I’m a passionate believer in the above proverb. Education and knowledge is the greatest gift you can give someone. Sometimes outright charity creates a reliance rather than encourages self-sufficiency.

For some reason, the developed world appears to be losing its entrepreneurial spirit. Sure, there are some huge recent success stories like Facebook or Google coming out of Silicon Valley, but only the tiny minority of startups obtain VC funding in the way they did. Starting a business should be for everyone, not an elite few that have the privilege of an Ivy League education or the right connections.

I want to support the ‘grass roots’ of startups … where the student, housewife or recently redundant feel that creating their own business is a realistic option and not some impossible task that requires a degree in law or accounting.

I am giving away free advice, on this Web site and in my eBooks to lower the barrier to entry as far as possible for everday people. I’ve also chosen to help Startupism, a non-profit organisation based in San Francisco created with the ambition of spreading Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial spirit worldwide. Hopefully my blog articles will be shared over on startupism.org very soon!

The World needs more startups. Small-to-medium business create 2/3rds of the jobs in the private sector. Large companies rarely innovate like small businesses do … so for the real leaps in wealth creation, quality of life, technology to protect our environment, etc. we absolutely need as many entrepreneurs as possible. We can’t have enough people encouraging entrepreneurs and celebrating their successes.

That is why I am a startup evangelist. If just one person decides to risk it and startup because of me it will have been worth it.

I don’t want to give people advice to rush into something unprepared, but if you’ve done your research & still believe there is an opportunity, the only way to find out is to give it a try. Dithering is counter-productive and potentially harmful to your startup.

Here is a simple checklist of things you MUST think about / resolve before taking the first step:

• Investigate the costs of starting up
• Research your competitors thoroughly
• Ensure you understand the legalities/regulation you will need to comply with
• Reduce your personal overheads or be prepared to
• Reduce the risk you are taking by ensuring you have enough cash/income to last as long as possible
• Set realistic expectations for revenue in your early months

I absolutely do not advise anyone to start a company if it is possible they will run out of cash within 3 months. You MUST reduce your liabilities or bankroll your start-up with a separate income stream to give yourself 6-9 months minimum. The amount of lead-time you will need to begin generating cash depends on the type of business you are starting. For example, if you’re selling to large companies you may need more than a year to give yourself a fair crack at it. If you’re opening a retail outlet or restaurant you will need less of a time buffer, but you should be aware of any seasonality in your sector. E.g. opening a shop in the Spring may be a very bad idea if you will do 40% of your sales around Christmas time!

You can’t think of every detail until you actually start running your business, both opportunities and problems will surprise you. You won’t have your strategy absolutely correct – be prepared to adapt and leap into action if an opportunity presents itself.

Remember that your first startup is like a first child … it will be a crazy and emotional roller-coaster. When a customer says no, you’ll be depressed and miserable. When you make your first sale you’ll be on top of the world. To make it as easy as possible on yourself, only start a business when in a stable place personally. Do NOT surround yourself with doubters or negative influences, those closest to you must either encourage you or stay away!

If you’re lucky enough to have nothing to lose, spend less time thinking about it and get on with it!

The expression “busy fools” is important to remember. We all know them, people who busy themselves with things add no value to their businesses. They have meetings but come away with no firm decisions or progress. They’ll spend three days trying to learn accounting so they can complete their VAT return. They will spend 10 hours talking to a customer who is spending £100. These people will never be rich as they don’t value their own time so their customers never will.

She's doing it wrong!

Many startups come to a point where they are limited by the number of hours their founder/s can work before they have a breakdown. They get stuck, feeling unable to hire someone to help as it will mean a pay cut. Their business hits a ceiling and goes nowhere.

You need to take that pay cut and hire that person sooner rather than later. Before your exhaustion means you start letting down customers and before you lose enthusiasm for your job and the prospects of your business. You need to have confidence that any cut in pay will be more than compensated for as the business will have your attention again … rather than slaving for customers, you will have time to think about things like business development or marketing. This is where the energies of the founders should be, and where you add most value.

