What are the Answers to the Top 3 Most Googled Small Business Startup Questions
On our Business Fundamental 101 Channel on Quora, we've seen a common trend and proposed responses to Top-3 questions: How to Start a Business? What Business To Start? How To Get Funding? Now CenturyLink has compiled a list of startup questions across different states in US, based on most Googled and we're not surprised to see, the trend is very similar to what see from our user.
Methodology used by CenturyLink was to use SemRush, a tool used by marketing professions (and us as well), to gather data on most Googled business centric keywords. The top ten results were then ran through Google Trends, providing insights into the Top-3 questions by state, collected from April 2021 to April 2022.
Here are the Top-3 Questions:
- How to Start a Business?
- How to write a Business Plan?
- What Business to Start?
As MD-Konsult is focused on SMB (Small Medium Business) and Startup consulting, we would be remiss, if we did not share how we broach these questions with our founders. Below is how we start and guide our founders:
1. How to Start a Business?
Important question, but this is not the right question to start with. "What Business to Start" is where the magic happens. We recommend, the readers to read that first and then come back to this, even though this question is addressed first. At a high level here is what we recommend.
A. If you are familiar with different type of incorporations, using LegalZoom is probably the fastest way to incorporate a business.
B. For first time founders, especially if its more than one founder, we suggest going through a legal entity, who specialize in startups. This is critical for future decisions.
2. How to Write a Business Plan?
We've made is simple, by creating "Free & Editable" templates either ourselves, or from other resources. Click here for free business templates.
Pause: We do not recommend founders to start with a Business Plan. Why? Our experience shows that due to the length of the document, it can become a deterrent very quickly.
Recommend: We recommend to start with a Business Model Canvas (BMC). They key tenants of a BMC allow the founders to validate their hypothesis very quickly and then graduate to the Business Plan. Also, based on where the funding is coming from, a Business Plan (at the onset), may not provide the value most believe it does.
3. What Business to Start?
Based on our many engagements with founders and startups, this is the starting question. Nothing matters more than right idea / hypothesis. We also recommend our founders to translate the idea into a "Hypothesis". This forces the founders to think in terms of outcomes and for whom.
Once done, the hypothesis is then expanded upon through a BMC. Once BMC is ready and viable, incorporation is done and we go into hyper drive mode of testing with users. Post user feedback, the Business Plan is then crafted, which clearly lays out key areas of focus.
Final Thoughts:
We at MD-Konsult, are a startup business that forces on the startup business. Our Experience, independent of industry, provides our founders a structured approach to start a business. There will always be challenges, but the best way is to be prepared and agile enough to manage the risk. If 90% of the startups are statistically failing, we want to improve the probability of success. Connect with us at MD-Konsult.com
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