|
New Business Start-ups &
Young Businesses
Exciting, Scary, Challenging - YES, YES, YES!
Business planning and coaching can make you much more successful as you get the advice and support when you need it.
If you have started a new business or you are about to start a new business then congratulations but we must warn you.
Failure rates are high and only about 50% are still going after a few years. You may even see statistics that say that 80% of small businesses won't see their fifth birthday.
I'm sure that you don't want to think about failure but that's why it's so important to get good quality business advice from the very start.
You’re about to start a new business or you’ve started it recently.
You feel alive and excited about all the possibilities now that you’ve escaped from being a wage slave.
You’ve endured years of working for someone else but finally you’ve got away from the frustrations, the politics, the game-playing and the bureaucracy. You know that you can do it better. If your old employers were successful then you are sure that you can be.
This is just such an exciting time.
But it’s also a bit scary. Suddenly you are out there on your own. You’ll sink or swim by your own efforts. And you now have responsibility for the whole business – all the selling, all the producing/delivering/buying, all the administration and the accounts.
This is very challenging.
You’ve probably only had experience of some of these things. It’s likely that no one has trained you in finance and accounts, marketing, sales or general management.
You check out Amazon for some books to help you but the choice is overwhelming – 8,859 books on small business, 28,128 on marketing, 7,700 on accounts. You try a book shop but again there are so many and which are the good ones? Which will help you rather than confuse? They all claim to be the best with their revolutionary new methods.
But do you have time for reading anyway? You’ve already found out that there’s a lot to do and it’s difficult to decide on the right priorities.
Should you have a business plan? What does it really involve? How do you find your customers? Are you really clear on just what your business will do and what it won’t do?
OK I'm biased but I'd like to think that you may believe that you need help from an experienced business professional and coach.
Why not call me, Paul Simister on 0121 554 4057 for an informal, no obligation chat?
Managing your business finances
Money is probably tight.
You know you need money to start your business and to live on.
Hopefully you’ve got some savings but there's a dilemma - should you invest it all in the business or should you hold some back to live on while the business grows to a size to pay you a salary? Do you need "rainy day" money if things don’t go according to plan.
You may have tried to borrow money from the bank and that’s an experience in itself. Hopefully the bank manager was nice and understanding but many aren’t.
The problem is that they only seem want to lend to people with assets as security or businesses that are sure things. They don’t understand that you are an entrepreneur, a risk taker determined to succeed.
To get "The Secrets of Getting Your Bank Manager To Say Yes" read this great e-book by Rob Warlow
You don't have to be alone
Starting a new business – exciting? Yes, extremely.
Scary? Yes.
Difficult? Usually.
Do you have to do it on your own? No.
We are here to help.
Our role in helping you to succeed
Our business is based on three primary areas of speciality that combine to form a comprehensive package of services:
1. Financial management and performance measurement
2. Business strategy, marketing and sales
3. Process improvement and getting the best from any staff.
Our purpose is simple – to help you develop a profitable business over the next few years.
We can do this in three main ways:
1. Our website library is absolutely packed with useful information, most of which is free to download immediately. This gives you the chance to read about subjects in “bite sized chunks”. We accept that most people don’t find the concept of business and the theory of business success as exciting as we do.
2. If you just want someone to bounce a few ideas off, then give us a call. We understand about the pressures of starting a new business or developing a young one. We are happy to see if we can help and the advice will be free of charge. We only charge fees after we have a formal agreement. If you make regular calls we will try to encourage you to move to option 3 – after all we have to make a profit as well.
Give me, Paul Simister a call on 0121 554 4057.
3. Business development coaching is a formal arrangement where we provide you with the advice, help and encouragement you need for a small monthly fee. Unlike most other coaches/consultants/advisors we would look to link our fees to your success as part of our “partners for profit” approach although it is difficult for very new businesses as you don't have an existing level of performance.
The principal services we offer are:
Monthly financial monitoring - because you want to make a profit
We’ll explain the way your accounts work, the way the Profit & Loss Account, the Balance Sheet and Cash Flow all link together to explain your financial position.
We’ll help you spot things that are going right and encourage you to make more progress and we’ll point out problem areas while they are still small and help you develop action plans to improve.
