It is only 2 weeks into 2015 and this year will see some great new businesses launched if StartUp 2015 at Somerset House in London is anything to go by. As an experienced entrepreneur myself and a government accredited SME business coach, I was invited to be one of the resident ‘meet an advisor’ on the day.
I can only say I was amazed by the huge crowds, the incredible enthusiasm and some of the great ideas I heard about. Confidentiality means I can’t share these ideas but I am really pleased that people are not only developing digital services, but also planning to manufacture and retail products.
Here are the three pieces of key advice I gave to new entrepreneurs during the day.
Who are your clients? Make sure you know who is going to be a paying client. This is a vital first step in understanding the type of people who will pay for your product or service. Before setting up your company it is really important to invest time in researching this.
How will you make money? Having paying clients is great, but you must also make sure that you can trade profitably, if not immediately then at some time in the future.
How much money do you need to get started? Often people think they need £100K or even £500k to get their business started but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Most businesses can get up and running with little or no investment. This is a good thing as you want to prove your idea is viable before making any major investments of your time, your money or someone else’s money.
…and finally I advised them to get help from the government’s Growth Voucher scheme, where they will cover 50% of the costs (up to £2,000) for strategic advice. You can use these vouchers for getting strategic business advice from me.
C+S Management Development & Training 