If business founders are worth £100/hour and employees £15/hour, the company will obviously make more profit on a job if an employee does the bulk of the work. You can then invest your £100/hour time in finding more business so that other people’s work is paying your salary. You’ll also be able to streamline your business, negotiate better deals with suppliers, spend time with your key accounts, etc. … things worthy of your time that will enable it to grow and become more profitable than before.

Bite the bullet, spend less hours doing and more thinking strategically… take a pay cut … and then reap even greater rewards!

>500 downloads on Smashwords with 47 Facebook ‘Like’s
Average of 4 stars rating in US iTunes – 28 ratings
Average of 4.5 stars rating in UK iTunes – 29 ratings

***** by Whitney Spelman:
I enjoyed this book greatly.

***** “Very inspirational and motivating” by Gskskshak:
I have been trying to come up with ways to make money on the side, other then working at the office job I have now. I don’t make bad money but would love to start my own business and work for myself. This book encouraged me a bit more and I think I will start putting ideas into play more often. Thank you for the awesome bit of information. It was inspiring!

***** “Better than expected” by Yung_Executive:
Inspirational book without the cheesiness of self-help literature. The author does a great job of warning entrepreneurs of the challenges ahead while providing convincing encouragement that YOU CAN DO IT…and you should! Quick, easy, and purposeful read.

***** “Start – go get em!” by John Conroy:
Great read and a real motivator, it’s seems the doubts are no just mine, thanks for publishing this.

**** “Decent Startup Book” by Mark P:
This book helps go over the startup phase of any business. It was short, easy to read, and came with inspirational quotes. I liked it enough, that I going to recommend it to my students. I run a business myself.

***** “Simply amazing” by Ramsy Rollie:
I’ve read many business self help books (the intelligent investor, think and grow rich, the E myth, etc) and this little iBook phamplet has got to be one of the best. It’s motivational but also MOST importantly keeps you in check with reality. Clearly telling you it ain’t all candy and roses, and giving you valuable advice from experience. My take? READ THIS BOOK

Few people would downsize their home, sell their car, work weekends and holidays, see their family less, stop buying new clothes, miss the big game on TV or even sleep less to reach their goals. Yet, unfortunately, more often than not this is what people need to do to get on top.

Eric Thomas, the ‘Hip-Hop Preacher’ is a motivational speaker. He sums the above up nicely by saying “When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe … THEN you’ll be successful”. When you want to make your startup work, more than you want life’s luxuries like TV, holidays, a nice car, etc. then you are far more likely to make it work.

Creature comforts & startups don't mix

This is one of the big reasons, in my opinion, why most successful entrepreneurs are young (18-30). Students are already doing without, living on a tight budget, sleeping in a tiny studio … so it is far less sacrifice for a student than it is for someone who has tasted the comfort of a regular pay-cheque, owned a nice car or lived in a nice home. People who have had a decent job almost always end up with a bunch of liabilities that prevent them from taking risks. Higher rent payments, car payments, a credit card … all things which are hard to sacrifice in order to make a start-up business get off the ground.

Lets be clear, the higher your living costs the more difficult it will be to take the leap and persist long enough for you to learn the intricacies of your business and gain traction. That is unless you have a large pot of savings to fall back on during the inevitable difficult patches … which nearly no-one has.

So how can you increase your chances? It is easy to write down, but very hard to implement. Reduce your liabilities and outgoings as low as possible, and save as much as possible! Debt must be one of the biggest worries that prevents people from starting a business, so try to eliminate yours. Go without. You don’t need a nice car – I sold a 9-month old car and bought a £2000 boring one to give me some extra cash when starting a business for the second time (even when technically I was a millionaire!). Sell things you don’t need on eBay, stop having expensive nights out, eat at home & cook for yourself … even get a part-time job to do on the side of your start-up to reduce the burden on your fledgling company.

