BUILDING Stage

As you start to formalize your idea into an actual business, it is advisable to have a first conversation with an accountant. They will be able to advise you on entity structure, bookkeeping, certain tax laws and planning, and other ways to save money.Similar to doctors, accountants have specializations. We recommend an experienced accountant that works with small businesses and startups. They should be aware of tax incentives and benefits for small business, women and minorities as well as Research and Development credits. If you plan on seeking investments, this is a specialized area where not all accountants have working knowledge. Interview several and decide who seems fair, reasonable and knowledgeable. You won't likely need a massive firm like a Baker Tilly or BDO. A smaller shop may work just fine, but make sure they'll be able to provide the service level you'll expect and need as an early stage business. Make sure they are not charging fees for every question, meeting and email.Ask around to your network, mentors and Madison College for recommendation. Jeff Quinlan, Dorothy Conduah - accounting instructors with great knowledge & resources.

Early on you created some basic budgets and forecasts for your personal runway. Now as your business is moving more towards being its own entity, you'll need to have separate financial statements and projections of revenue and expenses. After your meeting with the accountant they might have templates or suggestions to help you get started. They might help build that model with you, but don't just hand it off to them. Building this financial story of your business is critical to understand what is going on.Often you'll see a need for 5 years projection, but that is difficult to do with accuracy. 12 to 18 months of month to month projections are a good start, then you can move to quarterly for year 2 and 3. Financials will need updating and review on a regular basis. Don't do it once and then forget about it. These will be an essential tool for your success!

It's time to pause and take another look at your Business Model Canvas. Are you filling it in and with information and data that is actionable and informed by your own research? There is no prize for just filling it out. Make the effort worthwhile. If an area is unclear or you need some new approaches to think about, make an appointment with an EIR or look around for some new videos about the canvas. There are many professionals who can provide tips to make the canvas more valuable.

Creating an elevator pitch is critical because you are always going to be out in the market telling people about your business. You will need very short versions that are about 30 seconds, up to 10 minutes or more. Your pitch should be flexible and well-rehearsed but should never sound rehearsed. It should be natural, exciting, and compelling. The goal of the pitch is not to get a full customer right there but to get them to want more information or take a meeting with you. A good pitch is about telling your story but making it meaningful to the audience. Sometimes you'll have slides to go with and other times it will be just you. Spend about an hour on Youtube watching examples and you'll have a sense of where to go. You'll find strong examples and then ones that are less so. Studying Ted Talks and other public speakers is a good way to get your structure down. Most of all. PRACTICE! Practice often, with others, solo and even record yourself. You learn to swim by doing it. Same with being good at pitching.

Now is the time to revisit your Mission and Vision. These are similar to the 'What you do' and 'How you do it'. They build upon the WHY you do what you do. If you are still not clear on the WHY, then go back and put the work in.Next, think about what is the future state you are trying to bring into the world? What are you changing? What is better, faster, cheaper, more convenient, more luxurious, less painful, etc. That's the better future. That is your vision. Your mission is how you make your vision a reality. How are you going to accomplish this? In what manner are you solving that problem or creating a new future and how will you reach others to impact their lives?There are dozens of videos, blogs,and whitepapers on mission and vision. They all have their own take or spin on it. The key is that you develop a version. It can change later, but start now. This will be important as you start thinking about your brand. It will also come out in your elevator pitch and other sales or marketing assets you create.

Advisors are needed to give us an outside perspective on our business and our thinking. You'll find people who will provide advice and counsel, but you may want to select about three experts who are willing to meet with you once per quarter over coffee or lunch.Select advisors who aren't just friends or family. You need pointed, realistic, direct and experienced professionals who will make introductions, open doors, counter your thinking and provide support. You may want to select from a variety of industries and sectors that are related to what you do, but not exactly what you do.Once you grow larger and become more formalized, a board of directors might be something you establish. Until then, a less formal agreement is fine where you compensate your advisors with meals, travel, free product or services if applicable.

Getting out into the entrepreneurial community is vital for making new connections to resources and advisors. There are in-person events running all year long in a variety of locations. Some events are general networking and some are more focused on particular niches or sectors and some are purely social.A few tips:1. Have a short pitch ready to describe your idea.2. Have business cards ready � they don't have to be your FINAL card. Just something with contact info and a bit about you or your idea.3. Arrive on-time and be ready to mingle.4. Make a goal to meet at least 3-6 people you've never met before.

