Michael J Morris - Starting a Successful Business: Your Guide to Setting Up Your Dream Start-Up, Controlling Its Finances and Managing Its Operations

MICHAEL J MORRIS

Starting a Successful Business

Your guide to setting up your dream start-up, controlling its finances and managing its operations

8TH EDITION

Publishers note

Every possible effort has been made to ensure that the information contained in this book is accurate at the time of going to press, and the publishers and author cannot accept responsibility for any errors or omissions, however caused. No responsibility for loss or damage occasioned to any person acting, or refraining from action, as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by the editor, the publisher or the author.

First published by Kogan Page in 1985

Second edition 1989

Third edition 1996

Fourth edition 2001

Fifth edition 2005

Sixth edition 2008

Seventh edition 2011

Eighth edition 2017

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licences issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned addresses:

120 Pentonville Road

London N1 9JN

United Kingdom

www.koganpage.com

1518 Walnut Street, Suite 1100

Philadelphia PA 19102

USA

4737/23 Ansari Road

Daryaganj

New Delhi 110002

India

Michael Morris, 1985, 1989, 1996, 2001, 2005, 2008, 2011, 2017

The right of Michael Morris to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN 978 0 7494 8086 8

E-ISBN 978 0 7494 8087 5

Typeset by Integra Software Services, Pondicherry

Print production managed by Jellyfish

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Many people have made helpful introductions, others have kindly given their expertise and time to correcting my errors and still more have contributed their first-person accounts of the perils navigated in establishing their own businesses. I hope I have remembered you all in the list below; if not, I apologise. They are:

Melloney Cambell, Ontario, Canada; Barbara Chapman, New Zealand; Oscar Chang, Taiwan; Andrew Chiski, Canada; Rivers Corbett, New Brunswick, Canada; Rachelle Desorcy, Canada; Paula Fernandes, Baltimore, Maryland, USA; Gary Francis, Australia; Jarrod Goldin, Canada; Shanny Hill, Canada; Virginia Kristensen, England; Elliot Leung, Hong Kong; Joanna Lundt, Japan; Scott Mallory, Rhode Island, USA; Karl Martin, Toronto, Canada; Eleanor Morris, England; Tim Morris, Sydney, Australia; David Mulholland, FCO Tokyo; Ken Ng, Malaysia; Nutch Nazeer, Switzerland; Angela Nibbs; Eunice Nyala, Kenya; Pat OBrien, Republic of Ireland; Jeremy Ouvry, England; Radek Pallach, Poland; Leo Panousakis FCO Athens; Stuart Pohler, England; Mohammad Qayyum, England; Nate Schlachter, Portland, Oregon, USA; Daisuke Shigematsu, Tokyo, Japan; Duncan Smith, star international chef; Santosh Thota, Hyderabad, India; Leonardo Valente, Argentina; Danny Wurr, Switzerland.

In addition I should like to thank OakNorth Bank Ltd for permission to reproduce one of their advertisements.

Finally, I am grateful to my infinitely patient wife, Frances, for her quiet and unstinting support.

Any errors or omissions are, of course, nothing to do with the people mentioned above but are entirely my responsibility.

Unlike other texts, this is really three books in one:

• a conventional textbook, telling you the important things you need to know and do before starting in business;
• a practical manual on how to set up and run a business;
• The PLG Programme (Prepare, Launch, Grow).

The PLG Programme helps you to create your plan for investigating the ins and outs of your new business, getting it up and running and, once it is established, making it grow.

In this revised and fully updated eighth edition, fourteen case-studies from around the world feature thumbnail sketches of how recently formed businesses set themselves up. Furthermore, people deeply involved in their foundation offer advice they wish they had been given when they were thinking of setting up. A further case-study is from an experienced South African businessman with much mature advice to share. In addition, there is a new summary of the principles of Islamic banking.

This new material is invaluable advice from people further down the road than the readers of this book, but not so far down as to be out of sight. It is from the horses mouth advice that is simply not available from any other source.

Starting a Successful Business is already the classic book of its kind. For over 30 years it has helped a whole generation of entrepreneurs to get going with maximum effectiveness. This new edition brings it all up to date and adds extra features.

Good luck!

Michael Morris

THIS CHAPTER COVERS

• being a business owner-manager;
• family and social life;
• personality, experience and success;
• family finances;
• types of business;
• IT.

Every successful business is powered by a big idea even if its only a small firm. It comes before the product, the market, the premises, the staff, the money or anything else. (Those things are vitally important, of course, and we come to them later in great detail, but it helps a lot if you first develop a big idea to drive your company.)

Consider a religious or political movement; the whole point of a religion or a political party is that it puts forward a big idea, in these cases a picture of future bliss, either in an afterlife or here on earth. The human need to believe in some meaning beyond mundane daily existence makes such ideas the most potent commodity known to man. They are responsible for all the political and social revolutions that have ever taken place, for the way that we live our lives and for the way we bring up our children.

Tap into the strength of the big idea, and you harness a surge of power that can carry a business on to worldwide recognition. Consider what I see as the big ideas behind these great businesses:

• John Lewis Partnership: if the staff own and run the company, they really care;
• Apple: powerful IT made relevant and easy, presented in beautiful forms;
• Mercedes-Benz: utmost performance and reliability enjoyed amidst comfort.

Two of these firms started some generations ago, but in one, a member of the original founding team ran it until recently what drives them, and drives their public appeal, is not the product itself, but the big idea behind it.