RULE 6

Get all the help you can

Right. Now you’ve been brutally honest you’ll know what you can’t do yourself. Plus, since you only have a finite number of hours each day, you may not be able to do even the stuff you are good at on your own. As time goes on, you’ll find you need additional skills that you either don’t have or don’t have time to use – you need to plan an exhibition stand, or write material for clients, or the finances become more complex, or you start exporting.

So here’s a problem. There’s work for a dozen people but only you actually there – or perhaps two or three of you. And no money to pay anyone else. So what are you going to do? Actually, this is a good thing. Yes, I promise. We’ve already established that no one can do everything, and I don’t have to know anything about you or your business to be able to tell you that you’ll achieve far more with other people around you than you will on your own. You just have to be canny about getting help without paying out money you don’t have.

There are some fairly obvious solutions, which can often work, such as taking people on part time, or on a one-off project basis, rather than creating an unaffordable full-time post. One option of course is to bring someone in as a partner in the business. Give them a share in the company and they’ll work as hard as you do, and have a vested interest in paying themselves only what the company can afford. This is a great idea if you can find the right person with skills you’ll always need – for example, if you’ve developed a great product but just don’t get the whole marketing and sales thing. That’s always going to be essential to the company’s survival, and it’s better to own 50 per cent of a successful company than 100 per cent of one that fails. But be wary of giving away equity if it isn’t essential. Pick them carefully too because you’ll be stuck with them.

Then there are costs you can share with other companies. For example, if you find another business with complementary but not competing products, you could exhibit at half the trade shows each and promote both sets of products on one stand. That saves time as well as splitting the costs of attending. There are lots of things you can share with the right fellow businesses in fact, from mailshots to information, bulk materials costs to sales leads.

And there’s one more really important source of help I want to draw your attention to, because it’s behind many successful new enterprises. Sometimes you think you need someone to do a job, when all you actually need is their expertise. Then you can do the job yourself. So put together an advisory panel of people who between them have experience in marketing, finance, production, PR, your particular product or service, and so on. Some people can tick more than one box – that helps but it’s not essential.

The panel can be formal or informal, it can meet regularly or just be on the end of a phone. Pick the right people (friends, ex-colleagues, business contacts, whoever fits the bill – but keep the panel to a manageable size) and you shouldn’t need to pay them, at least not to start with. Make them feel valued and important, don’t ask too much time of each one, buy them the occasional slap-up thank you meal, and most people will enjoy it enough not to want paying. Then pick their brains every time you need their experience or intuition.