Auckland Small Business Help

Steps to Starting a Small Business

Are you looking to start a small business or looking for help with your startup Business ?

Starting a business takes courage and skill, and often the initial personnel involved in the startup business will lack some of the less critical skills or experience, eg office administration etc plus often the workload involved does not warrant a full time person in the role. This is the perfect situation for outsourcing particular roles or tasks to those experienced in providing such roles.
However there is one task that must at least be overseen by the originator of the business.
It is that of creating the Business plan, the method of taking the ideas of the business originator and putting them into some sort of structure that defines what the business is about and where it is intended to go.

First step with any Business is the Business Plan

Without even the simplest of plans the business is unlikely to be successful, as it will be directionless.
The Business Plan is just like a Road map.
If you know where you are going, because you have been there before, then you already have the plan in your head.

If you have not been there before then you need to look at the map, plan a route to get to where you want to go (do you want to provide an ongoing income or build the business up in preparation for sale  or combination of both etc) and how you are going to get there, ie using what mode of transport(product or service), where will you buy fuel (money), will you need others to help you get there (co investors, co directors) or need to have someone drive you there (workers, contractors, outsourced services etc).

The Business plan makes you at least consider the important aspects of the business, and you can choose to determine if they are relevant at that point, or if some planning needs to be put in place to take care of them later.

The Process makes you think

When writing a business plan, the very thought process of considering one aspect will often bring up another that had previously not been even thought about.
For instance, when considering how your business will market its product or service, (normally with very little budget), all sorts of opportunities should come to mind that are suited to the particular product, such as local papers, free websites, direct marketing letter box drops or targeted prospect offers, Trade-me, Trade & Exchange, Clubs & associations, Joint Ventures with complementary businesses  etc
Without going through the plan building process, the chances are that many of these sources would not have occurred to you, or appear when you are half way through an expensive marketing campaign.

Everyone is on the same path

It is well worth spending some time developing a decent business plan so that everyone involved knows where the business is heading and how it is expected to get there, and of course you will know when the goals have been  reached.
From the top level business plan will be generated the lower level working procedures, which will make them congruent with the overall plan, rather than being developed in isolation and at risk of being at a tangent to the master plan.

However, realise also that the Business plan should be flexible and will often change due to business environment, law, cultural factors or financial constraints etc. If the plan is written in such a way as to make change easy, then it provides a useful reference of the majority of issues that need to be reconsidered in the new direction.

So the first step to  Starting a Small  Business (and many existing businesses that have evolved uncontrolled) is the Business Plan
There are many Business plan tools available. The trial version of this one may be useful to you for checking on the financial viability of your projected sales and business overall.

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Auckland Small Business Help