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Brixx Bizapalooza Roundup

3 December 2018

starting a business from scratch bizapalooz

We recently had the brilliant opportunity to take part as a guest on one of our regular Tweetchats; #BizapaloozaChat which is hosted by Ivana Taylor of DIYMarketers and Iva Ignjatovic who runs the @Bizapalooza account.

The questions for the week of 26/11/18 were based around planning a new business with a focus on the financial side of things. The topic was broad which allowed for lots of discussion and debate about people’s own personal experiences which is what we always love to hear!

A Number Love Story

One of the things that struck us here at the office was the fact that there were many people that actually enjoyed playing with numbers! It’s more often than not a subject that people recoil from in horror!

We loved this tweet by Andrea, figures are most certainly a foundation that you can build on and should build your small business on. Having a love of numbers or at least the ability to work alongside them can help a lot.

Learning about our fellow chatters

One of my favourite parts of Monday’s chat was hearing the stories behind the people that we see in the tweetchat each week and how they became business owners.

I think Ivana’s situation is a common one, many people want to make the jump from the corporate workplace into something that they are passionate about but lack of confidence in their skills holds them back from taking the next step. I think we can all agree that Ivana is a testament to the fact that it can be done!

Suzanne and Kittie’s stories will resonate with people I’m sure. Our situations change throughout our lives, sometimes the right time to make the jump will be in the middle of a tough point but if the determination is there to make it work then it can be done.

Confidence in Numbers

Iva bought us some interesting information regarding the number of businesses that believe themselves to be proficient with finances and accounting.

39% is a very tiny proportion considering that all businesses will have to do some sort of financing or accounting for their business. Perhaps this is one of the main reasons that the failure rate for small to medium businesses is so high. It’s also possible that the low numbers related to this statistic are due to a lack of confidence!

Confidence is one of the skills that was mentioned multiple times in this week’s discussions. We heard about people having confidence in themselves to take the next step in their ownership journey, and those who consider confidence to be their most refined skill, such as Kathryn.

Confidence is a fantastic skill to have especially when it comes to dealing with finance and numbers.

Financial Forecasting (it’s easier than predicting the weather)

One of the skills that all business owners will need is the confidence to do financial forecasting – one of our questions asked what people understood by the term. We had many exceptional and interesting answers.

Here’s what I think – do you agree?

Financial forecasting is all about trying to make educated guesses about the financial future of the business. This is something that becomes a little easier over time as you will have the past data to check your predictions against.

Overcoming a fear of numbers and gaining confidence in the subject can come from many places – one of the best to start with is demystifying some of the jargon that surrounds it. Learn more about some of the core financial terms.

Planning for the future

Planning and finance are two topics that often go hand in hand, especially with what we do over here at Brixx. Financial forecasting is really just another way to say “planning for the future” in a numerical sense. However, planning comes in many forms and is probably a term that many business owners will already be tired of by the time they reach the end of their startup journey, but the planning never truly stops.

During the chat we discussed a quote from Winston Churchill – “Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential”.

It was very interesting to see people reflecting on how planning has helped businesses/clients that they’ve previously worked with. Many people agreed that planning is something that needs to be adaptable or as RingBoost put it, there needs to be wiggle room.

SmallBiz made an interesting point which I actually agree with, the two are of course intrinsically linked – planning is a tool that businesses use to reach their goals/vision. If you have a goal and no plan then you aren’t moving anywhere with efficiency. However, it is important to be willing and able to change your plans and sometimes even change your goals should the need arise. All successful businesses will see growth eventually – but many of them change their business goals along the way simply out of necessity.

Wrap up

During the chat we discussed a host of topics, from business skills, to understanding financial terms and tips for new business owners. We learned a lot about our fellow chatters and got some great insights into their working and business lives. We had a great time attending and reading everyone’s unique viewpoints and can’t wait for next week’s #BizapaloozaChat!

If you’ve never attended a tweetchat before then #BizapaloozaChat would be a fantastic place to start. They do two chats a week Mondays at 2pm ET (7pm GMT) and Thursdays at 8pmET (1am GMT).

If you’d like to learn any more about what we do here at Brixx then feel free to contact us through our contact form or jump into a live chat with us from the home page!
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