Cost of professionals
Unless you are operating from your home, with no premises and no staff, you will need to engage some professional services, and these all come with a cost attached.
As soon as you are dealing with clients and or have an office, you may need advice, expertise and support from a range of people including; –
IT support to establish an IT infrastructure, broadband, printers, networks, cloud apps.
A telecoms provider for your landline and mobile phones
Website developers, to build, maintain the site, and drive traffic to it. They may also offer E – Marketing.
Marketing and advertising advisers. Depending on your market you may need to advertise in local, regional, or national print. Or online advertising may work for you.
Health and safety compliance. This will vary from country to country. In the UK, this includes mandatory electrical and fire safety checks.
Legal advice for company structure, leases, terms and conditions, contracts, employment law.
Accountants will also advise on company structure, complete statutory accounts and give tax advice.
Banks will provide banking facilities, possibly funding, overdraft agreements, credit and debit cards, perhaps payment collection facilities.
Pension provider. Again, this will vary, In the UK at least, this is mandatory if you have any staff.
Insurer. to cover equipment, premises, perhaps professional indemnity, employer’s liability, perhaps income and business continuity, maybe key man insurance.
Energy suppliers. to provide electricity and gas.
Other things you will need to budget for include; –
Local authority taxes
Water rates
Purchase of hardware
Purchase of Software licenses
Fees for Networking organisations such as BNI
Franchising
In the module on franchising we covered the advantages of setting up a franchise. A significant factor is that all of the groundwork has been done for you. The model has been honed, systems and processes are established, leaving you much freer to get on with managing the business as set up in the handbook.
There is a blue print for success, an established formula. The process is established and regulated by the franchisor. All the problems have been addressed and resolved.
Owning a franchise gives you the right to use a successful business model and trademark in return for a fee. The franchisee is granted permission to use an identified business system.
Even if you are not interested in a franchise, I recommend you reread this section, because it covers many of the stages you need to go through to set up a business, so may give you some ideas for your own situation.
In particular, we look at the stages a franchisor has to go through to complete a registration application with Franchise regulators. We talk about the fact that they will be required to provide lots of information about the proposed business. They will need a business plan, audited financial statements, an operating manual.
Reading this may give you an insight into how to organize your business