5 Things Nurses Need To Know When Starting Their Own Business
August 7, 2017
Whether you’re a Nurse, Barista or sales associate at Best Buy, the thought of starting your own business might have come across your mind at some point. In some instances, when my friends ask me how to start their own business, I tell them not to. Work for someone else, its easier. I guess most people who’ve asked me have probably done so on a stressful day. Get ready for a lot of those.
We work with a lot of Nurses including those who have gone on to open up their own cosmetic practices. Even those who have gone on to completely abandon nursing and open a coffee shop!
There’s a lot of money in botox, fillers and other non invasive procedures, and making the jump from your house botox party to your own office can be daunting.
You’ll have days you want to rip your hair out for sure. You’ll have days that are rewarding, and days you want to stab yourself in the eye with your own botox needle. For those who are still persistent and want business consultation, and have an idea, here’s 5 pointers to help you get off the ground.
It takes money, honey.
Seriously, if you don’t have capital, you’re probably screwed. You need an investor, or you need cash. Depending on what type of business you want to open, will depend on what you want to do. Opening a small coffee shop for instance can cost you around $50,000 to fit it out. That’s no marketing budget, no salary and no supply costs.
Forget a TI budget (the money a landlord will give businesses to refit the office they’re about to lease)If you have a small clothing line, or want to get into apparel then you can start small, but you’ll still want around $10,000 to get it off the ground.
If you want to open up your own small clinic, then thankfully the start up costs don’t need to be that huge – but you’ll still need a little capital to get you started. You’ll need the following:
- Budget to fit out your new clinic. Think at least $5,000 to do it very cheaply.
- Advertising budget. Your friends might help with word of mouth, but you’ll want to advertise to the masses. An SEO Company can help you manage this type of activity for a fee.
Do your research!
If you’re in the service industry, find out what the demand is in your neighborhood. Don’t look for the entire metropolis. Focus on a neighborhood and find out what drives demand. If you’re running an apparel line, what sets you apart? Are you using the same fabrics, same choices and basically doing everything that Forever 21 could sweep in and overtake overnight? Then it probably won’t work. You’ll also want to look at space, if you’re planning on opening a location then square footage is key. Don’t be the idiot who wants a 3,000 square foot office when you have 5 staff.
Yelp can be a great tool. Call them and ask how many people search for Botox in Phoenix. Some execs might tell you that they can’t tell you that info, I call BS. Tell them you need to know otherwise you can’t justify spending with them. Do NOT however, start advertising until you have at least 20 reviews (and they need to all be 5 stars) No one will buy from you.
Get Social.
Social is by far the cheapest way to reach out to your audience. Influencer marketing is easy peasy, and all those people you see with over 100,000 followers on instagram, aren’t necessarily making money, they have day jobs but reap the rewards of tons of free gifts from people like you wanting your product featured, and they love it. Find your influencer through instagram and get your product featured.
Keep your website simple.
I’ve tested an abundance of websites and conversion optimization, and the flashier the website, the poorer the sale. People want a simple experience, they don’t want to have to sing and dance to get to where they want to be on a site. Keeping a grass roots feel can help make the difference between a lot of sales, and no sales.
Remarket, Rengage.
Remember that your customers aren’t necessarily looking for your product right now. If you’re a botox clinic, your social ad might have hit someone two days after they’ve just had botox. Impression based advertising usually works on frequency and recall. Meaning your message needs to hit their eyeballs 4 times before they ‘recall’ the ad and start lodging your brand in their brain. Social is good for this and will help you achieve your brand awareness goal.
Setting up a re marketing campaign for people who have visited your site to ‘haunt’ them around the web will keep your brand in their minds for up to 90 days after they have visited your site.
If you want to talk more business, get in touch with us – we offer consultations to help you on the road to setting up your own business. Contact Michael@brighthaus.com today.