A Plan Comes Together........

Do some simple Maths.  If, in three years, you want to live in a bigger house, work out how much the mortgage will be.  Car? Family costs?  Holidays? Put all the cost elements of your “big picture” of your life into your plan.  Then work out how much you need to have in profit to take out of the business. Doing this will give you a clear idea of how much money your business needs to generate for you to meet your lifestyle requirements. This will, in turn, tell you how much work you have to generate. Now get real with what you can earn, especially in the first year or so.  You can reasonably expect to earn £25 - 30k in your first year of trading, but don't allow for too much more, or you will be chasing your financial tail. What's more, you will start to think you are a failure if you don't meet your target. Also – allow for tax and National Insurance.  As soon as the tax people find out you are a self-employed Bricklayer, Tiler, Plasterer, Joiner, whatever, they will assume a level of income and you will have to justify every penny less that you earn.  The Inland Revenue will advise you and their website hmrc.gov.uk has pages devoted to business start-ups. Someone in my village recently thought he could just submit a set of numbers to the revenue as a sole trader and got a great big surprise when they promptly levied an assumed tax amount.  (This has some more implications later, when you are buying goods and services for your business.) Think about who your customers will be. How will you make your service known to them? The flash words for this are "Marketing Strategy", but it's just common sense really. As time goes on, your headings will become sentences, sentences will join up and make paragraphs and with not too much effort, a document you can use as a plan to support your business in it’s first year – especially when dealing with Bankers and Business Link.  Don’t forget, you can always call SuperSkills for advice. Your business will need some things to get going.  Add them to the list.  Work from the inside out – your office, your skills, your tools/transport.  Remember to keep the costs down where you can and buy expensive items only when you need to.  You will find a very useful resource at the BusinessLink website, which contains loads of free stuff you can use, especially a StartUp Wizard that you just work your way through. Have a look at FlyingStartups.com which is a forum hosted by Steve Parks, whose excellent book "Start Your Business Week By Week" has been used by thousands to get going. (DON'T buy it from the site - go to Amazon and get it for half the price!) Better still - go to your local library and borrow it for free!