Startup checklist for starting a business
Here's a business Startup Checklist - a quick reference overview to all the specific steps for every small business startup:
Develop an idea
The first item on the business startup checklist is to decide on what your business idea is, who your customer will be, how you’ll make money and how it will all work. It’s common to go through many many ideas before landing on the one that seems correct for your small business or startup.
Research the idea thoroughly
Before you start building the startup business do a LOT of effective keyword research to learn if there’s a good chance the business will work for you. Talk to and test your small business idea with real customers to get their honest feedback to help you understand their needs.
Create a financial forecast spreadsheet for your small business startup
A very easy and important item on the business startup checklist is that most entrepreneurs also forget, is this CRITICAL step: Create a simple spreadsheet to guesstimate potential revenues, expenses, and profits to make sure your idea is really worth executing and will meet your needs.
This is a way to test your business idea without actually building the business.
If it doesn’t meet your financial needs, (there isn’t enough profit to get you excited), then re-think the idea or the financial model.
Learn how to create a basic Financial Projection now >>
Develop a business plan
The business plan is really more for YOU, the founder, than anyone else. It’s away to make sure you’ve considered your small business idea thoroughly and that you’ve done some serious strategic and marketing planning, and research for your startup checklist. Starting a small business startup without preparing a business plan adds extra risk. It’s a very helpful exercise.
Get a full-fledged Business Plan template here >
Get a super simple Early Stage business plan here >
Test your business idea before you build the business
This is the step everyone misses. Before you commit your time, energy and money to building the small business startup, cross this item off your startup checklist:
Test your startup idea in the real world if you can, to ensure that the customers and market are there and want your product. More on testing your business idea here >
Big decision: Go forward or not?
Now you’ve spent weeks or months researching, thinking, planning marketing and many other things, and hopefully testing your business idea before committing to starting your small business. If things look encouraging enough, consider committing to the startup idea and building the business.
If not, don’t give up immediately on your startup idea. It might just need to be re-envisioned or re-imagined from another perspective.
Perhaps you can change your financial model, or your supplier or your audience or your expenses to make your startup look much better on paper.
Finance your small business startup
How much money will you need, do you have it, or will you need to raise the capital through investors, loans or crowdfunding? Don’t commit to too much before you know where the money you’ll need for your business startup will come from.
Often the first two steps are creating a financial forecast, and perhaps creating a Pitch Deck to see if you can get support for your startup from investors.
Incorporate the business, open bank accounts
Next business startup checklist item:
Most businesses will form an LLC or an S-Corporation. There are other business type choices but you should make this decision before you start hiring others or taking on investors or other capital sources.
You’ll need your EIN or Tax ID number and your articles of incorporation (unless it’s a Sole Proprietorship) to open business checking account at your bank. Be sure to learn basic business bookkeeping and how to keep all your personal accounts and money separated from your business finances.
Assemble a team if needed
Unless you can do everything on your own, you’ll need to find people to help you such as designers, programmers, engineers, and others. Some will be freelancers and some might be employees or even partners.
Build the actual business (finally!)
You have decided to go forward, legally formed the small business startup, and secured the needed capital. It’s time to bring your startup business to fruition and build it all. This is the part that takes the longest but is also the MOST FUN.
Build a website for your startup business
Every business startup checklist includes a business website!
Your business website is your online business card. If you’re not a web designer person, you will probably want to get some help. It’s critical that your website should look professional and not inspire trust in your customers, so pay someone if needed to make sure it looks great. Choose a domain name that is broad enough that it will work well for you even if your business focus shifts a little.
Set up your social media accounts
These days every small business startup should have social media accounts such as Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and TikTok. It’s free to post to social media and the advertising value of a well managed social media accounts is off the charts! Anyone can learn to use social media.
Feedback from real customers
Get to the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) stage as quickly as you can so that potential customers can test your business and your product and give you feedback. Use that feedback to revise and improve – keep repeating this cycle!
Solidify your marketing plans
As important as your business is your marketing plan. Without a solid marketing plan, nobody will know that your business exists. Typically you have to use social media and other low budget methods, along with some possible paid advertising.
Launch the business!
It’s time to share your small business startup with the world. Use all of your marketing savvy, get help if needed. Test your website with our Website Testing Ultimate Checklist: triple check that your website is error free, all the links work, and use Google Analytics and Search Console to understand your users, traffic and how Google sees your site.
Talk to your customers, get feedback
This is another major failure with a lot of new founders: they forget to talk to their customers constantly. This is hands down the beset way to learn what is good or bad about your business, which gives you a chance to improve and iterate to strengthen your product.
Explore your marketing, try new things
Marketing is a little like solving a crime…you need to do a lot of “what ifs” and try a lot of marketing experiments. You also need to carefully record all your tests, what you tried, when, what the results where, the cost, the results etc.
Sooner or later you’ll find the best avenues for marketing your particular business, but it might be different than what you imagined.
Refine your process, costs and business
There’s always room for improvement – even if you’re crushing it! Talk to customers, get feedback, look at the competition, ask yourself how you can improve every aspect. Be relentless.
Grow your startup business
If things are humming along and there’s a profit in your bank account, it’s time to work on growing and improving your business.
Looking for ways to maximize efficiency (which results in lower costs) and improve effectiveness of your efforts is key. Often it’s time to create written documents and training manuals that detail all the company processes. This way there’s an authoritative method for doing all the jobs that your business needs done – rather than every employee having their own methods and beliefs about what they do at work.
I help people with their business questions and goals. I've helped hundreds and I can give you the guidance and mentoring you need to figure out every step. Why learn the hard lessons yourself, when you can consult with an expert who can save you valuable time and money?