The calls by mostly US Democrats for greater regulation for Wall Street will be supported by most UK small businesses. Although most UK companies, sole traders and partnerships will not have direct investment in the United States financial markets, the effect of the financial crash is felt globally.

Make no mistake; the events on Wall Street will affect companies and people starting a business all over the UK. Customers will feel less confident about their finances and the economic situation and will restrict buying to the necessities.

This in turn will lead to businesses purchasing fewer items from other commercial entities and the knock-on effect continues towards an increasingly downwards spiral fuelled by recession and employment worries in an ever shrinking buying circle.

Because generally fewer people will consider starting a business in a recession, the future business taxes which the Government relies on for the sustainment of public finances will diminish. Both new and existing businesses will sell less and therefore the VAT, corporation and income tax generated will be less.

The stark reality of the power that Wall Street, the fund managers and banks posses has been burned in to the conscience minds of Governments, regulators and the public who are crying out for answers.

Against a background of democracy, the realisation that none of the people who control and influence the economic and financial well-being of everyone on the planet has been elected must move the world to a more socialist leaning.

The arguments for capitalism, free markets and small Government have taken a battering in the same way that Communism did after Russia ran out of money in the 80’s.

The kind of regulatory structures which are likely to be invoked following the global collapse of financial centres are likely to impose stricter controls on bank liquidity ratios, ensuring that their lending is supported by adequate deposits.

As always, some of the regulatory and reporting duties will fall on Accountants by way of new standards and disclosures which assess the exposure of a particular business to potential drastic falls in the stock market share prices.

Whatever the specifics of the proposals to regulate Wall Street, one thing is certain; if a Democratic President is elected on November 4th 2008, the changes will be sweeping and almost designed to be a form of punishment to the class of perpetrators on the current crisis.

The spate of new laws and regulatory provisions which will be brought in are likely to be culture changing in their nature, designed to create a solid economic basis on which all stakeholders can build and make future plans.

The effects could affect the ability of everyone to register a company in certain financial industries which might well in turn dampen the global entrepreneurial spirit to an extent. But as we have, and indeed are still witnessing to results of rampant disregard for people lives when Wall Street is left to be completely free, the needs of the many must now outweigh the greed of the few.

Carrying out regular evaluations of both the business and yourself is a crucial part of ensuring that potential opportunities are maximised and that any non efficient practices are rectified.

Before discussing the specifics of any type of evaluation, it is important to express the gravity of the necessity and the alarming frequency with which the exercises do not form part of the everyday processing which occur within business operations.

Switching from being employed and starting a business often results in many changes to both one’s duties and outlook. Some of the changes may be obvious, such as where the person works or the fact that finances become their immediate responsibility.

Other changes have a greater subtlety and due to the time spent adjusting to the more striking alterations in the person’s life; these less overt differences can be overlooked. Such items which fall in to this category might be some of the broader administrative activities which existed in a person’s previous employment such as appraisals, management meetings and peer discussions.

These are a form of business and personal evaluation whereby others assess individual performance and also the strategic direction of the operations. The results of these exercises may have favourable or not so, but none the less, they provided a structured platform for commentary on performance and the mechanism to change it where this was deemed necessary.

Most small businesses fail to implement such structured evaluation methods in to their operations mainly due to the lack of time and other resources. They generally choose to rely on strict financial indicators such as profit and turnover to assess and evaluation how the business is performing and therefore, in turn, how effective they are being.

The problem with such crude techniques is that they would fail to reveal many of the lost and future opportunities available to the business and would not, in themselves, provide any detailed analysis of where either profit or turnover originated.

Also in cases where the person being evaluated is responsible for carrying out the critique, many would agree that this lacks objectivity and the motivation to provide useful information.

The evaluation of both the business and the person running it must be conducted if the business is to rely on anything apart from luck to deliver the full potential benefits to the owner.

Running a small business, particular as a sole trader or single company director might restrict the available avenues to obtaining an objective and thorough report card on performance.

They are some methods which can still be called up on however. These might include trusted friends, certain family members or even Management Consultants who might be able to review and assess the effectiveness of one or more aspects.

In the case of both family and friends, proper instruction by the owner and the fact that even negative comments would in fact be most useful might lead them exercise a higher degree of objectivity when conducting their analysis.

They also certainly have the advantage of being free and low costs means of receiving feedback and comment.

Management Consultants do charge and the initial quotation might be alarming. One should remember that in almost all cases you receive what you pay for and even though the expense might be large, the value obtained from a yearly or quarterly check-up could far outweigh the charge.

A reasonable halfway approach between the potentially far from objective approach adopted by friends and family and the expense of  a professional consultant might be that of joining a BNI chapter or some other group which can provide discussion, feedback and analysis both directly and indirectly to the business and owner.

By listening to others talk about their business, ideas can be gained as well as evaluated and such interactions can enable the business owner to compare their focus and direction to that of their peers.

Whichever methods or combinations of them that are adopted, it is vital that a sole proprietor have some means to receive external assessments on both their performance and direction and that which relates to businesses.

In the current economic climate starting business on the cheap has to be at the forefront of every entrepreneur’s plans for setting up. With the banks refusing to lend to each other yet alone an enthusiastic but unknown business start-up, people are being forced to scale back their plans and seek cheaper alternatives to bring their products and services to market.

The problem which is being faced by the small business sector is that spending and investment limitations in turn reduce the number of industries which can be entered in to.

Those areas such as manufacturing, retail shops and building which typically require substantial monies to begin with are probably out of the reach of most entrepreneurs with little capital of their own.

The obvious cheap methods of starting a business, such as through internet selling are immediately problematic because they typically have few barriers to entry and expose the operations to a vastly saturated and competitive environment from the outset.

Business objectives might change from making very good profits to generating sufficient income to cover operational expenses and provide the owner with some remuneration to meet personal costs.

Within the current business models which start-ups must adhere to, the importance of a website become even evident as this might now become the primary means of both advertising and selling.

Other considerations when seeking to set-up a business cheaply may well be to extend the current financial plans by a number of years to reflect that investment in to the operations will have to occur at a slower rate than that which was ideal.

The risks and disadvantages here are self-evident as those potential investors now see that it will take so many more years before the business achieves both profitability and adequate cash to return their capital and reward.

Another important aspect of reducing monetary exposure when setting up a new business, is to review and limit where possible, the number and value of overheads that are taken on.

The renting versus buying calculation might allocate a premium to the outright purchase option because of the risk associated with it. Although leasing or renting is typically the more costly financing alternative, any monetary benefits may have to be foregone. This is simply because a non-committal lease arrangement provides lower initial costs and the ability to cease the contact should the business fail to meet success in the way that was expected.