Kick-start your own businessDragons’ 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.
jgs-2008
