I recently asked a selection of professionals that I know, from different industries, what is the one item, essential to their business, that they might recommend to those at the very earliest stage of their freelance career or those thinking of starting up in business.

Whether it be a business card, website, smart phone, twitter account or something more abstract I wanted to know the one item they would pick overall.

Below are their responses, which I have categorised into 5 areas:

 People

• a mentor or critical friend – someone not personally related to you or your business that can advise you and offer help, support and encouragement.

• The best thing you have is YOU – no other things are really essential unless you have made contacts / got out and spoken to people / networked / told people what you are doing. People like people. The other ‘tools’ are just add-ons. We get most of our good contracts because the people have met us and know who we are.

• An address book. Not a literal one, but the more people you know who can recommend you for work, the better. Get out there and get networking!

• My advice would be that your networks – formal and informal are one of your best assets. Develop relationships, nurture existing and new contacts, actively involve yourself in online and offline networks.

• a network of contacts is the most important thing to start a business

• A network. For support, collaboration, ideas, leads.

Physical items / getting organised and connected

• A business card

• Brompton fold up bike for getting to meetings and work through the city streets

• Access to a computer of some sort

• If I had to suggest something physical I’d be lost without my smart phone, it has everything, phone, internet, diary, alarm, satnav and now even talks back to me thanks to Suri!

• A laptop with wifi. You can work anywhere and take everything with you when you meet people to tell them about your business.

• Business bank account – keep financial matters separate as much as possible

 Online presence

• A domain name with even just a holding page, and an email address

• a Face Book page

• A tool or platform for starting a conversation and building relationships – such as a blog/or regular event

• A blog – related to what you do professionally and your skills. A good platform to “show off” your skills and talents, the “collaborative nature” of it (i.e. asking other people for blog posts) means that you can build work focussed relationships outside of the confines of your day job, and learn loads of stuff, from what people actually post on there. An example of the interesting opportunities this has led to: being approached by a university academic to be featured (albeit briefly) in an academic publication. Whilst also being approached by other cultural orgs (non-profit and profit) for advice on using digital media.

• A website – absolutely. Doesn’t have to be anything snazzy, a WordPress site would be fine, the content is more important.

• If I had to choose something then maybe some kind of ‘intelligent’ web presence so that people can ‘find’ you! (Not just a Twitter account that tells people what you had for dinner!).

 Self-belief, determination & confidence

• Believe in Yourself

• Everyone will tell you that your idea is impossible and cannot happen, believe in yourself and find a way to do it! Talent attracts talent so as you move forward you will meet fantastic people who will bring a new perspective to the project!

• The ability to say ‘hello’ in a room full of strangers.

• There’s also that notion that if you can talk to one person, you can talk to two hundred – and once you’ve ‘broken the back’ as it were, you can work up to speaking confidently in front of large groups of people in addition those essential one-to-one conversations. Useful once the work load increases!

Ideas

• A notebook full of ideas

• An ideas board – virtual or physical but somewhere to manifest and make visible your ideas – once they are somewhere they can be developed.

• My recommended essential isn’t a thing like a business card or website, it’s actually: a good business idea. Can you say what your business is succinctly? – is it a product or a service or both. Why is it a good business idea and is there a demand for it- if not can you create the demand. Easy!!

Let us know in the comments below if you would like to add any further recommendations and also if you have any experiences to share of how these items work alongside your business activities.

• The system which was demonstrated to us during our CRM workshop last week was In Touch. A web-based system which is very user friendly and simple system to understand, with easy screens for adding new contacts, tracking contact history and events, product information, sales figures, marketing campaigns and report building. This system is free in part and £20 per month for use of the newsletter section
• There are several systems developed by Sage including Act! and Sage CRM which can be installed or used as a web-based option. There is a guide on how to choose a CRM system which can be downloaded from their website as well as numerous demos of the various features
• Another web-based option is Absolute Busy. There is a demo version available to browse
• For MAC Users an option is Daylight by Market Circle
• Salesforce looks to be aimed at much larger organisations
• vTiger is a free, open-source option
• Capsule is another online option

If you stumble across any more good ones then let us know.

This interesting article from the latest Creative Choices newsletter gives a useful 10 point list of ideas for focusing your energies and achieving more from your career…

Karin

...which way next??

Hailed as ‘without doubt the biggest step that you will take on your journey towards self employment‘, I recently booked myself onto a Thursday evening Business Awareness seminar held at the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce. The seminar programmed by the BCT Business Venture Scheme is ‘a chance to hear what the experts in business start-up have to say‘.

The first thing that John Kilcoyne, our expert for the evening, asked all of us to do was briefly introduce ourselves to the group one by one and say what our business idea was. There was a very broad range of ideas from personal fitness trainer to wig maker, and cake making to selling handmade vases from recycled materials.

John revelled in telling us that none of the ideas were unique enough to not have been used as the basis for a business before. Where we were all heading to was an already crowded marketplace. If we were going to carve a niche for ourselves we would need to swot up on the concept of wealth creation, familiar to all entrepreneurs.

There was a lot to ponder and some of John’s anecdotes were very thought provoking (such as the experiences of Anita Roddick when she set up The Body Shop) and kept me going for the 3 hour seminar after a long day at work.

I got home from the seminar and wrote myself a quick action plan checklist:

1. Call the tax office to register self – employed
2. Set up a transactions records system for income and expenditure plus somewhere to store receipts. (Records of transactions need to be stored, saved, kept for 5 years for tax purposes. Note: I’ll need a secure Ikea style storage solution!)
3. Start preparing a business plan, cash flow forecast, and marketing strategy – including a timeline with dates allocated to activity. There are templates for these online including loads of useful stuff at www.percyemmett.com for instance.
4. Take advantage of one to one business advice sessions (i.e appointment with Marion Taggart at the exchange)
5. Get business cards

Feel free to share your top tips for setting up in business in the comments below. I’d also be interested to hear about obstacles others are facing and things to avoid/watch out for…

Lauren

You’re invited to join us between 12 and 2pm on Thursday 1st October 2009 for a chance to meet David Parrish!

David has written a book called T-Shirts and Suits (available to download from his website) and is a business advisor working with creative businesses and agencies that support them. He helps his clients by drawing on his own experience as a creative entrepreneur combined with his knowledge as a specialist professional advisor, trainer, speaker and writer.

Please let us know if you plan to join us.

Tony