Bizstartup.ie - Two things every start-up should know

Business plan

“Your business plan is very important. You need to be able to present it very easily. Whenever we spoke to anyone, which we did a huge amount of in the beginning, we brought an eight-page plan with lots of graphs and bullet points.

“You wouldn’t bother reading a newspaper full of text. It’s the same with a business plan; the eye needs to be drawn to different things. Also, when you’re going to meet someone bring some sort of unit or mock-up to demonstrate it, even if it bears no resemblance to what you end up launching. It will help you to articulate your idea.

“Everybody thinks their own business is unique, and that nobody else could possibly know about what they’re doing. The reality is that 95pc of what you do is just business, common to every other product or service. The other 5pc is probably unique.”

Seek advice from seasoned entrepreneurs

For this reason, Sully advises speaking to people “with grey hair”, regardless of what business sector they’re in. “They have made mistakes before and not repeated them. Whether they’re in IT, engineering or any kind of business, they will all have had similar problems – such as whether to take on reps or not, whether to borrow more money. There’s a lot to learn from experienced people in business, even if they are in a totally different sector to you.”