Getting Started On Your Business Plan

If you have started your business and have made initial sales, however small, that is tremendous. You have proved there is a market for what you offer. You have moved from a theory, a dreamer to a realist. Big Mistake Number 1: a business is about making a better quality product at the best price. Wrong. A business is more about processes than it is about quality products.

Customers to a business are like petrol is to a car – absolutely vital to go anywhere, but there is a lot more to it. The car itself is a system of interacting parts working as a team in harmony and co­ordination. Similarly, your business, if it is an efficient machine, it will operate at an optimum.

About five in a thousand plans get funded. Those five also received many rejections and took at least six months before they were successful. One of the problems in the real world of starting a business is trying to eat and survive while you are designing the plan and presenting it to potential investors. You have to research and understand investment deals relative to the size you are seeking to be and the nature of your proposal.

Service providers may find it an easier business to start than suppliers of a product, as usually you can start small and build up. For example, if you are starting anything from a hairdresser to a management consultancy all you need to be able to start is your home telephone. A hairdresser would have the added advantage of immediate cash payments.

If your idea is to develop a product it may require all sorts of research, development, testing and patenting before purchasing capital equipment, stock, staff and premises. Even then you can do a lot of this with no funding in your evenings and weekends while maintaining a regular salary. Ideally you need to be able to make, say, ten of the product, a prototype and then try to sell it and see what response you get.

All I am suggesting is that if you can avoid raising money do so. It is also good advice, more often than not, to develop as much as you can before raising money. The reason for this is obvious: the more you have proven the concept, the less the risk and the more likely you are to secure funding, and it will be on better terms.