If you are looking into how to start a small business this article is designed to give you some pointers of what you should be looking at in the Start-up stage of a business – at this stage in the life cycle of a business the considerations and planning needed fall into the following categories:

- Decide on whether to should I buy a business or set up a business from scratch or even buy a franchise business. There are relative merits of each route, as discuss in the article link here. A franchise is a good route to take where you are seeking banking finance, as banks like franchises.

- Decide on a name for the business - if you are starting from scratch, you must then consider protecting your name and of course your idea if it is an invention by using the patent protection process. Be very careful with this, as you cannot protect an invention via a patent if the idea is within the “Public Domain”, so don’t go telling people down the pub about your idea until it has been protected, this that would be deemed in the public domain.

- Decide on business bankers – I always suggest that you begin this with meeting up with your personal bankers, as you have a track record with them, which can help in the process here. However, always check around for the best deals on free banking for new businesses.

- Start-up finance required and do your business plans and cash flow forecasts. Whether or not you are looking for start-up finance you should prepare business plans for your business together with some cash flow forecasts. However, if you are looking to seek finance from a bank then a well written business plan is important which must be accompanied by properly prepared cash flow forecasts.

- Choose your business location – depending upon the type of business you are setting up the location may or may not be crucial or you may even be able to start it from your living room at home. However, if you are going into retail the location is one of the most critical decisions you make to get the necessary foot-fall.

- Decide upon a business structure – there are various trading structures for a business ranging from a sole trader to a limited company and the best route to take is discussed in types of businesses and setting up in business.

- Equipment for the business – even the smallest of small businesses requires some equipment and you need to decide how you buy or lease this. If you are looking at some major capital acquisitions you might need to lease or finance these to help with business cash flow. There are tax implications with how you acquire assets and you might want to take these into consideration, but never let the tax tail wag the commercial dog – in other words make your decisions based upon the commerciality of the idea and not the tax implication, but consider it within the overall commerciality of what you are doing. For example, governments sometimes encourage business to buy assets by giving away what is called first year allowances of up to 100% of the capital cost. This means that you would get 100% tax relief in this example for the purchase, whereas if you lease the item you would only get tax relief on the lease payments paid in the year.

- Get Licenses and Permits – certain businesses require licences and some need to have a permit before trading commences. For example if you are about to set up a pub or restaurant with a drinks licence (or buy one) then you will need to obtain a drinks licence.

- You might want to find a Mentor – A business mentor is invaluable and to have someone as a sounding board is a great asset to have. Never under-estimate the learning curve when first starting out on the “Going into business route” and to have someone to talk to is always a bonus. I used to spend many hours talking with my clients in my accounting practice about business “Problems” and how best to expand or how to finance assets or whether to move premises etc. Running a business on your own can be a lonely experience, so any support you can get from fellow businesses owners should be taken up.

Last night I was watching a program about how Bill Gates made Microsoft one of the Worlds biggest companies and made him the richest man in the World up until recently.

One aspect that was discussed on this program was the threat that Google poses to Microsoft. Bill Gates seemed to be really nervous about the power of Google and how they are developing their site so that PC users no longer need to buy Microsoft products like Word, Excel and Power Point, etc, as these programs are held on Google’s servers.

Google’s GDrive is a step in the direction that makes Mr Gates Nervous and is an online storage option where Google servers have enough capacity to hold the entire contents of your hard drive. We are all familiar with having a C: drive and a D: drive, so how do you fancy having a G: drive too.

This new service from Google (thought to be launched in 2009) will allow you to access and update your information, including word documents and spreadsheets, your emails, your personal photos etc, just so long as your device has an internet connection. It could also mean that instead of your PC booting up from your hard drive (or your C: drive), it could be booting off the Google operating system.

By shifting pretty much the entire content of a user’s hard drive to Google’s servers, PC’s would become simpler and cheaper. These new devices would simply act as a portal to the web and perhaps we would just need a keyboard that interacts with our television set and nothing more, other than a “local” processor and some RAM memory to work on files locally.

This new form of computing has a new term, which is “cloud computing” on the basis that your information is sitting in “the cloud“.

Of course the benefits of this new system are numerous, one of which is having your data stored in another location or “the cloud”, so if your computer is stolen or if it crashes, then your data is “safe”. The second obvious benefit to businesses is the ability to share information with other users within your business as a large network, using the internet as the network connection.

One thing that you will have to consider is the security of the information held by Google; will you be happy for Google to hold all your data. What about security breaches? Google would have access to all your data files and all the information pertaining to your business! This information could be sitting anywhere in the world too – it might sit in the USA or perhaps in Indian, who knows where?

The only constraint on this service is the bandwidth you have with your Internet Service Provider (ISP), so as long as your service is a fast one then there should be no speed issues. Today the Internet and the connections to it are pretty reliable. However, there are still times when the Internet still goes down, only last week it was reported that Google’s servers in India were down.

