Page 38 - 25148.pdf

26 • The 100 Greatest Ideas for Building the Business of Your Dreams

trouble when sales are poor or when you are starting up. Investment now will keep
those running costs to a minimum.

Competitively you must play at least a draw in this area. If they can produce
drawings on a large-scale flat bed plotter, then so must you. Take into consideration:

• How will you buy it?
• How long will it last (e.g. £1000 spent today on computers will almost cer-

tainly require another £1000 in a year to eighteen months)?
• What are the running costs?
• Will you need training expenses to be able to make use of it?

Finish this exercise and you have done the difficult part of the planning process.
Now we have to convert these ideas and decisions into financial matrices and
cashflows.

Idea 16 - Take the banking forms seriously

Consultants and bank managers have at least one thing in common. Almost all
businesspeople tell them that their particular business is different and that they must
not use the same parameters to judge their business as they do for others. Consult-
ants and bank mangers therefore spend a lot of time convincing them that whilst to
a certain extent that is true - all businesses do have different detailed characteristics
- nevertheless no business can ignore the universal issues that any profit-making
company has to take into account. No matter how difficult it is in, for example, a
service company to calculate and monitor gross margin, the managers of the busi-
ness must do it. Another truth that people sometimes plead to be different in their
environments is the rule that everything in business is negotiable. No one - lawyer,
accountant, financial adviser or supplier of anything - works in a vacuum, therefore
everything is negotiable.