Starting up

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Who’d be a school/college/university leaver today? Well, I would for one as the range of possibilities open to people these days is exponentially greater than when I left school. At that time (in the 1980s), on leaving college you had two choices: get a job or go onto University (at which point you had two choices: stay at Uni or get a job). Although there were, of course, self-employed businesspeople, most people didn’t know one personally and it seemed that there were many barriers in the way. For example, being self employed meant, at that time, selling a physical product or service and that meant either buying expensive equipment or renting a shop and that meant borrowing money from a reluctant bank (or family member).

Today it’s different. It’s possible to get a business up and running for, say, £250. It’s easy to choose a business that you can run part time to supplement earned income. And then, at some point, to add another business or build that one until you have enough regular income to stop inhabiting the corporate rat maze.

And the sheer amount of choice, along with the questionable reputation of the internet and the multitudes of “gurus” all eager to sell you on the dream of easy money is what is leading to confusion and procrastination amongst the next generation of entrepreneurs. With so much choice, what do you do?

Well, you may have come across a book called Crush It!: Why Now is the Time to Cash in on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk. If you haven’t then I strongly recommend it: I had read it within 24 hours and am now systematically applying its lessons to my businesses. Vaynerchuk’s style might be a little OTT for your taste (or mine) but there’s no denying his enthusiasm or his success.

He talks about three rules, in this order:

1. Love your family. As soon as I read this, I knew I was going to like the book.
2. Find your passion
3. Work your arse off

…and there’s a fourth, which is “patience”.

So, to find direction you need to think about this. If you didn’t need to earn money, what constructive activity would you devote your life to? What would get you out of bed early in the morning energised and carry you through the day enthused and excited? Whatever the answer to that question is, that’s your direction.

I get excited about the idea of building new businesses, either myself or helping others to do so. It’s like a puzzle to me, a very creative puzzle. I also love writing and programming. So I spend the majority of my day doing these things. I’m advising one young man to build a blog around his passion for horse racing, another to build a very specific t-shirt business and a young woman to build a business around her passion for history. Can you imagine spending all your time working on something that turns you on? Then do it! Vaynerchuk’s book is a good starting point but you’ll find this advice given by all of the industry’s most respected figures.

The key is not to be in it just for money: be in it because you love it. You might not make more, working for yourself, than you did as an employee. But you’ll have a great time doing it.

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One of the most often asked questions is “How do I come up with an idea for my small business?”. Bear in mind, from the start, that coming up with an idea is just the first step in a long process – once you have an idea, you need to research it before deciding to base your business on it. Far too many businesses are started up without this level of research and this is one of the main reasons for early business failure.

Here are some of my techniques for idea-generation:

What do you like doing?

A good business is based around your skills and knowledge. If you like doing something, you’ll naturally be better at it and more informed simply because your interest level is that much higher. This is why boys who are completely turned off by school can explain, in great depth, the off-side rule or list their favourite team’s players faultlessly.
Whilst it is possible to force yourself to learn about a subject you’re not naturally interested in, you’re pushing against the grain when you do that. Make a list of the things you like to talk about and do and see if there are any business ideas there. [click to continue…]

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If you’re looking for inspiration when it comes to starting and running a business I suggest you download this PDF, flip to a random page, read and consider…

What Matters Now

…by some of the most important thinkers both in and out of business.

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Choosing a name for your business can be one of the most important, and frustrating, of tasks. It’s especially important for internet businesses or businesses where the website is an important part of the marketing effort (in other words, most businesses).

Why? It’s likely that your potential customers will look for you by typing a search phrase into Google, Bing or Yahoo. This results in a list of the websites that are most relevant to the search phrase. Search engines use various ways of working out the relative relevance of each of the matching websites and order the results by relevance, so the more relevant your website appears to be, the higher you will appear. The higher you appear, the more likely it is that customers will find you. This applies both to the “sponsored” listings (Adwords in Google) and the “organic” listings that provide free traffic to your site. [click to continue…]

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