How to Settle
My Informal Enterprise?
ARNAUD SEGLA
Arnaud Segla
How to Settle
My Informal Enterprise?
ISBN KDP: 9781790728046
Legal deposit
Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, 2017 Bibliothèque et Archives Canada, 2017
Book and cover design: ASSOUKA
Cover illustration: © Uber Images
Translation: ldoron – Fiverr.com
admin@thewisemencouncil.com.
Sommaire
Sommaire 3
Introduction 7
Before you start 8
STEP 1: KNOWING YOURSELF WELL 8
STEP 2: MASTERING YOUR IDEA WELL 10
STEP 3: KNOWING YOUR FUTURE CLIENTS WELL 12
STEP 4: MASTERING YOUR SALES SPACE WELL 13
STEP 5: EXPECTED REVENUES AND EXPENSES 15
STEP 6: ESTABLISHING RESOURCES 16
STEP 7: POSITIONING YOURSELF 17
STEP 8: LAUNCHING ACTIVITIES IN AN INFORMAL WAY 19
STEP 9: LOOKING FOR CLIENTS 20
STEP 10: LOOKING FOR FINANCING 23
STEP 11: MANAGING YOUR BUSINESS WELL 24
STEP 12: ELABORATING A STRATEGY TO LAST 26
STEP 13: DECLARING YOURSELF 27
Conclusion 29
Here is a simple path to launch your informal business step by step. It has served as a pilot project to Malika in Senegal before apprentice students of the ALPHADEV NGO to launch their activity with my accompaniment. This is to share so that other informal actors, having a need for a structured procedure, to live the same experience either alone or in a group, with or without coaching.
“Each Human is
important to the eyes of God.”
Introduction
As a complement of the « Succeeding through the informal way» guide, I hoped to propose a simple path to followto launch one’s informal business under the model of the guide “Business in the box”. The 13 steps identified here permit to think about a model and then a structure and finally to put it in place on the spot. I consider that the border is slim or even almost inexistent between ethnic and informal entrepreneurship; it’s for that reason why this precise can serve also to people in diasporas wanting to put in place a simple structure in complement with their main job in the framework of para-entrepreneurship that lives as a communal way in Africa, and I suppose, in other Southern countries.
Before you start
The chosen format for the structure of the course is an ensemble of questions on which the entrepreneur is brought about to work on, alone or with an accompaniment, and can deepen one’s project, and then launch it (as of step 7). The rest of the course comes back to the acquisition of competencies of entrepreneurs by practice and a minimum of initiation.
You will need a workbook that will serve as your work tool.
STEP 1: KNOWING YOURSELF WELL
This step consists of asking the right questions to know yourself better and to know what can help us continue to undertake tasks:
• Knowing your personality based on your names and last name. What is the sense of my name?
• What do I like to do?
• What do I do with ease or that I master?
• What do I least like to do?
• What do I do with the most difficulty?
• What do I want to accomplish in my life ?
• What does my heart tell me to do?
• Why would I want to launch my business?
Write your answers in a workbook.
STEP 2: MASTERING YOUR IDEA WELL
This idea consists of defining the model of our business (Business Model Canvas):
Describe in a few words what consists the idea at the base of the business.
• What is the problem that your business aim to solve?
• What utility it brings to the community?
• What do you put in front to distinguish yourself?
• What are the key activities of the business?
• Who will be the target clients?
• What will be the service given to the clientele and the relations?
• What will be the partnerships to establish?
• What resources will you need?
• Through which means can you sell your product or service?
• What are the expected costs?
• What are the expected revenues?
Write your answers in your workbook.
STEP 3: KNOWING YOUR FUTURE CLIENTS WELL
This step consists of preparing the sale of our product or service to clients through marketing and promotional campaigns (mixed marketing):
• Portrait: what does your client resemble?
• Ritual: What are your clients’ habits?
• Revenue: At what price is your product or service ready to buy?
• Location: Where should we want to sell products or services?
• Moment: When should we want to sell products or services?
• Manner : How should we want to sell products or services?
• Choice: What is your product or service sensitive to?
Write your answers in your workbook.
STEP 4: MASTERING YOUR SALES SPACE WELL
This step consists of finding and preparing the locations where sales and activities will take place:
• Do you have the choice of your establishment?
• Is it easily accessible to clients?
• Does it allow you to distinguish it from other vendors?
• How do the others around you sell their products?
• What relations can you have with the other vendors?
• How often does your target clientele frequent the location?
• Are you findable? If not, can you signal your location?
• What are the prices and market tendencies?
• How are you globally situated with respect to the market?
Write your answers in your workbook.
STEP 5: EXPECTED REVENUES AND EXPENSES
This step consists of establishing the previewed expenses and the revenues we can draw from the business.
Expenses:
• How much do you need for equipment and materials daily, weekly, monthly or annually?
• How much do you need for wages and bills (fixed charges)?
• How much do you need for waiting to make sound sales (working capital)?
Revenues:
• How much do you hope to regularly make daily, weekly, monthly or annually?
• How much can you make not regularly in a year?
Write your answers in your workbook.
STEP 6: ESTABLISHING RESOURCES
This step consists of preparing the inventory that we dispose of to start:
• How much money do you dispose at the launch time?
• Do you have equipment or materials that you would like to include in your business?
• Do you already have orders or guaranteed clients?
• Were you promised monetary or charitable donations for your business?
