By The Rebel School CEO, Simon Paine.
Starting a business isn’t easy otherwise everyone would be doing it.
It’s true, right?
Here’s what we know.
For all of the working age population in the UK (some 70 million) it is estimated that only 7% of the population are intending to start a business in the next 12 months.
But that number is so much lower than the number of people walking around with a business idea in their heads.
What’s the reason that people don’t take the action to get their business started?
The main reason is because they think starting a business is risky. We can help you take the risk out!
Some other reasons might resonate with you:
- you can’t think of an idea,
- or maybe you have lots but you can’t choose an idea
- or maybe you’re just not sure you even want to do one.
The question you have to ask yourself: For what purpose do I want to start this business?
Do you want to start a business to create more income out of necessity?
Do you want to start a business so you get choice over how you earn your money?
Some other reasons are you might want to start a business for the personal challenge or you just want to get it out your system. Whatever your reason, think about this first: for what purpose?
Then you can decide whether the effort that you’re going to put in it’s worth it for the potential reward.
Something else we know to be true it is that it has never been more possible to start a business making money doing something new love.
You used to need business plans and finance to get a business off the ground but in 2022 you can start a business in 30 minutes and what’s more, you can do it for free.
Starting a business seems much less risky if you don’t spend any money to get started.
Something that many of us want is to be able to build a business around the lifestyle we want.
If you decide to only commit one hour a day it’s absolutely possible to make progress with the business idea in this way. Bear in mind, however, you will only get one hour a day worth of impact on your business ideas. So the more successful you want to be, then the more prepared you have to be to put in the time to make it happen (or if you’re really smart figure, to out how to get other people to do things for you).
OK Simon, I'm ready to commit to my business idea. Now what?
If you’re still reading, that means you’re still seriously considering starting your own business so here’s what we suggest:
- Bootstrap everything; that means to not spend any money on getting started. Use a free website, borrow or barter and get anything you can for free to get started. It doesn’t have to be perfect – it just has to be launched.
- Start selling. The traditional approach to starting a business ends with selling once you’ve got all of your ducks in a row. Screw the ducks they’re not worth it – this is the way to fail slow and expensive. Fail fast and cheap, start with sales, spend nothing and get going.
- Pitch to people before you’ve even made your products or delivered a service and take payment in advance in part or in full, so you can build your business with your customers money rather than your own
Commit, commit, commit.
Be honest with yourself about how much time you’re going to commit and what times of the day/days of the week or when you’re going to work on your business.
If you don’t plan for it, it’s less likely to happen. Remember it might be that you have to swap leisure time with business time.
e.g. Instead of watching three hours on Netflix tonight you can dial it down to one and like magic you two hours a day to work on your business.
Finally treat it like it’s a mini-experiment. Nobody is going to make you start a business and you don’t have to keep going with it if you don’t want to. Anyway it isn’t even a business yet it’s just an experiment.
It doesn’t become a business until you make money and you realise that firstly you enjoy what you’re doing, secondly so do your customers and thirdly that the business works both operationally and financially.
You’ll never actually know if your business is going to work until you give it a try. Plenty of people have dreams of business ideas when they actually run them in experiments they realise they don’t really want to do it, for example take the hobby bakers.
People who are fantastic at making cakes get encouraged by their friends to start a business but when they actually launch it they realise after sending the kids to school covered in icing sugar and working five hours a day baking, they realise it’s not something that they want to do for work, they just want to keep it as a hobby.
But if you don’t try and you’ll never know. So instead of thinking about starting a business instead think about launching your first mini experiment. What idea will you try first?
It's not a business launch, it is a mini-experiment
Finally treat it like it’s a mini-experiment. Nobody is going to make you start a business and you don’t have to keep going with it if you don’t want to. Anyway it isn’t even a business yet, it’s just an experiment.
It doesn’t become a business until you make money and you realise that firstly – you enjoy what you’re doing, secondly – so do your customers and thirdly – the business works both operationally and financially.
You’ll never actually know if your business is going to work until you give it a try.
Plenty of people have dreams of business ideas and when they actually run them in experiments they realise they don’t really want to do it.
For example, take the hobby bakers.
People who are fantastic at making cakes get encouraged by their friends to start a business but when they actually launch it, after sending the kids to school covered in icing sugar and working five hours a day baking, they realise it’s not something that they want to do for work, they just want to keep it as a hobby.
But if you don’t try and you’ll never know.
So instead of thinking about starting a business instead think about launching your first mini experiment.
What idea will you try first?
Simon Paine
Simon started the Rebel School (formerly Pop-Up Business School) with Alan in 2011.
As well as helping start-ups realise their business dreams, he has coached, trained and facilitated senior leaders from some of the world’s most famous companies including Microsoft, British Airways, and Thomson Reuters.