3 Essential Requirements for Starting a Small Business

By Jennifer V-E Johnson

In my experience, there are 3 requirements which are necessary for the successful start of a small business. 1) Acquiring start-up capital; 2) Finding customers - identifying your niche; 3) Accounting for, budgeting and controlling sales and expenses; The following resources will help your small business achieve these foundational success factors. Acquiring Start-Up Capital An adequate supply of capital to start your business is essential as many profitable businesses fail because they don't have enough cash to pay their employees and suppliers. You may be asking yourself - "what is an adequate supply of capital?" The only way to tell is by doing a significant amount of research on your potential market and documenting this in your business plan. A business plan is a very important document that is crucial to convincing your banker, your investor(s), family, friends, partners, etc. to invest in your business or to lend you money for the business. There are two ways to obtain a business plan. 1) Do it yourself by starting with a business plan template as your guide and then customizing it to fit your unique needs, or 2) Hire a professional to do it for you. If you choose option one above, it will be a great deal cheaper. My research has led to a website that has over 60 high quality and free business plan templates. My research has found a directory that you can use to easily find a business plan writer in your city where ever you live in the world. Finding Customers Finding customers is a difficult and expensive task for service business owners such as accountants, lawyers and plumbers. I believe that a cost effective marketing strategy for service business owners is to simply give all their personal contacts a few business cards. My research led to a few websites that have pre-designed business card templates. I felt that the diversity and quality of these designs was outstanding. In addition, I found that you can obtain a significant saving by finding a printing service on the Internet. I found that you could get 2,000 full color business cards for as little as US $150. Accounting For, Budgeting and Controlling Revenue and Expenses Accurate accounting is very important for small business owners. It is essential that you have timely access to information that could make or break your business. If stocks are running low you need to know about it. If a large proportion of your debtors have not paid you need to know about it. If you do not react to these situations quickly you may have a situation where you do not have enough money to pay your employees, or worse still someone is stealing cash from your cash register or business. My research led to a website that compares and reviews top accounting software for small businesses. The cheapest software cost US $89.99 and the most expensive software cost US $1,499. It was interesting to note that the top 3 ranked websites were not the most expensive and cost between US $250 - US $300. Hopefully you now have an idea of some of the tools that you can use to grow and maintain your small business. If you would like to benefit from our research please visit our website. I do not charge for this research and offer the content freely on our website. All information deemed reliable but not guaranteed. Limited consent to preprint or republish this report may be posted, reprinted, emailed or faxed as long as the copyright and credit reflect "Courtesy of Jennifer V-E Johnson, Reston Expert and WashMetroHomes.com Real Estate." Courtesy of Jennifer V-E Johnson, Reston Expert and www.WashMetroHomes.com About the Author Ms. Johnson is the webmaster of http://www.washmetrohomes.com/freehelp, who's aim is to help you save time and money by finding information to help improve the quality of your life.