You Can Start That Business. Here’s How.

0:09Hi everyone, it's Emma and welcome back to Aspire. So for those of you who have ever thought about starting a business, here's a number that stopped me in my tracks. 40 % of new businesses fail within three years and nearly half are gone by year five. But the ones that make it, well, they often follow the same playbook. And today I'm breaking down the exact playbook, the 10 steps every first time founder needs to get started. So stick with me because this is the blueprint to finally starting your business journey.

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2:45So back in 2017, I was obsessed with getting out of the agency and consultancy business and starting a brand that I could be proud of. But absolutely nothing was aligning. I couldn't quite get enough money together, even the fabric I needed, I couldn't get my hands on. But I launched anyway, with my second choice and without a clue of how I would make everything work. That messy start turned into Good American, a company that now has hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. And here's the truth. The number one mistake new founders make is waiting until everything feels perfect. If you want to start a business, you cannot wait.

3:27You need a roadmap that gets you moving today. Starting a business really is one of the most exhilarating, terrifying and transformative decisions you will ever make. I've done it more than once and I will tell you I've succeeded, I've failed multiple times and having mentored and invested in countless ideas and founders, I've learned that most people overcomplicate the process and they fail to start. So today, I'm going to walk you step by step through exactly what you need to do, what you need to think about, and the mistakes that you absolutely cannot afford to make based on my own experience.

4:08So here we go. Step one, let's remove the barriers and talk risk. So the first thing I want to tell you, and you should grab your pens, is that you have to start. It's that simple. For so many of us, and I've been guilty of this too, but an idea can live in our heads for years. A half-written business plan can sit on a desktop forever. You might even have gotten as far as a prototype or a red page, but it's not enough. You have to start. You have to get really comfortable with taking a risk and it not working out and failing. It's true that for so many of us, taking a risk is hard. If you're able to get to the truth that no one is watching you, so you don't actually need to concern yourself with what everyone else is thinking, then the next thing can hold you back is the responsibility part.

4:56We all have bills to pay, people that rely on us, children, parents, significant others, and that's real. But the truth is taking a risk actually is part of starting a company. Risk is not something that you can get rid of. It's something that you need to plan for. And I want to give you a way to reframe how you think about risk altogether. You've got to redefine risk as not something to avoid, but as something to manage, to learn from, and even to leverage. Now, if you're smart, you'll learn valuable lessons make you better because every business decision is an opportunity to gather data and refine your approach.

5:35So many of us think this is risky because we think to ourselves, I don't know the outcome. There's too much uncertainty, but I'm going to talk you through a process that can reduce uncertainty with some planning, some research and testing. The next thing I want to level with you on is how hard it is to actually start a successful business. If you're a perfectionist, starting a business will be really hard. If you're ambitious, if you're doing well at your current job, if you're on a path to promotion, it's hard. If you're busy with your kids and your life and you have no time, it's hard. But guess what?

6:11Even without all of those things, starting a business is hard as fuck. So the best way I find to manage hard things is by planning and anticipating them. Anticipating how much work goes in is a really good place to start. Knowing you're going to need to make huge sacrifices and leveling with yourself that nothing happens overnight and that this will take time. It's not a nice to do, it's a must do. Anticipating fear and knowing how hard it can get is your starting point. Step two, the idea. So the first thing I want to say is that an idea isn't a business, your execution is. Having a good idea alone doesn't make for a successful company.

6:54What matters is how well you bring that idea to life. Ideas are plentiful. So many people have ideas and often multiple people are working on similar ones at the same time. A quote that I love from Samantha Wills is, originality is a myth, authenticity isn't. It's never been done by you through your lens, your lived experience, your perspective. Make it your own. It's such a true quote because the uniqueness of an idea is rarely what creates lasting value. Think about how many companies make computers. There's still only one, Apple. Ideas don't generate revenue either. An idea by itself doesn't attract customers, build systems, or pay salaries, but execution does, and execution is everything.

7:42The reason execution is everything is because creating the right product, obsessing over every single solitary detail of that product, hiring the right people, designing the right systems, and eventually the right processes, marketing effectively, and obsessing your customer consistently will turn your vision into a reality. Two companies can start with the same idea, but the one that executes better, faster, with more discipline, at a higher quality, with better storytelling, and a deeply understood connection with their customer, that's the one that wins. Think about how many social networks existed before Facebook or how many streaming services before Netflix.

8:25How you differentiate against the competition is the difference between success and failure. Let me give you an example. Back in 2017, I started ideating on what would eventually become Good American. Now, for those of you that don't know, Good American started life as a premium denim brand that was made for women of all sizes. Fast forward eight years, we now sell hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of denim online, in our own stores, and in every major department store globally. But most importantly, we rewrote the rules around sizing in fashion, and the brand, Good American, is largely credited in the industry as doing so.

