Starting a small & medium business involves understanding and dealing with different issues including legal, financing, sales and marketing, resources, property, liability, and many others. But still people are more interested in being an entrepreneur than taking a service. And there have been remarkable success stories of entrepreneurs starting from a small budget to growing to be a multi-billion-dollar company. Some of the example to include are Airbnd, Facebook, Amazon, and WhatsApp. As an entrepreneur, while starting a business you should remember some of the key points to become successful in whatever sector you peruse.

Managing director and global head of M&A at VantagePoint Capital Partners, Richard D. Harroch has written several articles for small business entrepreneurs. In one of his article he has provided certain guidelines for people starting a business. The following article will provide you some of those key steps to become successful.

1. Understand the Commitment and Challenges Involved in Starting a Business: Starting a business is a huge responsibility. Entrepreneurs often fail to escalate the substantial amount of time, resources, and energy required to start and grow a business. Therefore before starting a small & medium business it is essential to note the considerable challenges. Some of the challenges include:

• Introducing a unique product or service
• Having a strong plan and vision for the business
• Organizing sufficient capital and cash
• Finding efficient employees
• Maintaining reasonable work and life balance
• Not getting demotivated by rejections

2. Protecting Personal Assets by Creating the Business as a Corporation: Try not to start a business as a “sole proprietorship,” which can risk your personal assets for the debts and liabilities. Start it as S corporation, C corporation, or a limited liability company (LLC). None of those are particularly expensive or difficult to set up. Many business owners are under the impression that they are completely protected from personal liability by filing a Certificate of Incorporation for a corporation. However, this is not true and the process of incorporating does not completely protect the business owners. Therefore, always use the corporate name, a proper signature, and follow all corporate formalities.
3. Come Up With a Great Business Name: Selecting a correct name always have a significant impact on the business. Try to avoid hard-to-spell names, conduct a research on the proposed name, get .com domain name, and come up with certain names you like and test market the name with prospective employees, partners, investors, and potential customers.
4. Focus on Creating a Great and Unique Product: While starting your product must be differentiated in some meaningful and important way from the offerings of your competition‎. It should be differentiated from the competitors. Also remember that having a beta product also works for many businesses as they work the bugs out from user reactions.
5. Build a Website for your Business: Take time and efforts to develop a great website for your business as your prospective customers, investors, and partners will check your website before investing their time and money in your business and products. You can also check competitors’ website before creating your own. Make sure to make it search engine optimized, which produces high traffic. Also make sure that your website loads quickly and is visually interesting.
6. Make a Clear Deal with Co-Founders: If you are starting a business with co-founders, remember that both of you agree early on the business relationship details. Not doing so can cause significant legal problems. Make a legal agreement as a form of pre-nuptial agreement.
7. Get a Tax ID: You may need to get a tax ID from IRS of your company. It is also known as employer identification number. It will be required when you will open your company’s account in the bank. You can easily get this through online platform from IRS website.
8. Before Hiring Get a Comprehensive Reference Check: Many employers do not get reference check of their employees before hiring, which results in hiring people who are unable to perform their required duties or who don’t work well with others. Verifying employee’s educational degree, starting and ending salary, prior job roles and responsibilities, inquiring about why they left their prior job, inquiring on employee’s ability, and reference check are some of the key points to remember.
9. Understand Financial Statements and Budgets: Keep an eye on all the expenses of the company and learn how to understand the budgeting and financial statements. Establishing a detailed, month-by-month budget is crucial, and review the budget regularly.
10. Market your business effectively: To become successful in your business, you are required to continually attracting, building, and educating your target market. Make sure to include the following things in your marketing strategy:

• Learn the basics of SEO so that people searching for your products and services online might find you on the top of their search results.
• Use social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. to promote your business.
• Engage more in content marketing by writing certain articles for pertinent websites.

Source : All Business