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Essential Business Tools
Introductory Books about Starting a BusinessTo start a business requires some consideration. While you want to do something new, you don't want to ruin your life in retirement, neither financially, nor socially or emotionally. Therefore, the business opportunity has to fit into your life style and reasonable aspiration levels. That is why you should seriously read the page we created: Some Initial Thoughts about a Start-up . To start a business you have to turn ideas into action. You have to ask yourself about what are the elements of a perfect sales pitch or how do you attract talent? How do you establish an identifiable brand without any money? The books below will provide you with some of the answers!
What you are looking for are the essential steps to launch great products, services, and create a great company. You might now want to found the next Microsoft, but you still have to know how to unleash entrepreneurial thinking and creativity that will have your businesses stay ahead of the pack. If you don't have a business you want to enter and are still looking for opportunities, e-sbforum has selected some business areas where you could try your luck. Their suggestions might give you further ideas that offer the combination of low cost entry and low risk you are looking for. Have a look at the three (Page 1 - Page 2 - Page 3 ) pages of suggestions. They also give some explanations and guidance about getting involved in franchising.
After you have looked around a bit at suitable opportunities, you should assess your own abilities. You want to find the opportunity that you can handle "without pain", or at least with a threshold level that is bearable. There are many ways of doing this assessment. You will find one here. The Tools for running a BusinessA Business Plan, Incorporation and Accounting IssuesEvery business, however simple, needs some basic tools to be operated successfully. Success here, means to operate a venture in a controlled fashion. The tools you use might not be elaborate, but they are nevertheless explicit. When you have decided what kind of business you want to start, you can be opportunist and start without any plan. Though, it might be better to create a business plan however simple. There is a page that explains how to go about creating a business plan. You can simplify it and the basic rules still apply! Then you will start to convert your plan into some substance. You start operating the business. That will require at the very minimum some accounting. This can range from a simple cash accounting system such as that provided by Quicken,to a fully fledged accounting system.If you want to know more about the options look at the page dealing with accounting issues. You might find it strange that we recommend the installation of an accounting system, before we deal with the marketing and sales of your products. You will have expenses that will have to be accounted for prior to your first sales. It is therefore better to be prepared. The other thing which should be considered is whether you want to incorporate your business. There are several advantages to incorporation, especially if you incorporate as an LLC (Limited Liability Company). You can find a good basic analysis of the issues involved at the incorporation page of the Small Business Forum. Creating your Market Strategy and PlansIf you start your own business then putting into place a proper marketing plan is essential. You will have to work out an overall plan as part of the business planning process. But at a later date, you will have to sit down and work out the details of how you approach your market. And that is where the Marketing Plan starts. Here are some books that will help you. Some will appeal to you more than others.
The important point is that you do it systematically and the follow your plane once you have completed it. Marketing
includes a host of skills important to your venture. You
might not have any skills in pricing or in a proper brand
identification of what you want to sell. Similarly, you
might look for ways of how to present your product to the
public on or off the internet. These are all skills that
other people had to learn as well. You should therefore
profit from their knowledge and look at what these people
have to say about the topic. The Total Financial Costs of starting a Business with an Internet PresenceA most important issue will be "how much does all this cost?" Nothing is free. Though we try to give you suggestions that will limit your financial risk. We have also recommend products, where someone in our organization has had experience in the specific business area. This experience has either been gained from consulting and coaching other people or from helping people to set up a business. Although, not every business needs an internet presence. You will soon find that using the internet as a medium to propagate your business or to explain your business venture to clients will be very helpful. It is the medium where you can make yourself known with an absolute minimum cash investment. There is no guarantee that you make money and anyone telling you, that it does not require some serious effort to set up, has never tried to use the Internet! The amount of money you can make will vary with your effort, the products you select and various other factors. In that respect the Internet is not different from any other business platform.
Most of the above is your personal investment and you can not put a price on that.Your desires and aspirations will determine this. The financial investment is, however, something quite different. e-sbforum.com has provided some cost calculations that include setting up an internet presence! Given, that you create something with which you can potentially earn several tens of thousands a month, the investment is an amazingly low amount. Moreover, the total start up costs, do not all come up at the very beginning, but are probably spread out over three months to a year or more. Non-Internet Business VenturesThere are a large number of ventures that can be undertaken without the use of the Internet. In fact, probably more than those that use the internet in an effective way. Some interesting ones are discussed in the books shown below. Books on How to Start Specific Business Activities The world is full of ideas about starting a business. Most "new ideas" have been done somewhere and there is a person who has gone through the same trials and tribulations you are going through now.
The books above are accounts of people who have pursued specific business ideas. Even if your intended venture is not identical to the ones dealt with here, the ideas of these writers might help you avoid some of the pitfalls and will help you in being successful. Organizing People and ProcessesIf you are a good organizer, there are many places where organization is needed. This can be at the household or at the office/company level. To market yourself as a professional household or office organizer is a job opportunity that can result in a substantial income . This naturally requires that you, yourself are well organized. If you are, there are scores of possibilities, especially in urban/suburban areas with a high proportion of professional people. Most of them simply do not have the time to organize their home. Here are some books that might make the business choice interesting:
Many good ideas are destroyed by a lack of organization, either by the people who are supposed to implement them or, by the people, who they are supposed to help in other ways. Similarly, good processes are laid to waste, just because they are poorly organized. There are, obviously, numerous other possibilities for starting a business and we are always interested in new areas, that make sense and have a reasonable risk to initial investment ratio. Send us an e-mail. |
