Charles Ryder - Help! I Want to Work for Myself

Help!

I Want To Work For Myself

Charles Ryder

S U M M E R S D A L E

Copyright Summersdale Publishers Ltd 1998

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, nor transmitted, nor translated into a machine language, without the written permission of the publisher.

Summersdale Publishers Ltd

46 West Street

Chichester

PO19 1RP

United Kingdom

Printed and bound in Great Britain.

ISBN 1 84024 064 4

Contents

Introduction

This book is your first step towards working for yourself: possibly the best investment you will ever make. Help! I Want To Work For Myself is designed to give a general overview of various routes an entrepreneur can take towards successful self-employment. It describes the kinds of businesses that will offer you the level of potential you require, and points you in the right direction to get started in each of them.

The business aspect is only part of the story, however.

People who take the plunge and work for themselves often possess personal qualities that make them stand out from an average employee. An entrepreneur wouldnt get very far without courage, self-discipline, and a strong desire to succeed against all the hardships and problems that the commercial world will throw at them. People who work for themselves also take far less sick leave than employed people and this doesnt necessarily mean that theyre healthier, its just that they cant afford to take a day off. This book examines those qualities, and applies them to the real world of commerce.

One of the best ways to become skilled at a trade is to learn by example. Becoming an entrepreneur is a trade to be learnt, like any other, so a section of this book is devoted to looking at the case histories of some well known business people in order to see what personal qualities and business skills they possess and whether these characteristics can be applied to an entrepreneur just starting out for the first time.

The business ideas featured are not intended to form an exhaustive catalogue of all possibilities. Most of them involve trade or services, rather than manufacturing, due to the relatively high set-up costs of a new business in the manufacturing sector. The majority of the businesses described can be run from simple office premises, and some can even be run from home.

It is not uncommon for people to start a new enterprise in one sector of business without considering all the types of business available. You would not buy a house without first considering a large number of choices, so why do people pick a business idea without considering whether it offers them the best potential? If you have not yet decided which business route you want to take, read through the ideas suggested. Many of them are tried and tested concepts (which means competition already exists) while others would fill gaps in the market and offer enormous future growth potential. Take a close look at all of these and other business ideas before deciding what you want to do, so that your eventual choice will be an informed one.

Who wants to be a millionaire?

Whether it is for our own benefit or to be able to afford to help others, we all want to gain financial rewards from running a business, and some of us want even to become millionaires. But how many of us actually make a small effort to achieve our dreams before giving up? A sizeable percentage. Who actually pursues the dream to its fulfilment? Hardly anyone. Why is this? Surely the prospect of wealth, luxury, respect, splendour, power to do almost what you want including the power to do good and never again having to toil for a living are worthy ideals that will motivate nearly everyone to make a financial success of their lives? This is not so.

Lets take a random sample of one hundred ambitious young people, about to commence their working lives. They all think they will achieve what they set out to achieve: a large income, a big house, nice car, no debts, and prosperity far in excess of what they began with. Now lets jump ahead to their retirement age. The chances are that only two of them will be financially independent, wealthy. A handful will be comfortably off, some will be dead, but the vast majority will have worked hard all their lives just to keep their heads above water. Forty years of work has left them with very little. Why? Did they do anything wrong, or is it that society does not allow success for everyone?

The answer lies in a combination of factors. Luck is always significant. Life is full of random events and meetings: who we are, where we were born, and the people we meet through life are all random things that can be financially advantageous, harmful or neutral. Luck can to some extent be controlled. Some people claim to have made their own luck, and this is normally true. They have made the required effort, gone out into the world and had a go, one thing has led to another, and finally they have succeeded.

Forging your own good luck is a matter of making sensible decisions and taking positive action throughout life. Actually doing something is far more likely to lead to prosperity than sitting on the sofa in front of the television. Successful self-employed people are those who do things, rather than letting things happen to them, and this is how they make their own luck.

Perhaps another reason why most people dont make it is that the dream is so distant that they feel it is an impossible dream? One thing is certain: working for yourself is possible for anyone, provided you believe in the dream and dedicate yourself to making it come true.

Generating an income for yourself by means of trade (the normal way) is the most openly available method, for it is merely an extension of something that we all do every day: we regularly trade for money. Usually we trade our time for cash, giving up a number of hours a week for someone elses business in return for money and other benefits. We may also sell the occasional second hand item such as a car and put the money towards a new one. We are continually trading with money in one way or another: the thing to remember is that there is an awful lot of money in the world. While it is frustrating not having very much of that money, it is vital to remember that a very large proportion of this money is constantly changing hands.

All over the nation, every day, money moves from person to person, from person to institution, from institution to institution, and from institution to person (see diagram).

You form a part of this flow. If you paid for this book, your money will be shared between three institutions: the bookshop, the distributor and the publisher; and one individual: the author. It will also be partially shared, indirectly, between the staff at all of these institutions, the shareholders, and not forgetting the portion that goes to the taxman (and is then re-distributed to schools, hospitals, defence etc). This is just a small example of how money flies all over the place. If you purchased shares in the company that owns the bookshop from which you bought this book, your purchase could help slightly to increase the profits of the company, and hence you could see a return in your dividend. Part of the money you spent would be redirected back to you.

With many millions constantly changing hands, the way to riches is to find a way of making more of that money come your way than normal. Asking your boss for a pay rise wont do it. Working for someone else is not the way. You can work as hard as you like, but you are only making someone else richer while you stay on a limited salary. Salaried millionaires do exist, but they are very rare. Building up a company from scratch is more likely to bring you great wealth than staying on in someone elses organisation. On the other hand, its also more likely to make you bankrupt. The huge rewards gained by those who succeed represent their prize for having taken, and won, a gamble. Neither bankruptcy nor wealth are common amongst those in employment, but they abound amongst the ranks of those who have chosen to work for themselves.