Holden Associates – Accountants & Business Advisers Blog

Q: I own and operate a custom glass terrarium company that designs enclosures for reptiles, amphibians and insects.
Currently, I manufacture between 100-150 units per month but would like to boost that number to 100-150 per week. At the moment, all my free time is dedicated to this business as I have not had enough sales to drop my day job.

The above is not my question, it is taken from Dane Carlson’s Business Opportunities Weblog.

Dane lives in Central California, and after becoming disillusioned with the ‘crap’ business opportunities ‘bizops’ he found on the web he decided to launch his own site, but with a difference, he applies a code of ethics to it:

I strive to only list quality businesses opportunities. I will not knowingly promote junk bizops, and will actively take a stand against them.

However, I digress, back to his question and answer, it always strikes me how business the world over is the same, the problems UK entrepreneurs have are no different to those of their US counterpart, strangely enough I do find comfort in this!

The advise offered so far is that from Lois Geller who quite rightly says to take a deep breath and take note that marketing can also kill a business as much as grow it.

The problem is simple, the business owner may have the best product known to man, but if no one knows about it then what’s the point. This is a common theme the world over. Lois goes on to say that a business plan is needed, and to include details of how many terrarium’s can be made in a year without a compromise on quality.

All good advise from Lois, but I would like to jump in with a bit more, firstly, by running this business in his/her spare time the business owner will never make a success of it, and at some point you have to make that bold (and some may say reckless) decision to give up the security blanket and go for it. Now this is not easy, if you have a house, mortgage, family etc this can be the biggest risk you have ever asked your family to support you in, do not take this step lightly.

If you are convinced it will work, go see an adviser, sit with them and do the ‘maths’, what are the numbers, how much will you make, what is your break even point etc.

Then, consider your options/choices, do you have to make the terrarium yourself, can it be make cheaper, faster and maybe just a well by someone else? Why do I say this, simple, if you can have someone else make the product, then you can also use a marketing company to get ‘hot’ leads for you to visit and sign up the orders while someone else is manufacturing, otherwise how will you split your time between manufacturing and selling? It is worth remembering, no sales person in the world will ever sell your product with your passion or knowledge!

Many in business try to be all things to all men, it can not be done, well not with any great degree of success anyway.

Look at what you want from this business, look at how it would run best, do you want to actually be the person making the product, which essentially means you don’t have a business you have a job, or do you want to actually run a business, only once you know the answer to this can you really start to plan to move forward.

Like always, I would recommend professional advise every step of the way, best of luck.