My Story
When I left school like many school leavers I didn’t have much of an idea of what “career path” to choose. After a few years of working in a fairly boring office job, it started to dawn on me that becoming a business owner or “entrepreneur” could be an extremely attractive option! Earning millions of pounds, running an exciting business, not being told what to do by others….What’s not to like?!
Unlike the average career path, there was certainly no university course that you could simply attend and follow a syllabus so how could I start?
Before the rise of the Internet and YouTube, reading books was the old-fashioned method of gaining knowledge 😉 and I religiously started to study as many different books on Entrepreneurs and Business that I could get my hands on and still do to this day.
I wasn’t really sure of what type of business to start and it was fairly evident that the more important question was not “What business did I want to start?” but what business had the best chance of success?
How do you start a business with no money?
My first and biggest stumbling block was “How do you start a business with no money?”
Most of the books on entrepreneurs that I read seemed to skim over this simple but paramount obstacle. I guessed that most of these entrepreneurs must have had some kind of head start, money from family or friends to start up?
None of my family or friends were wealthy or even had any money to spare and if they did I hardly think they would have risked their hard-earned cash to help me out, so I could rule that option out straight away.
Possibly feeling a little bit sorry for myself that I didn’t have the head start in life that I perceived many other successful entrepreneurs had, it started to dawn on me that without any money saved, it was impossible to start any type of business at all. So I continued to work and attempted to save some money whilst improving my knowledge.
It only became apparent to me many years later that the lack of cash was probably not a bad thing, the simple fact is that most businesses fail and even with a wad of cash and no experience like many others I would have likely and quickly blown the lot.
Having no cash forces you to think outside of the box and improve your business acumen. In fact many years later when I had saved a significant amount of money I still managed to quickly and easily lose a considerable amount on bad investments in the stock market, a very painful experience! It just goes to show that a pile of cash might not be the answer to all of your prayers!
For more details on how I started, and how you can also start a business with no money, take a look at this article.
Research
what you are doing when you dont know what you are doingSo as my journey starts lets explain the typical reality of starting a new business. First of all you need to know: Is there a market? Who are my potential customers? What’s the competition? What are the potential profit margins?
After your initial competitor research, you may be surprised to find out how many other businesses in your industry already exist. They will start to appear everywhere you look!
Standard advice when setting up a business is to aim to have your own Unique Selling Point (USP) to help stand out from the competition.
However, it often takes some initiative and insight to come up with a real USP. It’s not very often that you come across radical innovation in business quite often we are all tweaking or improving upon something that already exists.
Price and profit are often the next stumbling block if you’re looking at reselling a product. You will sometimes find that certain competitors are selling for cheaper than you can buy!
This could be for various reasons for example they could be selling a loss leader to acquire customers to sell another product at a profit. They could be getting greater discounts for buying in bulk or have other hidden agendas and motivations that you will not be aware of.
For example, I was once working with a van sales company where a competitor company was selling vehicles at a loss due to bonus incentives provided by manufacturers based on volume, this was not common knowledge at the time within the industry and only became apparent at a later date.
Time to Start!
not as easy as it seemsOnce you decide upon your chosen business idea the excitement starts to build and this is the best part! With a child-like expectation of the future ahead of you, time to put your money and time where your mouth is.
With the odds stacked against you, you may spend weeks or months developing your business, doing all the groundwork, creating a website, etc., and then you need to attract customers. You can either pay to advertise or spend countless hours online attempting to drum up business, spending time, or money … quite often both.
Then you sit there in anticipation waiting for your customers to start rolling in and your fortune to accumulate…and wait…and then… well quite often…nothing! just the sound of tumbleweed in the distance!
If your are lucky you may receive the odd half-hearted enquiry as your advertising spend and heart rate increase. Whilst you help increase the fortunes of advertising companies such as Google you can sit and watch as your bank balance starts to dwindle.
Quite often and very frustratingly once you’ve started your business the first calls and emails you receive will be from other companies out to sell to you! Welcome to the real world of business!
There is nothing more soul-destroying than sitting there after all of your efforts and marketing spend to get little or nothing in return. No salary, no recognition, no reward… absolutely nothing!
I guess that’s why most of the population work in jobs. You might not be happy with your salary but at least you are getting one! Once you start a business however you are not only losing a guaranteed income you are risking your savings also, effectively starting at a double loss!
This “entrepreneur education” however does have some value…
If at First you dont Succeed…
As Ive already mentioned business acumen is typically hard-earned… it is pain, it is frustration, it is a loss of time and a loss of money whilst learning valuable lessons in the process. It is however a learning process that improves your business acumen, knowledge, perception, negotiating skills, confidence, and success.
Ultimately failure is a learning process, just like a baby learning to walk. I remember my little one learning to walk and often falling, sometimes hitting his head hard! He might have cried and been upset but he got back up and tried again- he didn’t stop trying to walk.
More intelligently however as adults in business, we should aim to reduce our pain and financial loss and learn from the failures of others! As the saying goes “A smart man learns from his own mistakes, a wise man learns from the mistakes of others”.
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Try Try again
Even the most prolific and well-known entrepreneurs realise they never know it all and can benefit from the mistakes and advice of others.
Before Richard Branson set up Virgin Airlines he first consulted with Freddy Laker, the owner of the failed airline “Laker Airlines”. Learning from Freddy’s failure and experience battling against British Airways Branson was already prepared for what lay ahead and ultimately his battle against BA and their “dirty tricks” campaign.
I have sometimes wondered about high-profile entrepreneurs that we hear so much about, how long would they have kept trying if their first few businesses had crashed to the ground? Would they have kept trying? Would they have had the money to keep trying? Who knows would we ever have heard of them?
It’s ironic that the media typically report on business success but have less interest in business failures, I guess that’s down to the public interest also. Business failure however is where the most valuable and important lessons can be learned.
Maybe “business training” should be given to the youngsters in our schools? Within our academic school system, it’s fairly easy to study a topic written by somebody else, memorise the content, and then simply regurgitate the same information, safe in the false knowledge that you are really clever for getting the answers right! Possibly not the best education for running a business?
Anyway lets get back on track….
Achieving Results!
Learning from my own failures, studying the methods of countless entrepreneurs and the dogged and sometimes miserable effort to keep trying however started to yield results.
Over the years I have developed several successful businesses from the ground up including Importing, Business Brokerage, Marketing, Activities & Corporate Events.
I have also spent over 12 years as a Business & Marketing Adviser helping hundreds of business owners grow their businesses too. During my lifetime I have gained a tremendous amount of knowledge and experience, with businesses in all industries.
One thing to remember is that different business strategies and marketing methods that work well in one industry quite often don’t work so well in another, so it’s essential to have the right plan in place from day one. One of the most popular and successful tools that I use to help business owners is my “Time to Fly” programme, which tends to achieve results 4x more successful than owners working alone.
Ultimately helping business owners through exclusive Business Support & Coaching, and sharing my knowledge and experience is now one of my great passions.
Activity & Health
Apart from business, activity & exercise have also played a huge part of my life and my other passions. I have my own seasonal outdoor activity business in Wales (Blue Ocean Activities) where myself and team of outdoor instructors take out all types of groups on exciting and adrenaline based activities, so if you are ever in Wales look us up and come along.
Activity and exercise not only keep you physically and mentally healthy but also increase your energy levels an absolute essential in running any business. Its important to remember that health will always be far more valuable than any accumulation of wealth, In fact without health your wealth is worth nothing.
Has Your Business
Got Wings?
Ever wondered about the full potential of your business?
Are you 100% confident that you have the best possible business strategy in place?