Episode 161 – 2022 Business Planning – Part 3 – Implementation

Custom Apparel Startups

Part 3: What you need to do to GET THERE

What will you need to do to reach your goals?

1. If you need to sell 400 more shirts per month, how will you do that?
2. Was expanding a goal? What will you need?

In this series, we first took a look back at last year, (or if you are new maybe you did some initial research on the biz). Then we went through and created goals. These goals helped us work backwards.

So if you wanted to make $50k in profit, you sell shirts for $20 and you profit $10 a shirt.... you need to sell 5000 shirts. This means you need to sell about 417 shirts a month. This is your goal.

You have a profit goal = at least $50k

You have an annual shirt goal = $50k / $10 profit per shirt = 5000 shirts

You have an annual revenue goal = 5000 shirts x $20 retail = 100k

You have a monthly sales goal = about 417 shirts for about $8340 and $4170 profit

Now that you have a goal, how are you going to achieve it.

What has worked in the past?

If you are in business already this is great because you can look at what worked well before.

1. Did you pay for ads online? How much did it generate for you? Did it meet profit per shirt goals?
2. Did you cold call or door knock?
3. Did you get referrals?

What ways did you get business that....

A - met profit per shirt goals

B - you can replicate.

Now do the math on how much money, time, effort it will take. Will this get to your goal?

If it can... great! If not this is one step closer.

Sure-Fire ways to generate business for startups

Is there a sure-fire way to generate business that you aren't doing?

1. Cold calls / door knocking
2. Asking for referrals
3. Attending networking events
4. Calling old customers

These are all low cost and sure-fire ways to generate business in this industry. If you talk to enough people, and talk to them again... you will find more customers.

This comes back to some math again, and some creative thinking. You can use a 10% rule for a lot of the estimating here. If you talk to 10 people, 1 of them will have some interest in what you do. You can estimate that 10-30% of those people will become a sale in the near future.

So if you talk to 100 people, 10 of them will be interested and 1-3 will buy. This might sound like a lot, but when you break it down by degrees of separation this is very attainable.

If you go to a network meeting and there are 20 people there, you may find 2 that are interested. Also, you will talk to 18 people who aren't interested... but they might each refer you to 1 or 2 or more people each. You might find someone who will shout you out on their social media or on their linked-in or in their business. 20 people can quickly turn into 100 people, landing you sales.

This rule works with cold calling, emailing past customers, attending events, knocking on doors, talking to friends/family, your kids friends' parents, etc etc etc

So just start doing some math. If you talked to X people, how much $$ does that generate for YOUR business. Yours might be for every 20 people I talk to I generate $500. If I need to sell $100,000 that means I need to communicate with 4000 people or 330 a month.

New ways to generate business (if you arent doing them)

PPC

SEO

Direct Mail

Local Ads

Social Media

Influencers

Trade Publications