START UPS
Budding entrepreneurs (the owners of small businesses) face a daunting array of tasks to get a business underway. Not only have they got to grapple with the problem of whether the basic business idea is going to work, they also have to tackle such things as writing a business plan and trying to secure finance. A list of the tasks would include the following:
- Addressing the who? what? and how? of the business
- Producing a business plan
- Entering into a shareholders' or partners' agreement
- Assembling a team of qualified and reliable staff
- Choosing the right business structure
- Preparing a research brief and a marketing strategy
- Putting together sales and marketing tools, such as brochures, stationery and a web site
- Understanding VAT, income tax, NI, corporation tax and employment law
- Getting to grips with company accounting
- Securing adequate finance
All of these steps are important and most need to be completed with a high degree of competence if the business is to have a chance of success. Most business owners do not have the broad range of skills (nor the time) to undertake all of these tasks and can become overwhelmed: so it is not surprising that 75% of small businesses in the UK fail within their first three years!
We consider some of these steps in more detail below.
1. The who, what and how?
All aspiring business owners need to ask themselves:
- Who are my customers?
- What are my products and services? and
- How am I going to deliver them?
If the answers are plausible and seem to make business sense, you can move onto the next major step, which is producing a business plan.
2. A business plan
The who, what, how questions and answers must now be converted into a comprehensive and believable business plan. At the beginning of the business planning process a new set of related questions can now be asked, namely: where are we now? where do we want to go? and how do we plan to get there? The business plan can be seen as providing comprehensive answers to these questions.
The business plan can be seen as a roadmap. It is the document that sets your goals (or objectives), the ways in which you are going to achieve these objectives and the people who will be responsible for undertaking (or managing) the tasks. In this sense, it is a document for use within the company, but it will also have an important external use as the document that explains your business to outsiders if and when you need financial support, so it should always be prepared with an external audience in mind.
We can assist you with producing your business plan. For further details on how we can help, click on the enquiry form link and we will contact you for a free, no obligation discussion.
3. The Shareholders' or Partners' agreement
Every business should be started with exit in mind and, for those businesses with more than own owner, a shareholders agreement is an essential part of exit planning. For a more detailed explanation of why a shareholders agreement is an important part of a start-up business and how we can assist you to put an agreement in place both online or by calling on you, please click on the www.exitstrategyplanning.com link, which will take you to our sister site. For an article on shareholders agreements please click here.
4. Securing finance
At the very early days of a start-up, the entrepreneur will usually use personal or family cash to keep the business going. After this, the ability to secure external funding will often decide whether the business fails or succeeds. Lack of finance, or the inability to manage cash flow, is cited as one of the main reasons for small business failures.
In theory, funding for small businesses in the UK is available from a wide variety of sources, from bank loans to equity finance; from Business Angels to Venture Capitalists; from the British to the European Governments; but, in practice, sourcing funding for start-ups is a protracted and tedious job and not for the inexperienced, or the faint hearted!
Don't despair, we can assist you though the funding maze. Just click on the enquiry form below and send it to us for a no obligation explanation of how we can help.
5. Seminars & Workshops
We provide a range of seminars and workshops on various business topics to Universities, Government bodies and business groups.
Currently, in conjunction with Andy Ward (family business advisor) we provide the Starting a Business three day workshop for Business Link, Somerset.
6. General assistance
We have highlighted above some of the major hurdles a business owner has to negotiate when staring up a business. Most entrepreneurs are starting up a business for the first time and need help from the outset. We have many years experience in helping entrepreneurs in starting up their businesses. Contact us and we will put you on the right path for sustainable and profitable business growth.
If you are interested in longer-term help, click on the Business Mentoring link for further information.
