How to start an online business in 2021 (Idea to SALES!)
Learn how to start a business in 2021 by turning your idea into a business - these are the tips I used to build a 6-figure business within 1 year of launching. Starting an online store or e-commerce store can be scary - how do you know if your product idea for your business is good? Follow these 3 small business tips to know how to see if there are customers in the market for your product, validate your idea, involve your customers in the process and launch confidently knowing you can get sales at the START of your business in 2021.
Learn how I turned my idea into a business. If you have an idea for a business, the last thing you want to do is make a website and start selling. Most likely, you will not get the sales that you want. That's why I'm going to tell you the framework on how to turn your idea into a business so that you can strategically launch and get sales when you launch.
Hey, guys, it's Joi Wade, and welcome to my channel. I post about business, life, and beauty. Make sure you subscribe and turn on the notification bell if you're interested in seeing more videos like this. Like I said before, the last thing you want to do is have an idea and sell it the next day. The RIP framework is a little acronym I thought of for this video, outlining how to prepare for your launch. I know this framework works because when I launched my business, I had 200 units of inventory. I knew exactly how many pieces of inventory to order, and they sold out in two days. So take notes for this video and get ready to learn the rip framework.
It's called RIP because I'm just putting depth into launching without a strategy. Let's get into the first letter, which is R. R stands for research. Just because you have an idea does not mean that it's backed by market research or has an opportunity for your business to do well. Suppose your specific idea might be a starting point to lead you to a better product that you should be selling. There are many ways to go about researching your brands. I'm just going to name a few.
The first is doing market and competitor research. Say you wanted to launch a potato chip brand. The first thing you should do is say, okay, who else is selling potato chips? What are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, or threatening factors those brands may have? When you do a SWOT analysis for some of your competitors, you can identify the market holes. Knowing the market is also very important. The main thing you want to learn about is your customers because they are number one when deciding which products you should launch. One thing I did when launching my beauty brand, is develop an email list of women who loved natural hair care, and I sent them a survey that had a bunch of questions about things that I was thinking about doing in my business. One of the signature products of my brand Joiful Bee is the Wash Day Kit. It includes five hair tools that are bought bundled into a kit.
One strategic thing that I listed in my survey was 20 different hair tools. Then I let my customers pick the five that they wanted. The top five products with the most votes are the exact tools in the Wash Day Kit. This is why surveys are so important. Your customers tell you what they want and what to do. That's how you can properly prepare for a launch. To recap, R is for research, and that includes researching your competitors and customers.
The next step in the RIP process is I, which stands for ideate. You need to ideate a few things before you launch your business. The best kept but obvious secret of business is that you need to solve a problem. Now that you've done a little bit of research on the market and your customers, you need to figure out what problem you want to solve. Did a lot of your customers complain that Lay's is too salty or that they don't have the flavors that they wanted for that potato chip business? You need to figure out their pain points to develop a product or service that solves those problems. If you can not tell me what problem your business is solving, you need to go back to the research and ideation phase of developing your business.
The next part of this is going back to your original business idea and see if it stacks up. Now that you've done the research and identified the problems your customers have, you can think of viable ideas for the market you're trying to enter into. You should then decide if you will have a physical or digital product or a service business. There are so many different business models thanks to the internet. You can have your business completely online, like e-books or courses. But when it comes to the physical world, those are things that you'll buy in-store or get directly from the seller.
Now that we have R and I settled, let's get into the last step of RIP, which is the plan. At this point, you should have all your market research done and your idea for your product. Making your business plan is the next phase. This is where you can make your launch and financial plan. There's a lot of things that need to get planned out before you start your business. Let me know if you want me to make a video on making a business plan. I already have a video on marketing plans, which I'll have up here and linked below. You can see how I planned, launched, and marketed my business following this RIP framework in that video. With the financial plan, I would highly recommend getting a CPA and bookkeeper on board. That will help you ensure that you have everything in line once you launch your business, like your business bank account, taxes, etc.
I want you to check out some of these videos on the side to figure out how to move forward in this process of starting your business. I have a video on the five things every new business owner should have, so check that one out. And also, check out where I break down my marketing plan step by step and how I launched my business. Okay, so RIP, you guys know what it is research, ideate, and plan. Let me know what you think of this process. If you took notes on this video, take a picture of your notes next to this video and tag me on Instagram stories so that I can connect with you and learn more about your plans for your business. Let me know if this was valuable in the comments, and I will talk to you guys in the next one.
If you're interested in learning about the admin tasks you'll need to do like establishing an entity (LLC) and more - watch part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7Zv2...
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Office Supplies Favorites!
Fluid stance desk whiteboard: https://shrsl.com/2wssz
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My favorite planner as a business owner: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B088KRN1CL?...
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