9:05But no one in their right mind would have said then or now that the world needed yet another denim brand. And I would agree, except I had an idea about how to execute that was totally missing from the market. Now cast your mind back to 2017. The body positivity movement was in full swing, but women's clothing and retail hadn't quite evolved to meet the moment. I saw what was happening and I saw clearly that there was a business opportunity. Thin women bought from one set of brands and plus size women from another. And the options for the plus customer were dire. I had a couple of key insights that led to me having the conviction to start a new business.

9:47I had read somewhere that plus-size women made up 68 % of the female population here in the US. If you walked into a mall, a small handful of the stores catered to curvy bodies. Plus-size women were relegated to unfashionable, poor quality brands, but honestly, anyone with curves was actually putting up with poorly fitted jeans. Now, armed with that information, we created a brand that would be focused on this customer. And for over a year, I obsessed perfecting the perfect fitting jeans for this body type and truly understanding this customer. What was out there for her? What did she really want and what was missing?

10:25The more research I did on denim, the more I actually realized a lot of women had issues finding perfect fitting denim. Petite girls needed to do alterations to their jeans. Tall women had limited options. And so I pivoted from the original idea and the original plan and the world's most inclusive denim brand was born. What I knew for sure is that plus size women were sick of not having the options that slimmer women had. And what I needed to do was make all the sizes, sizes 00 through to a plus size 24. Now for sure, I chose a great partner. And better than just being one of the most famous women on the planet, Khloe was someone who uniquely understood the problem of being taller than most and curvier than most.

11:11Khloe Kardashian's fame, popularity, curves, and her lovability helped catapult the business for sure. But the product also lived up to its promise. And we all know that no matter how much of a fan you are of someone, no one spends 160 bucks on jeans that aren't great. Eight years after launch, the original idea of Good American still stands. And that was because the execution was flawless. We were able to build a real company around a couple of key insights and the strong desire to give a customer what she wanted and what she needed. Honestly, I think I had a pretty average idea. It certainly existed in the marketplace already.

11:50We just did it better than everybody else. And as the market changed and adapted, so did we. So what I wanted to say, as you get to thinking about execution, you have to ask yourself these questions. What is the one problem that I'm solving? Number two, exactly who am I solving it for? And three, why am I the person to solve it? My advice is don't chase trends. Trends come and they go. You have to start where your conviction is strongest, especially because when it gets hard, you're going to need your conviction and that thing that got you started to carry you through. If you are just an opportunist, you're going to struggle with motivation when the going gets tough.

12:34Now, moving on to step three for starting a business, we're going to talk about research. So listen, for all of you solopreneurs out there, research isn't academic. When you're just starting out, it's about being obsessed with your customer and the potential of what you're creating. Plus, I want you to be armed with some key insights that will help you when the fear creeps in. We all know people that let fear get in the way. So do me a favor and share this episode with anyone that you think could benefit from what I'm about to share. I want to split research into two distinct buckets for you. First, we're going to talk about understanding your market, and then we're going to talk about the market opportunity.

13:15Put simply, this is understanding your customer and understanding the business opportunity. So let's start with understanding your market. To run a successful business, you need to be able to find a customer and market to that customer effectively. To do that well, you've got to get close to them and you've got to understand them. Where do they shop? How do they live? What frustrates them? What brands are they currently buying? Now you can go deep, deep, deep into this and I suggest you do, but I want you to focus on the things that you categorically must do. First, you must build an initial ideal customer profile.

13:53This helps you avoid wasting time on customer segments that don't match your product offering. Speak to whoever you can, friends, family, colleagues, reach out to whoever you can. When you create a customer profile or profiles, you're figuring out who your target customer is, their age, gender, income level, education, occupation. Figure out what motivates these people, their values and their lifestyles. And you ask questions like, how do they discover products like mine? Through search, through social, through word of mouth, and how much are they willing to pay? And then finally, you ask yourself, where are they purchasing?

14:32Where do they prefer to buy? Is it an online store? Is it through physical retail or by subscription. Next, I want you to obsess the competition. You need to know everything about the competitor set. So let me share how I usually do this. Take three brands that are in the category of what you'd be launching or that have relevant adjacencies and study the life out of them. Learn their product and what makes it great. Understand their pricing. Obsess the language that they use in marketing, sign up for all of their emails and look at what they do, how often they launch, when they go on sale, what changes they make to their website.

15:13Go on LinkedIn and look at their staff and piece together an org chart. You basically need to be like a crazy bitch for business. And you know, it's always good for us girls to channel our energy into something. So you need to look daily at the businesses in your competitor set. Now, you can use tools like Google searches, review sites, Yelp, G2, Trustpilot, social media chatter and competitor websites. And you can ask yourself and ask your friends, what do they do well? Why are customers dissatisfied? Where are there gaps that you can exploit? Moving on from understanding your market, now you have to do some market research.

15:53How big is this market is the question, but be sure to keep it super focused. The goal isn't to know everything. The goal is actually just to reduce risk and sharpen your idea. You can use publicly available reports, government data, industry publications, competitor filings, but you're looking for the following information. TAM, SAM, and SOM. So TAM stands for Total Addressable Market. Essentially, if everyone who could, did buy, what is the size of that? SAM is the serviceable, available market, the portion of TAM that you can realistically serve with your offering. And then SOM, serviceable, attainable market, the realistic slice that you could capture in the next three to five years.

