4 Essential Elements for a Startup Looking to Grow

Guest post from free­lance con­trib­u­tor, Lind­sey Pat­ter­son, who spe­cial­izes in busi­ness tech­nol­o­gy, cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment, and lead man­age­ment.

Start­ing a busi­ness is more than just buy­ing a domain and get­ting the word out. There is finesse need­ed, along with much need­ed research and plan­ning. You can find count­less “recipes for suc­cess” that will tell you “indus­try secrets” and so much more. But set­ting up your busi­ness for suc­cess can real­ly come down to these four things.

1. Envision the Long-Term But Plan for the Short Term

Among the most impor­tant steps to build­ing a suc­cess­ful busi­ness is your busi­ness plan. Your plan shouldn’t be seen as a ball and chain, but as a quick ref­er­ence for typ­i­cal sit­u­a­tions that will arise. Often, if a plan isn’t in place, it can be easy to be pres­sured into mak­ing deci­sions and this can lead to pos­si­ble dis­as­ter.

Hav­ing a writ­ten busi­ness plan doesn’t have to be a long or stress­ful ordeal though. Out­line financ­ing, sales and mar­ket­ing, a few objec­tives and strate­gies, and any­thing else you deem nec­es­sary. Your busi­ness plan doesn’t need to answer every ques­tion, but it should pique your investors’ or read­ers’ inter­est.

The biggest part of your busi­ness plan is that it should state your long-term desires and vision (about five years into the future), but it should state short term goals that will be achieved in the first year. As a Forbes arti­cle says “Envi­sion the long-term but plan for the short term.” You can do this by deter­min­ing what you need to achieve in the first year in order to have your busi­ness on the right path to achiev­ing your five-year goals.

2. Branding Your Startup

In today’s busi­ness world, brand­ing has become a huge part of a suc­cess­ful busi­ness. Prob­a­bly the most obvi­ous rea­son why brand­ing can equal suc­cess is that it will help you stand out in your indus­try and in such a com­pet­i­tive mar­ket­place.

Some key fac­tors for a suc­cess­ful and top-notch brand are its audi­ence knowl­edge, the unique­ness, con­sis­ten­cy and expo­sure. For expo­sure, you need to be sure that your brand is reach­ing con­sumers through a vari­ety of media and chan­nels. This can range from tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials to Insta­gram accounts. Whether you have a large mar­ket­ing bud­get or not, social media has made it far eas­i­er for big and small busi­ness­es to get their brand out there. With just about all design fac­tors, being con­sis­tent is very impor­tant. Think of Apple, their logo is just one small apple and it is that image across all their prod­ucts. This doesn’t mean you need to have some­thing that sim­ple, but it needs to be con­sis­tent across your web­site, prod­ucts and all mar­ket­ing.

Unique­ness and audi­ence knowl­edge can be no-duh fac­tors, but it might sur­prise you how many com­pa­nies miss this mark. Be sure to know your audi­ence, and know them well. If you’re sell­ing motor­cy­cles, hav­ing a flow­ery logo might not be the right choice (unless you are tar­get­ing more fem­i­nine cus­tomers). As for unique­ness, don’t miss the mark with some­thing so unique that it doesn’t relate to your audi­ence or even your busi­ness. But still, don’t copy your com­peti­tors look with just a dif­fer­ent array of col­ors.

3. Insuring Your Startup Business

Start­ing a busi­ness can be a very risky busi­ness. But thank­ful­ly, there is busi­ness insur­ance out there that can take some of the wor­ry and stress out of this. Invest in a good busi­ness insur­ance plan that can help you avoid cer­tain risks that are well, unavoid­able. We aren’t say­ing that you should be dump­ing large amounts of mon­ey into pre­mi­ums for some­thing that will nev­er hap­pen. No. Instead, we are say­ing to invest in a pol­i­cy that will get your back with some­thing as small as a legal haz­ard sur­faces.

For small­er busi­ness­es, insur­ance is a near must as, gen­er­al­ly, any unin­sured loss can threat­en the busi­ness itself or your own per­son­al assets. If your grand idea become a flop, you don’t want to be los­ing your house over it. Busi­ness insur­ance can pro­vide a safe­ty net for the risks that you are pur­su­ing most grand­ly.

4. Communication at Your Startup

A final key fac­tor into busi­ness suc­cess is com­mu­ni­ca­tion. And we don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean that it comes in fourth in impor­tance. Busi­ness suc­cess can be high­ly impact­ed by the way we com­mu­ni­cate. Just think of any rela­tion­ship you have and how much bet­ter it is when there is good, open com­mu­ni­ca­tion. It is the same in the busi­ness world. One good tech­nique to keep in mind when com­mu­ni­cat­ing is that we “don’t com­mu­ni­cate to be under­stood; rather, [we] com­mu­ni­cate so as not to be mis­un­der­stood.” Or think of it as, you lis­ten to under­stand, not to reply. Keep­ing these two things in mind can help any­one real­ize where they may fall short in their com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills.

Com­mu­ni­cat­ing isn’t about debate either (unless you’re on a debate team), don’t always try to con­vince your lis­ten­ers that you are right. Try to see their point and always be open to what they have to say. Being effec­tive when com­mu­ni­cat­ing will help your mes­sage be inter­pret­ed cor­rect­ly and can dis­solve poten­tial con­flicts. Take the time to hone in on good com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­niques.

Your Turn

Please let us know in the com­ments below if you have any ques­tions or com­ments.

Lindsey Patterson

Lindsey Patterson

Free­lance Writer

Lind­sey Pat­ter­son is a free­lance writer and entre­pre­neur who spe­cial­izes in busi­ness tech­nol­o­gy, cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment, and lead man­age­ment. She also writes about the lat­est social trends, specif­i­cal­ly involv­ing social media. Find her on Twit­ter: @LindseyPatter19

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  1. […] 4 Essen­tial Ele­ments for a Start­up Look­ing to Grow. Start­ing a busi­ness is more than just buy­ing a domain and get­ting the word out. There is finesse need­ed, along with much need­ed research and plan­ning. You can find count­less “recipes for suc­cess” that will tell you “indus­try secrets” and so much more. But set­ting up your busi­ness for suc­cess can real­ly come down to these four things. 1. […]

  2. […] Read about 4 essen­tial ele­ments that any new solo­pre­neur, busi­ness own­er or start­up own­er should know about.  […]

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