The longer you can survive and keep your business running, the more likely it will start to take off. Plenty of people have the perseverance and commons sense to make this happen … but can you also make the sacrifices required to last long enough?

What being exceptional is not about is being a genius. You do not need an IQ of 150 or a PhD to do something better than anyone else. Having a passion for what you do and striving to improve are the sole prerequisites. You don’t need to have an incredible job to demonstrate to the world that you are exceptional …

You can choose to do any job exceptionally...

The above image has been doing the rounds on the Web as a funny illustration of what a valet parking attendant with OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) might do. I tend to think that it is actually a great use of spare time to make his or her car parking something memorable and different … i.e. exceptional. If I was this person’s boss I would be extremely pleased and make sure I kept them as an employee … if I had several different locations with car parks I would make it company policy!

Small innovations can have big effects on your customers and your reputation. I was on a customer support call the other day and the person in the call centre said “I’m going to put you on hold. I estimate it will take 4 minutes to get you a definitive answer, but I will come back in 2 minutes to update you”. Any possibility of me getting frustrated by being on hold was eliminated with that simple line … I imagine they have far fewer people hanging up mid-call than other call centres.

So, whatever your job or business, have a think about some small things you can do to become exceptional. The small, thoughtful things make an impression and can create free word-of-mouth marketing for you or your company … or, like the photo, may cause it to go viral!

Iteration means repeating a process over and over to get closer to the desired result. For example, if you’re making a Web site you continually review and improve the site. The effects of each change are measured and feed back into the review and development process to create something better than the last version. This is a scientific approach, not trial and error. The results from each experiment guide the approach you take the next time around. The more iterative steps you take, the more you learn and the better the results.

I believe that rapid iteration of every business process is critical to success. Especially in startups. Larger business get stuck in their ways and become slow to adapt, so small companies need to press home the advantages they have. Trying new things each week or month will allow you to adapt far faster than many existing companies and serve your customers better. Undoubtedly you will discover things that work and other things that done. Be careful to remember every lesson you learn and use that knowledge to your maximum advantage.

The key point here is to take many small steps/improvements rather than try to do everything in one big step. You must also measure all relevant data so you can properly judge each change on its own merit. If you change too many things at once you will not know for sure what causes the improvement or drop in sales.

Some examples of small iterative steps having a high-impact are:

- A 5% price-drop doubled the conversion rate on a Web site (i.e. sales doubled for the same volume of visitors)
- Changing the wording on a Web site’s button improving the number of clicks by +20%
- Google improved the speed of their search engine’s results, which led to a rise in search traffic and therefore revenue (the improvement had to be measured in milliseconds, an amount of time most people believe humans cannot perceive)

In 1988, average wages in the USA were $30,400. After 20 years of so-called progress (the S&P 500 share index has quadrupled since then) the average wage was $30,000 in 2008. Yes, that’s right, $400 lower.

I’ve been wondering why this has happened, and can only assume it is due to an increase in the number of people earning nothing at all and surviving off the welfare state. In America around 47million people are in poverty. 15% of the population in the USA struggle to feed themselves.

This is scary stuff! I hate to be negative, but I really can see it getting worse. Progress in technology is such that many more jobs could be obsolete in the coming decades. Robots will replace more people in manufacturing, computers with ‘artificial intelligence’ will reply to customer service enquiries and answer phones, buses will drive themselves and medicine will improve so much that not only will populations swell but preventative treatments should keep us out of hospital. The result of all of this will be more people and less employment.

Not as far away as you think ...

I’m not talking about science fiction … this is already happening. Unpopular pension reforms are being pushed through because we are all living longer. Prototype cars which can drive themselves already exist and you probably heard about ‘Siri’ the personal assistant you speak to that comes with the new iPhone 4S. Progress is accelerating. As we get smarter and, more importantly, as our computers get smarter we can develop solutions to nearly anything more quickly. In a decade technology will be nearly unrecognisable to what we have today. Just look how far the mobile phone has come in that time or the development of the Internet.

