It’s summertime and maybe it feels like the longest summer of your life, right? We’ve been out of school for a few months already, and we are looking at a few more months before school starts again. Have you ever wondered what my simple steps to starting a business are? I’m going to walk you through how easy it is to start a business the right way!

First, a little back story:

I was looking at my kids recently and noticing we were all feeling the restlessness of the past few months. They needed a project. I needed them to have something else to do. And they needed somewhere to put all of their energy that would be beneficial. We had a family meeting and we talked about what they wanted to accomplish in the month of June before we headed to Utah to visit extended family in July. 

One of the things they had on their list was building an online business. My oldest is almost 14 and he and his siblings have been curious about what it is that I do for my job. They see me talking into a microphone at my desk, all alone, and it looks a little odd. Ha! I’ve tried to explain what I do to my kids, and how an online business works. It’s a pretty cool thing to be able to work online. So when my kids asked to learn how to build an online business, I got really excited. 

Over the past month I’ve been working with them to create a business model and plan for their online business. It’s been good for me, too, to remember the steps that you need to take to start an online business and get it going. I realized there are 10 steps to starting a business, and I’m going to walk you through what they are. Whether you are just starting out or you are an experienced business owner, you need to check out this list. I bet that you’ll be surprised at what I’m sharing. And I promise you will learn something!

Are you ready for a peek into my brain as I share my simple steps to starting a business?

 

10 Simple Steps to Starting A Business

When my kids first came to me with their business ideas, my 9yr old said they wanted to start a YouTube channel. I asked them, “Awesome, what are you going to share?” Their suggestions ranged from sketch comedy routines to trick shots. My reply? “No. If we are going to do this business, you have to do it my way.” This is when I started teaching my kids my 10 simple steps to starting a business. 

 

1- Choose a Niche and the Specific Problem You Want to Solve

I told them the first thing they needed to do was choose a niche and know how they were going to serve their audience. And they did it. They came up with the idea to teach kids how to cook. They’ve been learning how to make breakfast for the family every morning by taking turns, and they wanted to share what they’ve learned. Please come find them on YouTube. Their channel is Gifford Kids: Cooking Videos for Kids, by Kids. They would be so happy if you come subscribe to their cooking channel! 

Once we chose this niche it made it so much easier to know the next steps. I know you’re not out there thinking about just putting trick shots up on the internet for your business. But sometimes we want to focus on all the things that we’ve ever thought about instead of just focusing on the thing where we can serve the best. My kids are doing this right now. 

The problem my kids are solving is teaching kids how to cook. How to be more self-sufficient. Bring families together with opportunities to cook together in the kitchen. And bring goodness and light to the world. That is their niche and the problem they solve, and who they are creating content for.

 

2- Choose Your Core Content Source

 I believe in the core content method and formula. It just happens to be my favorite method. I have a few posts and podcasts all about my core content method  that you can find HERE. The core content formula is where you choose one piece of core content that you are committed to making content for at least once a week. You take that core piece of content and you stretch it across different platforms. My kids’ core content source is YouTube. This is how they will teach, serve, and grow an audience. It is also where they will create their core content each week and share their videos. 

 

3- Create a Brand with Colors, Logo, Name

When we talked about names for their channel on YouTube, the kids were suggesting different things. One that they suggested was, “Gifford Kids Cook”. My oldest didn’t like being niched down that specific. His reasoning was that they wouldn’t be able to do anything else on their channel as they grew and they wanted to share different things. The solution, in his mind, was to name their business, “Gifford Kids”. I thought this was genius.

So many times when we start our personal brands, we want to choose a funny/cute/trendy name. Sometimes it’s better thought, to just use your name. This allows you and your business to change and evolve without having to change the name of your business. This gives you room to grow. 

*Disclaimer— this business has been parent directed, not parent completed. I want them to learn the different aspects of an online business and develop the skills that are necessary to start a business. 

So when we were working on creating logos, the kids all came up with different ideas. And some of them were hilarious. I’ll share them here.

They created them on Canva and had a lot of fun! After the first round of logos, I showed them other logos of different companies. The kids then decided that they would use 5 colors to represent each child and they created a logo that revolved around these 5 different colors. They voted on which logo they liked the best. They found lots of inspiration for their final logo and color scheme from a simple search on Pinterest. 

 

4- Start a Blog/Website

I’m going to tell you that this step of my simple steps to starting a business was guided, but I didn’t do it for the kids. My oldest started a blog but I showed him how to do it. We used WordPress and Bluehost. For more on why I love Bluehost and WordPress read THIS post. After we got the blog set up, we purchased a theme from Restored316. There are a lot of places you can get blog themes. I like this site because she has a lot of step by step guides for purchasing a theme and changing the colors to fit your brand. This was perfect for us because I could just turn it over to my oldest son, and let him learn how to do this part on his own. 

