By Catherine Lang-Cline
Why am I talking about startups? Because recently the Women’s Small Business Accelerator asked me to talk to a group of small businesses and startups about goal setting. It reminded me of some of the goals that Kristen Harris and I set before we even opened our doors. That made me think, with all of the startups popping up, maybe we can help. If you prefer listening to reading, here is a link to our podcast, Illumination Bureau, that we did on the topic.
All of you readers, follow me… Because here are some of the “must-dos” that we recommend, based on the success we had with it.
Ask yourself, have you have created a job for yourself or started a company? If it is a company, what is your first goal? You can keep this simple. Ours was just wanting to be able to pay ourselves in 6 months from the day we opened.
Define your purpose or what makes you special. For us, there were already much larger general staffing companies in town, we needed to know why someone would use us.
Map out the entire company with job descriptions. Think about the roles you will eventually need and write out their tasks. We knew we would want someone to keep our books, handle paperwork, have more sales, and recruit people other than ourselves. At first, we just divided up the jobs. Once things got rolling, we hired people!
Determine who your ideal clients are. Who is going to want to buy what you have to offer and is not going to make your life miserable? (We all know that they are out there) Those are the people you are going to try and connect with and market to.
Call yourself President, CEO, or COO right away. This is your company. Being humble and calling yourself anything else is selling yourself short. You are more than the service you are providing, you are running the show!
Startups can be hard and challenging but if you do your research and are willing to keep learning we are more than happy to keep throwing out what worked for us.
In the meantime, if you have any needs for creative services, contact us right away. We are also interested in marketing people looking for work.
Eye on the prize, my friends.
