Ian Sanders - Leap!: Ditch Your Job, Start Your Own Business & Set Yourself Free

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Table of Contents

Leap!

Ian Sanders has been doing it himself for seven years as a business and marketing consultant. He has helped launch new ventures in radio, television, design and music. His current marketing company, OHM, (Outhouse Media), has clients that range from global brands such as Benetton to the small business around the corner.

Ians skills are in bringing common sense advice and fresh perspectives to clients whatever their size, helping them to exploit their market potential. With more and more of his contacts setting up by themselves, Ian was inspired to write up his experiences in Leap! With his eight years as an independent and another ten years working for others, his mix of experience, insight and ideas makes him best placed to guide others through this new scrambled up world of work.

Ian is passionate about enterprise, about doing it differently and reinventing to succeed. He currently lives in Leigh-on-Sea with his wife, Zo, and two children.

This is for Zo, Barney and Dylan

Preface

I took the Leap to go it alone in 2000. It seemed appropriate making a landmark change in such a landmark year. A good time to start something new.

I felt like a pioneer then, changing my working life so radically. Now, eight years later, everybody seems to be doing it. The world is full of the self-employed: workers running businesses from spare rooms, attics and sheds. Go in to any coffee shop and youll see people working at their laptops, many of them self-employed. But wherever theyre based, what unites everyone is the desire to succeed, to be enterprising and to be self-sufficient.

Traditional business and the concept of a proper job have changed as workers have sought to exploit the opportunities of the New Economy where its a case of survival of the fittest. In this new marketplace it seems you can do whatever you want, but competition has never been fiercer. Being successful is no longer about travelling in a flash car, in your flash suit to work in a flash office for a multinational corporation (thank goodness). Its all about you.

This is a world of no rules and no walls. Traditional trading barriers are down; the concept of bricks-and-mortar companies where employees go to work 9-5 is crumbling. The opportunities for the entrepreneur-within are huge. Welcome to the scrambled up world of work.

The idea for the book came in 2004 and I used a trip to Palo Alto, California to give me the inspiration to start writing it. Palo Alto is where a lot of Silicon Valley does their thinking. The town is close to Stanford University and has incubated many great business ideas from Facebook to Hewlett Packard. As I sat amongst the coffee shop entrepreneurs at the towns Printers Inc. caf, it seemed a good place to start writing. But once I got back to the UK I became busy with plans for my latest business venture, and the book idea sat dormant. It was another trip away (youll discover the importance of these later) in October 2006 when I had the time and the clarity to start the book again.

This book is a consolidation of my last eight years: shaping my experiences in that scrambled up world of work into some kind of order.

Ive always been stimulated by the notion of creating something from nothing. From that small idea I had on a trip away to seeing this book published - its satisfying taking an idea and a project to fruition. To make it a reality.

This book is both for those whove already gone it alone and those who are summoning up the courage to do it.

Visit my blog at www.scrambledupworld.com. My business ohm helps clients to exploit their market potential. If youre interested in working with me, please get in touch at talktous@ ohmlondon.com.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to: Fiona Cummings for her support and encouragement; David Sloly and Richard Harrison for their ideas and feedback; Tim McQuaid for capturing the original idea on video; Pascal, Alex, Chris, Aki and Tonia for sharing their experiences on taking the Leap!; Adam Bennett at Hatstand for his quote; Simon Trewin for advice; Emma Swaisland and all the team at Capstone for their commitment to the project; George Hazlewood for spotting the missing r; Tom Peters and Charles Handy for inspiration; Ugos, Villa Cervarolo and Padre Aviles for thinking and writing places; Illy and Red Bull for stimulation; Zo for her comments and suggestions.

Introduction

WHAT THIS ISNT

Leap! isnt a book about how to set up a business, describing the nuts and bolts of what you need to do. It doesnt offer tax advice; its not about financial planning, business plans or exit strategies. It offers no new theories on management success, no secret formula to make millions.

Its simpler than that. Its about the approach to a new way of working. About what you need to survive and succeed in the new world of business, in the scrambled up world of work.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

When you start your working life, few of us have a plan. You get a job, work hard, do well and then, five or even ten years later, you wake up one day and say Hang on, I never meant to do this for that long.

Change is rarely easy but is often liberating. Changing your work or business identity can be incredibly powerful in re-energizing your whole life. And working for yourself, whilst stressful and scary, can represent a whole new you.

If you feel stale, bored or unfulfilled, quitting the 9-5 to do your own thing can help you rediscover yourself, to find the lost you buried in the ten years of 9-5 drudgery.

Once youve decided to set up on your own or start your own business, youre going to need entrepreneurial spirit, and lots of it. Tenacity, drive, ambition, vision, patience, resolve - a whole box full of tools.

Think entrepreneur and people think of successful business leaders who started small and made it big. But you dont have to lead a big company to be successful in business.

Being an entrepreneur is much simpler - and more critical - than all that. At its most basic, its someone who pays him or herself from the proceeds of their own abilities. Someone who has the guts - and the vision - to create something from nothing . Someone who doesnt rely on a guaranteed pay cheque at the end of the month, but takes a risk to go the DIY route.

! An associate who left his job in a big music publishing company and started his own business. Hes one.

! A friend from university who resigned her job as a staff writer and became a freelance journalist. Shes one.

! A guy who left an IT job to set up a company managing bands. Hes one.

! A woman who left her job working for a technology company and set up an interior design business online. Shes another.

! A bloke who quit a mortgage company to start his own, very distinctive, one. Hes another.

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