I planned to start up my own business since quite a long time. This was a great idea of mine, which was evolving in my brain and turmoiling me all the time. Yet, I thought I lacked managerial knowledge and skills to achieve success in the task chosen. But now I am very confident. I think that effective manager is not the one who studies more and knows a lot theoretically, but it is the one who has courage, perfect intuition and is able to take risks. I am sure that I am the one. That is why I made up my mond to organize leisure aeromodeling shop. I am ready now to undergo all the stages of managerial process:

Planning
Executing
Leading
Controlling
Evaluating. (Blencoe, 2002; Sims, 2003)
I have developing the most important managerial qualities for a long time. Now is the minute to apply all of them.The best manager has to:

— be calm and rational;

— be enthusiastic of what he is doing;

— learn to listen to his heart and intuition, but at the same time do not forget about his mind, i.e. reasonable things;

— to get along well with people;

— be able to accept risks.
Dealing with stress and emotions

It turned out to be harder than I thought to start up my business. In fact, there are so many constraints on my way that sometimes I want to quit. For instance, yesterday one bank refused to give me a loan saying that I was too risky client for them to credit. Unfortunately, I relied so much on this bank that my disappointment was much greater than ever. I was about to give up. But then I said to myself “Hey, where is that courage you’ve been boasting about? You’ve got to be strong and persistent!” My bad mood didn’t last long, not only because of my personal ambitions, but because of the greatest desire in me to enjoy the final result. Even though stress follows me almost everywhere – this is the fate of young businessman with a little business experience – I try to extract as much useful info for me from each disappointing situation, as possible. Those are the most useful life lessons that I could possibly take. I always say to myself: failure is just another stage to my ultimate success.

In order to deal with my stress I apply quite well-known rules and principles:

n  To remain cold-blooded;

n  To be patient;

n  To believe. (Sims, 2001)

Management demands much effort and minimum fuss. Every detail matters. Being all the time in a hurry and in stress, I jeopardize my future success. Realizing this simple truth, I try not to let disturbing thoughts to turmoil my mind. Rather, I tell myself that I am the one to take over my fate and I will succeed whatever happens.

If you learn to smile to your life, life will always smile at you. That is my creed, both in business and private life as well.

Time management

My aeromodeling shop venture really demands a lot of effort from me. It takes all my time and even more. The bad thing is that sometimes I look back and understand that I really didn’t do everything I planed during the day. And it’s disappointing…that’s why I decided to manage my time more effectively. I prepared the schedule of my project outlining each stage of it and time, on my opinion, necessary to complete this stage. Moving up along this schedule I highlight everything that was done and specify everything that has to be done. Every morning I write a list of things that I expect to complete this day specifying time that is necessary for each task. Such table does really organize a lot, because it shows the effectiveness of my work – how much I did and how much time I spent on each task compared to planned (the ratio showing the productivity of my own work).

According to Buchanan and Huczynski (2001), time management needs to be based on calculation of so-called productive time, i.e. the time that is spent with benefit. Therefore, nowadays, my time-management schedule is comprised of the following necessary issues:

The number of tasks I have to complete in obligatory manner;
The maximum time I have to spent on each of those tasks;
The specific results I have to accomplish on completion of those tasks;
At the end of the day I hold evaluation of my work and try to see where I have lost and where I have gained both in work and time. This an excellent way to evaluate my personal productivity and input, as well as to develop time management skills.
Business partners-if any

At first I thought I didn’t need any partner. The idea of aero modelling shop was mine and I didn’t have any desire to share my business with anybody else. I did imagine myself a great businessman who doesn’t need any support. In fact, the reality is much more trivial. Business partner doesn’t just own a share of you business, but it can ensure the future success of your venture, which is crucial. Thus, I decided that I would probably ask my cousin to join me and become my partner. This guy was very interested when I told him about my idea. He can not only become a source of additional resources, but also he is a good manager to help me in organizational and leading manners, in communication with all the contractors. I look forward when he comes back from abroad to create our friendly business team…

Business format

I called my cousin. He was happy to hear me, but he was even happier to accept my offer to create a business team. It would be a partnership. We would both own the venture, me – 60%, his share – 40%. I think that is quite fair in my situation, considering that idea and initial implementation belong to me. The best partnership is the one where mutual interests are kept. I do believe that given format allows both of us to gain certain benefits.
Required support

Now since I know that it’s gonna be two of us to manage business, I become even more confident in our success. However, I still realize that I need support, especially financial one. The main resources required are:

Financial resources to cover project expenses;
Rent area to organize our office;
Human resources to work.(Morgan, 1997)
I have already taken the loan from the bank. Yet, it is not enough. My cousin decided to pledge his small apartment in order for us to get more financial support. Yet, the main thin that now we have all legal permitions. So, we can proceed with everything else firmly and with great confidence.

However, the milestone for us right now is the effective and friendly team that is able to put much effort to develop the business we would start. The process of finding the right one to work is a hard one. We have already started the recruitment process – posted job announcements. Yet, not many people have responded so far. I guess, a lot of our potential employees are afraid that we are a start-up and thus cannot provide stable work that pays well. Thus, we have to consider some sound motivation and stimuli for our future employees. Therefore, since we really cannot provide high wages, we would try to create some non-material motivation, such as friendly relationships in the collective, common picknicks and celebrating birthdays. Moreover, we are thinking of providing lunches for people free of charge. In general, it is our plan to create corporate spirit, corporate culture. It is a long process. Yet, it is one of the most reliable ways to ensure stability and prosperity of our business.
Things you have learnt from presentations of others.

Listening to the presentations of others, I have understood the milestones of starting up my own business:

Ø  Thorough planning, including working out several scenarios;

Ø  Preparing ground business plan to present to possible investors;

Ø  People are key assets, so organizing and effective team is crucial;

Ø  Enthusiasm, confidence, courage and persistence are key traits to achieve success in anything you do.

References

1.    Blencoe, Greg. (2002), How to be an Effective Manager, August Publishing, Chicago, Illinois

2.      Buchanan, David and Huczynski, Andrezej (2001): Organizational Behavior: an intoductory text 4th edition, chapter 24(power and politics).

3.      Morgan, Gareth (1997) Images of Organisation 2end edition, Sage IDPM JR MBS PRE .

4.      Sims R. (2002) “Managing Organizational Behaviour” Quorum Books, Westport, CT

5.