This article is the second in the series, and follows on from
the recession- a great opprtunity In the first
post, I briefly touched on some easy low cost business start-ups,
and tried to instill the motivation needed to succeed, with
P.M.A. [Positive Mental Attitude.] Now let’s try and get
that brain box of yours working.
What is the best type of business?
The best type of business is one that requires little or no
work, and huge rewards. You will see plenty of these advertised
on the internet, [I make £5,000,000
a month and work less than 1 hour a day. To find out how buy
my ebook worth £97.00 now only £35.00 for the first
500 customers. How do they do it? Simple the ebook suggests
that you resell the ebook on your site or by email for whatever
price you want:- you embed the ebook in your site, and people
pay to download it] I have a better one than that which I will
sell you for £1, it is an old Chinese proverb which will
save you pounds, better than that I will tell you it for free,
now ‘ A FOOL AND HIS MONEY ARE SOON PARTED’
So unless you are a writer, or a software programmer, there
is no such business. The next best type of business is one you
can run from your own home, with low or zero overheads. Of these
the service industry is more profitable. If you are a professional,.
Such as accountant, teacher, bookkeeper, finance director etc,
your choice of business is obvious. If you’re a tradesman
such as builder, electrician, plumber etc, again your choice
is obvious. Selling a service such as these only requires an
advert in the local paper, and a website[to give you more credibility]
Which do you think looks more professional on your business
card, ‘you@yoursite.com’ or ‘you@hotmail.com’
you can get a web host for free, with a simple to use website
builder usually as part of the package. More in a later post.
Mail order businesses were popular at one time and could be
run from home, now it is sales through ebay which is proving
to be popular.
You can run a Market Stall or a shop; these require some capital
and again some lines are better than others. When setting up
such a business, remember that repeatable sales are better than
one off sales. If you are selling something like batteries,
cards, food etc, people will keep coming back to you to buy
more.
What ever business you decide on, you will still have to make
forecast for profit and turnover. These are usually estimates
based on what other people are doing, and are usually way out.
I have set up many businesses and the method of forecasting
I use is more predictable.
I start from where I want to end up, the net profit. For instance
let’s say I want to start a business as an book keeper
and I want to earn a minimum of £50,000 a year working
from home. I have a telephone, and a spare room, and the family
car, so how do I go about making £50,000 a year. First
of all my working hours, I have decided that I only need 2 weeks
a year holiday, so therefore I need to earn £1,000 per
week, on a 5 day week that’s £200 per day. It is
obvious that my daily workload will change from day to day,
and will be quieter at holiday times, so therefore I will revise
my goal of £1,000 per week to £1500 per week or
£300 per day. To make £300 per day I am prepared
to work 8 hours minimum, therefore I need to earn £24.00
an hour,. clear of all expenses., to be on the safe side I will
quote my clients £30.00 an hour. Being a book keeper I
will target the small self employed businesses, by first of
all going through the local telephone book, and writing to every
builder, plumber, decorator, gardener, shop keeper, public house,
small manufacturers etc. etc. then following this up at about
10 days later with a telephone call. This should give me a good
base to start with, and with a small ad in the local paper I
should be able to catch every new business that is started.
I can use sage accounting software package, so all I need from
my clients is for them to email me once a month with their figures,
all I have to do is enter them correctly in sage accounting,
this will automatically generate professional monthly accounts,
profit and loss sheet, balance sheet, as well as quarterly and
yearly figures, which I can email back to the clients, and charge
a monthly fee of £60.00. This will take less than an hour,
so if I have to go to see a client, I am still able to exceed
the daily target figure of £300.
You can use this method of analysing your business model even
if you are buying and selling stock. Remember to include all
expenses associated with you particular business model.
