A Piece Of Business Advice I Was Given

[daemon]

Justin Cyder said:

No doubt there are generic skills that will shove you along in any business - sales is an art although one anyone can learn. Finance, marketing, operations are all valuable strings to any bow but we have only produced one Branson & one Sugar.

What I'm getting at is business men of that calibre are rare beasts. It's the mix of vision, ambition & openness to risk that is so elusive. It's obvious that starting from scratch & building a business to a t/o in the low millions becomes an attractive prospect for sale & escape. You see people do this frequently - securing their own future & why not?

Relatively few are consumed sufficiently to really push on & become a player on the big stage & of those that do, I suspect they possess the drive to have succeeded at whatever field they might have fallen into - someone has to be PM, Chief Constable, General etc.

For the rest of us shmoes, our best chance is ploughing the furrow we know inside out. That's where our value lies, in the knowledge & experience we hold - there's good value in that as any decent client will recognise & use to their benefit.

One thing to remember is that for every Alan Sugar there are probably 10,000 Alan Sugars who were equally as talented but werent in the right the place at the right time.

There is a significant "luck" aspect to it all, though of course the Best make their own luck (to an extent)

[Justin Cyder]

Well this is true although I'm a form adherent to the view that harder I work, the luckier I get. I wonder what would have happened with Amstrad had it not have been walloped with thousands of faulty hard drives on the PC2386.

[Wacky Racer]

daemon said:

spikeyhead said:

daemon said:

Wacky Racer said:

Expenses down Profits up...Peter Grant (Led Zeppelin's manager)

I would have thought he would have had his work cut out there....

Grant was a giant of a man that knew exactly what he wanted and was prepared to use any means to get it. Led Zep were as successful as they were because of him.

Every successful business I've seen has been a good mix of product skill and commercial nous.

Oh i know.

But you can just imagine him "trying to keep expenses down" on a world tour!

Before Peter Grant it was 90%/10% in the promoter's favour

After Peter Grant it was 90%/10% in the band's favour.

An incredible manager with a fearsome reputation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Grant_(music_ma...

[22s]

daemon said:

You gave a link on how to stick a burger in a bap. Hardly very specific.

Best business advice i heard "starting your own business with no experience is a great way to make a small fortune - out of a large one"

Edited by daemon on Sunday 13th April 21:53

I don't want to great drawn into a long discussion on this, but if you read the link properly it tells you the following:
- How the "front of house" communicate with the "chefs" in order to get across a customer's order quickly and efficient.
- That the heel of the bun and patty are reheated in the microwave to make them hot for service, which is how you get a hot burger that seems like it's (reasonably) fresh off the grill
- The exact amount of mayonaise BK use in their burgers - which is probably a result of extensive analysis which you, as a startup, would not be able to do.
- The amount of ketchup/pickles/tomato they use (again, probably a result of years of experience which you don't have - but they do)

I found it interesting and think at least some of that info could be useful. Anyway, it was just a crude illustration of where I think you can pick up valuable information without too much hassle. If you don't agree with me, that's fine!

[Siscar]

To create a successful business you need to know what you are doing. How you acquire that knowledge is up to you.

[paul0843]

When starting my business about 27 years ago my then bank manager
told me to never refuse any job,just make sure I charged the right
money for it.
Nobody wants to be a busy fool.
It's something I follow to this day.
Paul

[Zoon]

Also remember VAT stands for Value Added Tax, not Vodka And Tonic.

A guy I knew spent seventy odd thousand of HMRC's money on a Porsche 911 Turbo a few years back and funnily enough ended up going bust not long after. Spend your own money and pay everyone else theirs and you wont go far wrong.

[Justin Cyder]

Zoon said:

Also remember VAT stands for Value Added Tax, not Vodka And Tonic.

A guy I knew spent seventy odd thousand of HMRC's money on a Porsche 911 Turbo a few years back and funnily enough ended up going bust not long after. Spend your own money and pay everyone else theirs and you wont go far wrong.

Good rule in life: Always pay your Doctor & the Taxman.

[BoRED S2upid]

Justin Cyder said:

Good rule in life: Always pay the Taxman.

As little as possible

[Zoon]

BoRED S2upid said:

As little as possible

Of course, but pay what you need to.

[Eric Mc]

BoRED S2upid said:

Justin Cyder said:

Good rule in life: Always pay the Taxman.

As MUCH as possible

EFA

[testosterone]

Best bit of business advice i ever got was to treat everyone as a potential thief including your bank ! This attitude has served me well over the years.

A lot of sucessful businessmen have sailed close to the wind when it comes to being on the right side of the law. I seem to recall Branson nearly went to prison for Vat evasion.

In the old days i think you could make it by hard graft and having the right connections over a long period of time. These days going to the right university or having wealthy friends or family is the quick way forward as banks want to give u f*ck all.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

Wacky Racer said:

Turnover is vanity Profit is sanity

This. And also:

Never try and rationalise something that is wrong.

The tricky thing about having power is knowing when not to use it.

Looking like you know what you're doing will engender trust even when you don't. But not looking like you know what you are doing means people won't trust you, even when you do.

You can learn as much working for and idiot as a genius. It's just that you learn what not to do.

Winners never quit and quitters never win, but people who never win and never quit are the biggest fools of all.

It's okay to learn from your mistakes, but better to learn from someone else's.

[Justin Cyder]

Also avoid at all costs, vapid & vacuous platitudinous flowering bks.

[Gaspode]

Justin Cyder said:

Also avoid at all costs, vapid & vacuous platitudinous flowering bks.

Are you that bloke in the gin adverts?

[Justin Cyder]

All I'll say is I didn't get where I am today by not knowing there's no 'I' in team.

[Tribal Chestnut]

Justin Cyder said:

Also avoid at all costs, vapid & vacuous platitudinous flowering bks.

A timely post

[Akiraprise]

DSLiverpool said:

Where this theory fails is if you are a web marketing person or say a really good website maker / SEO person. You can then sell almost anything and can build a business on the back of your sales expertise as you "own" the online sector. You of course need money to do this but not a stupid amount depending on what you sell.

Completely agree with this and it's exactly how I built my business up

[jammy_basturd]

There is no point talking about Sugar, Branson, etc when trying to give advice about how to become an entrepreneur. You do not become an entrepreneur by following what "worked" for the 0.00001%. These are people with a unique blend of skills; marketing, product knowledge, sales skills, negotiation, general business nouse, motivation, resilience, knowing when not to give up and knowing when to give up, along with being in the right place at the right time once or twice. I strongly believe there are people just as good as Branson, Peter Jones, etc that are not billionaires just because they didn't get that massive break. But you can be sure they'll still be very successful.

I'm not going to lie and say that anyone can be successful in business. Some people aren't motivated enough, some aren't intelligent enough, some don't embrace risk enough, etc, etc.

At the end of the day, general "inspirational" advice won't make a blind bit of difference, either you're going to get off your arse and make it happen for yourself or you're not.

The only advice you want to listen to is advice about specific aspects of a business you're currently working on.

[Fotic]

When it's sunny the bank will sell you an umbrella and wish you well. When it rains they'll take it away.


Quite true of late too it seems from speaking to a few SMEs that had funding pulled.