In one of my businesses we have been cut-off from Internet connection due to faults on the line, usually a fault with BT. In this event, if all your data is stored remotely, you would not be able to access your files and work would grind to a halt! Is that how you would want your business to run?

Can you also imagine the law suits that would be flying around, should Google lose company data! This could prove to be an interesting dilemma trying to prove that the data was in fact sitting on Google’s servers when it was lost. This could be a lawyers mine field in the future and can you imagine a small business going up against the might of Google, should something go wrong.

As a business owner what do you think about the idea of the Google GDrive? Would you be prepared to trust your hard drive to Google? Please let me have your comments on this below…

Do you actually go on vacation when you go on vacation? Typically, I don’t.

This Thanksgiving week my husband and I went to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. We frequently choose that holiday week for our vacation because I’m only gone for three business days. (Yeah, I know – pretty pathetic.) Of course, that doesn’t mean I don’t work.

Much to my husband’s chagrin, packed right along with the sunscreen and swimsuits, are piles of uncompleted work projects. In the past I’ve finished book manuscripts, written business plans, even reviewed financials as part of a due diligence process. But this trip was different.

First the resort didn’t have an Internet connection in the room. Panic attack! Then, my phone signal was extremely weak. Another panic attack. I had to face the facts: My constant communication connection had been unceremoniously cut.

Okay, I can deal with that, I thought. So I accepted my plight and decided to focus on projects that didn’t require communication with the outside world.

But guess what! I did nothing. Yep, absolutely nothing. Didn’t accomplish one darn thing the entire week. There was something freeing about being cut-off from the world. I wasn’t compelled to check emails all day long or return phone calls. Instead, I took leisurely walks on the beach, enjoyed lazy lunches at beachside cafes, read a couple of great books, watched a few movies and relaxed. And amazingly — I enjoyed it.

So my best vacation tip to my fellow small business workaholics, go on vacation and do nothing. RELAX.

Oh by the way, here’s a photo I snapped one morning on the beach. Enjoy.

The climate for small business is getting easier around the world, according to a new report by the World Bank and its private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation.

The report, Doing Business 2009, which measures how easy it is to do business in 189 countries, says that regulatory reform has gathered pace in the past five years, particularly in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

EASE OF DOING BUSINESS
1. Singapore
2. New Zealand
3. USA
4. Hong Kong
5. Denmark
6. UK
Source: World Bank/IFC

African countries are also increasing the pace of reform, with 28 countries initiating a reform process, including some post-conflict countries such as Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The majority of the top-ranking countries for doing business, however, are still in developed countries, with the US third and the UK sixth in the world rankings.

Georgia, the former Soviet republic, is ranked 15th in the world, with one of the most business-friendly regimes in the world.

Bahrain and Mauritius also joined the ranks of the top 25 most liberal countries.

Different strokes

The developments are striking, particularly given the worldwide credit crunch and economic slowdown.

According to Penelope Brook, the World Bank’s vice president for private sector development, we should not be too surprised by these findings.

She told the BBC that many smaller developing countries realised they had to mobilise their domestic resources and create a more business-friendly climate.

And she argued that the more difficult economic climate worldwide, which has raised questions about how much globalisation benefits all, has intensified efforts by these countries to modernize their economies and attract investment.

Business and poverty

According to Ms Brook, helping small and medium-sized enterprises in developing countries is one of the keys to eliminating poverty, especially in urban areas.

She cites survey research that shows that most people in poor countries want to either start their own business or get a job in the formal sector to improve their condition.

But, she adds, the lack of clear regulations, such as enforceable contract rights in courts, means that many small companies in developing countries are in the informal sector, where they lack any legal rights.

This makes it hard for them to expand or get access to bank loans, and that in turn limits the number of workers they could hire.

And those workers lack both job security and legal rights.

And the poor make up one quarter of the world’s population.

In its latest estimate, the World Bank says that 1.4 billion people live in poverty, based on a new poverty measure of $1.25 per day.

Ms Brook says that their lives will be helped by an expansion of small companies.

But she agrees that the area of labour laws is contentious. The report argues that flexible labour markets generate more employment and so help the poor.

But Ms Brook concedes that this is a “sensitive area” for countries, and their policies need to balance the need for protection and the need to ensure business-friendly conditions.

In previous years, trade unions have criticised the Doing Business report for ignoring the rights of workers, particularly the right to join trade unions.

Limits of reform

It is clear that a liberal climate for businesses is only one part of the story of economic development.

Many of the biggest emerging market countries, such as India and China, come well down in the World Bank report ratings.

Ms Brook said that growth in countries like China and India was driven more by macro-economic considerations and increasing foreign investment.

But she pointed out that there had been significant reforms, particularly in China, giving more legal rights to business owners and establishing a system of credit ratings for individuals.

In addition, many of the developing countries that have a liberal economic regime do not have a liberal political regime.

Whether economic reform will ultimately encourage political reform, or whether political repression will in the end inhibit economic development, is still an open question.

News reported by The BBC