First Time Starting A New Business - Any Advice / Help Greatly Appreciated

ShadowFax

Hi Guys,

I was made redundant a few months back and Im opening up my own dog grooming business (sole trader) in the next month or so. Can you guys give me any free advice / help on any of the following;

1. Any funding / grants I can qualify for?

2. How I could get numbers for the amount of houses in certain towns, for my business plan. I need fairly accurate numbers of houses in specific town in the surrounding areas, anyone know where I could get this info? I treid the post office....they havent a clue and I tried the county council...they havent a clue either!!

3. Do I need to get a solictor, and where to get a good accountant, what to look for?

4. Any info on advertsing, or anything else you might think of.....


I know Im asking alot, but I really appreciate any info / help I get from anybody. I have sussed out alot of stuff already, but looking for a different opinion on things if possible.

Thanks for your helpl guys,
JR

niceirishfella

Hi Shadow,

RE;

1. Any funding / grants I can qualify for?

Talk to your local leader organisation, and county enterprise board.

2. How I could get numbers for the amount of houses in certain towns, for my business plan. I need fairly accurate numbers of houses in specific town in the surrounding areas, anyone know where I could get this info? I treid the post office....they havent a clue and I tried the county council...they havent a clue either!!

www.cso.ie

3. Do I need to get a solictor, and where to get a good accountant, what to look for?

Solicitor?? Unless you get sued for having sexual relations with a clients poodle, NO.
Re; accountant, you should be able to file your own tax return next year, keep all your reciepts and note all income and expenditure.

4. Any info on advertsing, or anything else you might think of.....

I dunno.

maxwell smart

4. Advertising

With the information you get from the CSO report, you can decide what areas you need to target. You can get a leaflet drop done for a pretty low fee at the moment.
Also, think of the average customer you are aiming at, what is the demographic? Will they have disposable income to spend on the product? If they have pedigree dogs then these are your targets, can you get a list of these owners/breeders from the kennel club?
Advertising only works when the right message is delivered to the right audience.

mickbyrne

Dear ShadowFax,

Things that everyone starting in business should do are:

- Contact your local enterprise centre, they will give you information on all grants etc that they have. They also run excellent courses such as start your own business, bookkeeping, marketing etc all at subsidised rates.

- Go to a BNI meeting and consider joining a chapter. For more info lookup www.bni.ie

- You don't need an accountant and the revenues online system is very easy to use. However as an accountant I would recommend that you engage one as they should save you money in the long run with good sound advice not just on tax and accounting advice but on all aspects of your business. If your business remains very small the cost of an accountant may outweigh the benefit.

Feel free to PM me if you like.

Michael Byrne
www.perspective.ie

madonna123

I would highly recommend you take a start your own business course from the enterprise board. It suits those starting and also those who have started.

Very informative and they break down all the information into relevent sections.
They can be done over 3-5-7 weeks.

ShadowFax

Guys,

Thanks for all the great advice. Its very much appreciated.

All advice appreciated...keep it coming

lecheile

Hi Shadow - best of luck with your new venture. The other thing that I would start thinging about is where you can start promoting you business. If you can pick a ways of letting people know how good you are you will develop a reputation quickly. Some ideas off the top of my head

(1) Offer 'looking after your pet' talk at local school, youth group, community centre
(2) Offer a basic grooming session as a prize for community raffles - many of these prizes dont get taken up - you get the publicity without having to give away your 'product'
(3) Talk to local vets about maybe offering a grooming service for their 'patients' post op - the equivalent of having your car valeted after a service

etc..etc..

And lastly scope out your competition - see where they are advertising, what they are offering, mystery shop them - and then go and make sure you do it all better.:)

Andy_Black

Good luck Shadow.

The easiest people to sell to are the ones who are actively looking for your products or services.


Your aim is to get real market info as quickly and cheaply as possible. If your business idea is going to fail because of lack of demand then you want to FAIL FAST and move onto another idea.

In a nutshell, here's what you need to do:
1) Find out what people are looking for.
2) Find out how to give it to them.
3) Find out if you can make a profit doing it.
4) Create and implement a plan to act upon this knowledge.


My advice:

1) Got to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

2) Make sure the region is set to Ireland.

3) Enter a phrase that someone might use to find your services/products ("dog grooming" for instance).

4) Google will tell you how many searches there were in Ireland that had the words in that phrase on the line, and for similar phrases.

I've just done it and the results for Sep-09 are:

dog grooming 9900
grooming dog 9900
dog groomers 1000
dog grooming courses 1000
dog groomer 720
dog grooming ireland 590
dogs grooming 590
mobile dog grooming 480
dog grooming equipment 260
dog grooming course 210
dog grooming supplies 210
dog grooming in ireland 140
a dog grooming 110
dog grooming jobs 110
grooming a dog 110
dog grooming clippers 91
dog grooming services 91
mobile dog groomers 91
professional dog grooming 91
dog grooming business 73
dog grooming parlour 73
dog grooming salon 73
dog grooming table 73
dog grooming kit 58
grooming for dogs 58
mobile dog groomer 58
pet dog grooming 58
dog groomed 46
dog grooming classes 46
dog grooming prices 46
dog grooming products 46
dog grooming tables 46
dog grooming tips 46
dog grooming training 46
dog grooming vans 46
paws dog grooming 46
dog grooming books 36
dog grooming salons 36
dog grooming school 36
dog grooming scissors 36
dog grooming career 28
dog grooming kits 28
dog grooming service 28
cheap dog grooming 22
dog grooming schools 22
dog grooming suppliers 22
dog grooming tools 22
top dog grooming 22
all breed dog grooming 16
christies dog grooming 16
dog grooming parlours 16
dog grooming shop 16
dog grooming brushes 12
dog grooming tool 12

5) Determine which are the best phrases to indicate people are actually looking for you, and have a reasonable volume of searches (don't get too excited about volumes... remember it's for the whole of Ireland).

6) Put those search phrases into Google yourself and see what pops up. Are there lots of Sponsored Links (on the right hand side)? If there are then people are probably making money from those Ads. If there isn't but there is a high search volume then maybe it's ripe for you to go in there and be the first to have Ads up.

7) Check out your main competition (the ones with Ads in the top positions over a few weeks). Reverse engineer their sales funnels for free by pretending you're a shopper and visit their website and see how they lead you into becoming a customer.

8) If you think there is enough traffic out there and you can compete with (or better) the competition create a simple 4-5 page website such as [YourCounty]DogGrooming.com. The 5 pages would be:
Home | Services | Testimonials (optional) | About Us | Contact Us

A simple one I've done for a client is www.dublin-electrical.com
Nothing fancy, but it works.

9) Create a Google Adwords campaign to run only for people who type in the search phrases you identified within your county or within, say, 75km of your location.

10) Analyse the traffic stats over a month and see how many times your Ads are triggered. Hopefully you'll also be getting a few sales leads too.

11) After a month use this info to help decide whether you have a viable business idea.


I hope that helps!

Feel free to contact me if you have any queries.

Best of luck.
Andy

Grow Your Business With Digital Insight
www.digitalinsight.ie

ShadowFax

Thanks alot guys, some really good info here. Much appreciated.

Theres alot of work involved!