Start Me Up Series

Money may be either an incentive to go into self-employment (you want more money) or a concern (you don’t think you will have enough).  Therefore it is important to know the possible avenues that you can explore when sourcing your business finance when starting up.

HOW MUCH MONEY DO I NEED?

You may need money to buy your materials and equipment and furnish your premises.  Therefore you must find out exactly how much money you need before you start sourcing any finance – your business plan should give you a good indication of this.

• Make a budget using realistic cash forecasts for each month
• Do you need certain amounts of money at specific periods throughout the year?
• Consider worst case scenarios to give you some backup funding
• Arrange all your funding at the start.

HOW WILL I RAISE THE MONEY?

There are many resources which you can use to form the basis of your start-up finance:

• Own Investment
• Family Investment
• Lease Agreement
• Investors – Venture Capitalists, Business Angels
• Go Fund campaigns

• Overdrafts
• Loan Finance
  • Banks/Building Society
  • Credit Union
  • Enterprise Northern Ireland
  • British Legion
  • Princes Trust
• Asset Finance
• Grants
• Competitions

Certain schemes are only available if you match the criteria, this could be dependant on your age, the location of the business, if you will be exporting and so on.

Local entrepreneur, Philip started his first business with a cocktail of funding: “Getting the correct amount at the very beginning was make or break for me.  I knew I had to be able to buy all the equipment and my vehicle to be able to deliver a quality service to my customers.  Because of that, I applied successfully to a number of organisations for grants and loans.”

“I would definitely recommend that anyone going into business should do their sums firstly and get all the funding in place, even if it is loans.  One of the benefits I found with loan agencies was their flexibility throughout the loan term.  For example over one Christmas period when business was slack and my debtors delayed their payments, I was able to explain the situation and agree to defer a months payments. I only had to do this once but it was reassuring to know the loan agencies were approachable, had an understanding of my business and willing to be flexible with payments.

So if you are interested in starting a business, but unsure how to raise the funding or which cocktail of funding is best, get in touch with one of the business support team to discuss how to turn an idea into a reality:

jennifer@antrimenterprise.com or kerry@antrimenterprise.com

028 9446 7774