Kickstart Your Own Business

Dragons’ Den panellist Peter Jones (note the name – no more special than mine) is building a National Enterprise Academy where 16 to 19 year olds will be taught how to be entrepreneurs, not taught by qualified teachers but by entrepreneurs (as a flippant divergence, see www.stupidstudies.co.uk to find out if being dyslexic will help). He wants Britain to be a “can do” country, its young people to have a positive mindset. I did not, as he has, build a £180m fortune but I did build a very successful one-man business.

Here are the worry beads to play with

* There are a thousand reasons not to do it
* Where will the start-up capital come from
* What if there is no work/orders
* What about all that paperwork, licences, rules ,regulations
* Know nothing about accounts and tax
* Never been on my own before

Here are the answers in sequence

* Choose one good reason to do it
* Ignore it, just get going, start as an acorn – ignore the oak tree
* There will be, trust me, we all felt like that
* Sod the lot, someone will sweep up after you but be legal
* Don’t need to, after 3 months ask someone else who does their books
* Yes you have, born alone and will die alone, you can do it

Now consider these two things. Rachel Lowe, a 29 year old mother of two, was working as a taxi driver in Portsmouth. She invented a board game that was ridiculed by the whole panel of Dragons’ Den. It now outsells Twister and Monopoly. Secondly, I was fired from a major corporation aged 49 and when MD. After a number of false starts and set-backs, I applied the positive answers set out above and it worked. If she can do it and I can do it, so can you.

If you found this article striking a chord you will enjoy learning, and maybe profit from my own experiences. Read my book “Barn Door To Balance Sheet” it may just give you the insight you need to kickstart YOUR BUSINESS.