Methods to start a new business: ]Do what you love to do Businesses don't just happen. They are made.

Whether you plan to profit by twisting balloons into smile-generating shapes or orchestrating the growth of multimillion dollar, multinational companies, your success relies on what you bring to the business. If you love what you do, your passion for the business will drive you to be knowledgeable, creative and persistent. On the other hand, if your feeling for what you do is lukewarm, your success will be, too. Turn old standbys into new products Truly new concepts are few and far between. Most new products or new business ideas are simply spin-offs of old ones. Inline skates is one good example. Essentially, they are ice skates on wheels. Or, depending on your point of view, streamlined roller-skates. Other business ideas are nothing more than new ways of marketing mundane products. Florists were around as relatively small, local stores for years --but then Jim McCann, who started with a single retail shop in 1976, acquired the phone number 1-800-Flowers and developed a network of florists. The company saw an opportunity to grow online, and started selling through the early commercial online services, and then the Internet. You may not have the money, management ability, contacts or desire to launch a major new product like inline skates or the energy or desire to turn your single store location into a multimillion-dollar sales organization. But you don't have to launch anything that large to start a business or introduce a new product. You need to think about what people want to buy and how they would like to buy it. Look for mundane money-makers You don't need to create exciting new products or services to go into business, either. Millions of business owners profit by selling routine and sometimes unglamorous services such as window washing, car repair, sandwich making, building maintenance, house cleaning and plumbing. The key to making money with the mundane is to sell something your customers can't do, don't want to do, don't have the time to do, or can't get done well elsewhere. Tip: one way to making really big money with mundane services is to develop a unique and reproducible method for marketing and delivering the service and then open up multiple offices, or franchise the concept. If you plan to franchise your idea or sell it as a business opportunity, retain an attorney early on who is familiar with franchise law and can help you steer clear of the pitfalls.

Turn that hobby into cash Do people ooh and ah at your handiwork? Whether you are a whiz at creating floral arrangements or at writing software, look for ways to turn your hobby into a business. You might want to manufacture your items in quantity, license them to other manufacturers, sell them by mail order, at flea markets or on consignment, or open your own retail outlet selling supplies to others with similar interests. Ask the reference librarian at your public library to help you find trade magazines pertaining to your hobby, and read those to generate new business ideas. Reach out and teach someone Do you have a skill others want to acquire? Do you have a knack for explaining things so others can understand them? If so, don't give your expertise away. Start charging for it! For instance, if you are a karate expert, you might teach at a karate school or open your own karate school. If you're a talented artist, you could teach art at home or in a school. Tip:: Make extra money selling books, supplies, or other items your students will need to buy to complete the course. Sell training seminars to corporate America Don't limit yourself to training individuals or private groups of people. Look for ways to polish up your act and cash in on the $50 billion corporate training market. What kind of training do corporations buy? Everything from sales, management and computer training courses to self-defense courses. To locate training opportunities, contact the human resources department and ask to speak to the person in charge of training programs. Introduce yourself to that person and make an appointment to discuss the company's needs and your ability to fill them. If you get the assignment, be sure to have handouts for the class so they know how to reach you for more intensive training on their own. Mass produce your advice Selling your product or service one-on-one limits the amount of money you can earn to the number of people you can personally see. To increase your profits without significantly increasing your work, consider turning your expertise into booklets, books, computer programs, MP3s and DVDs that you can market in quantity.

You can use your computer to produce the printed matter and CDs, DVDs, and MP3s. You can outsource editing and production to professionals if you don't have those skills yourself. When sales volume grows, you may also want to outsource production and fulfillment. Be an industry consultant This is another great way to increase your bank account. If you can solve business problems (such as how to bring waste water into compliance with EPA regulations) or answer important business questions (what steps should be taken to increase market share in a target market or how to manage inventory more efficiently) you can earn substantial hourly fees selling your advice to corporations. Downsized corporations can be a good source of consulting business since they may no longer have experts they need on staff. Turn a former employer into a valuable source of new business Just because you leave a company doesn't mean it doesn't need your services. Companies often retain the services of former workers on a freelance or consulting basis. That way they get the benefit of trained personnel without having to pay payroll taxes and benefits. If you leave a company on good terms, ask about contract or freelance opportunities. Don't stop with contacts who work with the former employer, either. Call your former employer's suppliers and customers and tell them about your capabilities. Call their competitors, too. Stress your industry knowledge, contacts and skills. You may soon find that the income you earn exceeds what you made as an employee. Modify one of your existing products Sometimes all it takes to create a "new" product is a slight change in an existing product. Harrison-Hoge Industries is a mail order company in Port Jefferson, NY, that sells fishing lures, inflatable boats and other outdoor gear. To expand their line, the company added a widebrimmed, canvas hat called the Campesino to its catalog. The hat was a big success, but the owners of the company thought there might be more they could do with it. And there was. They discovered they could adapt the hat to sell in specialized markets just by changing the hat band. As a result, they began to supply the Museum of Natural History and the Guggenheim Museum (both in New York City) with hats. Each museum's hat has its own distinctive hat band. Skip the start-up headaches: purchase an existing business When you start a business from scratch you have to jump through hoops to find and train employees, build up a customer base and find suppliers. But when you buy an existing business much of this infrastructure will already be in place. Don Pelham bough of MasterCare Cleaning Services, in Seattle, WA, from another businessman. He explains the advantage of purchasing a business this way: "In a start-up you have to pound

