As busy IT professionals Mamakoh Magona (left) and Renuka Bala (right) often needed a service which would help them save time with the nasty things in life. So they decided to start one themselves They tell Startups.co.uk all about it.

Startup profiles go straight to the hub of the action by speaking to entrepreneurs who have literally just started up. We find out what made them decide to start their own business, how they got it off the ground, the obstacles they’ve overcome and the barriers they still face. We’ll look at their hopes and aspirations for the future, and then, in six months time, we’ll go back and find out how they’re getting on.

Name: Mamakoh Magona (left) & Renuka Bala (right)
Age: 39 & 34 respectively
Business: My Best Friend (www.my-bestfriend.co.uk)
Type of business: Lifestyle Management Services
Start date: Full Launch in August 2003

When did you first decide you wanting start your own business?
We always wanted to work for ourselves and since we are both IT consultants, we thought it would be a great idea to start something completely different with a view to helping busy professionals utilise their time more efficiently.

Tell us about your business
My Best Friend is a lifestyle management service providing wide ranging personalised services and products to busy professionals. We cover quite a range of tasks from booking holidays and carrying out home improvements to buying birthday presents for a client’s wife or husband or even life coaching. We take care of a host of other time consuming tasks such as finding plumbers, walking dogs, taking your car in for a service or MOT, negotiating with builders, making doctor’s appointments and even doing the shopping.

Was it your first business idea and where did it come from?
No, we have both been involved in other business ventures. We realised that we could have used a service like this at various times in our working lives.

Was your decision to start a business inspired by any other companies or individuals?
Mamakoh thought of the idea about two or three years ago but didn’t want to do it alone so put it on hold until she found the right partner who wanted to start a business as well as someone who believes in the same principles in business – work hard and play hard!

What makes you think there’s a market for your business?
Because we believe time is precious, so why waste it doing the mundane tasks when someone else can take care of it? As we were both busy professionals most of the services we offer are things we would have liked to have at some point in our lives. We also believe although there are other businesses like us they are not that accessible to the ordinary person and we provide a personal assistant.

Once you’d decided to start a business, what did you do first?
We wrote a business plan and presented it to the local business link adviser. We researched the market, our competitors, what our marketing strategy was going to be and how did we want to be identified and the rest just followed.

What research did you do?
We used various methods including questionnaires, internet, talking to friends, colleagues, businesses and our competitors.

What advice did you seek?
We took our Business Plan to Business link and asked them to just review what we had done and ensure we had covered everything required to start a new business.

Does the government need to provide more help to people trying to start a business?
Yes, we think more financial help would be helpful and the requirements to get it should be simplified.

Talk us through the process of writing your business plan
We followed a set format for a structured business plan which we presented to the Business link, who having reviewed it, suggested we change a few things on which were not consistent and add more things like our profile and forecasting..

How useful has your business plan been and do you think you’ll stick to it as your business begins to grow?
We found it to be very useful exercise in forecasting and forward planning. It helped us focus and, so far, we are meeting all our targets. We are currently going through our testing stage to see if the market we have identified is viable and if our marketing gives clients. Our official launch is not planned until mid August.

How much did it cost to start the business?
It has cost us about £1,000 to get everything in place as we didn’t need any premises and we already had PC’s and other IT equipment.

How did you fund this?
We both contributed equally to a sinking fund. We have not approached anybody as yet, and we don’t want to until we can prove we have a viable business proposition.