BSF believes passionately that start-ups and entrepreneurs are the future of any country. They drive innovation, employ millions of people and have the guts to lay everything on the line.
However, it is no accident that some businesses succeed and others fail. Successful entrepreneurs don't just have the drive and will to succeed, they also have something else. Building on the survival tactics they have the critical skills, the action plan to battle each of the four stages of development, and the right team and partners around them. They make it look easy because they know the rules.
It's heartbreaking how many entrepreneurs invest so much time, effort, and money on promising start-ups that ultimately fail. In most instances they simply did not ask for help or they received advice from individuals or businesses that did not know what they were talking about. All they needed was a guiding hand from someone who knew the rules and who had successfully worked through each stage of the business' development before.
BSF aims to give entrepreneurs the professional help they deserve, cutting through the nonsense to provide hands on practical help. We can tell you what to do today, tomorrow, next week and next month to ensure you get to the finish line.
We have deliberately tailored our assistance to take account of each client's time and budget constraints and stage of development. This means you can pick the approach which suits your needs:
Mentoring: A good business idea alone is not enough. To succeed, most entrepreneurs need a guiding hand from someone who knows the rules of the game and who has done it all before. Mentoring is well suited for those who are time and / or budget constrained and looking for that periodic boost and wisdom to avoid those pitfalls. Learn more
Training: Our Training Programs provide entrepreneurs with both the critical skills that make the difference between success and failure and also provide a clear action plan setting out exactly what needs to be done tomorrow, next week, and next month. Interactive, practical and tailored to each stage of development. Learn more
Partnering: Bringing the right partner into a business can often help to grow the business faster with less risk, increasing profits, and helping to ensure that the business will ultimately be sold. Where the match is right, BSF can be that partner. We bring our experience and contacts to help lead the start-up. Not only do we add direction but also roll up our sleeves and get into the trenches. Learn more
People: Successful entrepreneurs always have a winning team with them at every stage of development. BSF can help you build the right team at the right cost at the right time. Learn more
Businesses have four stages of development. Each is a critical building block and a time of great change. It is where the entrepreneur must take complete control and lead his team. This is make or break time. Win and the prize is yours. Falter and be consigned to the scrap heap of start-ups.
Launch. At the heart of every successful business is a solid commercial idea. Then you need to plan your launch. Launch is all about survival. Survival is all about sales, anything else is window dressing.
Funding. Either at launch or not long after, most start-ups requires funding. You need to understand what funds you need and how to deploy them. You need to secure the funds on terms that allow you the freedom to grow through the inevitable twists and turns that your business will take.
Scale. Once through survival you need to grow and grow fast. But as you grow you also need to ensure profits grow. This is a critical time. A time to build customer loyalty, sure up repeat sales, sign long term contracts and finalise joint venture opportunities. Establish a powerful brand.
Sell. Now the prize that surprisingly few start-ups achieve: a sale. Follow the rules to prepare yourself for sale then manage a sales process that leads to a biding war for your business. Then negotiate a deal that maximises your payout and freedom.
All entrepreneurs who have succeeded understand the basic survival tactics. BSF have put these together from working with great entrepreneurs like Sir Richard Branson at Virgin to being part of the team at the cutting edge of new start ups. It is also true that you need to interpret these rules for your business and build on them to get through the four stages of business development.
If your start up is not going to add to the failure percentages, you should follow them!
Your first port of call is your idea. It doesn't have to be unique, it does have to be commercial.
Poor, non-commercial ideas will fail however well you execute them. So your first job is to make sure your idea is bullet proof.
Make sure you think through your idea carefully and always be on the look out for ways to improve it.
We have developed a framework for reviewing business ideas. One of the most important rules is being able to answer the question 'why will people find this useful?'
You don't have the time or money to perfect products or marketing pitches. Besides, how will you know if something is perfect unless you try it out on real customers?
You must get your offer as good as you can as quickly as you can, then test the product in a live sales environment. Refine and adapt it based on the feedback you get, then try again.
Once you feel confident that you have something that will work, do it! Pull the trigger and spend as much money as you have available to generate sales.
Make sure you only spend your money on the front end of your business, i.e. those things that get people through the door and achieve sales.
This includes your product and any sales and marketing initiatives such as advertising, brochures and press. At this stage, sales and customers come before everything else.
Don't waste money on things you don't (and may never) need at the back end of the business like computer systems, elaborate till systems or financial packages. Only spend money on these when customers are being impacted negatively.
Successful entrepreneurs like to pretend that their success is down to personal brilliance and an innate ability to see the future. It isn't.
Successful entrepreneurs devote a large amount of time to hard thinking and careful preparation. You must too.
When you're starting out, all you have is an idea but you have to open doors and convince people to do things for you.
You will only be able to achieve this if you have credibility. People must believe that you can do what you are promising, otherwise you are just wasting their time and money.
One of the things that we leaned was that positive PR is one of the most effective ways to build credibility quickly. And the great thing is - it's free.
Learn a few simple tactics and you will be reading about your business in the papers in no time.
A start-up is simply a series of deals. Deals with suppliers, employees and partners. If you can't negotiate, you will fail. So you'd better learn fast!
Once again, preparation is critical: what do you want? What do they want? And what is the point at which you should walk away? Throw in some tactics and you should come out with what you want.
Most businesses will need some form of funding but that doesn't mean you should simply take the first offer of cash that comes your way.
To succeed, you must to secure the right level of funding at the best possible price whilst retaining the necessary flexibility a start-up requires.
It might sound like a cliché, but this must be your mantra if your start-up is to succeed.
It doesn't matter how much profit your accounts say you have made, unless you have cash in the bank, you cannot pay your suppliers and employees.
