Last updated on June 11th, 2019 at 03:16 pm

I’m sure that many of the readers of this blog have had that thought at some point in their lives “it would be nice to work for myself”, and indeed as we have many small business owners that visit our site they will have done more than just think about it.

This article is aimed at those of our visitors that are still in the “should I / shouldn’t I” phase and hopefully will of some help in making your mind up whether to go ahead or not (or even just in giving you a list of things to be thinking about).

Business Idea

Firstly you need to be realistic about the business idea that you have had – is there enough demand for the service or product that you are going to provide?  For example the market town I live in (with a population about 3,100 people) has 8 hairdressers plus another 5 that work from home or travel to clients homes.  This means that on average they are catering for 240 people each – now, of course it being a market town people in the surrounding villages and hamlets will be travelling in to the town (but remember that it’s unlikely that some of the “more traditional” men in the area will be willing to use ladies hairdressers so that reduces the number of available customers but will increase the number of customers for the 2 men’s hairdressers in the town).   If you were to open this kind of business in the town would you be able to survive with such a low number of customers?

Of course, it may be that your product is so new that no-one has heard of it yet, or you may be very specialised.  In these cases you need to do a bit of research and remember to be a little pessimistic in the sales/customer figures that you come up with.  It’s much better to think that you are going to take, say £2,000 per month and find that you actually take £4,000 a month than it is the other way around, especially if you are basing other figures and expectations on the higher value.

Business Planning

Although thinking about the business idea is part of the business planning process, once you have decided that there is a demand for the product or service you are going to provide there are several other things to think about  before you are anywhere near ready to start your new business.  These include (not all of them apply to every business) :-

• How you will trade (sole employer, partnership, ltd company – see our article here about the difference between them)?
• Where you will trade from (home, office, shop, industrial unit etc) ?
• What kinds of insurance you will need?
• How you will fund the business? For example do you have the capital, will you borrow from family, try to borrow from a bank or raise corporate finance by looking for investors.
• How much will you charge for your product?
• Where will you get supplies from?
• Will you be employing staff?
• How will you market your services or products?  Do you need business cards?  A website?

Of course there are many other questions that you may need to answer and people you will have to register with (the HMRC for example) and it would be best to find someone that is able to give you professional advice in this area.  There are many local specialists across the UK that deal with business start-ups and can give you all the advice that you need, no matter if you are based in Glasgow, Stoke or anywhere else in the UK.

If you are thinking of starting a new business and have any general questions about SEO, website design, marketing, HR or social media please take a look at the rest of our site.