, tutoring, consultations, provision of services and performance of work. If for the performance of some work it is necessary to purchase materials, for example, if you sew clothes for someone or finish an apartment, then this problem is solved by receiving an advance from the customer. That is, investments on your part again will not be required.

If you are engaged in trade, then you will need money to buy goods, which you will subsequently resell. But trade can also be organized without initial investment. There are two solutions for this: either you trade on order, when the buyer gives you money to purchase a specific product specifically for him, or you take the product from your supplier for sale and pay for it when you sell it yourself.

How to start promoting your business

At the same time, how to start your business from scratch, you will need to declare yourself: that you have started working and that you offer and sell. At the initial stage, there is no need to invest in advertising and promotional tools: this can be done for free with the help of Internet marketing.

You can make your own fully functional website for free, including with the functions of an online store. To sell your product, to advertise the services you provide and the work performed, you can use free resources at the initial stage social networks and Instagram. Then, when you have money, it would be advisable to invest in paid Internet marketing tools: SEO-optimization of your site, direct-marketing, and the creation of commercials.

When you open your own business and start working, do not forget to reserve funds for the so-called financial airbag. The fact is that, according to statistics, during the first five years of work, again open business 90% of businesses close. Of the remaining 10% of surviving firms, only 1% will remain over the next five years. That is, if 100 new firms open today, in ten years there will be only one. This is one of the main laws of business, you need to remember it.

How to start a business

All novice entrepreneurs have to figure out on their own how to choose a niche, find their client, and promote a product. In this article, we will tell you how not to repeat common mistakes start-up businessmen, prepare to enter the market and lay the right foundation for their business.

Mistakes when starting a business

Business starts with an idea. Next comes the choice of a niche, access to your audience and the development of a "map" of goods. Below we will analyze all the stages in more detail, but first we will focus on common mistakes that start-up entrepreneurs by opening a business.

copying

At the beginning of the journey, it is logical to look back at the best, but a blind copy of a business idea is not an option. Focusing on niche leaders, think about how your product will stand out in the market and become a pioneer in the industry.

The interests of the buyer are not in the first place

The client is not interested in the brand, but in what it can give. Make sure the positioning of the business is on the right track, the value of your offer is clear to the customer, and the brand speaks for more than just itself.

How to find an idea

The desire to start a business does not always give rise to a business idea. If you want to be an entrepreneur but have no idea what to sell, answer these questions: What do you enjoy doing? What do you want to learn and what do you already know? What can you do for a client today? And finally, does the client need it?

It is pointless to do business if your product does not meet the needs of the buyer - entrepreneurship begins with solving some problem of the client. Before entering the market, check whether your offer will be in demand: try to sell the product to the first customers. Analyze what products and services are popular with competitors and why, and compare with your own.

If you already have a business idea, ask yourself these same questions anyway, and make sure none of them are confusing.

How to choose a niche and key segment

1

Count the number of potential customers

At the very beginning, it is important to focus not on the entire niche, but on a specific segment. Who exactly will benefit from your services and how often will they be used? For example, if you open a make-up studio, your clients may be professional artists, models, or ordinary people- decide on whom you will make the main bet. Search in the public domain and use statistical data to make the forecast more accurate.

2

Assess the solvency of the audience

The market can be huge, but the profits from it can be modest. When forming a business plan, proceed not only from the potential coverage, but also the solvency of buyers, because the order of the cost of the product depends on it.

3

Find out how many competitors you have

Analyze how many offers are on the market and how they are presented - can you stand out? If there are many competitors, focus on a narrower niche.

4

Determine your competitive advantage

Put yourself in the customer's shoes and think about what makes your brand better than others. Lower cost of goods shouldn't be the only benefit - don't forget the customer value of the product.

How to reach the target audience

To let consumers know about your product, use the right marketing channels. Find answers to these questions: what sites do potential customers visit, how and where do they go after work, what bloggers and brands are they following, what videos are they watching?

Useful tools will be Yandex Wordstat and Google AdWords: services provide monthly statistics of search queries by keywords. For example, this is how the Yandex helper page looks like if you enter the word “yarn” in the search field.

After analyzing information about target audience, you will be able to competently build a promotion and get access to customers.

How to think over the "map" of goods

Start with a list of problems customers have in your market and come up with services and products that can solve them. Arrange brainstorm and write down whatever comes to mind. From the resulting list, select 3-4 of the most successful products - a "map" of goods, the cost of which will be graded: from free or very cheap to the most expensive. The utility of a good or service should increase in proportion to the price. It is logical if the highest cost for the client will be the guarantor of an individual approach or uniqueness of the offer.

Keys to success

Remember Mistakes Are Good

Draw conclusions from your own and other people's negative experiences and do not give up after suffering a series of defeats. Problems and crises are normal, they are the ones that push you to look for new solutions.

Plan

Owning a business requires no less discipline than working for hire. Moving forward is impossible without a goal and specifics - set goals for the day, month, year, etc.

act

Abandon perfectionism: it is better to launch a non-perfect product on the market and quickly improve in the process than to outperform competitors and sacrifice the opportunity to earn money.

Analyze

At each stage, analyze the work done. If you realize that the next step is not bringing you closer to the goal, change the plan.