OFFICE-BASED AGENCY
Startup Checklist
Getting Started
1. Conduct a personal evaluation to determine why you want to start a business.
2. Create a business plan:
ID Plan
1 What do we do?
2 How do we do it?
3 Who do we serve?
3. Conduct a SWOT analysis to identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and
threats.
4. Assess how much capital you have available to invest.
5. Discuss your plans with family members to ensure they are behind you.
6. Determine if you want the business to be full-time or part-time.
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Committing to Your Business
1. Define the customer “problem” and how your business can provide a solution in a unique
way.
2. Determine viability: Is there a market for your service?
3. Identify businesses that are having success today.
4. Will your business be relevant as time passes? How will you adapt?
5. Define your market:
6. Validate your idea by talking to potential customers about it.
7. Evaluate how customers solve this problem today, as well as what the competition offers.
8. Create a quick financial plan, identifying costs and forecasted sales, to see if your capital
gets you to a profit.
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Minh Long
Sustaining Your Business
Keep track of strategies that worked and flopped to fine tune your marketing tactics.
Maintain and nurture your repeat business. Remember, it costs 80% less to maintain a
current relationship than to develop a new one.
Figure 1: Golden retriever
Maintain and nurture your repeat business. Remember, it costs 80% less to maintain a current
relationship than to develop a new one.
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