RSS feedsIf you get it right, it will put you in control of your own destiny and give you a sense of achievement like nothing else can. It may also make you extremely rich.
Unfortunately, starting up a business is also one of the most unpredictable things you can do and one which is far more likely to end in failure than success. The answer is to learn from the people who have done it before you.
One of the most important lessons to learn is to choose a business which can be scaled up. There is always one brick wall you are going to find yourself coming up against time and time again - the fact that you are only human. So you must decide if your business is scalable.
At its simplest, scalability means you do not physically have to be there to do the thing that makes the money. If your business is going to rely solely on your personal skills and expertise to create the product or service then the business will not be scalable because its expansion will be limited by how much you personally can do.
If, on the other hand, your business provides a product or service that other people can be trained to provide ñ for example an oven-cleaning service or a bespoke cake-making business and there is potentially no limit on how many people you can recruit to do this ñ then you have a scalable business.
Oliver Brendon is the founder of ATD Travel services, which sells tickets to theme parks such as Disneyworld, Universal Studios and Seaworld. He built scalability into his business model from the start, by deciding that he would never sell tickets for anything that got full, such as hotels.
That way he could take bookings at any time with confidence because he knew there was unlimited availability. It also meant he could employ other people to take the bookings.
The second vital lesson is to learn from your mistakes. Failure is a horrible word. It reeks of sadness and despair and of staring down into a very black hole.
But while repeated and persistent failure is of no use to anyone, discovering how not to do something can actually be far more useful in the long run than doing it the right way first time.
Do not take failure personally. Analyse the type of failure you experienced so you can find out the reason for it. If you find it impossible to dispassionately analyse the reasons for failure, get outside help.
David Speakman has experienced both tremendous success and crushing failure. At the age of 40, having built up and sold two businesses, he opened a themed restaurant. It was so successful that ten months later he sold it for a £500,000 profit. Enthused by his success he opened another restaurant. This time he picked the wrong location and lost more than £1m.
Two years later, after starting another company, the bank almost pulled the plug on his latest project. But Travel Counsellors is now the largest home-based company in the world with 850 self-employed counsellors who, between them, generate £210m of business.
The third lesson in becoming a successful entrepreneur is to accept that it will always take longer than you think. The secret is to have a business plan to remind you what your goals are, to talk to people who have done it before you, and to learn the art of being patient.
Edward Perry has certainly learned the art of patience. His frozen ready meals business, Cook, took ten years to make its first profit. The first batch of recipes were so inedible it took three months to even come up with a handful of dishes he could sell.
The first three years were a miserable 'battle of grim survival'. He clung on, however, and his determination eventually paid off. Cook now has 21 shops and in 2008 is expected to have a turnover of £18m.
By watching and learning from the people who have made it work you can dramatically improve your chances of success. And prove that truly, you can do it, too.
Rachel Bridge, enterprise editor of the Sunday Times, is the author of You Can Do It Too, Kogan Page, www.koganpage.com, hardback, 184 pages, £14.99