 

5- Create a Money Making Plan

I asked my kids how YouTubers make money. This was hilarious. Their first response was that they make money from subscribers. Which is true. But there are other ways to make money. I walked them through the different options. There’s ads on YouTube and Google, Blog Ads, Affiliate links, and creating your own product. I taught them the different ways that they can make money, and they decided on a digital product to start off with. The plan is to create a course digitally while they develop their physical products. We created a plan and mapped out how the kids can actually make money. 

 

6- Create Your Content Plan

We are halfway through my simple steps to creating a business. This is where we sat down and thought about what content they could create right now. We made a list of the recipes they knew how to make already and that they were familiar with. With 5 kids, this gave us quite a list to get started with! Now we have a plan of content we can create for the next few months. 

 

7- Create the Content

With the content creation method, you don’t want to launch a business with just one piece of content. It’s better to have a few videos, blog posts, social media posts, etc. up for your new audience. This way when a new audience starts watching and consuming your content and they want more, there is more for them to view immediately. We also planned for how we can create consistent content for the next year.

I warned them previous to this that I can be a bit of a stickler when it comes to being committed to their online business. I told them that I wanted them to commit to at least a year of growing this business, and then we can re-evaluate and see if this is still something they want to do. They grumbled a little about the process not being as quick and easy as they’d prefer, but this is the way it should be done. 

To start the Gifford Kids YouTube channel, the kids each made a breakfast recipe. This was our first content we released. It was really great. I helped with the videoing and I showed them how to edit the videos. And now they’re editing the videos on their own and learning a lot in the process. 

 

8- Create an Email List with an Opt-In

Of course an email list is in my top 10! Create a way for people to get on your email list. This way you can capture emails and grow your business from the start. The kids are creating a freebie download that they can advertise on their videos and their blog. By offering a freebie, they will be able to get email addresses from the beginning and really be able to grow their business the right way. 

 

9- Create a Dream Board

When you’re talking to kids about a business, they think $500 is a ton of money. They might not understand what you can do if you dream bigger than that $500. So I asked them what dreams they had, what did they really want to do, where did they dream of visiting? One of my sons said that he’d love to visit different places around the world and try new recipes from where they go. What a great idea!

By allowing yourselves to dream, you get excited about new things and it helps you to work harder to accomplish your goals. Now, I don’t travel much with just my husband. One of the reasons is because I love to experience things with my family. My sister in law and her family live in Italy. The kids and I thought it would be a great idea to have the goal of visiting Italy, seeing our cousins, and learning how to cook authentic Italian pasta dishes. How cool would that be? (By the way, my sister in law, JoEllen, is amazing and you should totally follow her on Instagram. She teaches women how to dress their bodies well and not fill their closets with clothes they never wear.)

One of the smaller goals that my kids came up with was that they just wanted some spending money to have for themselves. This is a perfect goal. I love that they will learn how to budget and make good money choices while they are still under my roof.

 

10- Create a Launch Plan

I touched on this a bit before, in step 7 of my simple steps to starting a business. It’s important to remember when you’re launching a new business it’s good to have more than one piece of content published so you can get people hooked. With all of this talk about content creation and being ready to be found and followed, it’s important to have an idea of where you will be found. My kids decided that they wanted to have their blog, YouTube, and freebie ready to go before they launched. 

I was trying to teach my kids the ins and outs of how you get found on YouTube and your Blog.  So I asked my kids, “How will people find you on your YouTube channel and blog?” They, of course, had no idea. You know, to kids, this online stuff is pretty magical. Haha! This gave me the opportunity to teach them how to utilize the caption under the videos and the keywords they chose to help them be found on that platform. I made them write captions to their videos, despite their grumblings. They just wanted to share the videos without any thought behind them. But I wanted them to wait a bit, have all of their ducks in a row, and launch their channel and business with purpose. 

Whether you are new to business, or you have a business that you are trying to grow, take a look at these steps and check yourself against them. Do you have all of these steps covered? If you don’t, get them taken care of so you can have a solid business. 

Here are my 10 simple steps to starting a business again:

Come on over to Gifford Kids on YouTube, your kids will love it and I’m so excited to see them learning and growing. I’m really passionate about business. We have this feeling that we can’t do motherhood and business at the same time. But that’s not true. My business has supported my motherhood. It has given me knowledge, experience, and confidence that I can pass onto my kids. That is a beautiful thing and something that should not be shied away from. 

I gathered my kids today and told them that this is the best time in the world to live. You, as kids, can start a YouTube channel from your house. You can start a business from your home. It’s amazing. You can be a light and a force for good from your computer. How amazing is that?!

Want more coaching from me? Join my Money Makers coaching group! It’s a great group of women business owners just like you, who are learning how to build their businesses and make some money. Find out more HERE.