the pavement while you wait for your ads to appear in the phone books and your website to show up in Google. But when you purchase a business, the phone rings from day one. Ads are in place and working. Schedules are already made. When I took over the cleaning service, there were about 12 jobs already scheduled, 3 or 4 a week, and the phone was ringing a new job every 2 or 3 days. ". Buy a franchise If you want to start a business but don't want to develop your own products, or methods of doing business, franchising could be your ticket to business ownership. That's because when you buy a franchise, what you get is essentially a build-your-own-business kit. Depending on the amount of money you invest and the franchise opportunity you choose, you get rights to use the franchise name, distribute a branded product or service, and perhaps use the franchise's methods of operations. Customer leads, help locating your business and other services may be part of your package, too. The benefit of this approach is that it simplifies start-up and may also help reduce the chance of failure. Buying a franchise won't actually put you in business. You have to do that yourself. But if you choose your franchise carefully, the franchise's products and methods can give you the leg up you need to succeed. Life Cycle Models Entrepreneurial ventures evolve over time through various stages from start-up, development and growth through to decline and closure. The enterprise changes its characteristics in each of these stages in a way that often requires different skills, structures and resources to manage them. A number of models or ways of categorising and predicting these characteristics have been put forward in order to conceptualise the life cycle of an enterprise from start to finish. Greiner (1972) developed an early model of evolution and revolution in the growth of an organization (see Figure 6-1). Greiner proposed that an organisation evolved through various stages but that movement from one stage to another was precipitated by a crisis that led to more revolutionary change. If the firm managed its way through this period it progressed to the next stage. For example, the first stage of growth through creativity leads to a crisis of leadership; once this is resolved the next stage of growth through direction begins. By the fifth stage, a more collaborative management approach emphasises teamwork and matrix style organisational structures, but Greiner was unable to predict what crisis might precipitate the move into yet another phase. Other models follow Greiners five-stage approach but with different descriptors for each of the stages. Churchill and Lewis (1983) identified the stages of: existence; survival, success, take-off and maturity. Scott and Bruce (1987) described the five stages as: inception, survival, growth, expansion andmaturity. In each of these stages, they suggest that the role of the topmanager, the style ofmanagement and the organizational structure will change accordingly. Thus the management role moves from direct supervision in stage 1 to decentralisation by

stage 5. The organisational structure evolves from unstructured in stage 1 to decentralised by stage 5. In the first stage of inception the management style is assumed to be entrepreneurial, individualistic. By the fourth stage of expansion this has changed to professional, administrative and by the final fifth stage of maturity the style has become that of watchdog. A common feature of these models is that they describe the management style of the entrepreneur and the key functional activities in each phase of development. A composite model by Stokes and Wilson (2006) described the five stages, shown in Figure 6-2, as follows: Stage 1: Concept/test Before a business is launched, it undergoes some form of conception and planning. This may involve a market test or running the business as a part-time operation, before the owner places complete dependence on it. Creative thinking, information gathering and networking are key activities in this stage. Stage 2: Development/abort stage The business is launched and either develops to a viable size, or it is aborted at an early stage. This will depend critically on whether sufficient customers in the marketplace adopt the product or service on offer, hence marketing linked to cash flow management are often the key functional activities. Typically an individual entrepreneur manages the enterprise in this stage largely through their own efforts. This is a particularly vulnerable stage for a business as statistics indicate that it is the smallest and youngest firms that have the highest rates of closure (more on this below in section 6.3). Stage 3: Growth/decline stage Some enterprises that have developed into a viable entity in the marketplace continue their growth quickly or, in some cases, more steadily. Such growth may place strains on the internal structure of the enterprise. The management of internal processes and people are often the critical functions. The one-person entrepreneurial management style may prove inadequate to fully sustain growth. A division of managerial tasks, the recruitment of non-owner-managers and the development of a functionally organised team are often prerequisites to take a business through this phase, without which it may struggle and close Stage 4: Maturity Most surviving business go through a period of stability, when growth flattens and the enterprise matures. It may at this stage lose its simple structure of centralised decision-making, use more sophisticated business processes and become more bureaucratic in its procedures. In other words, it takes on some of the characteristics of a larger organisation.

Stage 5: Re-growth/decline Once an enterprise has established itself in the marketplace with a competitive advantage over its rivals, profits or external investment may be available to exploit further the successful business model. The so-called s-curve hypothesis suggests that such investment may trigger a second period of growth. Without this further period of growth, the maturity stage can turn into stagnation and decline, as competition intensifies from existing rivals or new entrants into the market.