Robin Bennett - Start-Up Smart: How to Start and Build a Successful Business on a Budget

1992: London Tutors. Home tuition and supply teaching.

1993: The Aktuel Translation Group. Technical translation.

1999: Y2K translations. Translation for the publishing industry, renamed Quarto Translations in January 2006.

2002: ExpressTranslators.com. Online translation service 24/7.

2003: Monster Books. Self-published childrens poetry and illustrated books.

2003: Bennett Investments. Investment advice.

2005: Patent Translations International. Patent translation.

2005: Comp Farm Kennels. Dog-sitting on an Oxfordshire farm.

2009: River. Consultancy for companies spending over 2 million per annum on translation.

2010: Thisisplanetearth.com. Website collecting the best articles from around the world.

• You do not have to be radical. The soundest business ideas are rarely the most original, and regularly the ones that you know from everyday experience work well.
• Likewise a USP (Unique Selling Point) does not have to be excessively unique. Often it can be something as simple as good service, slightly lower prices or local appeal.
• If other people can make a similar business work, then so can you usually if you want it enough.
• Keep it simple. Make sure that the business idea is one that you can easily explain in less than 100 words. This is critical if you get in a muddle now, it doesnt bode well.
• Do your own business plan; it will be your best opportunity to really scrutinise the strengths and weaknesses of your idea.
• Choose your source of funding very carefully. Rank them according to cost and timescales of repayment. For example, grants are best, credit cards are worst.
• All business sectors have their own set of rules insider dos and donts, if you like. Find out what these are before starting. The best places are usually online forums and industry networking events.

Like I said, this is not a get-rich quick book. If you like, take this opportunity to thumb forward to the Appendix, look at the Cash Flow Forecast and decide whether the sort of figures I am outlining as an achievable goal in the first and second years are your cup of tea.

When alls said and done, the next 115 pages describe how 5000, judiciously acquired and spent, should allow for a 35,000-50,000 salary in the first year and anything between 100,000 and 200,000 thereafter. I am prepared to admit that this might not be enough for some, and I have a feeling that there are quite a few people out there who would scorn such an obvious lack of ambition. And, to an extent, Id go along with that. Like anybody, there are days when I do wonder what it would be like to be stupendously rich, own an island somewhere and have footmen. Some people that I know people Id even call close friends have annual salaries topping seven figures and theres nothing morally wrong with that. They work hard, they have friends, love their family, pat dogs etc. However, I usually make myself feel better by remembering that, statistically speaking, its highly unlikely that the vast majority of us will ever be able to achieve great wealth, either by chance, hard grind or stealth.

Ill quantify that by saying that, according to the Sunday Times Rich List, there are actually fewer than 3000 cash millionaires living in the British Isles today (a mere 0.015% of the working population). Yet sales of how to make millions books and CDs, not to mention the weekend seminars and online courses, must outstrip that figure 1000 to one. And theres a reason for this I suspect, because it takes determination, luck and perhaps ruthlessness to achieve great wealth, that most people, in their hearts, dont consider this a realistic lifestyle choice: they say to themselves Im not prepared to give myself grief over an aim that it is statistically unlikely Ill ever achieve.