Our advice to anyone starting a new business
Congratulations, you’ve spotted a gap in the market, decided to be self-employed in a field where you’re an expert, or purchased an existing business! Seize this opportunity for a rewarding new business venture, where you’re in full control, but don’t run at it without taking a step back and thinking about some of the important background aspects of starting your own business. At Villa, we regularly help people who are new to business ownership navigate the ins and outs of starting their own venture; here are our top tips for getting started.
Planning – this doesn’t have to be a lot of number crunching and graphs. By planning we mean sitting down, write out how you want your business to grow in the short term and what your bigger goals are for the longer term. Short term planning might be as simple as writing an income target for your first year of business, a rough idea of how many clients you could take on in your first few months of trading, or creating a website to promote your business to your target audience. Longer term plans could include where you would ideally see your business sitting in five years’ time. Planning is easy to neglect, it’s easy to charge ahead and develop your business on-the-fly, but a few goals and a plan are essential to maximising your opportunities and to driving your business in the right direction from the outset.
Learn a bit about tax – there aren’t many people who actually enjoy learning about tax, but it does pay to understand the basics of tax in New Zealand. You certainly don’t need to be an expert, we can help on that side of things, however knowing what income tax, PAYE and GST are is a good place to start and will give you a better footing to get started in your journey to developing a successful business.
Set your business up for success from the outset – New Zealand has a range of different business structures to choose from. It is important to have the right business structure for your projected goals from the outset, knowing that this can be changed if your goals and opportunities change. Villa can help with determining if your business is best suited to being a sole trader, company or another option. We’ll help you with tax and liability implications of each structure, from navigating income tax with IRD to PAYE if you have staff, even private and public liability laws if applicable to your business. You don’t have to be an expert on this, reach out for help and set yourself up for success from the beginning.
Understand your market – chances are you know your industry fairly well, that’s why you’re looking into starting your own business. Rather than trust that your knowledge, it pays to dig a bit deeper into your new market. Dig deep, investigate your competitors and your potential customers. The more you know about them the easier it will be to position your business in a way that differentiates from the competition and offers added value to your customers. Coming into a market and offering the same thing that everyone else is just leads to competition on price, change it up where you can and have customers calling YOU for business because of the different service you offer.
Villa Chartered Accountants and Business Advisors have clients who have started their new business ventures in a range of different industries. We help with planning, setting your business structure and working with you to investigate your industry landscape and position your business within it for maximum success. We’re more than just an accountancy firm, sure we will run your taxes and help with those essential functions but we also love becoming part of your team and helping you plan and navigate your journey to business success!
