The final installment of our four part series brings all of the planning to fruition and we finally implement the business idea. This is when you get to see how the rubber meets the road and we finally get to test drive this idea! You will be incredibly thankful at this point that you have done all the planning.  All the preparation you have done leading up to this will pave the way for implementation.

A great quote very fitting for this episode: “When you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail”

Implementation: the process of putting a decision or plan into effect; execution.

Prior to opening the doors for business:

• Workspace – this should have already been identified in your business plan. Now that workspace needs to be secured. Whether its a home office, shared space, or commercial warehouse, sign the lease and get the space organized and ready to conduct work in.
  • If it is a home office, try to make it a dedicated space. While a kitchen table can suffice, an area that is dedicated to this new business idea will keep you inspired each day.
  • If its a commercial space, personalize it. You’re taking a huge leap by pursuing this business idea, have some creature comforts that bring you happiness when the going gets tough.
  • If you had to borrow money for manufacturing equipment or other expenses, be sure those rates are locked in and there are signed contracts that allow business to start quickly.
• Personnel – whoever you identified as required personnel in your business plan, go recruit them now. If you had informal conversations with prospects during your planning phase, go back to them with employment offers.
  • If you plan to bring on a number of people at the beginning, hire an HR representative first. They can then assist you in the on-boarding of all the other employees. This is a smart way to work efficiently in the beginning stages.
  • Don’t forget to pay yourself.  Do this at the same time everyone else gets paid, even if it’s nominal. This is a good habit to get into, especially for accounting reasons. You don’t have to bankrupt your new business, but you need to start healthy habits from the beginning.
• Insurance/ contracts/ articles of organization – Make sure you’re properly insured and have the appropriate articles of organization filed.
  • There are different types of business entity’s you can file as, the primary ones are DBA (which is doing business as), LLC/P, S Corp, or C Corp, and non profit. Here are the primary differences:
    • DBA offers little to no protection. It’s simply you doing business as your company. This business setup is common for very small local businesses, for example an online jeweler or a florist who works out of their home.
    • LLC stands for limited liability corporation or if there is more than one owner, LLP which is limited liability partnership. This offers separation between person & entity, which offers protection to the person. If something happens to the company, they can’t necessarily come after personal possessions, such as your home or car. Most small businesses are LLC’s, they are very popular and rather easy to set up.
    • S corp stands for subchapter corporation. This is a sort of hybrid between LLC & C corp. It provides the protection & taxation of an LLC, but the structure for shareholders of a C corp.
    • C Corp is most publicly trading businesses, including probably all Fortune 500s. This type of entity has shareholders, board of directors, and different taxation rules.
    • There’s also non profit, which has a completely different set of rules.
  • Legal Zoom is an excellent resource for helping to decipher between all of these types of entities. As well, you can use them for help filing and submitting necessary paperwork. For a small fee, they will do a number of services on your behalf. With the exception of DBA, this is extremely simple to do on your own. Check your county’s webpage for how to establish yourself as a DBA.

Opening the doors for business:

• Marketing Plan: Now it’s time to put all that research to work. Remember who you sourced on social media to see if they would be interested in your product, get back in touch with them! Or  friends and colleagues you reached out to for testing your idea out,  get back in front of them. All of those people who were encouraging you and said they’d be interested, they’re going to be your first customers.
  • Rely on your closest colleagues to support you in the beginning. They can help you get the word out and spread information about your new company.
  •  Start instituting your product, place, price, and promotional strategy. The more thorough of research and answers you have walking into this, the easier it will be to implement. Ideally, you will have already figured out whats a great price, the perfect place to market your product at, and ideal promotional strategies. But, this is something that will likely change with time, so start where you think is best and then be flexible based on the results.
• Operations Plan: Hopefully the operations plan was well thought out enough that when you open the doors, it runs itself. This is ideal and may be be the case for the first little bit. However, remain flexible, this is a part of your business that if it has tension in it, everyone will feel it. Better to sway a bit on how you run the operations than to have disgruntled personnel.
• Credit Policy: Cash flow can make or break a business. Allowing too many customers to purchase on credit without being given enough from your vendors will suffocate your business.
  • Being able to collect on services or products already rendered will be vitally important to keeping the doors open. Cash flow, billing policy, and accounts receivable are such an important aspect to staying afloat in a business!

Staying Afloat:

• Efficiency: As a small business, each person wears a number of hats, and you are not necessarily able to afford to pay for more people to help. As a result, if you can find softwares and systems that do a lot of the work for you.
  • Some of the softwares we use are:
    • Quickbooks – this keeps track of our accounting, we store all of our clients & ATs information there, quickly generate invoices, and also see what is outstanding. There is a lot of automation in QB where the software learns your habits and will make suggestions for inputs. It’s great!
    • Podio – this is what we use for internal team communication. This software is a CRM (customer relationship management), which essentially manages all communications we have with each other and with clients & ATs. It’s a central station for our team to keep track of what is going on in the company.
    • When I Work – this is a scheduling software that allows us to utilize open shifts, which notify the ATs of opportunities to work. This enables us to communicate swiftly with all ATs who have open availability, as opposed to emailing, calling, or texting individually for shift coverage.
  • We also utilize e-sginatures on our electronic documents, BOC’s & NPI’s online verification process, electronic background check processing, and several other services that do much of the heavy lifting for us.
• Willingness to continue learning:  Staying humble and willing to adjust to the environment will make a difference in the people willing to work with and for you. Almost everything mentioned above, from your operation & marketing plan to your business entity type and technology will change over time. If you become hard headed and unchanging, your business will suffer as a result.
  • Just like in athletic training, if we continue to learn new techniques and proficiencies, we will stay at the forefront of the profession. If we become “know it all’s” practicing anecdotal medicine, then we hinder ourselves and the profession from progressing forward. Same applies to your business.
• Update the Business Plan: By no means does the document need to be revised every time a decision is made, but when your company has seen a good amount of growth, it probably is a good idea to revisit the document to make updates.