Business Startups: How to Start your Business Successfully

Starting Up A Business: You Need a Business Plan 

Starting a business is an exciting and yet daunting time for everyone, from the seasoned veteran to the first time start-up. Starting up a new venture in any field is one of the most frightening steps anyone can take. Stepping out from the known and safety of being part of another community to stand alone with your idea sounds exciting and thrills people, but also creates a mountain of new and often insurmountable challenges.  

  

The excitement of starting a new business can be quickly matched (and outshone) by the size of the daunting challenge you have set yourself. Where do you start in turning your idea into a business? For many it is talking it through with friends and family, seeing if it has legs, if it is a runner, trying to find the next step in turning the idea into a business.     

Hidden Challenges Facing All Entrepreneur

The next stage for many is to try to write down a plan of what they are trying to launch. This is where most people struggle, what to plan and how to plan what you are doing. How to turn your embryonic idea into a fully sized business is one of the hidden challenges facing every entrepreneur.

For many creating a business plan, is too big a challenge, re-defining it as a pointless exercise, or more realistic something they know they need to do, but want to postpone having to do it until the last moment, or later. Quite often planning their business is something entrepreneurs want to or try to delegate to other people. They want to keep the model flexible, or often in their head, I am working on it are other phrases I come across.

Putting All the Pieces Together

Yet to take any idea from embryonic idea to a recognizable business model, requires an investment in planning all the details of your business. Not just focusing on the core product or service, the exciting concept, but functional aspects of how the business will operate, from where and how, what operations have to be undertaken and by whom.   

Then a business needs to answer the biggest challenge, where will the customers come from and how. This key area is one, which entrepreneurs struggle to define publicly and honestly, relying on the old adage “build it and they will come.” But turning an idea into a successful business requires more than hope, it requires a clear plan, based upon a defined winning strategy driving a business model which makes sense and explains why it will succeed.

Defining The Optimum Solution  

The first step many successful entrepreneurs undertake is to review their idea and build their strategic plan, to take their idea from embryonic idea to a fully formed business model. From understanding your market and the size and scale of opportunity, to working out where to position yourself and what needs to happen to create interest in what you are offering and how you need to respond to it.

Developing a strategic perspective is a vital first stage in developing an agile and responsive business, by defining your strategic plan enables entrepreneurs to fully assess the whole business model, evaluating all aspects of your business and giving you all the ingredients for a business plan.   

Take Some Action

However you decide to start your business, do look for support. Run your idea past experienced people in bringing businesses to market, look at answering the difficult questions early, while optimism is vital, so is reality as is persistence.

 

If you are looking to develop your business model then look at developing your strategic plan for your business then why not look at my book Strategy: The Leader's Role by Richard Gourlay which will help you develop your strategic plan for your business.  

Business Planning: What Goes Wrong and How to Plan An Effective Business Plan

The first rule for everyone in business, or going into business, is that a business plan is essential. Essential to get started, from validating your idea through to accessing funding, the business plan is the fundamental building block of any business.     

So why do so many people struggle to write effective business plans which they should be using as the corner stone of their business? Why do so many business owners rely upon key ideas held in their head and winging it, even with some of their biggest decisions?  And why do so few business owners trust, use and live their business plans?

Now these are all fair questions which individually leave business plans and business planning not valued outside those essential, must do to get started roles. For many, that experience is exactly why business plans and business planning gets such a bad press by business owners once they get past the start line.

What Goes Wrong

Fundamentally business planning has become a tool to get funding, not as your manual to drive your business. This bad habit, of building a business plan just to get past go, has resulted in huge effort to start on the right foot, but is not valued in keeping on the right track.  

The second major factor with business planning is that business owners often plan the wrong things. Writing a business plan is seen as "filling in the template" following the process and jamming words into format. They focus on producing financial figures which add-up, not on identifying the important factors which drive business success, such as developing and validating the right business model, or identifying real future growth opportunities and how the business is going to succeed in that market.  

A third major factor is that business planning often lacks solid forward information, too often relying upon historical data, the accountants view of what has happened, rather than looking forward to where markets are going. You can see this in many businesses whose business plan over focuses on turnover and cost management, rather than describing their model, their market opportunity, how they are going to enter the market successfully and therefore who their target audience is and why.      

Successful Business Owners Use Tools To Plan Successfully

Business owners do not live their plan because they simply don't believe in them, despite the fact they wrote it, or heavily influenced its writing. Owners need to use business planning tools to develop their business model effectively, creating solid foundations. There are a host a tried and tested business planning tools to help business owners effectively research their plan. using these business planning tools provides real evidence that underpins a good business plan.

Possibly the most important difference between businesses which succeed and exceed expectations and those which do not fulfill anything like their full potential is often the lack of solid foundations within their plan. A lack of research regarding their market, its nature and future, undermines confidence and knowledge of who the customer is and why they should buy your product or service.

