Run a highly successful profitable business

Things have come to a stand still over the christmas period. There is no more work i can do as my avenues of running the business are unavailable during this time, plus most business types are not back until January. I’ve two problems at the moment. One is that my data renewal is payable in January and the other that my crm database is payable in the middle of next month.

My major issues being that if i can’t afford to pay the data renewal, there will be little point paying the crm as the company will be petitioned to be wound up. I can of course relaunch a new company with a new name and bank account, buy in a different database for in the region of £500 and continue with my business activities perhaps using excel to manage contacts until my financial situation improves.

However as it stands my personal credit file is suffering massively due to not paying things like my credit cards and i envisage that unless i take immediate action to setup a new company bank account, i may not be able to without asking someone else to stand in as the director of my company. So i would say without fail, the most important task i have to prioritize is finding my passport and setting up this bank account in the next few days. Almost everything else can wait until the new year, this can not.

Once i have a bank account setup, i’ll be back in action again as even if i pay .016 per record i can afford a nominal amount of contacts to work on and i only really need directors names , phone numbers and addresses to run my business even though it is working in the legal industry and does require accounts, my business partners are quite accomadating and i can always run a questionnaire on my website with the clients to collate any missing information i don’t have.

The other thing i need to maintain at the moment is my mortgage so that i have a base for running my busines. Due to losing my job which also contributed a reasonable amount to pay my mortgage, i’m having to go into arrears this month which means that my next monthly installments will be considerably higher than i anticipated, increasing my overall monthly cashflow expenditure.

Even so, i’m optimistic, despite the current recession and slow job market, that i will be able to make the £1200 a month i need to continue living here. Along with the £490 i am paid for rent, this gives me £1690.00 which covers my basic living expenses. On top of this i then have business expenses, which will be my database cost on pro-forma of around £450 no doubt. My crm cost which will be £42 a month or an upfront £493.50. I am looking about £1000 to resetup or alternatively ask someone else to buy my data under there company so that i can pay them on invoice.

As soon as the new bank account is up and running i can begin trading again under a different company name. I need to make sure the name i use is not similar to my pre-existing name. I have several companies which i can setup bank accounts for which would do the trick. I think it would be wise to get this underway as quickly as possible, before i reach the stage where i’m unable to setup and account due to my credit file suffering from missed payments and defaults. All my creditors i have now sent a proposal to pay, which will hopefully be accepted and improve my financial situation.

I enjoy runing a business, it was good the other day staying in the hotel in london and working on the business from there. Business i my main focus for this year. However if my work in the legal industry suffers, i may change tact and relaunch my marketing company and do some freelance telemarketing at a rate of between £12 – £24 per hour. The going rates vary right upto £48 per hour depending on the skill of the marketing consultant and the product to be sold. I think this time i’ll stick to appointment and lead generation as this is what i’m good at. I do need to get out my backup hardrive and relaunch the website at some point soon.

Today i arrived at the office of my friends house at 13:30pm. We managed to get some training done on data inputting with our new staff member, my friends girlfriend. She worked really well and managed to input four new leads. I got through 7 this evening. They can be quite time consuming, but she has got the hang of it now. We also discussed emailing client documents and went through which parts of the data need to be amended in each email. She now has a script to work from to make outbound calls and we have implemented a new contact management system which is real-time, meaning that she can data input whilst i make phone call out and generate new leads and vice versa.

It’s been a productive day in the sense that everyone knows what their role in the business is. Having two friends working with me for free is absolutely fantastic. I’m starting to feel the pressure lifting from my shoulders. It’s been difficult getting the business to this stage, where last month i took £5750 in revenue. Of course this is low, but for the first real month trading, i think this is good. We have set our target at three times this amount this month. I think this is realistic. However i would be happy with just one contract this month to keep the business ticking over.

In reality though alot more funds are required. I have an outstanding data invoice of £3000+ due and have a crm bill of around £500 to pay. These are low overheads in the scheme of things, but cashflow is tight and i’d rather not have any overheads at all. Regardless, there will always be phone costs, crm costs, data costs and labour costs, but i’ve learnt now not to spend where it is uneccesary.

Having managed to open a business bank account now i’m happy to say my first cheque has been cashed and i’m awaiting the account number and sort code so that i can use this directly with my clients and take cash upfront for my services which i offer. I find this is much more effective than invoice or credit/debit card. Also in the line of work i’m in i like to have my payments in advance due to the nature of the business.

I’ve agreed to arrive at 8-9am tommorow. Although this time frame doesn’t suit my reality, i’m going to try be on time. As i have a week holiday to get my business cashflow going, i’m going to dedicate and commit myself to generating 50 leads this month and converting 5 into sales if possible, at worst i expect atleast 1 contract if i put in this amount of effort. I also plan to enhance my calls by using mailshots daily to support the outbound work i’m doing. We now have a new company address which i will amend to all documents which looks much more prestigious than our old address and is our meeting place for clients.