hi I am Chris a co-founder of Nutri bot the meal prep software and at today's video I would like to cover one of the most frequently discussed topic so how to start a me prep business we've made one article about this topic but I see that it is not enough we still have more questions so I decided to record a list of videos when we cover this topic in detail so let's jump in so this is our topic as always I have a little chart about it and uh a quick introduction so a few sentences about our experience because maybe you haven't watched our last videos so we are the Nutri bot for the meal prep industry and we have seen in detail more than 1,000 meal prep companies across the globe so we have seen a lot of meal prep companies really successful one the startup one uh the one we which started and grow really really fast so we have a huge overview of many markets the other point about the startup at all or the company start uping at all is connected with our software house we have built over 200 projects and we have seen from five 600 to 1,000 startups uh annually so uh I personally have seen a lot of companies which had started which false and which success as I told you at the beginning we have U written one article how to start a me prep business and I believe it is really good and but still our clients uh asked about the advice about the the details how to start so I started thinks uh why this is not enough and how I will start the new me prep company I researched a lot of different articles from the different website how to start a me prep business I Revis the marketing plan advice the business plan advice strategic points and so on I split this uh questions or this points about the marketing plan about the business plan for a free different layers I have uh the three pillars of well starting and I believe the well starting is about the good preparation and as you can see here there is a great quote from Abraham Lincoln if I had eight hours to chop down a tree I would spend 6 hour sharpening the axe so if so many clients if so many companies if so many people think how to start with success so I believe it is not the mistake it is good so the good preparation is the key here as I told the topic is really really wide so at today's video I would like to focus on the preparation stage so I split the whole topic on the three stages the first one is preparation stage which means situation understanding so it is like the Napoleon Bonaparte or any other General started think about the Battle so first you need to understand where you are who you are understand your competitors and the the whole place where you are so you need to understand the place where you are and what you can the second stage is the planning stage so if you understand the battlefield and your capacity your competitor's capacity then you can start to think how you would like to play yes how you would like to fight so you need to design your strategy and then if you have done the strategy you need to execute this strategy so this is the execution stage and at today's video we will discuss on the first point the preparation stage and I hope you will enjoy it the important information from my site if you are interested in meal prep business and you would like to receive the best practices across the globe so so please subscribe our Channel or sign up to our newsletter we are adding the new videos on our YouTube channel once a week and we are sending the newsletter mouly so there is no spamming and you can cover all the news and the best practices so see you in the next material okay let's start with our preparation stage so the step number one is understanding who you are so the first step is uh to make the SWAT analysis and uh I would like to simplify that because many times in my history I thought about the SWAT analysis and it can be really big so if it is a huge topic difficult topic so you don't want to uh to do that so I simplified it a little bit and I think it is good to focus on some kind of some part of topic when you build the SWAT analysis and I have a few examples for you because why you should do that not each person not each company is the same so you need to understand who you are you need to understand your strength your weaknesses the opportunities of your company and your market and the treats so I have the few profiles here so the restaurant based company profile the dietician and the home based uh company profile or even the personal profile and the e-commerce specialist based profile I believe that most of the guidelines how to start is not useful because each company is different each client or is different each person is different and you have different strong points and the weak points and based on that you can build the company in different way to achieve the success so as in the simple story if you would like to learn the fish how to fly they will lose so you if you are the fish you need to swim and if you are the bird you need to fly and I would like to think about this topic in that way so to think to start thinking about your strengths and to use them and about your weaknesses and to avoid the problems with them so maybe not even improve the weaknesses but how to find the solution about them so if you understand who you are it will be much easier for you to find some kind of workarounds for for your weaknesses and to ball your strengths to beat your competitors so let's go with the first profile the restaurant based and we have the strengths so there is a we are great in cooking so for example you have the restaurant maybe you are the company with the experience in cooking so your strengths will be you are great in cooking we have a startup and marketing budget so if you are a successful restaurant you have a budget probably we have a restaurant experience so you have the experience with clients with cooking and so on we have a huge resta restaurant kitchen so you have the place where you can cook and the weaknesses will be we are poor in online selling for example you may be haven't built your online strategy before the e-commerce and so on so you are great in cooking but you are poor in online selling we are poor in marketing and we are poor in it e-commerce uh knowledge so this is the example when restaurant are great in the physical offline cooking and selling but they haven't built their strategy uh in the online channels the opportunities is Win customer thanks to food quality and the keep customers thanks of to food quality so the food quality and the experience it's cooking is crucial here here and that kind of company should build on the quality of foood and the treats is lo lost in the e-commerce it field and huge investment and lack of selling so of