You need to keep looking for ways to preserve the little cash you have to achieve incremental sales, to get paid faster and to be able to pay yourself later.
Don't waste cash attempting to build a brand from day one. Instead, you must focus on driving sales and meeting customers' expectations. If your start-up delivers on its promise in the early years, the brand will take care of itself.
Develop a brand on a shoestring - business name, website, PowerPoint presentation and some business cards. These things will enable you to hoover up the goodwill you create and ultimately develop a valuable brand that costs you almost nothing in the early days.
There comes a time when you are no longer needed - your time to move on! The good news is that this is your time to cash in.
The trick is to recognise when this time has come, remove your self elegantly and sell the business. Many businesses either fail or severely reduce their value because the business founder can't let go.
Only one in five start-ups survives to see their fifth year and only a small percentage of those ever get sold.
At BSF we find those statistics truly shocking. It is heartbreaking to think that so many entrepreneurs invest so much time and effort on promising start-ups that ultimately fail.
In most instances, the entrepreneurs behind these failed businesses could not find the right help or they received advice from individuals or consultants that did not know what they were talking about. A good business idea alone is not enough. What they needed to succeed was a guiding hand from someone who knew the rules of the game and who had successfully worked through each stage of a business' development before.
BSF can provide you with the help you need to turn a good idea into a thriving, profitable business by becoming your mentor. To us this doesn't mean providing motivation. We are confident that you are highly motivated and keen for success. Rather, we will meet with you regularly to identify and resolve the key challenges that your start-up is facing, mapping out a clear path to success, and providing very clear guidance on what to do and what not to do at every stage of your business' development.
Designed for those who need short, sharp, cutting-edge advice at regular intervals where time and/or budgets are at a premium.
Be warned, our assessments can sometimes be brutally frank. We want you to succeed and won't sugar-coat our recommendations. You must also be fully prepared for your sessions, as we will be.
We will also introduce you to our network of world leading suppliers to ensure that you have access to the right resources and skills when you need them, all at the best possible price.
Contact us now to find out how our mentoring program can help you avoid the pitfalls and keep on track.
It is not by chance that successful entrepreneurs prosper. They have the critical skills that make the difference between success and failure. They are able to identify what needs to be done, when and how to do it. They combine a concrete plan with the skills to ensure they can implement it. It is how they lead their troops.
Building on the basic ten survival tactics our training programs combine classic teaching with the Harvard Business School "Case Study" approach to provide you with the cutting edge skills you need. You will leave with a clear action plan setting out exactly what you need to tomorrow, next week, and next month.
Key topics we address in our Start-Up Training Programs include:
- Growing Smart: what to do (and what not to do). Build your next six month survival action plan. Ensure your idea is bulletproof, build instant credibility, understand the role of PR and brands, what to spend cash on and what not to, get help on a shoestring budget and how to build a marketing program that generates repeat sales and gets you over the precarious first stages of start-up life.
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Securing funding without being eaten alive. Learn how to calculate the funds you need to grow and where to use them to best effect. Understand the intimate motivations and concerns of funders. Use that knowledge to craft a proposal and develop the tools to get the funds you need on the best possible terms. Once you are ready for funding, we will introduce you to our funding partners.
- Negotiation: the science and art. A start-up is nothing but a series of deals. If you can't negotiate, your start-up will fail. Learn how to scientifically prepare for a negotiation, the powerful tactics at your disposal, and (critically) when to use them. Understand when to hold your nerve, and not rush into impulsive decisions that could destroy your start-up. Role-play real life case studies learning how to use negotiation as an everyday skill.
- Finances: lead from the front. Learn how to use simple practical financial information and tools to make the right decision under pressure, identify problem areas before they spiral out of control, and find and use the right information to capitalise on opportunities. We expose the myth of financial statements, how to understand them and how to use them as a tool.
- Branding and PR as a weapon. Learn how to use your brand and PR as a weapon. Build credibility and punch above your weight through working the system known as PR. Ensure you are written about in the way you want. Understand how to build a brand "on a shoestring" during survival, then develop it to smooth your path to sale. Learn this from Virgin case studies and how to apply to your start-up.
Click here and tell us what stage of development you are at and we will send you the agenda for the training program that we think is right for you and your business.
Many entrepreneurs find that bringing the right partner into their business can help them to grow their business faster with less risk, increasing profits, and helping to ensure that their business will ultimately be sold. Where the match is right, BSF will agree to be that partner.
We bring our experience and contacts to help lead the start-up. Not only do we add direction but also roll up our sleeves and get into the trenches. We will work in a serviced office bulldozing through problems in the morning, then suit-up in the afternoon to take on the latest city hotshot to make sure that the business is not fleeced while getting funding or negotiating a sale.
We bring with us the knowledge and experience to avoid the common pitfalls and we understand which deals to chase and close.
Our contacts and suppliers come from all the over the world and are hand-picked for their ability to work with start-ups at start-up rates These guys have done it for us before and range from the mundane Accounting and Legal to the more exciting Branding, Marketing, PR, and Digital Agencies.
We believe strongly in letting our results speak for themselves so we are always happy to discuss structuring deals with upside based on performance.
Contact us if partnering with BSF is the way to turbo charge your business.
Successful entrepreneurs always have a winning team with them at every stage of development.
BSF can help you build your own winning team, by offering a complete solution:
- Getting the right management structure: We will work with you so you understand what people you need, in what roles, and at which stage of development.
- Skills yes, but also people that can thrive in the rough and tumble of the start-up environment.
- Provide and manage HR and Payroll systems and procedures. Let us take a load off your mind so you can be freed to lead and grow your business.
Contact us now to ensure you have the best team for your stage of development.