Business owners over focus on the product or service not on the market, the target customer or market entry. What business planners need to focus on is quantifying and qualifying their market knowledge using business planning tools, to enable them to know what to put into their business plan, that provides the right evidence adds weight to your argument and provides a rationale behind the assumptions you make.  

Successful Business Owners Benefit From Using Business Planning Tools

The right business planning tools, used in the right order will provide business owners with the tools and the processes to go through to build an effective business plan, which is both reliable and robust, a solid base for making informed decisions about your business plan.

Using the right business planning tools, to research and inform your business plan, also provides confidence to business owners and senior management to trust your business plan. If you trust your business plan you are more likely to deliver it.

Using the right evidence, the right analysis and logical conclusions then business plans built upon effective use of logical step-by-step business planning tools provide business owners with a clear and robust plan with clear focus for their efforts. Using business planning tools makes business planning a value-added process built upon solid foundations, with clear insights about what's driving the market and why your business will be successful. 

Like to know more about business planning tools to build your business plan more successfully then click this link: business planning tools         
      
Here's some other thoughts about why you should be using Business Planning Tools to build your business plan on solid foundations why to use Business Planning Tools to build your business plan.            

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Cowden is a strategic planning and implementation business which works with business owners to grow and develop their business, based in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland with the tools to successfully build business plans, contact us to learn more: click herehttp://www.cowdenconsulting.co.uk.

How To Grow Your Business Successfully

6 Great Reasons To View Richard Gourlay's Mentoring

Being focused and clear on where you are going and why with your business will put you in control and ultimately ensure you are more successful.  But how to take control is one of the biggest issues leaders face. Where to start and even how to start making changes to your business, making it become more successful is never easy. Moreover, the order you do all those elements, makes a real bottom-line difference to your business success.

Over the last 20 years I've worked with hundreds of business owners, from micro-businesses through to international PLC's and I've identified that there are some key factors that very successful owners do which ensure their success. While other business owners struggle to keep their heads above water. What I've learnt is that these simple and logical steps that successful people undertake, which make that 'something different' in what they do, delivers real results in taking the guess work out of their business success. 

I've spent years refining those key steps into a single programme of bite-size activities, my mentoring programme, of how to take the guess work out our business success. Each session supports leaders and business owners to work ON their business effectively rather than just spending more time IN their business.  

If you would like to know more then see my mentoring then get in touch to learn more about my mentoring programme click here or click this link:- www.cowdenconsulting.co.uk 

Below are some of the key things to consider in taking the guess work out of your business success:-  

6 Tips to Grow Your Business

1. Know what to Work ON

Knowing what you need to focus on makes a huge difference in where to invest your energy and resources.  I'm a huge fan of the leadership culture of working ON it not IN it. If you are not working on your business then how is it going to improve, how is it going to be ready and able to face tomorrow's challenges? But you need to know what is important to work on within your business, and why!  

2. Why you are working ON your business

Change is the only certainty in business. Today that has never been truer, the pace of change in every market has, and is, changing at an ever faster rate. The rise of the web, for example, has created rapid online trading and shopping which has rapidly accelerated change.  

How should you respond to those changes, fast enough and effectively enough to take full advantage of those changes, if you have ever wondered how, then my mentoring programme will enable you to understand why you are working on and put you in the driving seat of your business. 

3. Where to Grow

Every business owner wants to grow turnover, profitability or customer base, but how is the important question.  Where is tomorrow's growth coming from and how can you access it effectively and efficiently? This step-by-step programme will show you where growth is going to come from and how you can effectively access it.   

4. How to Make Change Happen

Doing what we've always done is the natural default behaviour that people fall back into despite best intentions.  Change is always easy to talk about, but harder to actually deliver. Change is always necessary to achieve success. This step-by-step programme enables you to create the right changes, which deliver the right results for success. Every step involves a single simple activity which is supported by a template in a workbook to create your success.      

5. Reduce the Risks

Taking your business from where it is today to where you want it to be tomorrow is essential to keep your business competitive and successful, but change involves taking risk. This proven programme reduces that risk by evaluating and balancing the risk factors effectively. Each step is focused around making sensible proactive decisions which have been tried and tested.     

6. It is simple to use

Taking the risk out of your business success is all about taking small, simple but highly effective steps which move your business where you want it to go. I have designed the programme to fit every type of business by size and sector and at every stage of its development. 

Short bite size learning, is what mentoring programmes can provide and is supported by easy to follow notes and action plans including all the templates and models you need to achieve your success. Supporting my bespoke mentoring programme are emails to help support you undertake each step. You can do the mentoring programme at your pace of learning the choice is yours.   

