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Start your own business

How do you do to start your own small business?

My mom and I want to start a cake decorating business. She is self taught and has been decorate cakes for almost 30 years for friends and acquaintances. He has business cards out there and wonders, but can no longer do that because she works during the day. She can not start a business of his house because, legally, you must have a separate kitchen. I learned the craft in recent years, but I can not close the My job is unless we are making money. E 'audacity to do that is making it difficult transition. Also, what is the best way to present your business potential in order to get a good loan for this? Neither of us have no schooling for business. Does this matter?

Step one is to define the your main customers – are people looking for wedding cakes, cakes for corporate events, birthdays / anniversaries etc? Could be targeting more than one group of customers. For each, the better you can define as: geographical location, income level, gender, etc. Next, identify the competition. Who else is serving this market now? Where you can create a competitive advantage against them? Price? Quality? Delivery time? Convenience (location, opportunity to order online, etc.)? If you can not identify a competitive advantage over each of the competitors, you need to rethink your product or scrap the idea. Then, from knowledge customer and work, the competition through the "4 P": product: Once again, it will only wedding cakes? Other types of cake made of sweets? Special flavors or ingredients? Elaborate designs best rate vs. standard? Price: At what price point you have to (a) cover, (b) to achieve a fair profit than the money, the risk and effort you're putting in trade and (c) To remain competitive with other companies? Place: (a) that produce your product? If you surrender, what is your area geographical? (b) Will you sell from your own store? Through other retailers? On-line? During special events like bridal shows? Promotion: How will you promote their products? Great suggestions here: for weddings and similar events are very important, word of mouth, aka referral-based sales are huge. People ask friends who have used long before answering a newspaper or yellow pages ad. Read what your customers? You hang out? Regardless of whether you go for a loan or not, you should put together a business plan, if only to confirm for you that you have thought through marketing, logistics and financial / concerns tax. In this regard, I strongly recommend putting together a 12 months revenue and expenditure estimates. On the basis of sales forecasts, what you earn each month and what costs be? This is useful for businesses with seasonal fluctuations extras like yours.

Start Your Own Business – Ch. 2 of 9