Veechi Curtis - Small Business for Dummies

A whole business community is out there for you to lean on. These links and sites may have changed by the time you’re reading this, but here are some of my favourite sources of inspiration:

www.flyingsolo.com.au is not just a website for ‘micro businesses’, but a community as well, with over 120,000 members, hundreds of articles, lots of free tips and tools, and a busy bunch of forum boards.

www.entrepreneur.com is a website as well as a magazine, and has more of a start-up, corporate bent. I find many of the articles helpful and a bit of nudge to keep my thinking fresh.

With an upbeat feel and great info, www.smartcompany.com.au is an Australian site dedicated to free news and resources for small- to medium-sized businesses.

A favourite of mine when I’m in the car is the Goal Digger podcast, hosted by entrepreneur Jenna Kutcher (podcast.jennakutcher.com). This show is all about setting and managing goals, whether for your side-hustle (how I love that term!) or for your main game.

When I’m in the mood to refresh my marketing, I enjoy the Strategy Hour podcast, facilitated by Think Tank collective hosts (bossproject.com/podcast). These practical podcasts help with the nitty-gritty details of business, with hundreds of episodes covering all kinds of different topics.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), home-based businesses make up over half of all the small businesses in Australia, reflecting part of an international trend towards more businesses operating from home (a trend presumably partly fuelled by improvements in technology). Home business is the spawning ground from which larger businesses are born, including iconic brands such as AirTasker, Billabong, Canva and Salt Gypsy.

An acupuncturist once said to me: ‘When you work for yourself, you work for a real bastard. No holiday pay, no sick pay, no bonuses — long hours, filthy pay and no promotion.’ As I lay on the couch, needles sticking out of my ears and my navel, I reflected on my 60-hour weeks and wobbly bank balance. I had to agree with him.

As the years have passed by, I’ve developed a sniffer-dog instinct for which businesses are likely to succeed, which are going to struggle and which are doomed to fail. Although I usually wish I wasn’t so chillingly accurate (especially when I predict failure), occasionally life delivers a surprise — the success of an overpriced French restaurant with a mad chef, for example, or the survival of a bed and breakfast in the back of beyond.

Running a business is an inherently risky game. Sometimes, this risk makes things exciting and, other times, just plain old scary. Of course, business success is a fantastic feeling but, on the other hand, failure can be quite catastrophic. You can lose your house, your job, even your family, all in the one hit, not to mention the disillusionment of having precious dreams crushed by harsh reality.

How well you cope with risk depends on your age, personality and health. Certainly, investing your life’s savings in a new venture is infinitely scarier when you’re 60 than when you’re 30. I recommend you always minimise risk by keeping a tight control on your finances, a topic I explore in detail in Chapters 15to 18.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), the brilliant business ideas that earn $10 million in the first year are very few and far between. For many people, the only sure-fire way to succeed is to work loooong hours in the first year or so, taking on the roles of bookkeeper, marketing consultant, salesperson and managing director all in one.

These long hours do tend to settle down as your business becomes established, however, and the ABS reports that the average self-employed owner-operator works 42 hours per week. And, at the other end of the spectrum, many people choose to only work part-time in their business, content to choose lifestyle and flexibility over income.

One of the hardest things about being self-employed is staying motivated. Not just in the first year, where everything is interesting and different, but year after year after year. Of course, as your business grows, you can hopefully employ staff to help. ( Chapters 13and 14talk more about becoming an employer and building an effective team.) Ideally, you can arrive at a point where your business earns money, even if you’re not working in it every day of the week.

Sometimes, the highs and lows of small business profits make even Melbourne’s weather look reliable. A bumper year, and the bank account is rosy. Then you lose a client or two, interest rates go up, and before you know it, you’re wondering how to pay the rent.

In Chapter 15, I talk about creating budgets for business set-up expenses, and share tips for securing business finance. Some consultants advise you not to expect to make any money at all in your first year of business, and to have savings put aside to pay for your living expenses during this time. Such advice is prudent, but the truth is that sometimes businesses take even longer than a year before they make a profit, and even businesses that have been cruising along happily for years can strike hard times.

I used to find the feast and famine of running my own business very stressful, but I’m getting better at managing this dichotomy as time goes by, even managing to put money aside when things go well. How you cope with the effect of this insecurity depends not only on your personality, but on your family commitments as well.

Weighing up the good and the bad about being self-employed is tricky enough, but when you add the ‘you’ factor into the mix, you may decide to rethink some issues. You have to consider not only your own skills and expertise, but also whether you have the timing right: The right timing for the business idea, the right timing for you and your family, and the right timing for the business environment.

An experienced entrepreneur once said to me: ‘If real estate is all about position, position, position, then business is all about timing, timing, timing.’ He’s right, of course. If you were selling fondue sets in the 1970s, chances are your business would be successful. Try to sell the same fondue sets for a living these days, and it would be slim pickings indeed (although my mother does have very fond memories of cheese and chocolate fondue dinner parties).

If you’re not sure whether now’s the right time to start your business, consider the following:

Fickle fashions: Humans are capricious creatures and what’s hot today may be ice-cold tomorrow. Whether the latest craze is kids going nuts about a Disney action doll or adults getting worked up about a big sporting event, make sure you’re not the one who suffers when everyone gets bored and tired. Try to jump on the bandwagon near the beginning or during the build-up — don’t leap in at the peak.