Ride the Wave: How to grow a sustainable business

To start your own business you need more than just a good idea.

Rob Da Costa is a business coach with more than 25 years' experience. On Wednesday (January 28), he will be leading one of Brighton Chamber of Commerce's Ride the Wave events for creative businesses.

To start your own business you need more than just a good idea. Every successful entrepreneur understands that you need three things to grow a business:

A great idea

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Every business starts with a good idea that needs to be researched to ensure you understand who your target customer is, what their need is, and that your idea meets that need. Finally, you need to be sure that you are not too late to market.

The knowledge and time to run a business

Now you have the first point figured out, you have to acquire the knowledge to run your business. That includes setting up systems for invoicing, HR, capacity management, timesheets, and so on. It includes allocating enough time to focus on writing and delivering a business vision and strategy - anticipating the opportunities and icebergs before you hit one.

The ability to focus on the future and deliver a constant stream of new customers

Next, you need to allocate a significant amount of regular time to how you are going to find a constant stream of new customers (to avoid the peaks - no time to do anything but deliver customer work; and to avoid the troughs - not enough clients). This includes a marketing plan, sales strategy, and customer-retention plan.

When last two are overlooked it leads to:

bottlenecks in delivery of client work;

the inability to grow your business;

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either super-busy or not enough work - which leads to poor decision-making (for example, discounting work in order to

win a client or taking the wrong kind of work on that becomes loss-making);

dependence on a very small client list;

demotivated staff who feel they are not valued, leading to low retention;

a sense of "one step forward, one back".

So if you want to avoid these pitfalls, then ensure you focus equal amounts of time and energy on each of the above three crucial business areas.

To find out more about Ride the Wave, visit: www.businessinbrighton.org.uk/ridethewave; or email [email protected].