How To Make A Small Fortune: Take a large fortune and start a small business.
Senior Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE) at the Small Business Administration: http://www.score.org/index.html
Read this book: E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber
One of the best books for the small businessman I have ever read.
After that read: How to Sell Anything to Anybody, by Joe Girard. Best book on pure selling ever written IMHO
Buy low, sell high.
Research, Research, Research! Market, finacial needs and investors will help as well.
Been there and done that. A Computer and simple bookkeeping software, (Quicken or Quick Books) will help you budget and track your progress. A company checking account will help to keep personal and company funds separate and the Dummies reference will help
Check the laws and regulations in your state for setting up a business. You can likely find what you need on the website for your State’s government.
Napoleon Hill, Zig Ziglar and other of the genre
start with Think and Grow Rich,
stay away from naysayers, join your local Business association.
read everything you can regarding the type of business you are looking to set up.
Instead spend ALL of your time determining WHY and ultimately IF you want to start a small business.
Once you have satisfied all of the reasons to/not to do it, then worry about how.
Especially in this environment.
Having done it 3 times, best of luck, schu
Don't delude yourself into the belief there's a market for something just because you like it.
Whatever you think it will cost you in the first 5 years; it will be more, probably much more.
Try to NOT borrow any money.
Work out of your home / garage for free rent first. Less risky ?
Work in the field / profession as an employee first. This may help you decide if you want this type of work before investing any personal money.
Get good insurance, set up legal protection so as to not lose your home if things do not go well ( Think LLC or such ).
Talk to local retired business owners at Rotary, Elk, Eagles, your church...for local issues.
Do a detailed, written business plan and budget.
Like one of the other posts said - figure out WHY you want to do this. I GUARANTEE you that it's more time consuming than you think it's going to be.
Write out a business plan and have someone reliable look it over.
Retain a GOOD accountant. You might not need bookkeeping from them but a good accountant can keep you out of a LOT of trouble.
Plugging numbers into Quickbooks or some other program is really easy to do. It also doesn't mean a damned thing if you don't know what the numbers mean or if they're showing up the way they're supposed to. Learn what a Balance Sheet, Income Statement and Cash Flow statement are.
After you've done all that, go talk to some other business owners in the field you're looking to get into or similar fields and see what they have to say. Don't do this first because 90% of what they say will be different than what you have just learned.
Go back to the accountant and tell him/her what the other business owners have said and make sure that you can reconcile THEIR answers with the accountants answers (a GOOD accountant will be able to explain what, why and how what you heard from others is BS or good advice).
bump for later
When I asked him what that was, he said:
"People come to me and ask about running a restaurant. I tell them "Don't do it. That'll be a hundred grand, please.""
What kind of business? Where? How old are you?
Funding:
First choice, save up cash for the business and avoid debt.
Second choice: use peer to peer lending as a funding source. Then you avoid family dinners filled with “when will you pay me?”
Business ideas:
Have a business plan. Not to borrow money with, but to know your goal, your customers, your competition, and your strengths.
AND have an exit plan, for when to exit and how, because many businesses fail.
Be a one-man consulting firm if at all possible.
Never become involved in a government contract (federal, state, county or municipal)!!!
While seemingly lucrative (at first)..., you will discover "strings" attached which may very well destroy your business in very short order!
WE started a business three years ago. It has become extremely successful. I’m knew it would be, but I’m still kind of shocked. We’ve had a 35 % growth each year and made a profit our first year. We started the process in June and by August we had a license and our first client. We have a 50/50 partnership and it works great. We are in the mid to upper six figures on gross income.
The first thing we did was to come up with a name for the business. We then went to a lawyer to draw up an operating agreement for the S Corp./ L.L.C partnership. You’ll probably want to do this type of business setup. The lawyer sent off the paperwork for the incorporation papers to our Sec. of State.
We then filed the necessary paperwork to get our permits for being licensed in the State of Ind. for a personal care business and to be able to be paid by the payors. We rented an office and bought used furniture. Our biggest expense to this point was buying 2 Dell Computers. We rented a copy machine. We bought a used fax. We got a 2 mil. dollar insurance policy. We already had our firts employee and a client. My wife had made some great contacts at the place we get our clients from, so that helped a lot.
I kept a log of day to day activities and progress on what we did and so forth. If you’d like, I would email this to you or snail mail it to you. It may be helpful because I might have left out some stuff above.