So, in short, you need to get into the 1% as quickly as you can. The only way to really get ahead is to operate your own business and not rely on an employer to enrich you … you may become obsolete and unemployed rather than promoted! You need to be the person installing robots, using AI computer programs, etc… the one profiting from new technology and serving your customers better with it. What you do NOT need to be is the person competing for superiority with technological progress. You will fail.

Clearly not all jobs are at risk, at least right now … but who knows where the next breakthrough will be. I know I’m much happier being master of my own destiny than hoping Artificial Intelligence doesn’t develop too fast and replace me!

Schools (i.e. those educating young people up to the age of 16/17) simply do NOT teach their pupils anything to do with business, creating a company or any of the fundamental knowledge someone would require to incorporate a company or set up as a sole trader.

There is heated debate about education constantly. What age should sex education start? Should creationism be taught alongside evolution? Are religious schools good or bad for an integrated society? Are education/exam standards slipping in order to give the illusion that we’re all getting smarter?

What I never hear a debate about is what age should we start teaching kids about profit and loss. How much time should we spend encouraging kids to think of small businesses they could run to raise money for charity? What introduction to the business world can we give kids to empower them to form companies, create partnerships and generate wealth?

Teach them young!

Sure, by the time teenagers get to their A-levels they can select a course such as ‘business studies’ but this is far too specialist and elitist. Why can’t ALL kids be taught about business in a basic way?

The lessons are valid for everyone, not just those that decide to become entrepreneurs. Cash-flow management is relevant for any person looking to balance their expenditure with income. Teaching about buying low and selling high would encourage people to shop around & seek out value. Starting a small enterprise for charity would give real-world lessons in project management and accounting. Students would learn a little bit about law, use their mathematics for a real application and how to prioritise or advertise. They would also have a better understanding of how their first employer works and likely be more able to spot opportunities.

Small companies hire 2/3rds of the people working in the private sector. They are the life-blood of modern society. What would the world look like if every student had at least tried to run a little business for a good cause before they were 16? Would that double or treble the number of adults who then try to set-up a real business to support themselves? Or, even if it didn’t increase the numbers, perhaps it would help reduce the failure rate. Any improvement in either of those statistics would enrich a country substantially.

I believe putting some business education into the curriculum could dramatically help Western economies, increase the number and variety of startups, create employment and spark more innovation and diversity of business. It would also create a much-needed alternative to higher education and the indebtedness this creates for many.

So, isn’t it time to teach some simple business lessons to 10 year-olds?

Too many companies are obsessed with their competitors. Trying to win business away from them, talking trash about them to customers, taking legal action against them, threatening suppliers to not do business with them, etc. etc.. It is a never-ending process that saps your energy away from where it is needed. Every minute you spend thinking about what your competitor is doing is one not spent on improving your business.

There is no point trying to match a competitor’s pricing if you can’t make a profit, both companies could easily end up in a death spiral and wind up insolvent. Price wars don’t benefit anyone and ruining a rival’s profits doesn’t transfer them into your bank account!

Don't pick fights you can't win

Having rival businesses around you is a fact of life. If they are hostile towards you, they feel threatened and you should appreciate that you must be doing something right! Don’t waste time and energy being fearful of them, you should not care if they make £1million as long as your business is going OK and improving. Even if you’re killing the competition, it does not mean that you should stop trying to improve. Complacency kills far more businesses than competitors.

So if you’re going to compete with someone, compete with yourself. Try to make each month better than the last. Work to improve margins and efficiency. Try new things you’ve not done before on a regular basis. Constantly seek ways you can improve the way you do business. Never be satisfied and always keep an open mind. Push yourself. If you’re lucky enough to be doing well and making a healthy living, the worst thing you can do is stop trying to improve and adapt. One day the market will change and you’ll find yourself in hot water.