5 Essential Steps To Building An Online Business

I tend to think of myself as a problem solver. My education in law and engineering creates the perfect blend of someone who can spot a problem from a mile away and think of about a thousand ways to fix it.

This problem solver mindset serves me well when I am helping a friend, advising clients, or coming up with new products or services for my business. I can always see the issue and immediately think of outcomes that will make things better, faster, easier, or less stressful.

What doesn’t always come into view for me is how to get to the outcome I’ve envisioned. I tend to see the forest, not the trees. And when you are building a business, you need a little of both.

Don’t Miss The Forest For The Trees

In simple terms, the cliche don’t miss the forest for the trees means don’t miss the broader context by burying yourself in the details. You hear this phrase a lot in law school because students often get so bogged down analyzing the minutiae (the trees), they miss the larger point altogether (the forest).

But if you have attempted to start a business, particularly an online company, you know that this cliché applies in that process too. There seem to be so many moving parts like email lists, opt-in forms, payment processors, domain names, social media, SEO, Google rankings, and more, that seeing a viable business through all of these elements can seem impossible.

To cut through some of the noise, I’ve simplified the online business-building process into 5 essential steps. Once you’ve mastered these steps, you’ll be in the perfect position to design the forest first and then plant it with trees that make sense later. (Or hire someone else to do it ????.) Here are those steps:

Step 1: Decide who to serve and what to offer

I’m sure you’ve heard that, in business, if you speak to everyone, you’re really talking to no one. That’s because, in our highly customizable and accessible world, people want products and services tailored to meet their needs.

For example, customers don’t just want any slice of pizza. They want a slice that is paleo-friendly, vegan, gluten-free, or whatever diet floats their boat. So as a business owner, you have to narrow your focus to determine what group, with their specific wants and desires, are you most interested in serving.

Once you’ve done that, the next inquiry is to decide what to offer them. The question here is, what could you do that would add another dimension to the products and services that are already out there.

Step 2: Build An Audience

The next essential step to building a business is building an audience. You can have the best offers in the world, but if you don’t have anyone to talk to about them, you won’t make any money. There are several strategies to building an audience including blogging, guest posting, being interviewed by magazines, podcasts, and newspapers, and networking. No matter what method you choose, recognize that building an audience is a constant, on-going process that will continue throughout the life of your business.

Step 3: Monetize, Market, and Sell

Once you’ve built your audience, it’s time to start making cash. This means you need to create pathways that lead customers toward purchasing your products and services. Often these pathways are called funnels. A funnel is just an organized plan of how you will use your exposure and content to sell your products and services. Every funnel you create should lead you to more leads and more sales.

Step 4: Test and Pivot

The testing step is where things get interesting. In using your funnel, you might see that you’re not generating the revenue you need. You may also find that you don’t like serving your particular audience or that you don’t want to package your products and services in a particular way anymore. So the test and pivot step is your opportunity to test what is working and what isn’t. If something isn’t working for you, you simply pivot to a different solution until you find something else. Once you have refined your selling mechanisms and verified that they serve the needs of your audience, then your next focal point is growth.

Step 5: Scale

The 5th and final essential step to building an online business is scaling. This means focusing on ways to attract more customers and implementing systems to make their customer experience more seamless. This also is the step where you want to hire help to make the business run more efficiently.

And that the forest folks. Nail these essentials, and you have a business. Got any more tips to share? Let me know your business building essentials in the comments below.