Courtesy of Hari NYC.Hari Kaur: mixing yoga and jazz with a start-up.
Tech Support
What small-business owners need to know about technology.
In my last post, I described a Web-based service called Wicked Start that can bring a measure of automation to the process of getting a new business off the ground. Wicked Start lays out a sort of template for each of 10 major steps in starting a company, suggesting ways to proceed, pointing out what might be overlooked, and offering various resources and advice. I also briefly mentioned a Wicked Start user: Hari Kaur, a yoga instructor who four months ago opened her own jazz-yoga studio in Manhattan, called Hari NYC. Ms. Kaur tried the Web site at the suggestion of one of her yoga students, who just happens to be the founder of Wicked Start, Bryan Janeczko.
I thought it might be interesting to take a closer look at how Wicked Start proved useful to Ms. Kaur, so for this follow-up post I asked her to walk me through some of the steps that the site took her through. Wicked Start’s 10-step program is laid out on a single Web page called “the Road Map.” At the top of the road map is a progress-tracking bar that tells you at a glance how close you’ve come to completing the entire process. Ms. Kaur’s tracker indicates that she’s 60 percent complete. She noted that she had jumped around among the 10 modules in the road map that represent the 10 start-up steps — Wicked Start doesn’t pressure you to do things in order, or to do all the steps, or to do any of the steps in a particular way. But let’s take them in order, anyway.
The first step, “Starting Block,” asks basic questions like, “What is your idea?” “What is your business model?” and “Who is your competition?” Ms. Kaur said that, having been in the yoga business for 20 years, she was able to breeze through this step. Same for Step 2, “Industry,” which prompts you to identify your industry, network with knowledgeable people, and get some experience. Wicked Start tracks progress in each of the modules, and Ms. Kaur has completed 100 percent of these two steps.
For each suggested action within a module, the site provides the option of checking off a “not applicable” box, so that the program won’t nag you about completing it. If you’re creating a truly solo company, for example, you don’t need to get up to speed on hiring. When Ms. Kaur came to Step 3, “Prototype,” which pushes you to think through and create sample versions of your product or service, her first impulse was to give it an N.A. “I’ve been teaching classes a long time, I didn’t think this applied to me,” she said. “But I decided to try it as an exercise in being more concrete about my plans.”
The results were eye-opening. Ms. Kaur had vaguely imagined that in contrast to typical yoga studios, where classes are back-to-back and large enough to keep as many students moving through the studio as possible, her studio would be a more relaxed, intimate place where a smaller number of students could sit around and talk before and after class. But when the prototype questions pushed her to fill in details like the number of classes, class length and size and how the space would be used, Ms. Kaur realized that keeping revenue high enough could be a problem if she weren’t careful about managing the talk. “I hadn’t been thinking about the concept as a product,” she said. “I realized I needed help in figuring out what I had to do to meet my business needs and still keep my idea.” That help would come in other modules.
Step 4, “Corporate Structure,” seemed simple enough. She already used an accountant to help her with taxes, and she figured she’d just do the routine accounting herself by hand in a book, as she always had as an instructor.
But Step 5, “Business Plan,” got Ms. Kaur thinking again. She said she thought it mostly applied to someone who needed to raise money — she’s self-financing — or who was setting up a more complex manufacturing business. But she followed the prompt to come up with vision and mission statements, and got business-plan religion. Her vision statement emphasized nurturing creativity through a blend of yoga, the arts, and service to those in need, and that in turn led to a mission statement that made music and theater performance and a formal program of volunteer service part of her business plan. “It helped me to see how the different parts of my vision could be connected,” she said. “I hadn’t realized until then how well yoga, jazz and service to others go together.”
A screen shot of Wicked Start’s financing page.
Ms. Kaur skipped Step 6, “Funding,” and went to Step 7, “Business Infrastructure,” though with some trepidation. “The nuts and bolts of a business are not my strength,” she said.
But the module pulled her through setting up her office one step at a time. It nudged her to plan out how her space would be laid out, helping her to realize she needed to create a welcoming, efficient entrance area differentiated from the active class space. It also guided her through choosing computers — she’s getting a MacBook Pro for the office, so it can be folded and placed beneath the desk when not in use to make the front area less cluttered, and a lightweight MacBook Air to carry around.
Wicked Start also offers links at every step to a “resources” page that provides descriptions of and links to businesses that can provide relevant services, and the technology advice led her to Toktumi, a $14.95-per month Internet-based phone system with a number of features tailored for small businesses. “I didn’t know that kind of service existed,” she said. “It looks wonderful, I’m signing up.”
One action item in the infrastructure module prompted her to set up financial controls and a budget, and though she had a budget and was keeping accounting books, she decided she needed to do more. “We weren’t keeping good track of our expenses and budget on an ongoing basis,” she said. Now she’s signing up for Intuit’s QuickBooks online accounting service. She’s been putting off setting it up, but Wicked Start pushed her to enter a deadline for the action. She has selected Sept. 30 and is planning to stick to it. She now has a completion level of 57 percent for the module.
Step 8 is “Hiring,” and the revelation here for Ms. Kaur was that she should set up a board of advisers. “I love this idea,” she said. “I need help understanding how I can plan out my classes to build in talk time, I need help with finance, and I need help with how I can set up a volunteer network of students.” Now she’s inviting a mix of business and non-profit executives and entrepreneurs to join her board, and already has some takers who she thinks will be sources of great advice.
“Operations” is Step 9, and Wicked Start led her to decide to take on Basecamp, the online project-planning and collaboration service. “I love chaos, so I tend to push the limits of not planning,” she said. “But I think this will really help with my long-range training programs and community projects.”
Finally, there’s “Marketing,” Step 10. Ms. Kaur felt this module mostly served to reinforce the strategy she had intuitively adopted, namely to promote herself via word of mouth, especially online. She built her Web site herself via WordPress – it’s pretty impressive, considering — and started three blogs, along with Twitter and Facebook accounts. The module also prompted her to think about her branding, and that led her to speak to a branding specialist who helped her focus on the homey aspects of her studio compared to other yoga studios, and on her interest in being of special help to women.
But she still needs to act on Wicked Start’s suggestions that she open a merchant account and set up a formal process for dealing with customer service — she has them marked as “in progress.” Fair enough. When is a business owner ever 100 percent done?
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Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=cfe42b2f6090f570444d85e10e244e8c
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