We will explain the factors that lie behind the main results and how you can influence them and we’ll encourage you to monitor them daily, weekly or monthly.
Measurement lies at the heart of success. How else do you know if something is working and you should carry on doing it? Without measurement you wouldn't know that something wasn’t working and that you should stop wasting time and money on that activity and try something else.
We’ll make sure you understand the break even concept and how it can be adjusted to move you towards the profit you want to achieve. This means that you can tell whether your business is on track every day.
We’ll help you keep focused on the cash position. Believe us when we say that nothing is more important.
If you'd like to know more about our monthly financial review service follow the link or call me, Paul Simister on 0121 554 4057.
Decision support
You’re now the decision maker. Perhaps you see this as a great opportunity but it can quickly become a heavy burden that you have to get used to.
The strange thing is that often, as your business gets bigger and you start employing other people then you start feeling more lonely and isolated as the decision maker. Your staff look to you for leadership and direction but the decisions are now bigger than ever because they no longer just affect you.
Our role is to help you make good decisions and avoid making bad ones and we’ll do that by encouraging you to think:
- Is it consistent with your personal and business goals?
- Have you identified all the viable alternatives? Is there a better or cheaper way of solving the problem?
- What are the likely consequences (good and bad) of the alternatives?
- What is the likelihood of success? Business is about taking calculated risks and not taking a punt on an outsider in the 3 O’clock at Haydock Park.
If you would like to know more about our decision support services follow the link or call me, Paul Simister on 0121 554 4057.
Business strategy and marketing
A good new business starts with a business plan that shows that it is viable. It’s far better to lose money on paper as you go through the alternatives and find that the great idea doesn’t work but a modification of it should.
What do you want to achieve? What are your personal and business goals? What do you feel passionately about? What can you feel committed to?
Is there a market for the product or service? Who are the potential customers? Why will they buy your product or service? Why would they buy from your business rather than one of your competitors?
How much business do you think you can get? At what price levels? What costs will you have to bear? How much money will the business need to grow?
If you would like to know more about our business planning service then follow the link or call me, Paul Simister on 0121 554 4057.
How will you make or supply the product or service? What do you need in place before you can start and what can wait until you can see how successful you are at gaining customers?
How will you make your business special? How will it stand out from the crowd? How do customers get to know of you and your products and services? How do you communicate with them?
Do you need employees from the start or can you subcontract? How are you planning to find the right people? How are you going to manage them? How will you cope with all the legal issues of employing staff.
Do you have enough finance or do you need to borrow money? To raise finance, you’ll need a special business plan that “sells” your business concept to bankers and investors.
So many questions, so little time to find the answers on your own.
Process improvement and “systems development”
You may be thinking at this stage “systems and processes – that’s big company thinking – there’s only me” but if you don’t start when your business is small, how are you going to cope when it gets bigger? How will your staff know what to do?
The only way that work gets done is through systems and processes. It’s what will make your business special and deliver a good quality product or service that your customers can rely on.
All the time you need to be working ON your business while you’re working IN your business. This means that you work out how something should be done, record it, try it, measure the results and decide whether it worked satisfactorily or you start improving.
This way when you recruit your first employees you already know that you have a method that works and works well so when they want to know what should be done and how it should be done, you are already prepared.
The key areas that you will need systems and processes for are:
Lead generation – how you’ll attract interest from customers.
Lead conversion – how you’ll convince possible customers that they should buy from you rather than a competitor.
Customer fulfilment – how you’ll satisfy the customers’ orders and requirements so well that they are eager to buy off you regularly because they know that they can rely on your business.
Finance – how you’ll manage the money in your business.
Marketing – how you’ll identify your target customers and investigate/understand their needs and motivation.
Management – how you’ll develop the business, the systems and the people employed.
Leadership – how you’ll develop and fine tune your vision and produce the action plan that will lead to turning your dream into a tangible reality that people can see, hear and touch.
I strongly recommend that you read the “E-Myth Revisited” by Michael Gerber. The author explains why most small businesses don’t work and what to do about it. The book is recognised as an outstanding influence on small business.
Last updated 2007-10-10
|
