Many people starting a new business do not give their business or product long enough to be successful. Here are seven quick tips to review to make sure you give your business the right kind of attention and certainly the right kind of launch.

Tip Number One

Before starting, define success for yourself. Is this a side business to get you through the rough times? Is this to eventually be your main pay cheque? Right down a number figure for profit that you expect to reach on a yearly basis sometime in the next three to five years.

By doing this, you don't lose sight of the ultimate goal. Business in its own right is to create wealth. A business doesn't exist as a charity. Ergo, it has to make some money. By defining what you want out of it, the business will have an opportunity to meet and beat your expectations.

Tip Number Two

Once you have your main product to sell or to service, you need to get your marketing together. The most effective advertising has a single message about a product. So make a flyer and start sticking it up everywhere you can for free. Here as well, lay out a plan of what your advertising will look like in three to five years.

Take advantage of the internet. Dig up all the free online classifieds for your area and start posting. Free isn't always better but imagine getting a few sales or comissions to justify your money later in posting ads that aren't free. Do your research and put make a map of where you are going to go with your advertising, including time limits. If you don't see any yield from an advertisement, what are you going to do about that? How long are you going to give it?

Shouting the loudest about your product in a variety of different mediums is best. You may well find that one works the best right out of the gate but in a year, that will dry up and now what? Instead, focus on having any number of ways to go. So if you do direct market faxing, then make sure you also do some low cost email. If email seems to work, don't give up on the faxing or placing flyers around. You simply do not know where your next sale or comission will come from or how these mediums will shift over the years.

Make sure your advertising embraces multiple mediums and that you give each a chance to justify its cost.

Tip Number Three

As word of mouth is such a strong kind of marketing tool and you can't start it yourself, you may feel somewhat ignored. You have this fabulous new product or service, a newly minted business and yet, the phone isn't ringing off the hook to start with so what do you do?

You simply can't wait for word of mouth to happen. Instead, you have to phone up 50 people or visit 50 businesses or get out there and find 50 potential clients and somehow out of that many, get 3 to five sales or comissions. Give them a ten percent break if they will say something nice about you.

Now once you have those basic three or four individuals or businesses, you can get a bit more confident and repeat this until you have around ten people who will tell anybody that your business is great.

Include their testimonials in your advertising.

Tip Number Four

Get a website. This is all year advertising and people don't even have to phone you or seek you out to read what you have to offer. Businesses without websites and no storefront are at a distinct disadvantage.

Websites can be extremely affordable. I know of several that won't break the bank. The best kind of website designer is one that can work to your budget and give you a flat rate for a year. Without prices jumping up and down as you make changes, you can actually sleep at night.

Tip Number Five

The great equalizer in the first year that means that whether your business is small next to a giant business is persistence. Most people don't give their businesses a chance.

Now listen, there are lots of times in life when it would be easier to give up but if you're talking about something that is really important to you, that you really want to try then quitting is pointless in most circumstances.

However, I definitely will say that if you have taken a lot of debt on for your business and are taking your family down, then maybe quitting would be the high road.

If there is nothing gambled, then OK, persistence will win everytime.

Tip Number Six

Consult a business colleague. Find someone who has a similar kind of business and take them out to lunch. Explain that you just want to know someone in the same industry. Often you will find by taking part in this type of discussion that ideas you have can be better improved by being in contact with another business.

And on the other hand, the other business need not fear you because of course you're new and small. Also, running your own business can be fairly isolating so in most instances, you would be welcome.

If you can't find one person to talk to and expand ideas with, consider getting involved in a business group in your area of expertise.

Tip Number Seven

In some ways, this should be tip number one. To start a business in Canada, you can expect to sink 50,000 dollars into it for start-up costs. Reading that, a young enterpreneur will immediately run out to the bank or a financial company and hit them up for a loan.

This is how people lose their houses, their families and their possessions.

If you are venturing into business and need a loan, then my suggestion is to go to family.

Look at ways to make your investment in your business in five stages. There is no reason a business has to start big with big expenses. Instead, do your numbers and review them, try to get it down to stages.

For example, you could invest 10,000 dollars right away and get what you need. You could now go out and sell that product and hopefully make that same amount of money back. Take half for your efforts. Invest the other half. Now your company should have 15,000 of investment. Sell another 10,000. Repeat. Now you're up to 20,000.

By doing things like keeping your business in your house until it grows bigger and full investment is made, you can be reasonably sure you wouldn't need all 50,000 right up front.

What I'm saying here, is do not take out a loan with fixed terms and costs that can hold you down. Try not to even take on rent for the first little while. Space out your investment.

Do your Math. Remember that you want the profit to be your profit and not the bank's.

This is a fairly conservative outlook but it has worked for all kinds of great business men and women.

It's a little like this. If you want to be a millionaire, you'd probably have to be a 10,000 dollars in the bank person first and then maybe 100,000 and then eventually in time maybe closer to a million. It would not happen overnight so why upsize your company and make it so big to start with that you cannot maintain it and the bank loan?

Thse are the main seven tips for starting your business. Good luck to you.

Robyn Whyte
http://www.stargazerpress.com