Your Situation
You had been working in the corporate world for several years when Covid-19 struck.
At first, everything seemed as though it would be OK.
A little later, maybe a month or so, the company announced it had to furlough most members of staff and your name was among them.
Settling into a world that wasn’t 9-5 and no commuting at either end, took some getting used to.
Eventually, you developed a new daily routine and settled in for the wait until you could return to work.
After several months you started to realise that life is a lot better without the daily commute and then the 9-5.
Consequently, you started thinking about how you might make a living without a daily commute.
A lot of people had been doing this re-evaluation.
After much thought and a lot of discussions, you decided that you might just as well work use your skillset for yourself and you have positively decided to start your own business and become a startup.
What’s going to happen here
We are writing series of startup blogs, one each month, as well as social media posts on LinkedIn and Facebook to help startup businesses.
We will run through the sort of issues that could come up and how to resolve them.
In the interim, if you would like to ring up for advice or simply talk just call us on 0808-172-1900. There’s no catch, just a friendly and, we hope, helpful voice.
The Most Important thing to do before anything else is Plan your Business
By this I mean build a cash-flow plan. The Profit and Loss Plan can follow on.
By building an Excel spreadsheet, a cash-flow plan that goes through the next 18 to 24 months, means you will have to stop and think about every expense that you can foresee as well as every piece of business that you expect to win.
It will also force you to take account of the timing of anything you do because it is all dependent upon the bank balance/overdraft at the time.
Your system will show you when you’re nearing your overdraft limit and conversely when your bank balance goes black.
We have been using and developing our own, simple to use, Excel system since we began BHT in 1981.
I update it each Monday morning from the bank statements, to make sure we are on track.
You will come to rely on it and enjoy looking at your potential future, with money in it!
Should you need any help on this, just call us on 0808-172-1900 and we will help you.
What type of company should you be?
Once you have your cash-flow plan you can talk to your accountant and get the Bank focused Business Plan drawn up so that you and he/she can arrange your company overdraft facility.
Part of the discussions you will have with your accountant will be whether you should be a sole trader, a partnership, or a Limited Company.
There are pros and cons to each type of company and your accountant is the best person to advise you because there are tax implications to consider as well as legalities.
What’s next?
Now that you’ve got the legalities, and tax, sorted out you can start working on:
- Company identity
- Internet identity (Website)
- Online promotion
- Marketing
- Selling
- Contracts
- Invoice raising
- Paying bills and people
- Production
- And more
It’s not as bad as it sounds, so long as you take it one step at a time.
Our next startup blog will cover company identity and online promotion and will touch on marketing in general.
In the interim
We will be sending our messages on LinkedIn and Facebook so watch out for us and if you need to talk about anything at all just call on 0808-172-1900 and we will help you.