This guest post is provided by Julie Morris.

Maybe you want to start a side hustle to gain some work experience before college, or perhaps you’re wondering if you’d be better suited to entrepreneurship than a traditional career. Whether you’re in high school or just entering college, you might already have the skills and resources you need to launch a business! Here are a few tips to walk you through the business launch process, from nailing down your idea to coming up with an idea to forming an LLC.

Come Up With an Idea

First, you’ll need to define a realistic business idea. Remember, you’ll have to balance school and business ownership while sticking to a relatively tight budget. Under30CEO recommends car washing, pet sitting or dog walking, house sitting, babysitting, mowing lawns, or working as a virtual assistant. You could also start an online business as a blogger, web developer, social media manager, or graphic designer.

 File for LLC Status

Even if you’re still in high school, you can register your company as an LLC and enjoy the benefits of this structure. With this status, you’ll have limited liability, and you’ll also get some tax breaks. Don’t worry if you can’t afford to hire a lawyer for assistance with this process – you can file by yourself, or submit your documents to an online formation service. Spend a little time researching your state’s rules for LLC formation to stay in compliance.

 Map Out a Plan

You can’t move forward without a business plan! Break down your business idea and write out a company overview, details about your offerings, a market and competitor analysis, your marketing strategy, and an operations strategy. You should also include an executive summary and a SWOT analysis outlining your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

 Stick to a Budget

Starting a business on a student budget isn’t easy – but if you choose an idea that requires minimal overhead and involves low startup costs, you can definitely pull it off. Honestly, this might be one of the biggest challenges for any entrepreneur because the start-up cost for nearly everything is pretty expensive. You can expect to spend more money starting up your business then time running it (for most people, at least). You’re going to need thinks like a good-running computer, printer, ink cartridges, a website and domain, marketing software, and so much more. It can be hard to get all of this on a budget, right?

If you’re operating your startup on a shoestring budget, OppU recommends bartering with friends for certain services, choosing free or low-cost marketing methods, registering for a business rewards credit card, and managing your documents digitally to save on paper.

You don’t have to rely entirely on your savings to cover your initial expenses, either. You may be able to apply for grants or even seek outside funding from investors.

 Create New Products with 3D Design Software

3D design software is ideal for product design as it provides a flexible and intuitive platform to create 3D models, textures, and materials that are essential for visualizing and prototyping products. Additionally, it offers a wide range of tools and features to add intricate details and realistic textures to the design. In order to use 3D modeling, research the best options available.

Market Your Business

Your first customers will likely come from word of mouth – your friends and relatives will probably want to patronize you and support your launch! But beyond that, you’ll need to spend time marketing your business to draw in more patrons. Build a website, leverage the power of social media, start an email newsletter, and print up business cards and flyers to hang up around your town. By combining affordable digital and print marketing methods, you can reach customers through various channels.

When it comes to entrepreneurship, there are no age requirements. You can start a successful business as a teenager! With these tips, you’ll be able to come up with a workable idea, establish your company as an LLC, use 3D design software to create new products, and more.

Bonus: Find Legal Protection ASAP

Unfortunately, bad things happen to good entrepreneurs; bad things happen to good people in general. Sure, it’s bleak, and you just never know when something bad will happen, especially legally speaking. When starting up your business, while it’s not ideal to anticipate nothing but the worst immediately, you basically need to. So, it’s best to just go ahead and find an attorney like Ritchie Law Firm to build up a solid connection with. Every business needs to have a lawyer or firm that they can build up a relationship with so they know that, legally speaking, they’re going to be safe.