Before You Get into Business, Consider these Clues
2.Have a frugal startup. There is much talk about looking the part. There is not much point looking the part if it cost an arm and a leg to get it and you lack clients to pay for it. Get yourself a fabulous suit that is worn every day and makes you feel confident and ready to meet people but be very careful with your office fit-out and other business elements. Here are some ideas to help you initially:
Consider renting offices that someone else furnishes, cleans and that get shared around. Spend only the time needed in them, to cut costs.
If you do have your own offices, rent furniture or buy it cheap at auction.
Lease anything that needs to be constantly updated, computers being number one in this group.
Keep staff expenses under strict control from the beginning.
Fly economy. Or use Skype and other online forms of virtual conferencing and avoid flying at all.
Be eco-aware and turn off unused items all the time. Save the planet and your bottom line.
3.Monitor cash flow with an eagle eye in your start-up business. This is one time in life where obsession is a good quality. Every cent counts and if it is not in your savings or being churned back into your business, it is in someone else's pocket.
Do not neglect the viability of your business. Always pay attention to what is not working and remedy it at the earliest possible opportunity.
Do not neglect the mundane but essential parts of running a business, like timesheets, tax, petty cash, invoicing. Do them with clockwork regularity or employ someone who is capable to deal with these things.
Deal with bad debt as soon as it rears its head. It is not going away, so the earlier you face it, the better.
4.Find your business sweet spot. There are only three pieces to this. First, know the strengths that are unique to you, or at least where you can add unique value. Then find a market, a group of people, who want what you have to offer. Finally, you have to make sure those people will pay money for what you have to offer.
5.Define your brand. A brand is nothing more than a belief system that people have about you and your business. People will want to do business with somebody or some company they believe will solve a specific problem they have. You must be seen as the solution to that problem.
6.Create your business model. Your business model must be either high fidelity or high convenience. If it is high fidelity you will have fewer customers who will pay a lot. You need 100 customers at $10,000 each to make $1 million. If it is high convenience you will have many customers paying you small amounts. You need 100,000 customers paying you $10 each to make $1 million.
7.Decide on your exit strategy. The simplest way to make $1 million is to create a business, an asset that you can sell. People will often pay two times the annual earnings for a business. That means a $500,000 a year business can be sold for $1 million. That breaks down to having a business that makes roughly $40,000 per month.
8.Make more profits from existing customers. The fastest way to increase your income is to sell more products and services to your existing customers. Find ways to add even more value, and offer the products and services to your existing customer base.
9.Build systems and scale up. This a key entire secret to a massively accelerating your income growth. If you create a product that sells for $100, and you know that $50 spent on advertising consistently produces one sale, you have a winning model, as long as you have picked a large market. Scale up.
10.Hire great people. One of the biggest ways to go from a $60,000 a year income to a multi-million dollar business is by hiring great people. This is why all the large corporations focus on team-building and leadership. The only way to have a great team is to be a great leader.
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