Sources of Advice when Starting a Business

I will be describing the sources of advice when starting a business. These are:

-Solicitor/Lawyer
-Accountant
-B.I.S (Department for Business Innovation and Skills)
-C.A.B (Citizen Advice Bureau)
-Local Authority
-Mentor
-Family

I will also be explaining who they are? What they do? and How can they help me in starting a new business?

-Solicitor/Lawyer: is the person who gives you advice about legal matters in setting up your business. The business process should be proper and legal because this helps your business to avoid crises. A solicitor/lawyer can also help you to identify the possible problems and helps you to take actions to prevent them- protecting your business from risk and saving your money.

The solicitor/lawyer can help you about the company structure of your business by explaining all the different options and advise which the best one for your business and also a solicitor/can also set up the option you have choosen and when it comes about choosing your business premises a solicitor can help you to apply for your business license and also help you to fully understand the terms of the lease such as: increasing the rent, service charges, restrictions. 

Therefore, a solicitor/lawyer is very important in business society because if someone sues you and your business, a solicitor/lawyer will help you find solutions to solve the problems or complaints.

-Accountant: an accountant is the right person to ask for help when it comes to money matters because a good accountant will help you to avoid paying unneccesary tax. She/He knows all the allowances and legitimate expenses and will make sure that you can claim all the money back. An accountant gives me advices about tax.

You should talk to an accountant before you open a new business because it is not good waiting for a long time (a year later) to discover tips that would have saved your money.

An accountant can give you advice whether or not you are better off to launch as a limited company or to operate as a sole trader. They will also advise on partnership issues and should generally steer you in the right direction.

-Family: Setting up a new business with my family advice gives you self-confidence of what you are doing because of their support. It also helps you a lot because it would be easy and convinient for you to get ideas on how to encourage customers/clients. It also presents unique challenges over and above the usual problems a startup phases.

Family advice is very useful because you can use them to help the next generation to survive their business.

-Local Authority: The local authority can led you money and gives you low interest rates to encourage you to set up your own business by helping you and your business to learn what kind of services you may need to use and know about. These include collecting business rates and approving planning applications, enforcing health and safety, environment and trading standards requirements and issuing parking permits.

-Mentor: A mentor is the person who provides advice base on her/his experience and expertees on how to survive and prosper your business in business society.

A mentor can help you on how you should run your business properly by giving ideas and advices and she/he also helps you to make decisions for your business to be successful and not to fail.

-B.I.S (Department for Business Innovation and Skills): is the department who gives you ideas about the economic growth by investing in skills and education to advertise/promote trade and bosst innovation and they can also help you and other people to start and grow a business. They also protect all the consumers and reduce the impact of regulation.

B.I.S can help you to gain new skills that you may need to compete the global employment market. They can help you to research about the business industry , which is very important to help economic growth of your business. They also provide you a lot of information about the consumer law, which is you can get ideas how to use the consumers/customers right.

The most important about B.I.S is that they can help you to get better regulation by reducing the amount of regulation and they can also help your business about the businesses cut time, save money and to be more efficient.

-C.A.B (Citizen Advice Bureau): is the department who can help you to resolve your financial issues such as debts, benefits, employment, and housing. They can also help you to resolve your emotional problem such us being descriminated against by somebody else.

You can get advice from CAB by phoning them or face to face.
 

"As a conclusion, I would use both individual and organisational (formal and informal) advice for starting up my business.

The first step I would do is to go to consult a solicitor/lawyer to get information about all legal matters and legal processes in business and then, I am going to consult an accountant to get information about money matters which is can help me to avoid paying unneccesary tax and get some ideas how on to manage the money.  

After consulting a solicitor/lawyer and an accountant, I am going to a mentor who has got the same business as me and has got an excellent experience of running a business to ask for help, advice and train me on how to be a succesful businesswoman. Secondly, I am going to ask my family, relatives and friends about their opinions, ideas and advises in running a business.

Therefore, I would also go to consult other organisation such as: BIS, CAB and Local Authority because these organisations can give me the right advice with all the bases of my business including terms and regulations, financial issues, location for my business and more."