Starting a business...a guide on what to consider, brand identity, financing, culture, marketing, plus more. Includes interactive tools for you and your team.

1. Helpful hints
Starting a Business

2. Crafting Your Elevator Pitch
• Know yourself (what’s your story?).
• Know the WHY for the new venture.
• Know the business (care about your idea).
• Know the numbers (if you need funding,
what’s the investment ask?)
• Pitch: intro (logo, name, tagline, metric/stat),
problem, solution, market, traction, team, ask.

3. Crafting Your Story
• Why did you start the company? Was there a
need in the market? Ex: a cheaper version of
something (Ikea), a better version of something
(Virgin), a brand new idea (Google).
• What drives you? Building a company is difficult.
We’ve all heard the “80% of businesses fail in the
first year” mantra. Why take the risk?
• Where are you going? Do you see something
others don’t? Are you interested in creating a
good work environment or community?

4. The Golden Circle
WHAT
Products / services
HOW
What sets you apart from
competition
WHY
Purpose / cause / belief

5. Ask yourself…
• Is this idea different?
• Will people care?
• What are my expectations? (goals, hours, etc.)
• Who are my customers? Am I listening to them
and addressing their needs?
• Do I have a support network?
• Am I solving an important problem?

6. Tips for Financing
• Borrow at the right time
• Borrow what you need
• Don’t focus on interest rates
• Don’t pay it back too fast
• Keep track of your numbers
• Know your elevator pitch
• Don’t focus on one financial institution

7. Business Viability
• Break-Even Analysis:
– Start-up costs
– Start-up requirements
– Overhead costs
– Variable costs: mark-up, margin, cost of goods
• Cash Flow Forecast:
– Monthly cash in flows (3 factors for how cash enters)
– Monthly cash out flows
– Cash flow calculations
– ‘What if’ calculations

8. Be Aware of Burn Rate
• The monthly rate at which a new company
spends its available capital.
• Burn rate is largely used to estimate your
runway, which is the number of months your
startup can survive according to it’s money
reserves. Roughly, this is the calculation:
cash in the bank / (monthly burn – revenue) = runway left

9. Avoiding High Burn Rates
• Rush to ramen profitability (when a startup
makes just enough to pay the founders' living
expenses i.e. rent and ramen).
• Increase equity for great employees (salaries
low, equities high). Build a team of brand
ambassadors & believers.
• Use content marketing to grow awareness
and increase following.
• Hold off on big expenses (including hires).

10. Branding
• The essence of your business – should be built
every day in every single thing you do.
• A promise that your business makes to customers.
Builds trust and increases customer loyalty.
• Ensure consistency especially when built
incrementally – social media platforms, font, logo,
colors, website, business cards, material, voice.
• Analysis, identity, experience, management.

11. Culture
• Invisible fabric that threads a meaningful
environment and gives everyone involved a
sense of purpose that goes beyond
instrumental work goals.
• Created from the spirit of every individual in
the early stages of company’s existence.
• Trust, comfort, supportive, details, sharing,
transparency, teamwork, injecting fun.

12. Vision
• This is the five year outlook for your venture.
It should be aspirational & customer focused.
• How do you want to be perceived? What is
the first thing you want people to think of
about your business? How you want your
customers to feel when interacting with you?
How you will develop those relationships?
• How does your vision shape your values?

13. Marketing
• Focus on building customer loyalty vs. scale
– Better to make a few people really happy than to
make a lot of people semi-happy
• Foster virality and sharing (involve crowd).
• Know who your customers are and where they
are (how to talk to them).
• Be clear about your values.
• Amazing customer service to create engaged
brand ambassadors.

14. Growth
• Retention is the single most important thing
for growth (metrics: Acquisition, Activation,
Retention, Revenue and Referral).
• Growth Hacking mindset (creativity, analytical
thinking and social metrics).
• Find out as soon as possible where your users
are getting the core product value, and
obsessively lead them there.
• 50% product and 50% traction.

15. Creating Business Systems
• What are the top 10 tasks you hate doing?
• Creating systems for these tasks: repeatable
processes that can theoretically take place
without your direct action.
• Creating triggers – ex: auto email response,
invoice on job completion, etc.
• Money and resources are limited so you need
to maximize productivity and efficiency.

16. TOOLS
To uncover the vision and voice for your business.

17. Business Model Canvas

18. Brand Blueprint
Brand Vision Five year outlook, aspirational, customer focused.
Essence “How do we describe our positioning in a single, concise thought?”
Differentiator What is the one thing that truly sets us apart?
Character What is the tone/personality of the brand?
Reasons To Believe What are the functional and emotional proof points for our
differentiator?
Benefits What are all our pertinent benefits?
Audience Insights What is their mindset regarding our offering/category?
Audience The person and situation for which our brand is the best choice.
Competitors Who loses when we win?

19. Visioneering
Who am I?
What do I do?
What do I do differently from others?
What is my key competitive advantage?
What do I stand for?
What is my commitment?
What are my values?
What is my personality?
FieldofcompetencePointofDifference
Mission/FightPersonality

20. 10 Free Online Courses That Can
Benefit Every Entrepreneur
1. 21 Critical Lessons for Entrepreneurs (Udemy)
2. New Venture Finance: Startup Funding for Entrepreneurs (Coursera)
3. Introduction to Web Development: HTML (Udemy)
4. Scaling Operations: Linking Strategy and Execution (Coursera)
5. How to Make Money Online: The Passive Income Business Plan (Udemy)
6. Successful Negotiation: Essential Strategies and Skills (Coursera)
7. Foundations of Business Strategy (Udemy)
8. Fundamentals of Project Planning and Management (Coursera)
9. Entrepreneurship -- From Idea to Launch (Udemy)
10. Marketing in a Digital World (Coursera)

21. Maintain Work-Life Balance
“Ego depletion refers to the idea that self-control or
willpower draw upon a limited pool of mental
resources that can be used up. Energy for mental
activity is low & self-control is typically impaired.”
• Wake up early & avoid late night work
• Decide 3 things that matter today & focus on
them one at a time (make time for them)
• Stop reacting (especially email inbox)
• Protect your ‘magic hours’

22. GOOD LUCK & HAVE FUN!