1) When you start a new business/ launch a new product, ask yourself :
"Are there enough potential customers ?"
"Do you have a method to communicate with those prospects?"
"Can you afford to Market to those prospects?"
If the answer is "no" to any of the questions think long and hard about continuing
2) Get out to market ASAP, learn from the early failed results and refine your product offering quickly. Most people spend too long planning and refining their product / service before showing it to the market. Best market research is to ask people if they would like to buy!
3) Write an 'instruction manual' for your business outlining each process, who should do it, and how. De-skilling the operation into a set of rules makes your business easier to scale and makes holidays more relaxing.
4) Dream about the future regularly, picture your business in 6months, 1 year, 3 years What's it like? Staff? Revenue? Profit? Your Role?
5) Profile your customers and make sure that you understand why they buy your products / services.
6) Have a USP. Make sure you can answer "Why should I buy from you", in less than 30seconds.
7) Remember Profit is your friend. Learn to love it, forecast it and measure it. No matter what your business ambitions and morals are everything starts with making some profit.
8) Get to grip with Finances. Learn at least how to do a cashflow forecast, P& L and read an aged debtors report . Then commit 1 hour a month to updating them.
9) Be very careful about whose advice you take. Government organisations are great at teaching you how to do something specific (like a bank business plan) but you need to think hard about taking commercial advice from civil servants. They advise most UK startup businesses, yet 2 years from now 75% of those startups will be bust. Take advice from successful business people.
10) Get a mentor, or more than one. That’s not a coach or trainer but someone who you would like to emulate. Don’t pay them, buy them lunch once a month and talk through your plans and problems. Use
Have some suggestions to add to the list? Please leave them in the comments below.