Entrepreneurship made easy in five simple steps

Getting into business is seen by many as a very complex and complicated process.

Of course it can be – but only if you make it so. On the other hand Steve Sammartino, writing about it at over at Start Up Blog, chooses to make it a very simple five step process.

His five steps are:

First step – Idea: easiest bit.

Second step – Plan: Not as important as you think. A single page summary will suffice, at least until we get to revenue.

Third step – Funding: Better to use your own money. If you can’t fund it go back to first step and get a new idea.

Fourth step – Build it: This will be harder than you thought. Think QDOS. Quick & dirty operating system. Just get a product out there. You can improve it later.

Fifth Step – Sell it: This is the really hard part. Getting people to pay for your product or service. In an economy and where the latest buzz word is ‘free’ this is where you can see if you’ve got what it takes. If you can’t sell, get a job in a nice safe office. Selling is the vital final step for all entrepreneurs.

Simple or what?

Easy, of course, is another issue entirely!

Business blogging from IBW 1

Over on www.irishbusinesswomen.com, the virtual network of and for Irish business women, they have started a thread where members of that particular network, which recently celebrated the arrival of it’s 3,000 member, can post details of their blogs.

Although most of the blogs involved are business related (more or less) it is amazing to see the great variety of themes and topics addressed, reflecting, I suppose, both the great diversity of businesses that are out there, and also the diversity of the IBW community itself. Over the coming weeks I intend to mention some of them here.

Darina Loakman, aka busywahm on IBW, blogs generally about working from home and stuff like that! Although she might be too modest to say so herself she is THE Irish expert on working from home, so much so that much of what she does is also taken up by key players in the field, particularly in the UK and the US.

If you want a blog about the nitty-gritty, and sometimes not so nitty-gritty, issues relating to being self-employed and running a small business, ie tax, vat, cashflow, profit & loss, filing returns, managing accounts etc. then that of Aileen Hannan, aka AileenH on IBW, the person behind the sortmybooks softwate package, is the one for you. A nice feature of this blog is that from time to time it includes tools that can help manage some key financial management task.

Organic food, organic and environmentally friendly issues, recipes and product reviews are the subjects most usually covered in the blog of Amanda Webb, aka Hamperlady on IBW. Amanda’s aim for the blog is to help promote an organic and eco friendly lifestyle, and I don’t know anyone who does it better. We have never had our own blog awards on IBW, but, if we ever do, I expect that, with a name like organicyum-yum Amanda would win the best-name category by a country mile. She would probably win the best business name category too – what sounds better than feelgood hampers?