John Lamerton - Big Ideas... for Small Businesses: Simple, Practical Tools and Tactics to Help Your Small Business Grow

Title: Big Ideas... for Small Businesses: Simple, Practical Tools and Tactics to Help Your Small Business Grow

First published in 2017 by Lets Tell Your Story Publishing

Address: 3 Century Court, Tolpits Lane, Watford, WD18 9RS

ISBN: 978-1-910600-15-3

Copyright 2017 John Lamerton

The right of John Lamerton identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing by any electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without written permission of the copyright holder except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, De-signs and Patents Act 1988.

Applications for the copyright holders written permission to repro-duce any part of this publication should be addressed to the author.

For press and publicity, contact the author.

Author address: PO Box 74, Plymouth, Devon, PL7 1ZN

The author specifically disclaims any liability, loss or risk which is in-curred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any contents of this work.

This guide is not endorsed by or affiliated with any other website or organisation mentioned in this book in any way.

For Linda. Miss you, Sis.

This is the part of the book that most people skim over, unless you know the author personally, in which case youll read it line-by-line to see if Ive remembered to namecheck you. If I have, youre welcome and if I havent, Im sure it was an honest oversight.

So, a big thank you, thank you, thank you...

To you, dear reader for investing in your education by buying this book. I really hope it makes a difference in your life if it does, please let me know () as hearing about people making positive changes to their lives makes me feel ten feet tall for the day, as do five-star Amazon reviews, and cake (I can be bribed with ei-ther!).

To Sarah, for holding everything together whilst I took time out of our lives to write this bloody book as it became known by the end. To Jack and Harry for putting up with me being Grumpy Dad (and getting grumpier the closer I got to deadline...) I owe you guys, BIG time, and Im coming back down your end of the see-saw right now.

To Jason, for being my right hand man for the last 14 years. I think its safe to say weve done alright. Thanks for taking the load whilst I fo-cused on this book. I dont do well spinning multiple plates, and the only reason I can do so well focusing on my one spinning plate is knowing that Ive got you following me around, furiously keeping all the other plates from crashing to the ground.

To my friends and family. Its been 17 years now, and many of you STILL dont know what I do (dont worry Dad, I havent included the story about you trying to stick stamps on emails...), but youve kept me grounded, and always supported me, and for that Ill be eternally grateful.

To the rest of the Big Idea team Rob, Joe, Mel, Stu, Matt, Alice, Sarah, and Kayliegh for ensuring that I still had a business to return to whilst I took time away from my desk to write this book.

To my peers and mentors Clarke, Jason D, Thom, Andy, Mark, Seb, Damian, Julia, Phil, Keith, Pete, Jo, Lucy, Dave, Ed, James, Nigel, Siam, Terry, Jason V, Rob M, Rob B, Rob D (how many Robs?!), Tim, and Tracy. Ive spent a lot of time with some of you, a chance conversation, or a brief meeting with others but youve all impacted my life in such a way that, when it came to writing the acknowledgements section of my book, I thought of you. Its a clich, but I really wouldnt be who I am today without you.

To everyone who helped turn this book into a reality Lee from LCG Design for the amazing cover design, Keith, Rupert, Sharon, Kirry, Matt, Simon and Jo for beta reading (and there were a LOT of typos in the original I can tell you!). Tracy, Nigel, Tim, Terry, Jo, and Dave for providing stories, anecdotes, ideas and sayings that Ive used through-out the book. If Ive said something funny or inspiring in this book, its probably thanks to one of these guys. Thanks to Colette for turning my final draft into a published book.

To everyone who helped with the marketing of the book (something I neglected until Id actually finished writing the damn thing!) Mark, Mike T, Thom, Hannah, Dan, Lucy, Bracken, Mike K.

To Warren weve never met, and likely never will, but on the off-chance you read this, I want to thank you for being you. Youre an in-spiration to me whenever I have a decision to make (business, investment, or personal), the answer usually comes to me when I ask myself these five words What would Warren Buffett do?

I hate being busy. Im the laziest ambitious person I know.

Tim Kreider

Ive been running small businesses since the year 2000 some suc-cessful, some not. But Ive learned a shed-load of really useful stuff along the way. And there are some common traits amongst the suc-cessful businesses that Ive created traits that just about anyone can put into practice to take their business to the next level (regardless of what level youre currently at)

Ive hired staff, fired staff, taken people to court, made a million quid, lost a million quid, sold businesses, bought businesses, laid awake at night worrying about paying the bills, feeling totally overwhelmed. At times Ive wanted to jack it all in and get a real job, and at other times Ive felt on top of the world like everything I touch turns to gold.

Its a safe bet that if youre struggling with any aspect of your business right now, Ive probably lived through that myself at some point over the last two decades.

Im a former civil servant, who quit the day job back in 2001 to chase a dream of becoming an internet millionaire. Despite not even owning a computer, let alone having access to the Internet on it, or knowing anything about web design, internet marketing, or... erm... how to ac-tually run a business.

And yet I DID become an internet millionaire. Granted, I didnt man-age to KEEP many of those millions, but I DID earn them! Nowadays, I run several companies in the sports betting and property sectors and mentor ambitious lifestyle business owners. Oh, and I still do some stuff on the internet . Ive stopped chasing the dream of making mil-lions now though, and started living like a millionaire instead (more on this in the next chapter).

I wrote this book to share some of the simple, practical ways to grow a small business that Ive picked up over the last couple of decades. If youre looking for the latest silver bullet techniques that involve cre-ating a funnel the size of a cross-channel ferry, youre going to be disappointed.

If you want to know how to blow up your startup, turn it into a uni-corn, and exit for 50m three years from now, then this book aint gonna be for you. Likewise if youre a big fan of the grind, or hustle as our American cousins like to call it if working three days straight without sleep, or surviving on a diet of coffee and cigarettes is a badge of honour for you, Ill save you some precious time right now put this book down and go back to hustling / grinding / getting shit done / JFDIing / some other fancy term for working really, really hard, for a really, really long time.