Even though I had worked in most areas of my 'chosen' pro audio industry during the last 20 years, I found it still left me totally unprepared for the challenge of starting a small business. Working for someone else is nothing like working for yourself.

Just about everything I have since read in business planning books, I wish I had done when I was planning and running my little fledging business back in 2003.

So I'm going to share some of the many mistakes I made in the hope that others can learn from my experiences.

Back in 2003 I designed an audio product which I was very proud of. I decided to have a go at putting it into production and see if I could make a living by selling it. By mid July 03 I had 100 units ready to sell and a simple website www.safesoundaudio.com up and running. In Oct 2003 I had a very positive review of the product published in one of the biggest English speaking pro-audio gear magazines and waited for the orders to come rolling in!

Well I did get some orders but not nearly as many as I had hoped for, and it took me quite a while to figure out why my flegling company wasn't an instant success. Top 3 highlights of my growing realisation were;

1. I hadn't done my market research. Working in an industry for 20 years is not the same as being an expert in that sector. I found that I had designed a product which appealed to impoverished musicians rather than top end recording studios. It had many elements common to both markets but was not 'tuned' into the market I wanted to attract.

2. I hadn't considered the complete lack of credibility which any new company has. I assumed that people would just get their credit card out and buy my wonderful product over the web. I lost countless sales from people saying 'where can I try it out?'.

3. Following on from point 2, I hadn't factored in enough profit margin to be able support any kind of distribution network, so I lost some early distribution opportunities as they were put off by the very low margin available to them.

The crazy thing is that, looking back, all of these issues were preventable and predictable with just a little bit of simple research and business planning. BUT they are a lot more complicated, and expensive, to fix after the event.

Next time : What I did next (including quite a bit of sulking!)