Starting a small business
Amazing Garden – courtesy of gardeninfluence.com
“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Starting a small business
Starting a small business has much in common with starting a garden.
Window Box Garden – courtesy of deborahsilver.com
A garden can be as small as a window box of herbs or colourful flowers, or acres of magnificence such as featured in some of the famous gardens of the world. Louis IV for example. Many acres of magnificent gardens, breathtaking in scope and features, a delight to experience and home to so much life and enterprise.
Gardens of the Palace of Versailles, in France. This was NO ACCIDENT! Courtesy of rothseye.org
However, these gardens both have much in common with starting a small business.
Each began with an idea, an inspiration. Someone, at some time, had to have the idea and inspiration to create either the small business, or the garden. Without that initial inspiration, neither is possible.
What an idea! – image from shopigniter.com
“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.” ― Gloria Steinem
In some cases, some people just bought seeds and scattered them. Some people just opened the doors on a business and hoped for the best. Both these strategies grow weeds, and soon fail.
WEEDS! Image from hillconsulting.com
Starting a small business successfully requires the same strategy as starting a garden; you need a plan to work to. The best gardens, like the most successful small businesses, saw life through a very clear plan.
Not every garden was planned initially to look like the final completed picture, just as small businesses grow and evolve into their ultimate operation. Over time, the conditions and circumstances of the garden change, just as the small business environment you work in changes. Both must evolve, adapt and change with the times, so they can not only survive, but thrive!
Gardens are living, breathing organisms, teeming with life and activity. So are the most successful small business. Let’s look at what they have in common.
The initial plan is crucial.
Gardens have a creator. Someone had to start them off, create the idea and concept, mark out the seedbeds and plant the first seed. Someone also had to start the business, have the idea and stock the shelves.
Gardens need the right environment and location, soils and climate. With businesses, you must be where you can make sales and service your clients. Location is everything, whether a home based internet business, a corner store or a major retail outlet or service centre. Your location is just as critical because in the wrong location, all you get for either is a surfeit of weeds.
The climate? The business climate is just as important as the temperature and rainfall expectations for your plants. Some like it hot, others will die there – get it right. The business climate must be right for the business you are operating in that environment. Snowboards don’t sell well on the beachfront!
Choice of soils – just like the foundations of the business – crucial. Are your soils shallow and stony, or rich and deep? What is the foundation of your business? The marketability of your concept and the strategy for implementing it. Fundamentals for each enterprise.
Gardens need supplies of nutrients and water as their life flow. Fertiliser, water at the right time and volume, pruning, harvesting and weeding. Just as businesses do. Marketing, promotions, advertising, management strategy and ongoing training for everyone. Staff numbers and training need to be managed for efficient operation also.
Starting a small business is so much like gardening. You even need bees! Gardens need bees to pollinate flowers, to ensure the survival of the plants in the garden season after season. In starting a small business, you need to ensure you have access to bees also – both worker bees for your internal team and customer bees to ensure that the fruits of your labours multiply as profits, to ensure you are back next season also.
Busy little bees! – Image from care2.com
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” ― Abraham Lincoln
There is so much in common with both starting a small business and starting a garden, and knowing this we can plan for success in both, with the crossover of common sense and knowledge required for either enterprise.
Back to the beginning. Neither your garden, nor your business idea have a snowball’s chance in hell of success without their creator knowing and understanding what they are starting, and have a plan for its success. Whether you create your own plan, or get a landscape gardener or an accountant to do it for you, there must be a plan. The great benefit of creating it yourself when starting a small business is that you will get much closer to what you want, what you dreamed of and what you are passionate about.
The challenge is filling in the technical bits, to make sure your plan is complete.
Small business creation and planning is now very easy.
The Business Profits Program provides all the tools you need for starting a small business plan, and much more. It takes your original idea, or prompts you to create one if necessary, locates your resources, skills and capital, then shows you how to combine them into a business model. It asks you how you will define your business, identify your target market, finance your enterprise, produce goods or services, market them to the intended clients and launch your business with a degree of success that even your accountant would be happy to achieve.
However, it doesn’t help with planning a garden. Unless you want to make a business out of your garden. Then it could become the most valuable tool in your garden!
It provides the foundations for starting and operating a business, successfully. Take a look – you’ll be glad you did!
If you know some other folks who are either in business or thinking of starting one, please send this article to them. They will thank you, I’m sure.
Til next time, fair winds and full sails.
Ray Jamieson
“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” ― Warren Buffett
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