Advice on starting a business

Have you ever thought of ditching your day job and working for yourself? No boss, no commute, no arguing over whose turn it is to make the tea. Running your own business is wonderful, hard work and, most of all, a huge learning curve.

Here's some advice on starting a business, in the form of a handy top ten list.

• Tip 1: Work out why you're doing this What is it you want to get out of running your own company? If it's to make lots of money, you might as well give up now. Money should be a result of having a well-run business, not a goal in itself.
• Tip 2: Figure out your product's USP I use the term 'product' broadly - meaning whatever you sell.

  You have to have a unique selling point (USP), and it can't just be something vague like 'the leading web design company' or 'we listen to our customers'. It needs to be specific and tangible, like 'we are the only web design company to offer our customers an online marketing pack - at no extra charge'.

• Tip 3: Get as much free advice as you can Whether it's from a small business support service (like BusinessLink) or from people who have done it before you, there's a wealth of free information available to you. Discard what you don't need and verify anything you're not sure about with a third party (the internet is a wonderful source of information).
• Tip 4: Do everything well A rather tall order, but something to aim for. If you strive to do everything properly in your business, you'll benefit with loyal customers, hard-working staff and great products or services to sell. A refusal to compromise on quality doesn't necessarily mean you'll have to shell out more on supplies, or give your staff everything that a larger organisation can. It means doing the best you can with what you have, owning up to and apologising for your mistakes, and always looking for improvements.
• Tip 5: Work out what you can and can't do yourself This can be quite hard, and is often down to trial and error. Also, it depends on how much money you want to spend on outsourcing things. It's a lot harder to spend your own money rather than someone else's! On the plus side, outsourcing can save you a lot of time and money in the long run - it's easier to do something correctly at the beginning than unpick mistakes.
• Tip 6: Accept that you're going to be on a steep learning curve In the beginning, you might find you have to change things a lot - how you structure your invoices, how you organise your work, etc. It all takes time and it's never a very exciting task. Accepting this can help minimise frustration.
• Tip 7: Take time to think We all need a quiet place to think now and then. Whether that's in the bath, out for a jog, in the cinema or even on the loo, it's important that you take time out of your day-to-day business so you can think about the bigger picture.
• Tip 8: Be honest Especially with the tax people.
• Tip 9: Focus As your business grows, it can be tempting to forget why you started it and what you're supposed to be doing. Of course, diversifying, adapting and growing are all part and parcel of developing your business. You just need to make sure you do it in a way and at a speed which complements the core of your business, rather than detracts from it.
• Tip 10: Don't let fear stop you Fear of failure is a big reason why people put off their dreams of being an entrepreneur. And the odds aren't good: you may have heard of the often-quoted statistic that 80% of businesses fail in the first five years.

  There are two things you can do to counter this. The first is to arm yourself with as much knowledge as possible - make the effort to keep learning.

  The other thing is to remember that failure is not the end of the world. You can always start again if you need to, and learn from your mistakes. Nobody thinks Richard Branson is a failure, even though he's had over 200 failed businesses!

  As Richard Nixon once said, "Failure is not falling on your face. Failure is not getting up again."

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