course they are worried that they will start cooking but they will not acquire the new customers so this is the first profile so they should build on the good quality food and they should avoid or work around or look for some kind of support in it and e-commerce layer the second profile is dietitian and home bit so for example you are The dietitian and you don't have the kitchen so you would like to start from home so the strength is we are great in nutrition and the meal planning and we have the personal approach Personal Touch so because we are the nutritionist you are the nutritionist with the years of experience and you have worked with the clients in Personal Touch you are good in relations and you are good in nutritions so it will be your strength Point uh and the weaknesses here is we are poor in selling for example you don't have experience in selling and scaling the sales we are poor in marketing we are poor in it Ecommerce so similar like here but there is also lack of budget and lack of professional kitchen and as you can see there is a lot of weaknesses but it doesn't mean you can't start it mean you need to understand your weaknesses and as at this example yes and this you need to plan your strategy and your game in different way so you need to understand what you can do the imagine the period of time and how you can grow and build the the kitchen professional kitchen the e-commerce strategy how you can Outsource it and so on so you can cover your weak points uh but you need to understand them first the opportunities here can be win customers thanks to nutrition care and keep customers thanks to Personal Touch because you are good in the relationships the treats can be lost in the e-commerce it field because if your lack of experience so you can worry about how to win with the best players on the e-commerce Market in meal prep industry and the personal money and time investment and lack of selling so maybe you employees right now and you need to quit your job so it is a risky situation so it is your treats and the lack of time to cover all the fields because if you don't have a budget so you can't hire the marketing strategies to the kitchen Chef the support specialist so you're oneman Army so it is also one of your treats so then we have e-commerce specialist based so for example you are the e-commerce specialist you are great in marketing and you have seen that the meal prep industry is growing like crazy and you would like to take a piece of this cake for yourself so the strengths here we are great in selling and especially in online selling we are great in marketing and we are great in it e-commerce so you can acquire new customers you can build a great website you are good in it in engineering and so on the weaknesses here can be we are poor in nutrition and meal planning so maybe you even don't know anything about the nutritions about the food and so on so we are poor in cooking and the lack of professional kitchen so you don't have a kitchen and the solution can be here to hire the third party Cloud kitchen for example or to find some kind of uh business partner with the experience in cooking the opportunities here winning a lot of clients thanks to great marketing and e-commerce so you can bring a lot of clients to the company but the treats here is finding a good third party kitchen because it is risky you can trust one company and they can cook poor quality food or they can start stealing your clients or something like that then longtime relationship and cooperation with third part the kitchen so even if you find a kitchen so the longtime relationship is the key here because lifetime value uh is uh and keeping the clients in meal prep industry is the name of the game I talk about that all the time so the problem with customer retention because of the food quality can happen and the inertia in working with the kitchen so you can't react uh immediately uh because you are using the third party kitchen so you need to discuss with them negotiate maybe uh find the new company the new kitchen so this is your treats and as you can see there is a free different profiles three different approaches there can be more profiles for example the vegetarian based kitchen the vegetarian based dietician maybe you are the famous vegetarian blogger or whatever else so one of the most important point is to understand who you are to understand your strengths weaknesses opportunities and treats if you understand this topic you can go farther and the topic number stand number two is understand where you are so you need to analyze your competitor and analyze your market and it can be a huge point and I believe if you spend more time on this it is better so many companies just don't think about it they believe in the opportunity if they will be good everything will be great and okay as the entrepreneurs we are the opportunity persons but it is good to understand who we are and to understand where we play and where we fight and to understand with whom we fight if we understand only our capabilities and don't know where we play and with who we play or where we fight and with who we fight it is difficult to win because the market isn't the single player game so to understand the competitors and the market I believe the best is the Google search so if we go to Google I will start from this really simple research for example mil prep London company and from the top to the bottom I will start to learn about the companies and I will start from the very first one I will open the their website and just read about how their offers looks their strengths their weaknesses and what I will do I will print screen their um their website and I will create that kind of free form board for example in mirror or Apple free form whatever I will create here the new board and I will paste what I have copied and uh then I will put the name of the company XYZ and uh I will read about their specialities what they are the best in I will check their customer Journey how it works yes and the most important parts I will screenshot again and I will paste in my website and thanks of that I will build some kind of detailed profile about this company and uh similar about the build their plan I will focus on their offer so how many meal plans they have what kind of meal plans they have and so on then I will go back to the search and guess what I will take the point and the position number two from the uh Google and I will check their offer I will similar screenshot their website I will paste it here and again I will read about their offer about how it looks I will check their customer Journey so the ordering process and so on and so on I will screenshot the most important points for example