Setting up own business - Thoughts

Johnny20270

Johnny20270

Johnny20270

Associate
Joined
28 Apr 2014
Posts
63
i assume many guys here have set up their own business. I have been reading a lot of sucess stories about it recently and just wondered what you chaps have learnt from your experience. Naturally there are plenty stories whereby they failed too!

The crucial concept to me is generation of the idea.

Its something I would like to explore and as redundancy is envitable where i work, its seems like a good time to at least research.
 
Johnny20270 said:
i
The crucial concept to me is generation of the idea.
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Whilst an idea is fundamental to starting a new business, it's the execution and the follow through that earns dividends.

A relatively "mundane" idea executed well can still be a success and a great business - but a good idea executed badly will most likely not even get off the ground.

You do not need to develop the next Facetwitchat-social-media-app either!
 
No one with half a brain cell is going to give you the crucial "concept idea"

Have you considered selling Amazon Returned stock from pallets in your mum's garage ?

You will be looking at £250 loafers within a year.

#Yolo #Swag
 
Efour said:
No one with half a brain cell is going to give you the crucial "concept idea"

Have you considered selling Amazon Returned stock from pallets in your mum's garage ?

You will be looking at £250 loafers within a year.

#Yolo #Swag
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yeah but eh could take some of the inevitable troll comments from GD, mix them together and cfrete the best turtle soup letter box pooping machine ever

on a serious note, good luck man
 
Do/sell something you're good at and know about.

Don't become an 'entrepreneur'. The amount of people I've met at uni that swear blind they are, yet they haven't actually done anything or started any sort of business idea.
 
One thing I can tell you for a fact about running a business, you never really get a
day off and you sure as hell dont work 9to5. Just another thing to think about. ;)
 
Once you have an idea you need to research the market if its highly competitive can you offer something they don't? Something people want?

If there's no competition why is that. Maybe there's no market for it.

Turning an idea into a successful business is 50/50 research and execution.

Best of luck :) there's always people who have the capital and are interested in new ideas.
 
Hot dog vendors can make reasonably good money if you get a good location, I know a hot dog vendor who clears £50k a year.

I don't think you need to be skilled to run a simple business like that - a lot of it is luck,
I will give this advice to any small business owner - be prepared to fail then get right back up on the horse. Most successful business owners have failed at least twice before.

Do you have any marketable skills or maybe hobbies whereby you know a lot about something?

I run 3 small businesses, it's as demanding as you make it - if I quit my day gate I could make a healthy living off of them but as it is I basically do as little as possible. Probably helps that I have a ****load of business experience and a masters degree in the subject...
 
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mrbell1984 said:
If you have to ask about setting up your own business you are simple not ready. Come back she you're making billions.
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Nah I see it as a guy who is starting out his initial research and asking for a little advice. Not as someone who sees himself as ready to go for it at this stage.
 
mrBell: thats kindof a foolish statement tbh

My question is to gauge the thoughts of those experienced in this area, not run off like a headless chicken. Nor am I am not looking for someone to give me an idea. Far from it! Some get plain lucky by just thinking of a concept and essentially get bought out before the idea comes to fruition, but I daresay the majority comes from hard and intelligent work.

My question is more based on the lessons learnt from people who have actually done it before and what lessons they learnt at it, i.e. their testimonials. I reading about successful start-ups there seems to a lot of commonality in their wisdom. Such as:

- don’t underestimate marketing
- don't ignoring advice from experienced entrepreneurs - Hence the post
- confusing a good idea with a profitable business
- resisting technology

And so on …

I am well experienced in business but in large multi-national corporations, Exxon-Mobile, Investment Banking etc and this is nothing like a small enterprise of course. To market and set up financial products we hire teams of lawyers, regulation specialists, IT gurus, and large marketing department. Naturally this is not feasible for a one man band. We only deal with sums of 10m and above

I am well educated and I work at specialist finance and the amount of people I have seem over the years looking to make a fast buck in finance because they have watched “the wolf of wall street” or some other movie is simply amazing or look for patterns in pricing and think the concept of risk “not being a p#ssy”.

However I am not naive enough to think I can do it better than everyone else. I always admire the young graduate who can make a great success of himself with seemly no business knowledge nor life experience. They have done well and good luck to them. I personally think a lot of my educated colleagues often pour scorn on enterprising people because they have “not served their time” so-to-write and often put it down to this jealous sentiment of “they just got lucky”.
 
Abbotsmike:
yes you're correct. I dislike that term entrepreneurs, I am more referring to sensible people who have planned their business and progress through the stages, not those cocky Muppets you see coming in to dragons dens on a half-baked idea with no research and get hammered for it :)

Mynight: yes I have the capital (within reason) and interest so no problem there, but want to do my due diligence

As for my skill: background, structural engineer, then c++ programmer for scientific software and last 10 years technical financial specialist. Whilst there maybe avenues of doing something in my line such as financial software as knowledge is crucial it’s a very expensive and competitive industry to get involved, and has become highly regulated so definitely too risky. Time to research a potential career opportunities
 
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