How to Get Your New Business Up and Running
The most daunting part of learning a new skill is exactly how to get your new business going. We look at:
- how to run a colour consultation from start to finish, beginning with the initial telephone enquiry right through to how to promote your follow-up services
- how to set your studio up
- how to dress to reflect your own colouring, shape and personality
- what to say
- what absolutely not to bore your client to death with
- how not to confuse her with too much information
- how to deliver exactly what the client wants (not what you'd rather tell her!)
We also look at how to:
- market your new business
- get going
- get your first bookings
- market your business once your very happy client's been to see you.
Where to Work
Q: "Would it be possible to be a colour consultant and NOT work out of my home, i.e. go to the client's home instead? I am presently living in a bachelor apartment/flat, meaning my queen-size bed takes up about 1/3 of the room (-- long story). I feel that my apartment would not project the professionalism I wish to project to my customers."
A: Many consultants are mobile. It's your business and you can work wherever you want to. I can understand your concerns that working from such a small space might not convey a professional image, so you could take your business to your clients' homes. Many consultants/therapists hire a room by the hour or day from a local medical centre, library, beauty salon, etc. The Chamber of Commerce often hires out rooms in their premises, too. In this way, you might be able to keep your props in a locked cupboard, which will save you having to transport them every time!
This is your business and you can do exactly what suits you and your family. This business allows total flexibility. Some consultants work in this way all the time; others prefer to have a base and work from their home or rented premises.
To travel to other people's homes just requires more organisation - you will need to load up the car, travel, unload at the client's house, set up - all before you begin the consultation - and then you have it all to repeat at the other end. Think about the time you will invest, and consider including (at least some of) the costs in your fees.
I work from home as I like to be in control of every aspect of a consultation or training course. When I have visited a client in their own home in the past I have found that they haven't quite told me the whole truth - the 'wonderful light' is a tiny window 73 feet off the floor, and there isn't room to swing a cat, never mind set up my mirror and drapes' stand, or to display all my accoutrements.
But try it and see for yourself. We are all different, we can all run our own business in any way we want to, and there are no rules!
Have You Got A Good Support System In Place At Home?
If not, then either sort it out before you begin or get a job working for someone else because without support from the people you live with, your business will never take off.
Few financial overheads needed
In this business, you should have very few financial overheads:
- You do not have to find premises as you could work from your spare bedroom or front room
- You do not have to carry very much stock - a small selection of the wallets that you have chosen to work with should be your greatest ongoing outlay, and you could always provide them after the consultation and just order them in when you have seen a client
- Your only investments are the training and any associated travel/hotel costs, a full-length mirror, a set of drapes, a cover-up cape, and a set of colour swatch wallets for display purposes
- You may wish to add a small number of lipsticks or a full set of make-up with all the associated paraphernalia - make-up remover, cotton wool, brushes, etc.
Will you be under pressure to make money?
According to Barclays Bank, 25% of all new businesses fail within their first year. The good news is that some of these often-quoted statistics - like the one that says 90% of all restaurants fail in their first 12 months - are simply not true. However, the real test for a new business is whether it's still trading after five years. It is generally accepted that only 20% of start-ups make it to their sixth birthday.
One of the main reasons for this is lack of finance, especially to pay your living costs while you're starting out. Have you considered this?
A lady I trained about a year ago is currently being pressured to recoup her investment by her husband. I firmly believe that we all need to take responsibility for everything that happens to us so she is allowing this pressure to stress her out but, that aside, she is now taking further training courses with all sorts of other companies in the dubious hope that she will find the missing Eureka moment that will help her to gain clients and the necessary income that he is insisting upon. This is a forlorn hope, in my opinion, as she already has the necessary tools to go out and start her business but her current low self-esteem plus the pressure of this idiot husband is undermining any confidence that she may have had when she first finished her initial training.
Unless you are studying colour, style, etc. for your own benefit, then I have to assume that you want to make money from it. And the only way you are going to do that is to adopt a business mind:
- if you treat this like a hobby, then you will earn hobby money
- if you treat this like a professional business, then you will earn a professional business income
- your choice!
Will your family be totally behind you in your new venture?
Have you sat your other half and/or family down and explained what your new business will mean to them and your current schedule? You need to point out what changes the whole family will have to make. For instance, if you are going to work from home, they must give you total peace and quiet when you have a client. They will have to:
- answer the phone
- take deliveries
- clear up when the cat has been sick
- deal with disasters
- feed themselves!
Will they be able to do all this without you? For a change, I am being dreadfully serious here! Some families are quite incapable of functioning without their lynchpin (could that be you?) so it's worth considering the implications now.
Have you discussed how the diary is going to work to accommodate all these changes?
- Will you just be blindly (or should that be blandly?) booking people in, or will you consult the family and make them feel part of what's going on?
- How are they going to answer the phone when your potential clients ring?
- If they answer the door to one of your clients, what impression will they give?
- Will they represent you as a professional at all times, or will you just end up looking like the proverbial little hobby housewife with her proverbial little hobby business?
To get positive support and encouragement from your nearest and dearest, you need to explain the positive benefits that your business will bring to the family as a whole. It might be a good idea to discuss and agree all this BEFORE you invest in a training course and/or supplies!
