Becoming you own boss and the Business Funding needed to do it

If you performed a survey of the average British worker to find out if they enjoy their job your results would appear to be rather disappointing. It is as though there is an unwritten rule when it comes to employment that states people aren’t allowed to enjoy their job and we spend half of our working time wishing we were somewhere else. This is one of the reasons that more and more people are deciding to make the move into owning their own business.

Becoming your own boss may seem like a fantastic dream with all these highly successful hopes and imaginations of how it will transform your life while in reality your financial situation is ready to launch a full blown attack all over your nicely thought out dream; stopping you before you even really get going.

Without the right business finance your plan to open a successful business will fail. Business finance is key if you want a successful start to your career as being self employed. Start-up business finance is needed to cover a number of start-up costs for your new venture. You will need money for business equipment, marketing costs and property costs, all of which need to be taken care of before your business even makes its first sale and when you are trading you will need enough finance to pay any bills that you will be facing and your staff wages as well as having enough money to keep your business going.

You need to work out the financial requirements of your business and then choose the best form of business finance to suit your business needs. The way in which this can be achieved is through your business plan. Your business plan is one of the most important documents to your business. It is your best business tool and its purpose is to outline not only all of your business requirements but also your service, target market, your products and your selling point. Below are a few things you should take into consideration when writing your business plan:

• Have you analyzed the market for your product or service? Have you separated the market into differing user groups? Have you formulated a marketing message that is understandable by your potential customers, have you described how your service will benefit your clients?
• Have you prepared a pricing schedule? Are you going to offer discounts, if so to who and for how much?
• Have you prepared a sales forecast?
• What type of media will you use in your marketing campaign? Posters? Internet? Advertising?
• What type of after sales service/customer service or support will you offer?
• Is ‘packaging’ going to appeal to your target market, does it matter? Are you going to have a staff uniform, smart or casual what kind of image are you trying to portray to your potential employers? Distribution; how? And with what?

You should also take into consideration what your business is going to offer, what your Unique Selling Point (USP) is.

Once your business plan is complete you can start to think about what sort of business finance you want, do you want debt or equity funding? Debt funding refers to finance that comes from aspects such as bank loans, credit cards etc, finance that has to be paid back over a series of months. The main problem with debt finance is that many new businesses cannot afford to keep up with the monthly repayments; plunging their business into debt that they can’t get out of. However debt finance in the form of a bank loan still remains the first place to approach to gain business funding, even though most banks are often hesitant to provide new businesses with funding.

The other option open to you when it comes to business finance is equity funding. Equity funding refers to business finance that comes from places such as business angels and venture capitalists. Equity finance is when money is invested into your business in return for a share of your business. The money that is invested doesn’t have to be repaid, however it does mean that another person will have a say in how your business is run and will gain a portion of your business profit.

The best form of equity finance for a new business is a business angel. There are many reasons why this is the case such as a business angel is an entrepreneur who has built up their own business from scratch, just like you are trying to do. They have the experience needed in order to grant you success for your new business. They will also have all of the contacts that you will need in order to get your business off the ground and keep it that way.

A business angel could be a valuable tool for your new business and even though you will be, in effect selling part of your health store business, the expertise that you will be gaining from the use of a business angel will be too much of a good opportunity to pass up. A business angel will provide you with all of the business start-up finance that you will need to get your business set up and to keep it that way.

Helen is the web master for Angel Start-ups, home to all your Business Funding needs.