Start-up Smart

Jacket text for Start-up Smart

This book will not make you a million inside of three months - nor does it make any other wildly optimistic claims such as saving the world, fundamentally changing the way we think about business or improving your chances of pulling.

This book is a detailed description of how to start a small business from scratch, with relatively little money and how that business can give you a comfortable standard of living with little or no risk in the long term.

The advice contained in these pages is founded on what Robin Bennet has found to work over the last 20 years in business.

Chapter headings for Start-up Smart

Preface
About the author

1. PLANNING FOR GETTING STARTED
In which we ponder on just what we are getting ourselves into and then set about getting the money to make it all possible
- Basic Strategies
- Defining ones goals
- Planning and preparation
- The Business Plan
- Sources of Investment
- Things to watch out for
- Useful websites

2. MAKING MONEY
In which we start making money
- Basic Strategies
- Marketing
- Sales
- Premises
- Hiring for the first time
- Useful websites

3. GROWING SENSIBLY
In which we start to hammer out an infrastructure and craft a company culture
- Basic Strategies
- Cash flow
- Staff relations
- Technology
- Building a reputation
- Networking
- Suppliers
- Banks
- Clients
- Networking 'clubs', Trade Fairs and Conferences
- Useful websites

4. PLANNING FOR THE LONG TERM
In which we find out how to expand without creating a nightmare
- Basic Strategies
- Creationists, expansionists and caretakers
- Related Markets
- Foreign Markets
- Brand building, Patents and trade marks
- Structuring for the long term
- Useful websites

5. REFLECTIONS
Recommendations for small business ideas and lost causes
- Dealing with the highs
- What to do if you think you might fail

Conclusions

About Robin Bennett

Robin Bennett came to business relatively late: not for him selling lemonade to neighbours from the front garden, cleaning cars with rags or a 4am paper round. Kindly grandparents and generous friends meant for a cosseted existence until being a penniless graduate – plus the demands on an over-zealous bank manager – forced him to start his first company, aged 23. All of which goes to show that entrepreneurs are just as often made, not born. Since founding the Bennett Group in 1992, he has started 8 separate companies - in private tuition, publishing, translation, dog kennels, sandwiches – all for less than £5000 each. 6 still trade, always in the black and never at the expense of high borrowing or the really important stuff, like family and friends.

More about Robin Bennett