....and I forgot one!

7. Low start up costs!

I forgot my last requirement for my perfect business! We've already ploughed quite a lot of our own money into the development, marketing/PR, research and countless hours obviously, so we decided a few weeks ago that it was about time we approached the banks to help us really get a good budget towards PR for our launch.

Quite ironic that yesterday I was presenting a course on 'Fundraising for SMEs' to 50 accountants, and that I wouldn't think twice about helping a client to get some financing for say, £1m. But try and get £20k for a start up business - no chance! I decided to 'go local'. My countless banking contacts are generally in Manchester, and I've moved house now over to West Yorkshire. As we were only looking for small amount, I thought I'd try approaching the local bank managers, and not rely on my previous dealings with bankers, as a corporate finance advisor. What a mistake!

Banks are just suffocating entrepreneurship in this country. The reason we've been turned down by 2 banks (Barclays and HSBC for the record!) is that our business plan is too speculative. Despite the fact that we have done thorough market research. I admit that we haven't any 'proof' as to how many members we are going to get, we'd never be able get that exact information before we launch.

Of course we don't have any firm members yet. But that's because we haven't launched yet and we are 'selling' to consumers. What start-up B2C business would? And yet, only a couple of years ago I raised £150k for a start up retail shop! They'd rather give larger sums of money to more traditional businesses. Although the higher overheads of running a shop, and therefore the higher breakeven point is going to make it a higher risk for the banks. It's bizarre! Don't get me started! I suppose at least Barclays and HSBC have replied to me, I can't even get Royal Bank of Scotland to ring me back! If only they knew.....!

So it's onwards and upwards, using our own resources and having belief in ourselves and our business plan. If I could manage our business without even using a bank account, I would. It really irritates me that they're still going to make some money out of us with the transaction charges through Worldpay and the general banking charges. HSBC did say (without prompting!) that they may live to regret this in a couple of years' time. It's a good job I truly believe 'what's goes around comes around'.

Some really good news yesterday though. We had the results of some of our market research from Luke's nursery, who very kindly offered to distribute our questionnaires to their parents - thank you Alexandra at Greetland!! They showed that we have pretty much got our business strategy spot on. It's such a relief seeing that you have the same views as everyone else, and we've pitched our price about right too!

Haven't even told you what the business is yet, have I?!! Have you guessed or have you been sneaky and guessed what our home page is?

More later and I'll spill the beans (unless I have something else I want to rant about!)

Kirsty