Once again you've been spending more time validating, building and moving your idea forward. Take time to pause and see if this effort is going to be worth the next steps. Once you go live with a new business, it takes on an entirely different level of commitment.Are you clear on what you do, how you do it and why? Are you clear on how you make money and what your costs will be? Do you understand the metrics you need to attain to survive and thrive?If you don't, it is not a reason to abandon. It can be a reason to push ahead.

To accelerate your growth you should explore external resources that can provide help. These can be city, county, state, federal, academic, and even corporate resources. Specific resources include grants, preferred vendor status, education, tools, training, connections, in-kind help, etc.You need to understand where your gaps are and where you could use the most help. Then begin to research where you can get some assistance. This research will be a lot of emailing, phone calling and even visiting some offices. It can take a while to find the optimal fit, but keep digging. You might be surprised how many people want to help and see you succeed! Examplese are: Dane Buy Local SBDC WBBC SBA Black Chamber Latino Chamber WEDC Madison Development Corp Madrep

At this stage you should have a solid definition of your customers, their problems and how your value proposition satisfies their needs. The ability to move from a MVP or service to a real business is in selling your Value Proposition for money. In this step you need to think about the process of selling. How do you do it? How do you find your customers? How do you connect to them and make them aware of you? What prices do you charge? Is there post-sales support? Do you use 'channels'' or other parties to reach your customer? How to make the sales easy for them and repeatable for you? Is this a time to look into certain sales and marketing tools or even other people to help with this process?

Websites are a necessary part of business. They can seem very mysterious and technically complicated � especially if you need to do commerce on your site. While you can invest time in learning how to design and code a site, there are much easier ways. No longer do you need to pay thousands of dollars to a web developer.In addition you can have numerous sites to test designs, product ideas and target certain customer segments. It's not a one and done.There are dozens of templates and design tools that will help you get a website up in minutes. It should not take months, weeks or even days!Start with the resources below and google for additional website builder tools.

By this time you should have a legal consultation with an attorney � if you have not already had one.Topics to address are: entity type, employee documents, partnership agreements, licenses and other permits, contracts, terms of service for customers. The CPA you consulted with might have some suggested legal questions for you to ask the attorney. Most attorneys will give you a free 30 minute to 45 minute consultation. Most new clients do not pay for the initial consultation, so please ask them about it. You can also negotiate fees. Some will do a package, some will do flat fees, some will hand off template work to a paralegal or Jr attorney. You don't need to pay partner rates for basic legal work.

If you have other partners in your business, have the attorney review your agreement to make sure the ownership structure and operational structure are clear.Difficulties with early employees and co founders can destroy a business. While it may seem overbearing to have an attorney get involved, it is important to create these clear boundaries as soon as possible.

Now that you've worked with an attorney and put more time into your business model, it's worth a second visit to your CPA. There may be questions from consult #1 that you need to follow-up on and the attorney may have given you homework to explore with your CPA.The goal here is to make sure your business is set up for successful operations so you can track revenue, costs and have no surprises from a tax perspective. If you made some initial business model projections, the CPA may be able help evaluate your model and assumptions. They might even recommend a part-time CFO (Chief Financial Officer) to further help with this process.

After several accounting consults you may have a reasonable financial model in place. Based on all you've learned and discovered it is important to revisit your projections.To help prepare for almost any situation, you can make three versions. Make an optimistic version � that is if everything goes as planned. Make a realistic version assuming some delays and setbacks. Just make sure you understand what it is that is creating the setbacks so you can model them. Finally you can make a very pessimistic projection that details a very rough start. Most likely, reality will be somewhere in between all of these, but this exercise can help you not fear the unknown and prepare for any situation.Even wild success and growth can have challenging consequences so you want to be prepared for that as well.

This is an exciting task because it means you are nearing launch. You need to a strategy to get make the most out of your launch and then to sustain it. Developing a go to market strategy is not a small process and there are entire college courses on it. In fact, entire careers and organizations dedicated to just this effort.As you prepare for launch it is important to consider fundamentals that will allow you to build for the future. A strategy isn't just a website, business cards and some social media blasts. You must develop a campaign that has a combination of method to reach your customer, making them aware and informing of your value proposition. The campaign should help drive them to business and make purchasing easy. The campaign should re-engage them so they become return customers or spread the word to others. Lastly it should be data driven such that you learn during the entire process and can actively respond as new data becomes available.

Verifiable digital credential. A digital emblem globally recognized to symbolizing skills and accomplishments that contains detailed content describing how the earner achieved the badge and can link to evidence of learning. Represents attained knowledge, specific skill, set of skills, certificate, etc.