So if you want to take the guesswork out of your business success? Then this  effective programme is specifically designed for business owners from start-ups to established businesses owners to take the guess work out of your business success.  Contact me to learn more or see our website link www.cowdenconsulting.co.uk.

Have you felt the full power of the Internet Tsunami?

Have you felt the full power Internet Tsunami?  

Has the world moved for you, or did you miss it? The world of business has shifted but many businesses don’t seem to have noticed the great shift in power away from companies to the customer.    

We all see the impact of the Internet in every market sector, well above the growth of online shopping or the growth of smart phones and the online move of insurance and music online. While these shifts and the responding growths of new consumes are just beginning to be understood, this is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg.  

The Great Paradigm Shift

As our understanding of this shifting paradigm slowly emerges and evolves. It takes time for its impact to be fully understood and its impacts to be really appreciated. In the same way as the impact of the introduction of domestic electricity, which subsequently facilitated the introduction of the radio, which spread communication, did in previous generations. So the rise in power of the Internet is more than just our ability to look stuff up and buy consumer goods online.  

This paradigm shift has certain key features, which makes the rise of the Internet generation far more dramatic in its impact to business today.

Unlike many previous innovations, the move online has been done in an infinitely scalable way, making it financially accessible using technology which is therefore low cost and software which is build on open and shared platforms. Rather then being a premium service only open to the super rich, such as the introduction of the car or the television, which limited the accessibility of the technology to those who could afford it, the move online has been introduced to all levels of society.

A Global Movement

This global shift, supported by governments and industry to reach and penetrate all and every strata of society and on an almost global reach is a new global phenomenon creating a universal shift.

Whether in New Guinea or Newfoundland, you can get a 3G signal, with many countries like India and China just leapfrogged the copper wire landline systems of the 20^th century through large parts of their country’s moving straight into the 21^st century, avoiding unnecessary cost and rapidly accelerating progress throughout their country.  The Arab spring was not achieved by any three letter acronym news agency or Rupert Murdock’s media empire, but by new young mobile online generation who created, sustained and drove the rolling revolutions.        

The result of the internet revolution is that the world has made a huge step forward almost overnight and that has changed more than just the way we buy some products, it has in fact changed the way we think, and act.  This universal overnight movement has also solved the adoption dilemma for new technology. For companies to achieve a launch of a new product or service they had to achieve certain volume and this can now be achieved without geographic boundaries and often bypassing traditional routes to market, achieving profit without having to invest huge amounts of capital in awareness marketing.             

Empowered Intelligence

This paradigm shift has moved the way we think to such an extent that everything has changed. When in 1906 Admiral Sir John Fisher invented the Dreadnought in 1906, the Royal navy had 1,200 ships of-the-line, the Dreadnought made them all redundant overnight. Suddenly and globally, to be a superpower it was not the number of ships you had but how many Dreadnoughts you had and a new arms race had begun as every other battleship become redundant. 

In the same way, the introduction of always available high speed broadband has made so much of business thinking redundant, not just in the collapse of use of directories such as yellow pages, dictionaries or our communication. Today people have empowered intelligence, the ability to become informed by scanning a QR code, or connecting to a highly rated source they can become more than informed, they can become actively empowered.

Networked Learning

The internet is now driving people to think and do things in different ways across many age and economic cohorts. Its not just the young buying music or consumers doing their shopping online, although both have delivered huge shifts in culture to these markets.  People’s first mental response to knowledge and decision making is now to click, look-up and become informed. 

No-longer relying on our embedded historical mental heritage or through experts’ advice, people are now researching and networking their knowledge and our learning, widening knowledge and creating expert communities on almost every subject matter possible. For example to become an expert on social media you could do an online course or you could click onto Mashable and become an expert within hours. Anyone and everyone can become an expert, exposing consumer and business choice to new forces and opportunities.   

You may have heard the old adage that there is more computer power in a simple watch today than on the Apollo 11 spacecraft which took man to the moon. People have at their finger tips more knowledge about companies than even the most informed company is aware off. Users groups, expert forums and review sites empower and drive decisions, in a far more effective way than traditional marketing channels can persuade customers.

In just in the same way that the Arctic Monkeys pioneered emerging through an online community following, rather than through the plugging and playlist approval to get on the radio. Today the same today is true of consumer both in consumer and business markets.    

The power of the internet is yet to be fully understood. For some it has been like a Tsunami, just as a record shop or an insurance salesman. To many others though it is an unseen force, they know its there but not what or how it operates and effects their business. But it is and it will. The sooner business wakes up to these changes the better placed they will be to compete without feeling they have one hand behind their back.

Like to learn more? Then contact us at Cowden Ltd or see our website or social media channels for more about Cowden:-

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Our services: business planning, strategic planning, business development, strategic marketing, Return on Investment, director development, director mentoring.

 

Cowden is based in Dumfries & Galloway, Scotland and works with businesses throughout the UK.