• What is the total of all these goods?
Write your answers in your workbook.
STEP 7: POSITIONING YOURSELF
In this step we do the act of launching the business by verifying that we respected all of the previous steps and by doing a symbolic act that engages you to start activities:
Have you answered all of the previous questions?
Can you declare in one sentence what you want to do, why, how, where and with what means?
Write it in your workbook with the title : “Declaration of intent”.
Make your oral declaration in front of witnesses, written by reading it to witnesses and then display it somewhere that you can see it regularly.
You have symbolically positioned yourself through this declaration and are engaged to launch your business.
STEP 8: LAUNCHING ACTIVITIES IN AN INFORMAL WAY
Presently, we will specify all of the preparation in two faces (the 1234 model and the 567 structure that we created):
1.
Write in your workbook a list (inventory) of everything that you need to make the business function.
2.
Then put the list in an order of deployment.
3.
Follow the list to put the business’ activities in place.
When you are personally ready, we will start the first promotional campaign of products and services to catch in clients and make sales.
Open the business in its sales location.
STEP 9: LOOKING FOR CLIENTS
In this part we will find ways to attract the maximum clients possible in our sales area and convince them to buy stuff that will be useful to them :
The 7 informal attitudes enabling frequentation:
• Possession desire: target the client when he/she have money and is willing to spend it.
• Confidence: present the product, service and sales location well to reassure the client.
• Pleasure: make the quality of the product or service known with a commented sample.
• Knowledge: learn promotion techniques and trends that are efficient.
• Quality: carefully look after and maintain good characteristics of the product or service.
• Definition: identify and value the pride of being involve in the success of your project without internal constrain.
• Richness: generously offer to create a relationship and invite to return.
Usually the following is used instead of “possession desire” (especially in liberal system):
• Excitation desire: create the need of spending money targeting the client by using marketing tools.
Some promotional tools are:
• Publicity (posters, radio, newspaper, Internet): information;
• Recommendations in a network or community: reputation ;
• Participation at representative events: visibility.
Do you know other techniques? Let’s search together. Write your tools in your workbook.
STEP 10: LOOKING FOR FINANCING
Financing can be useful to launch or to reinforce the informal business. The business plan is useful for institutions and banks and is the subject of other content. Here we want to present our project to specific people that have the means of helping without suffering much neither asking for reimbursement.
List the potential investors.
Edit and print your workbook to make it more presentable.
Make the people who can gives you money read it (investors).
It is therefore the equivalent of your business plan in a simple version. By default, the notebook is used to collect the minimum information necessary to draft a business plan for an informal public. Then it will be used as vade-mecum.
You need especially to show that you really want to create and manage this business.
Don’t hesitate to discuss with the investor to try to convince him/her.
STEP 11: MANAGING YOUR BUSINESS WELL
To manage your business well you must make sure that what you spend to function is always less than the sales you make.
• Therefore, you must keep track every day your revenues and expenses in another book called a journal.
• You must constantly make sales, therefore, invest in a continued way in the promotion of your product or service.
• You must control your costs, therefore, know what is fixed or obligatory and what varies with activity and what you produce.
• You must renew the work equipment or improve your knowledge to permit yourself to grow by creating new products and attracting new clients.
You must have as an objective to see your business grow the most possible and do not satisfy yourself with a revenue of subsistence. It is what we call having ambition.
STEP 12: ELABORATING A STRATEGY TO LAST
To last it is good to have a strategy and to have a strategy it is good to have a vision:
Where do you see yourself with the business in 5, 10 or 15 years?
Write in your workbook where you think you will see yourself with your business in a further horizon (at the moment of succession). Write in the present tense. It is your vision.
Then write (always in the present) what you can do to get there in the form of a tree diagram (more complicated) or a timeline that leads to now (easier). You can do both in the form of a fishbone diagram (inquire about this).
This will be the structure of your strategy that you can follow and adapt throughout your business’ lifetime.
STEP 13: DECLARING YOURSELF
I chose to start the activities of your informal business before declaring them. This permits you to familiarize yourself with management and permits you to be solid enough with your revenues before paying taxes.
The declaration is an obligatory passage. It is what permits the state to function conveniently.
Some can be maybe constrained to declare themselves from the start since they are in places subject to strong regulation. In this case include declaration fees or taxes in your expenses when you follow this path.
For the declaration go to a business creation office or a town hall to know the documents to provide to register. Do not wait for someone to tell you; you can get fined. Find the information when you are ready.
Also, get informed through the Internet.
Conclusion
The community economy makes intervene in the same common trunk the notions of informal economy and ethnic identity to constitute, ideally one day, an alternative model of quality or liberal system. We are talking about an economic Attitude vs economic System. This implies respecting human values and especially a tangible character of finance (performance and effort) to serve the market and not to hold it in slavery.
Good luck with your business!
Photo: Awa LakeDiop
Arnaud Segla M. Sc., M. Sc. Admin., CAPM. Consultant, Manager and coach in ethnic, informal and corporate entrepreneurship. I organize and animate learning activities and accompany many entrepreneurs in the attaining of the objectives of their business project.
Since 2009 I offer consulting services for ethnic and informal entrepreneurship projects within the economic and identity development for migrant workforces. I associated myself with every helping stakeholder to realize my vision with the business The Wisemen Council.
“Making informal economy a quality alternative to the liberal system.”