Going into business for oneself can be the most rewarding step you could ever take. However there are a few things I think you really should consider:

1. It’s going to take twice as long and cost twice as much

It’s a frequently used maxim but only because it’s true. It is easy to underestimate how much needs to be done before revenues come rolling in and one’s plans rarely allow for any contingency or indeed living oneself until the business kicks in.

2. Test your proposition first

If it’s a product you are going to sell have some advance orders, or test selling it at a car boot. If it’s a service, go be someone’s apprentice or stand in for a week or two first, and see if you are cut out for going it alone.

3. Strongly consider becoming a limited company

A limited company is a separate legal entity to you and so if things go wrong it can go bust without you having to. Also, with a limited company you can sell shares to others at different prices and quantities and so raise money whilst retaining 51%+.

4. It’s all about the team

If you are going to raise money from Venture Capitalists or Business Angels, they’ll want to see a team in place with all the key roles covered. Six rocket scientists might build a great rocket but will still need a sales person , someone in finance etc.

5. Be a little selfish or greedy

If this is your plan, or simply you seem to be doing most of the work, you don’t have to settle for equal participations all round. If the chances are you’re going to lead this, then take the biggest share – kindness at the beginning can cause problems later.

6. What’s your ‘Ronseal’ pitch?

Forget elevator pitches – life’s too short even for a quick explanation of what you will do. Ronseal ‘does what it says on the can’. Can you summarise your business proposition to anybody in a single sentence?

7. What need does your offering satisfy?

Very little in this world is completely new, so most times there is already a need. If there’s a need, does your proposition deal with it? If there’s no existing need, because it is as revolutionary as the Sony Walkman or Apple’s iPad, then you’re going to have to create the market too.

8. How will the competition react?

Be careful if a market opportunity appears to exist because of competitors’ inefficiencies. If by starting, you show them wanting, they’ll surely move to shut the door on you. And remember too, existing loyalties might make their customers slow to switch to you.

9. Don’t rely on professionals – do some yourself

Lawyers and Accountants etc make their money by charging for their time. Often at hourly rates you’d happily take as daily salary. So  ensure you know what you are asking for in terms of outcomes and always ask for a quote first.

10. Look for a mentor

Starting up is full of tricky situations you might never have encountered but invariably someone else has. Consider approaching an ex-boss or industry legend to see if they might agree to help you in your early stages. Surprisingly such help is often willingly given for free.

Michael Carter is the author of ‘Take the plunge – 101 things you need to know before starting in business’. This easy-to-read, colourfully illustrated book covers everything from business plans to VAT, selling to find premises, hiring people to limited companies and is available at a special price of just £5 (post paid) from www.efactorybooks.bigcartel.com

But with start-ups it’s different.

Certainly the starter-upper is probably well versed in what they are about to do: dog-grooming, house-building, architecture, wood-turning etc, but their knowledge of basic business isn’t there at all.

I greatly enjoyed Richard Branson’s ‘Losing my virginity’ but you can’t really advocate starting a business on a tax fraud, can you? Similarly, I was incensed by ‘Anyone can do it’ by Sahar Hashemi – cofounder of the Coffee Republic. Reading her book gave me no confidence at all that a potential start-up would learn any of the basic business steps to support their chosen activity.

My own first book: ‘It’s all cobblers!’ was, I found at my 45^th reading,  in a similar vein to the two above  – more autobiographical and less helpful to a start-up to whom I thought I had addressed it. In fact, reviewing the market I couldn’t find a book for start-ups that explained in bite sized chunks, why you need to do things in start-up mode at all.

So I wrote it. ‘Take the plunge – 101 things you need to know before starting your own business’.  Available from Amazon in paper or as an eBook – with all Amazon’s ‘look inside’ features.

Well, I’ll try this analogy. I like to cook, and pulling together a good meal is more than just chucking a few ingredients in a pan.  The perfect meal needs the careful combinations of ingredients, flavours, pots and pans, cooker, timing and, of course, a cook to blend everything together for the optimum results: in short a carefully designed recipe, perhaps tweaked as you follow it, that brings all of these things together to give you the resulting foodie pleasures.

In the same way, a successful business is created and sustained by bringing together every aspect of your business.  I call this the business mix and find this to be a good representation:

By combining the operational and marketing mixes, we can begin to map the interactions between the various ingredients for our successful recipe.  Using this format as a starting point, and populating the business mix to fit your business, you can to collate all of the aspects of your business that impact its results: and that really will be all aspects of your business.

As product managers, or indeed general managers and executives, we need to work across the whole business mix to achieve the sustainable advantage we all want.

So, what should we then do with all of this newly tabulated insight? Well, I find that applying a ranking system to identify those most important, versus those less so, along with competence/capability rating helps.  And mapping a SWOT to the results really can focus the mind, and help you to focus the right resources, on the most important elements of the business mix for your business’ success.