Sharmadean Reid, Founder of WAH Nails & Beautystack shares her top tips for kickstarting an idea of your own and bringing it to fruition.
Sharmadean Reid, Founder of WAH Nails & Beautystack
Find your Passion
First and foremost, you have to find something that you’re extremely passionate about and use this as the focus of your business idea. It can also be used as the source of motivation and inspiration for the journey you’re looking to embark upon.
I’m incredibly passionate about making women feel good and feel empowered, which is a major part of why I decided to start my own business, WAH Nails, and has remained at its core almost nine years later.
I have recently been working with a group of super talented young creatives, as part of my mentoring role with VOXI, and its amazing to see what can be achieved when you find your passion and run with it. VOXI [a new mobile network] offers young people access to endless data for social apps on their mobile enabling them to create and share as much as they want, harnessing the power of social media to showcase their talents and creative portfolio with a wider audience.
Test Drive your Idea
If you have an idea or concept for a business, my main piece of advice would be to avoid rushing into making it a reality. Take a step back and think about how you can validate your idea before progressing.
There are many simple and effective ways to ’test drive’ your idea, such as developing a landing page and adding an email address to collect sign ups to explore whether people are interested in what you’re offering. Validating your idea will ultimately save you a lot of money in the future.
Feedback Loop
Ensure that you’re always able to test, measure and learn. There’s nothing to be gained, for example from hosting a launch event, where the outputs aren’t measurable. Think about how you are going to measure its success. This could be done by tracking how many people used the dedicated hashtag, or how many emails you collected from the RSVPs which you can then use for distributing marketing materials.
Try and avoid doing any activity without the ability to measure its success or return on investment as that is incredibly important.
Be Clear on Your Mission Statement and Values
You should be looking to clearly lay out your mission statement and values as early in the development process as possible. I feel it’s something that can easily be forgotten or deproritised until a later date.
You can’t build a business unless you’ve written the story and have become chief evangelist for that story, which will need be told to so many different people, from investors to the most important of all, your prospective customers.
The best piece of advice I could offer would be to develop a ’brand bible’ that clearly defines your brand’s mission statement, values and identity which will enable you to filter every decision you make through it. For example, hiring new recruits, working with suppliers and developing marketing plans. These will act as the ’commandments’ for your business.
Take Ownership of your Finances
It’s very easy, and understandably so, to get carried away with a big, brilliant brand idea, and to think ’I can’t wait to get going on my Instagram account, or website and all the fun things to do when you’re young and looking to set up your first business’. However, it’s really important to have a handle on the finances. When I was young this is something I definitely didn’t do, and it can come back to bite you in the backside later on down the line.
I would suggest whatever you spend in your marketing and promotion for your business, you should look to spend the equivalent, if not more, on your legal, accountant and other professional services.
Get References for Everything and Everyone
One of the problems with being an independent business is that you don’t have the financial security or ’bandwidth’ if things go wrong with a hire, whether this is internally or externally, as the cost of is not as easily absorbed in a new business.
If you’re going to take on services or a new recruit, I would advise being as dilligent as possible with checking references, checking with previous clients they have worked with and outlining a clear brief for any work they intend to do for you. Whilst also ensuring they know everything they could possibly need to know about your business.
I know so many people who have wasted a lot of time and money where they haven’t done the necessary due dilligence beforehand. Don’t let this prove a speed bump in your business’ development.
Bringing New People on Your Journey
Hiring is the secret to whether you’re going to win or not. Bringing new people into your business can be daunting in its infancy, but this is the only way that you can grow in any way, shape or form. Even now, as a founder and as a leader myself, hiring takes up around a quarter of my focus for further growing and developing WAH Nails and my other ventures.
Bringing new talent into your business should be treated as an ongoing priority – it’s truly never ending! You’re only ever going to be as good as the team you surround yourself with.
Banish the word ’Failure’
I don’t believe in the ’f’ word and neither should you! To me, failures are merely experiments that didn’t go right, but that you learn from. Building your business is a journey, full of ups and downs, but if you persevere and don’t allow the obstacles to get in your way then you have every chance of making your business a resounding success.
Find a Mentor and Support Network
Having a mentor or a peer group of other new business owners, who are at a similar stage as yourself in the development of their business, is really important and can provide a great support system on what can be a lonely journey at times. I have a group of founder girlfriends who are all at a similar point in our journeys who have offered me the support over the years and are great to bounce new ideas off and get feedback from.
Finding a mentor is something that I never managed to achieve on my journey, which is why it has been so rewarding working with VOXI and its community of talented young Creators, sharing my advice and guidance, via a masterclass, on how to harness their talents and passion for creating content and artwork into a future business and career.
Treat Business as an Education, Not as a Chore
I stongly believe that if you are constantly looking to learn and absorb as much knowledge and information as possible, you’re more likely to enjoy and gain great satisfaction from the journey of building your business than if you are passive on the journey. You have to remain an active part of growing yourself personally as well as professionally.
I’m constantly reading business and marketing books, listening to podcasts, and I absolutely love it and find it very fulfilling. So, I would say embrace the learning journey, enjoy it and allow it to enhance the journey of developing your business.
Sharmadean Reid, Founder of WAH Nails & Beautystack, has recently collaborated with VOXI – a new mobile network created with and for young people, offering them endless social data and the freedom to use their phone how they wish - as a creative mentor to a community of talented young Creators, who are behind all the content used in VOXI’s advertising.
https://www.voxi.co.uk/