I had enlisted into a day-long workshop on how to launch your own business. It was incredibly useful. I went wanting to learn more about possibilities of what I could do with my degree, freelancing and how to start a business in general. It covered all 3.
The first session of the day was 'structuring a business plan and identifying your market' with Siobain Hone.
We started by thinking about what we wanted our business to do in one line. This may sound simple but coming up with 1 condensed line of what in particular I want the business to be was quite challenging. I decided that "I want to handle and manage any multimedia work using other freelancers for fields that I am inexperienced in".
Next we discussed what we felt a perfect customer would be like. This was important because defining your perfect customer helps shape what kind of company it is and how you want to market it. I decided that a perfect customer for me would be one that "has a clear objective but who is still open to new ideas".
We discussed other qualities in a customer that would be useful including "willing to go with the contract", "has a good budget", "is informed about what is wanted by the company" and who is "trusting of my expertise".
Next, after establishing how to define a business, we talked about finding the perfect market. This consists of tapping into an area of the market that is going to attract the kind of customers that I want. The most important way of doing this was by networking with other people in the trade that are likely to come across such customers. I feel this could be one of my weaknesses and that it is definitely a good idea to keep ahold of the contacts I have accumulated and to always be ready to make more.
Another major way of getting into the market is by word of mouth. Because of this, I feel it is important to do work to an incredibly high standard and make sure that the first few customers I have are very impressed by me. Other ways of finding the right customers are by talking to businesses, doing surveys, going through trade magazines, self-promotion and exhibitions.
I feel that for me, the right way of getting into the market of customers that I want would be through working at a very high standard and using word of mouth and networking to accumulate clients and a great reputation. I think it's also important for me to attend exhibitions both displaying my work and looking at others to keep in touch with similar designers in the market.
In the next part of the session, we discussed business plans. We discussed what they were in definition and what they needed to be personally. I had never given this much thought before.
We decided that an initial business plan was a "plan for getting an idea into reality". I felt that this was a little vague myself. We then went into more detail and discussed how a business plan should have various milestones of success in and goals. I felt that this was more the essence of a business plan and that a business plan should be used to set and plan financial goals as well as others.
Finally, we learnt out how to produce a business plan suitable for taking to the bank. This consists of having a clear executive summary and unique selling point followed by information about the market and financial details. We were also given a list of various resources for help creating a personal one. This was very useful.
In all, this session was incredibly useful and interesting. I learnt a lot about how to efficiently setup a business and find a market and if I was to do this, I would now feel confident.
