Podcast Ep. 08: What to Do When You Don’t Know Where to Start
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify
In this episode, I’m walking you through the first 3 steps you need to take to start your company. The best part is, each of these three steps will take no longer than an hour to do. (Actually, each one will probably take less than 30 minutes!)
My goal here, and the goal of the Factory45 program, is to make “I don’t know where to start” obsolete. My goal is to show you that “knowing where to start” is a lot easier than you think. Ready?
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Free One Page Business Plan Template
Ep. 03: Write a Business Plan for Your Fashion Brand in 5 Easy Steps.
TRANSCRIPT
“I don’t even know where to start,” I thought to myself. I had a million things to do with half the time to do them and everything felt like a priority. Sound familiar?
Whether we’re really busy or starting something new or feeling pulled in a bunch of different directions, it’s normal to feel a sense of paralysis. And the statement that most often comes up is: I don’t even know where to start.
I know you know what I’m talking about because one of the most common questions I’m asked is: Where do I start?
I get email after email from people who have an idea for a clothing line or product but they don’t know how to make it happen. How do I know what fabric I need? How do I create sketches if I can’t draw? How do I organize all of my ideas? And which one should I choose?
Instead of zooming in on one thing to tackle first, they find themselves paralyzed by the overwhelm of everything else. And they end up doing nothing.
The thing is, starting a fashion brand is a lot more straightforward than people think. And so much of the process can be tackled when you decide to… Simplify.
That means when you think you should be doing more you should actually be doing less. And in this episode, I’m going to walk you through the first THREE steps you need to take to start your company. The best part is, each of these three steps will take no longer than an hour to do. (Actually, each one will probably take less than 30 minutes!)
My goal here, and the goal of the Factory45 program, is to make “I don’t know where to start” obsolete. My goal is to show you that “knowing where to start” is a lot easier than you think. Ready?
1. First, Get your vision down on paper
This is such an important first step, but we often skip it or procrastinate on it because we think it has to be perfect and written in stone from the beginning. I promise you, it doesn’t! My philosophy, especially when you’re bootstrapping and not trying to pitch investors, is that all business plans should be a rough draft. This releases you from the pressure of having all of the answers from the beginning, but even more importantly, it leaves your business plan open for adaptation, edits, changes and revisions that are all signs of a healthy, innovative and adaptable business.
I have a whole separate episode on writing a one-page business plan in 5 easy steps, so I’ll link to that in the show notes below. Make sure to also grab your free business plan template before you listen so you make sure you’re asking yourself the right questions about your business. I’ll link to that free template in that description below, as well.
2. The second thing to do when you don’t know where to start is to Identify your ideal target customer
Who is your customer? In the most ideal world, who would be the first person to buy from you? Who do you envision wearing or using your products? This is your ideal customer. And it’s so important to do a deep dive on them. But what does that mean?
Traditionally, you’ll hear from business coaches and programs that you should deep dive on demographics – where does your ideal customer live? How old are they? What’s their gender identity? Marital status? Income? Buy habits, etc.
And while all of that demographic information is important, the analysis that I encourage my entrepreneurs in Factory45 to do is a deep dive into their ideal customer’s value system. What do they believe? Which values do they live by? How do they make decisions? What drives their spending dollars?
When you start to market your products it’s these values and inherent beliefs that you’ll be able to connect between your brand and your ideal customer. And this will be a far more powerful marketing tool than knowing their age or marital status.
3. The third thing I want you to do when you don’t know where to start is to Create a landing page where you can direct people to your email list
Okay, so let’s say you’ve gotten your idea down on paper using the business plan template, you’ve identified your ideal target customer (which is actually one of the questions in the business plan template, so easy win there) – the next thing I want you to do is to create a very simple one-page website where you can start building an email list.
Why is this important? Eventually you’re going to start making marketing moves – you’re going to start telling people about your idea, posting about it on social media and you need a place to send people so they can learn more. One of the big mistakes new entrepreneurs make is thinking you need a full Shopify site from the beginning. Before you have anything to sell, and you’re just starting to spread the word about your brand, all you need is a basic landing page.
What should be on that landing page? Your brand name, a one-sentence description of who your brand is for and why someone should care and a call to action to sign up to your email list. Below that you’ll want to have an email opt-in form where someone can enter their name and email to subscribe.
In the beginning, every single new person who is interested in what you’re creating is an important person to keep updated on your brand’s progress. Building an email list on Mailchimp or another email marketing platform is the very best way to do this.
In a future episode, we’ll talk so much more about the importance of email marketing, how to increase your subscribers, ways to nurture your email list and more, but for now just focus on getting a basic landing page up with an email opt-in form. You will feel so good when you have this one tangible thing to point people to when you tell them about the brand you’re creating.
Okay, so those are the first three things I want you to focus on when you don’t know where to start: get your idea into a succinct one-page business plan, identify who your ideal target customer is and create a landing page.
Each of these steps then sets you up for building your audience before you launch, product development and raising money through pre-selling. All of these strategies are what we teach in Factory45 so that you can go from starting to actually launching a sustainable fashion brand.
If you’re interested in learning more about how to make these strategies work for your fashion business goals, book a call to speak with Hannah, our director of enrollment. You can figure out together if we’re the right fit for each other and see if our goals align. Just go to factory45.co/apply – I’ll also put the link in the description below this episode.
