Biz2

“How to Create Your Own Personal Business” Introduction This and the following sections (Parts 1 to 10) are extracted from “How to Create Your Own Personal Business” by Ben Coker The Business Vision Workbook and the Personal Vision Workbook are available to download free of charge in the Workbooks section First published in the United Kingdom in 2019 Copyright © Ben Coker 2019 The moral right of Ben Coker to be identified as the author of this work has been…

How to Create Your Own Personal Business Chapter 1 Your Business Vision You know what your business is going to do, what product or service it is going to provide to purchasers and what benefit it is going to provide to you. If at this stage you are not clear, really clear, on this then go back to the Business Vision Workbook, Module 1 of the Personal Business Creation System or to “What They Don’t Tell You About Starting a…

How to Create Your Own Personal Business Chapter 2 The Market Now that you’re clear about what your business is all about and what services, products and benefits it provides, the next thing to consider is ‘the market’. Although, in truth, you should have been considering this already – is there actually a ‘market’ for the benefits your business provides – are there real people out there who want those benefits? You see, so many businesses start up with ‘great…

How to Create Your Own Personal Business Chapter 3 Your Business Identity “Who am I – to them?” – is the question you must ask, and once you have the answer, the task is to decide how you are going to present yourself and your business to the larger market. Who you are to them needs to be your decision, not theirs. How you present yourself and your business is critical because people out there cannot resist, within the first…

How to Create Your Own Personal Business Chapter 4 Structure and Setup Quite early on you’ll need to decide how your business is structured and what status it has in the eyes of the authorities. There are effectively three options. Sole Trader A Sole Trader is someone who operates a business without any formal company structure. Income from the business is treated by the HMRC as personal income and taxed accordingly and there are fewer options to claim expenses against…

How to Create Your Own Personal Business Chapter 5 Planning Now that you’ve ‘designed’ your new business the next step is to consider how its going to operate. In other words, to make a plan. So far we’ve discussed ‘who’ is involved in the business, ‘what’ the business will do and offer and ‘where’ the business is going to be located or operated from and ‘why’ the business is being created in the first place. The next question to answer…

How to Create Your Own Personal Business Chapter 6 Finance In the previous Chapter, I mentioned the Cash Flow Forecast (CFF). This is a vital part of your business financial planning – but you won’t find it in any of the popular accounting systems like Xero, Sage or QuickBooks. Why, because, like most accountants, they look back and not forwards. They are about record keeping, about what has happened and not about looking ahead. The CFF is very simple and…

How to Create Your Own Personal Business Chapter 7 Requirements In the last Chapter I covered a little about what you need to invest in your business or company to get it up and running during the pre-launch period. Depending on the business and your offering, this can be a little or a lot. Even if you decide to join one of those networking businesses where the ‘joining fee’ is quite low you still have to invest more money to…

How to Create Your Own Personal Business Chapter 8 Technology One of the biggest issues for new business owners is ‘technology’ and in particular one or more aspects of ‘IT’. Issues around the equipment itself, web sites, social media, communications and so on. This perceived lack of knowledge about how it all works or fits together frequently leads to unscrupulous IT providers charging extortionate amounts of money for some of the simplest things. If they perceive that you have no…

How to Create Your Own Personal Business Chapter 9 Marketing & Sales If you do the marketing well, then ‘sales’ becomes irrelevant because people will simply ‘buy’ from you without having to be ‘convinced’ further. It would be impossible to cover the whole of this topic in one Chapter. There is a whole book devoted to this as well as the PBCS. But from the point of view of getting your business started you need to do two things. The…