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Kick-start 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 “Violets” It's a
cracking good read anyway, but may just give you the insight you
need to kickstart
YOUR BUSINESS. |