16:44Now, next, if you can, talk to customers or people that you believe would be your potential audience about your actual offering, doing interviews, surveys, focus groups, all of this can be a game changer at the start of your business journey. Even a handful of conversations can reveal real pain points that you, who is so engrossed in your idea, can so easily miss. Don't pitch. Ask open-ended questions. What frustrates you the most about the problem that you're trying to solve? How do you currently solve it? What would make it better? And be sure to record patterns, not one-off comments. Lastly, you want to synthesize all of these insights into action.

17:26This part is easy, but don't skip it thinking that it's just going to live in your head. Getting everything down on paper and pulling together your findings into a simple brief is actually really going to serve you so well. And by the end of this process, you'll be able to carefully articulate, firstly, who is your customer? And second, how big is the opportunity? Third, who else is playing in the space? And lastly, what is the problem you're solving and how will you stand out? These things are key. Now, step four, the business model and money. My favorite part. So my advice here is simple. You have to start lean.

18:06You gotta be scrappy as fuck. Reinvest every penny in growth, period. End of. Detail planning around the business model and money is where most founders get really stuck. But if you don't spend the time and do the work here, you can't create a business that will thrive. I also hear a lot of first-time founders say, well, I'm not good with numbers or I'm not a finance person. And let me just say for the record, I definitely fall into that category. But here's the thing, when you're a founder, the buck stops with you and only you. And if you've listened to me enough, you'll know that one of my principles is to always be in learning mode.

18:46Now, if you didn't listen to my first solo episode of this podcast, you should. It's called Emma's Blueprint for a Successful Life. Bookmark that for later after you finish this episode. So let's go back to finances. Even if this isn't an area of strength for you, you can count, right? I know when the math ain't mathing. You know if you buy something at a certain cost and you're selling it at another cost without enough of a margin in the middle, you're not going to be able to make money. Sometimes things are way more simple than when we first give credit to them. So what I want you to do is break down simply how will the money come in and how will the money go out and what are the costs associated with you doing business.

19:27You should always slightly overestimate to give yourself some cushion. The most common mistakes that I see are not pricing for profit and you have to create a margin that allows you to operate with some flexibility. So margin, put simply, is the amount of money a business makes after covering the cost of the product. But what I want you to focus on is net margin, not gross margin. Net margin is what matters. That's the money that's left after paying for the product or the service, plus all of the business expenses. Never, ever underestimate costs, thinking that investors will swoop in. Because listen, my experience tells me they absolutely won't.

20:09I really, really advocate for no investors in the start of a business. And let me tell you why. Firstly, you stay in control. In the beginning, you don't actually want investors telling you how to run a company. You get to keep 100 % of the equity and the decision-making power, more importantly. You have the freedom to experiment and pivot or even walk away without external pressure. Next, and this is a big one, learn discipline early. Limited funds actually force you to be resourceful, to be scrappy and to stay super focused. You prioritize essentials and you cut out waste and that builds really strong business habits.

20:50This muscle of efficiency actually serves you for life, even if you do end up raising money later. And the next thing, you prove the model before you're risking any big capital. Bootstrapping forces you to validate whether your product actually sells. Revenue from real customers becomes proof that your idea works. And when and if you approach investors later, you're negotiating from a place of strength. Then you avoid premature scaling. Raising money too early often leads to chasing growth before finding a product market fit. And that can be death to a new business. Also, it builds founder credibility.

21:30Investors, partners, and customers respect founders who have skin in the game. A track record of bootstrapping shows grit, resilience, and execution ability. Lastly, and honestly, less stress equals more freedom. Without external investors, you can grow at your own pace. You decide whether the business is a lifestyle company, fast-growing startup, or something in between. Okay, so we've talked about money, the part that makes most founders sweat, but don't go anywhere because after the break, I'm going to share the unglamorous, but absolutely essential step that most first-time founders skip. And it's the thing that can save your business from crumbling later.

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25:52All right, we're back. And now it's time to get into the nitty gritty structure every business needs to survive. Trust me, this isn't glamorous, but it's what separates the hobbyists from the real founders. Step five is setting up the structure. Now, this is the practical side that most first-time founders ignore. It's boring. It's not glamorous. If you don't build your foundation right, it crumbles later. We could do a whole episode on this stuff, but the basics are this. You need to register the business and choose a business structure. You have to get a bank account, set up any contracts you might need, protect intellectual property, meaning whatever you've created needs to be legally protective.

26:34All of this is easily searchable online, so I won't go into the details of every step. But what I want you to know is that you might cringe at the cost, but I promise you that if you're putting your sweat equity into a new business, these aren't steps that you can afford to skip. If you have anyone at your disposal, a lawyer in the family, a friend who's an accountant, someone you know who has a business, ask questions and lean on them for advice. But whatever you do, don't skip this crucial, crucial step. Step six, the next thing to do is to build the brand and the product. Now listen, brand is not your logo.