Entrepreneurship: How To Start A Business From Business Idea

One of my favorite ways to beat your competition and protect your business ideas is to build a moat around your business. The moat strategy is a very popular and maybe an intermediate or advanced topic. In this lecture of the course I explain what is a moat strategy and how to create it for your business.

It is great if the kind of company you are starting has barriers to entry. This is similar to having a moat strategy, but with a few distinction. The moat helps you during competition. The barrier to entry helps to prevent your potential competitors from even starting the business.

In this section of the business course I explain what is a business plan (sometimes called business proposal). The business plan is a basic document that outlines your business model and general execution strategy for your company in the near and mid-term future.

How much progress have you made with your business? It is ok if you are just starting. Every company had to start somewhere. You must simply help the reader of your business plan know how long have you been working on your business, and what kind of traction or growth you have. If you have customers, product or revenue, this is a good place to note the maturity of those.

The all important marketing plan in your business plan. You must be able to promote your business and get customers. Without marketing and without clients, a business can't survive for long so your marketing plan is absolutely important. It isn't enough just to have any old marketing plan. Your marketing plan must be very good and savvy. If your current marketing plans consist of promoting on Facebook, Twitter, with business cards and flyers, you must definitely come up with a more professional marketing plan.

You must have a section discussing your business competition. You must also explain how you are different than your competition. You don't need to say that you are better than your competition, but you should explain how your business is unique, and how it differentiates itself from competition.

Discuss your founding and management team. Also mention any investors, advisors that you have on your team, and the board of directors if you have a board of directors. Most importantly, list all the members of your founding team, their education, and their relevant skill sets and professional experience.

Unit economics are a good way to look at a single transaction in your business and understand its finances at a small level. The unit economics can give you a lot of insight about the health of your business.

The cash flow statement is an important financial part of your business plan. The cash flow statement is as much a very good thing to add to this document as it is good for you to be able to look at a cash flow statement and use the cash flow statement to help you understand where all the money is going and coming from in your business. Having a cash flow statement can help you to realize what to do to stop or decrease some of your spending, and what to do to increase revenue.

Most businesses don't end up raising money, and for that reason they must do something called bootstrapping. Bootstrapping is simply a way to start and grow your business by finding ways to do that without needing much money or any money. This is what most businesses must do when they start.

In this part of the course I explain how to raise money by getting loans, the difference between raising money from personal loans and business loans, and what options entrepreneurs typically have. It isn't easy to get a loan to start a business, but in some cases it makes sense and it is possible to get a small business loan.

Do you want to get a business grant? Many people ask about whether they can get a grant to start their business. It is more difficult to get a grant for businesses which have not started, but if you have started, there are a few grants available for small businesses. Check out this lecture to understand how to fund your business or project with a grant, or whether grants are not a good option for you.

Extra resources for getting grants for your business.

How to get grants by getting investors. There are many kinds of different investors. The different kinds of investors are angel investors, start-up incubators, seed investors, professional venture capitalists (VC) and investors who invest in specific kinds of businesses like maybe restaurants or real estate, or local businesses, or high growth start-up companies.

There are two ways to get donations for your business. There is the old fashioned way to get donations by reaching out do rich donors or philanthropists like many nonprofits do. And there is also a new way to get donations for your business called crowdfunding. You can raise donations for your business with crowdfunding by trying to raise money on KickStarter, IndieGoGo, or GoFundMe. It is now possible to get donations from the crowd online. It isn't easy to do crowdfunding, but it is possible.

One of the best ways to fund your business is by doing it through the revenue of your own company. Instead of waiting for money to come from a different course, why not just earn the money from your own customers. It is, in fact, what I did with my business, and what I recommend doing to other entrepreneurs. Long-term, you will have to get the money to grow your business from your customers anyway so you might as well start to focus on making money from your customers sooner than later.

Events are a great way to get clients, extra revenue, build extra awareness, and build loyal fans. Basically, events are a great marketing strategy for most kinds of businesses. Events can range from small meetups that drum up community to educational workshops to large conferences. It all depends on the kind of business you have, your event promotion abilities, and your ultimate business goals.

Why you need a commercial bank account for your business, and why you should not mix your personal finances and your personal bank account with the bank account of your business and the income and revenue you get from your business. All businesses should ideally have a commercial bank account.

How to do a great launch of your product. I explain how to launch in 3 different ways. This lecture is taken from my mobile apps course, but applies to other technology startups.

Some tips on how to get a good domain name for your business even if it feels that all the good domains have been taken.

How to choose a good business name and brand for your business.

Basic explanation of how to set up your website. Incidentally I have additional courses on how to find a great domain name and how to set up a Wordpress website in 1 day. All links to those are in the last lecture of this course.

This lecture does not necessarily need to belong in this business course, but for people who want to get into a mobile app business, creating the app is a struggle so I added a suggestion on how to learn to code in order to make your app or software product for free.