Do I need book tips for aspiring entrepreneurs?

Tom Peters is one of the most famous business gurus, whose books have sold millions of copies. Peters' management theories are based on his unique consulting experience. He spawned not only many imitators, but also a new category in literature - books about “successful success”. The leitmotif of such works is the existence of special secrets / principles / rules / lifehacks of achieving success in any chosen field.

The public perceives such books with a bang, because it is so tempting to get a magic guide that is guaranteed to lead to the top. However, more serious authors, for example, professors of American universities, harshly criticized both Peters himself and his followers.

Not that success in business was unattainable, but simply the principles of its achievement, which are the same for everyone, do not exist, they say. That is why management gurus do not know how to distinguish real success from simple luck, all the more they are not able to teach him. A negative example of the results of third-party consulting can serve as Peters himself - most of his corporate clients have long since left the pedestal.

This is, so to speak, a long introduction to the fact that business books should NOT be read. Alas, there is no unique recipe and / or unique pill leading to success, but on the general words of all popular business books (“do well”, “think about the client first, and then about money”, “lead business with love”, “Deliver happiness”, “the main thing is people, quality and good mood”, etc.) business, though growing, is not as active as many readers think. We believe in this, so we took and wrote as many as six of our books about business, based on the following rules:

1. We write about what we know or know those who know and are ready to share this knowledge
2. We write about each type of business activity separately (if about a cafe, then about a cafe, if about a shop, then a shop, no mixes and general advice, because each niche is unique and with its own specifics)
3. We write only practical advice and give recommendations applicable by the majority of readers.
4. There is no “water”, spreading of thoughts on the tree for the sake of volume and everything else that we ourselves do not like in such literature. Only hardcore.

Having studied the statistics of our service for the preparation of documents for the registration of LLC and IP , we have identified the most popular activities among the new business. Next, we selected those types where we and our colleagues, as well as consultants, had experience and expertise to write a separate book for each of them. Moreover, we did not want to limit ourselves to bureaucratic issues, but tried to put ourselves in the position of a start-uper (or remember how it was) and try to give the most complete picture of the chosen activity, including cases with calculations of expenses and incomes and a description of the “pitfalls”.

As a result, we have six such directions:

• Public catering
• Retail store
• Wholesale
• Beauty saloon
• Legal services
• Online store

We set to work a year ago, or to be exact, in August 2015. As a result of a great and painstaking work, today we have all 6 books ready (the last one about the online store is 11/2016). Books are placed in the user's personal account or here . Access to them is free, you just need to register.

Next, we present a brief announcement of the business series, we will be happy to receive feedback from readers.

Cafe / Bar / Pizzeria

This book is for those who want to open their cafe, bar or pizzeria. The catering industry is traditionally popular with start-ups, and it may seem like a fairly simple direction from the outside. Organizing the work of mass segment establishments is really easier than a restaurant, but even here there are plenty of problems.

The biggest difficulty in opening a food service point is obtaining permits from SES and fire inspection. To get the go-ahead from these services, it is necessary to prepare a project with a plan for placing equipment, linking it to water supply systems and electricity, and develop and agree on a production control program.

The selected room should not only meet the requirements of services, but also be in a place with good traffic. We told where to find such a place, how to calculate the potential number of clients and find out about the earnings of competitors.

How much and what kind of dishes you need for a cafe? Where to find inexpensive equipment? Why is it impossible to play music at a public catering point for visitors even from a purchased license disc? How to analyze the menu for profitability? What are the cafe performance indicators? How much money is needed to open the most modest catering point and when will it pay off? Learn about this in our book.

Beauty saloon

The market for hairdressing and beauty services in Russia is considered one of the fastest growing and having good potential for further growth. Moreover, its saturation is still far away. Marketers believe that in comparison with European and American countries, the competition between salons is 3-5 times lower.

Beauty salons are conventionally divided into three classes: economy, business and luxury. The more expensive the salon, the more costs will be required to open it. In the book, we calculated how much to invest in an economy class cabin and what profitability of services you can count on.

The essential income item of the salon is the sale of professional cosmetics, home care products and appliances. But here it is important to know about which taxation system you need to choose for the salon, so that the tax burden is not excessive, and you do not have to transfer substantial sums to the budget.

Often our users ask a question about licensing activities in the field of beauty services. Indeed, in the implementation of procedures that are classified as medical, a license is obligatory, but services such as haircut, manicure, makeup are not licensed. We also talked about the sources of loss of income in the salon and how automated computer systems will help organize work with clients.

Law firm

The private legal business in Russia has been developing for a little over 20 years, but the competition here is serious. We have a lot of lawyers, potential clients, too, with the first lacking customers, and the second with truly qualified legal assistance. Why are legal services so hard to sell?

In our opinion, beginners and experienced lawyers do not know how to advertise their services and do not know how to convey to the client the value that they can give him. We counted 10 typical mistakes in advertising legal services and suggested ways to solve them.

How to form the price for your services and how to sell a subscription for legal services? Show the customer its benefits, and you will not have to persuade him. We also gathered in the book useful online services for a lawyer that will help reduce the amount of routine work, and talked about what the law firm’s website should be.

Retail store

They say that for the success of the store, three factors will be especially important: place, place and again place. Where to open a shop - in the shopping center or a separate building? Of course, its commercial success very much depends on the location of the store, but this is not all.

How to choose a product, which assortment will be sufficient, how the display of goods will help to increase sales and why your sellers do not know how to sell? Where to find inexpensive commercial equipment and how much does it cost to open a small convenience store? We calculated the costs for opening such a store and calculated when it was supposed to be able to pay off.

For the store is especially important to choose the right taxation system. General recommendations do not work here, because special tax regimes have regional characteristics. But on the example of our calculations of the tax burden on different modes for a store in St. Petersburg, it becomes clear that this issue should be approached with particular attention. For the wrong choice will have to pay out of their profits.

Wholesale

The wholesaler is the link between the manufacturer and the buyer. What is happening in the Russian wholesale market, what supplier is the customer looking for and how to get their share of the profits from mediation?

One or two "star" customers can bring the wholesaler a major profit, but you should not be limited to this category only. Why? What types of clients still exist, how to analyze them, and which of them can be provided with a commodity credit? We talked about this in our book.

What assortment should be stored in a warehouse, how to evaluate its turnover and what types of wholesale turnover exist? Can a modern warehouse work without automation? What is the difference between the types of warehouses and is it possible to work without a warehouse at all?

If you have no experience in trade, it is not necessary to declare yourself as a wholesaler. To get started, try your hand at being a sales agent; you do not even need to register an IP or LLC. Just enter into one of the types of agency agreement and get to work.

Online store

The Russian e-Commerce market has shown steady growth over the past 5 years, but crisis phenomena and economic sanctions, of course, have affected it. How the preferences of online shoppers have changed, we showed on analytics of independent agencies research.

The most important thing in online trading is the choice of a niche or product category that potential buyers are looking for. How to analyze the demand for the selected product and its trend, how active are competitors here and where to look for suppliers? We talked about this with a real example analyzing requests and evaluating the success of competitors already working in a niche.

You will also learn about whether a cash register is needed for each courier, what payment methods and delivery methods exist, why do you need a current account and why the online buyer has more rights than the average consumer. And also about how to quickly and free create an online store site for testing a niche, what a sales formula is and why without a SEO optimization your store will not be successful.

Come to our library and read.

Ask your questions in the comments, criticize, suggest and advise. We are sure that among you there are many who, besides the IT sphere, are also close to more traditional businesses. We will collect feedback and start thinking about the re-release of books in the second edition.