if I am great in cooking So based on the step number one based on my strengths and weaknesses I will think about for example if I'm great uh in cooking I will think about the meals they offer the the the offer at all the meal plans so I will screenshot their offer and paste here here here then I will guess what go to the Google take Point number three screenshot paste here and I will try to build something like in the horror movies when the police build some kind of whiteboard with the profile of the gangsters and the connection between them the strength Point weak point and after that when I have at least 10 most of the important points then I will start to research the market uh popularity so for example meal prep industry in London and I would start to find some kind of statistics and facts about the me prep in my specific region because the me prep uh is growing there is a lot of information how fast the food delivery business grows but the markets are on a different level so there is a market with the really strong competitors and the markets when the the the industry starting so if you understand the market and the capacity of the market you can create your offer your website and your company in the right level because in the growing markets competition is lower and you can deliver lower quality service so your website can be uh can be worse your quality of the service can be worse and so on and you can win the game similar like in the war yes so if your competitors are poor you don't need to have the greatest army on the word to to win the battle so um if you understand your Market well so it will be better to not Overkill yes so not uh over invest to build your right um company or on the other hand side if the competition is huge and you will see that the website are good for of your competitors the quality is good so you will see where is the the threshold and how good quality you need to have at the beginning maybe one thing more you can even create some kind of quick SWAT analysis for each competitors or if you recognize three or most similar competitors for example if you are the vegetarian based kitchen so you can choose the three most uh important competitors in the vegetarian area and you can build quickly the strength weaknesses streets and opportunities so you can create the quick SWAT analyzes for them and uh to understand how you can win with them so it is a good quality about the market get one point more you can use the the tool like for example Sam Rush even and then you can go to the website of your competitors and I have here the Sam Rush dashboard and in the domain overview so you can paste here the domain and check the worldwide or a different location like the UK for example search and you will see the traffic on their website the organic keywords you will find uh on what kind of keywords they are positioning in Google so you can analyze their e-commerce competition strategy and if you dig deeper in this tool so you can find a lot of weaknesses and a lot of strengths and a lot of opportunities especially how to fight with them you can of course screenshot this and paste it here and you can build your free form like this one and you will see all the most important information and the weaknesses and strengths about each competitor so you can fight with them in the smart way so if you once again go back to the to the topic if you well understand who you are well understand where you are well understand the market the field and your competitors so then you can understand your Target and the niche so you can build your ICP ideal customer profile or in the e-commerce it is called buyer Persona so I have here the example of the ideal buyer persona for the M prep industry so you can build that kind of table and try to describe your ideal client for example there is the demographic the name of them the name is fake and of course the age from 30 to 40 for example occupation professional it Finance marketing annual income meral status family situation location when there is a short description psycho Graphics so personal characteristic Hobbies interest personal aspiration professional goals pains so you can build that kind of Ideal profile and the shopping behaviors so his budget shopping frequency preferred channels like online platforms mobile platforms and if you create that kind of uh profile it will be much easier to create your whole Market strategy so if you better understand your clients it will be easier to go with the right offer with the right discounts with the right uh advertising to them so uh if you have the point one number one and two covered you can build your ideal buyer Persona and the point number four understanding what you can do so your budget it is the I will cover it quickly but if you have the good understanding about you about the customers about your clients you need to compare it with your budget because if you are the profitable restaurant with the good budget you can invest a lot if in the advertisement if you have the capacity in the production so you can achieve a lot of customers and you can grow quickly but if you are The dietitian started from home and you don't have a budget you need to think like the startup owner so you need to start with the small budget and um think about the uh marketing channels which will be the most effective only uh and uh about keeping the clients as long as possible so you need to understand how much you would like to spend on a different categories for example for preparation of your kitchen for your branding for your uh website and so on and based on that uh so this is your this will be your onetime spendings and then you need to plan how much you can spend mouly for example how long you will and how much you will pay yourself if you need to quit your job so you need to understand what is your budget and how much you can do with that so thinking that you can achieve 1,000 new customers in free mouth if you don't have a budget because you are the oneman Army the single person company it is quite naive so it is good to understand your budget capacity and what you can do and this is the preparation stage and as the Abraham linol said if you spend more on this the 6 hour for sharpening your acts it will be worth of it so if you like this video in the next one not not the soonest one but in the uh near future I will record the planning stage and the execution stage so we will discuss how to set your kitchen how to prepare your brand how to prepare your website and all different areas and then how to execute what you have planned so uh if you haven't already subscribed this uh channel so hit the Subscribe button or sign up to our newsletter and see you in the next videos bye