Yvonne L. Nforchu, CEO of Yvonne Couture Cakes gives expert advice on how to turn your passion into a business.

Get a vision book. This is where you can write down your ideas, as crazy as they sound. Writing down things gives you a sense of clarity. And let go of fear! If you don’t dare, you will never know if you can be good at something.

Stay focused. Do not let other people instill their fears in you or discourage you. Even if you fail the first time, failure will teach you what your strengths are and show you areas where you need to improve!

Plan. Have a plan as well as at least six months of living expenses saved up. You don’t want to have to start living on your business proceeds when you are not firmly established yet!

Market. You need to find out if there will be a market for your idea or product and you need to make people know that you offer a certain service or product. But most importantly, remember that no matter how great you are, pride goes before a fall always! So stay humble and respectful no matter how great your business idea or how successful you become. Take me, because of my faith, I pray for my business always.

Professionalism. Read up on starting a business, marketing a business, book-keeping etc. There are lots of great articles on the internet. A lot of businesses have failed, not because the product or service offered was not great, but because the practical aspects of running a business were not understood.
The product or service… you need to be able to offer the best of what you have and to also know if it is actually needed where you plan to establish.

Pricing? This also needs to be understood. Your time counts as well and should be accounted for. Under-price yourself and people will think your product or service is not great. Overprice yourself and you will just get priced out of the market.

Placing. Do people actually have a need for what you offer where you offer it? Packaging… image is everything!

Marketing. Even if I made the best cakes, as long as no one knew about it, I wouldn’t be able to make any money out of it. So you need to plough back part of your profits into marketing your business. But you also need to understand your targeted market. You might not need to spend huge amounts of money on TV adverts when business cards, a website, flyers, facebook etc can do the job. And most of all, never ever underestimate the power of word-of-mouth marketing!
Then, be able to plan, organise and control your work, set targets and check feedback to see if you are meeting your targets.

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