What It’s Really Like to Start a Business
My advice: don’t quit your day job.
Instead, start your business while working at your current gig before quitting (trust me, you’ll thank me later). My co-founder and I did all the research for you because spoiler: I DID quit my day job and have some regrets.
We are sharing our best tips and step-by-step guide on launching a biz, so you can pursue your passion and avoid our time-consuming mistakes. Plus: a bonus blooper reel of our failed video production!
Local Union’s Mistakes Learned:
My partner and I were offered an incredible opportunity to leave our corporate jobs (thanks COVID) and we’d always been intrigued by entrepreneurship. I’ve been dabbling with blogs and business planning for a few years, so the timing felt right. We quit our jobs and jumped 100% into building Local Union. In our minds, we felt like smart and reasonable people with talents to share. We excelled in our corporate jobs and thought revenue generation would come easily because “we had good ideas.” Good ideas do NOT equal financial freedom. In hindsight, we both believed we’d be wildly successful from day one and be so busy we had to quit our jobs.
That’s wasn’t the case. In fact, we had to pivot three times before landing on a business customers wanted.
Maybe you have a passion you want to share with the world, a brilliant idea, or are interested in being your own boss but you don’t know what to expect?
Step-by-Step Guide to Building a Biz Without Quitting Your Day Job:
Step 1: Come up with a business or product / service you’d like to sale.
Don’t stay here too long and quickly move to step two.
Step 2: Test the concept with as little investment as possible!
Don’t overthink it. And don’t quit your day job just yet. I’m here to tell you a secret: you don’t need a formal business, strategic plan, marketing scheme, or official LLC to begin testing your ideas. The key to testing? Participate, not perfection! Your main goals are to 1) see if people are interested in your business and 2) collect names of potential future clients (for newsletters, feedback, etc.). Your goal is NOT creating a perfect and formal entity, as that can come later.
Are you an inspiring chef? Put together an Instagram and quick blog, then share with your friends and family. Thinking about starting your own marketing firm? Send emails out to potential clients showcasing your work and ask to do pro-bono (free) consulting or design. There are user-friendly tools out there to help in your pursuit, many of them with free trail periods including:
Squarespace for blogs / art or Shopify if building an ecommerce site, avoid the headaches we’ve had with Squarespace) website building
Flodesk - email templates, newsletters, and custom forms (where people can sign up to learn more about your business)
Canva - design, social media, and marketing templates
Step 3: Listen to the feedback!
We all believe our business idea will be a smashing success but the only opinion that matters is potential clients! How do you gauge what could work versus what will likely fail?
Brent’s (our co-founder) secret tip is to go incognito! Find out how your friends, family, and followers really feel by slipping in your business ideas into general conversations without mentioning your business idea. You’ll get their true feelings and see if potential future consumers think there’s a need for your solution or if the idea is crap. Need some inspiration?
“Mom, I’ve really liked online shopping and need some artwork. Have you ever bought art online and if so, how did you find the artist?”
“Jane, I heard about this Dad who was posting his culinary creations online and was thinking about putting together a cookbook for Dads. Would you buy that for Brian this holiday?”
If people don’t know it’s your potential business, they’ll let you know their unabashed thoughts. Pair these insights with social media or website data and analyze your results. Some questions to ask yourself:
Did you have increased interest while you were posting and blogging?
Did potential customers share your products or services?
Are the customers who acted interested the customers you want as clients?
Did certain content spark better interest than others?
Your business idea should answer the why and how, but listen to customers to ensure they view the market the same way. Keep tweaking your recipe and repeat steps 2 and 3 multiple times, until you have built a sustainable base that gets you to step four.
Step 4: Legitimize your business and create a business plan.
Once you have a working proof of concept and have started to generate income, make the business official! Don’t know where to start? Contact your local Small Business Development office, which offers free resources and consulting! We went with LegalZoom to set up our LLC, but after some support from the Small Business Development office, we’re confident we could have filed the appropriate paperwork on our own and saved on up-front cost.
Step 5: Evaluate going full-time.
At this time, you may or may not quit your day job; however, you should have a good understanding how much money you earn for your time. Let’s say you work 10 hours a week on your business and generate $500 in revenue. Once you quit your day job, you’ll redirect your time to the new company. Ask your self: Will sales increase in proportion to the time you’ll start dedicating to your business? Will you make enough money to live? Can you cover losing your company sponsored healthcare and / or 401K?
Step 6: Keep creating, testing, and learning!
Your job as an entrepreneur is to create, test, and learn as quickly as possible. I always remind myself “serve, not sell.” When we remember our job is to serve this beautiful world and our customers, our work speaks for itself.
Step 7: Have fun!
You’ll make mistakes along the way but have fun. Need proof? Check out our silliest blooper from our intro video :)
Now it’s your turn! Thinking about starting a business? Interested in entrepreneurship? Have an idea you want the world to know about? I would love to hear about it! Send me a note at m.butler@local-union.com or comment below.
Xo,
Maggie
Co-Founder