RYAN WILLIAMS gives some hard-earned advice on becoming your own boss
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Starting your own business in Northern Ireland after ten years of pretty relentless travel across EMEA (not the glamouress kind of travel by the way .. Ryanair is luxury compared to the likes of Tunisair … at Tunisair you have to bring your own seat) and the unbridled joy of turning 40 (over three years ago!) for me it was time to take the self employment leap.
Leaving a six-figure salary job and pushing all your chips in to establish a business in NI Plc. took some serious personal interrogation. Following about six months of water boarding and walking around the house in orange pyjamas the decision was made – and honestly the sensation can only be compared to standing on the edge of a sheer cliff and looking out to a golden horizon bouncing off clear blue water. It all looks fantastic and you start taking off your shoes and socks to go for a pleasant dip.. until you try to work out how to get down the immediate cliff, traverse the rocks below, watch out for fatal jelly fish, miss the rip tides… etc. etc.
This combination of idealist ambition for success and the constant forcing down of fear of failure has got to be one of the best ‘mish mash’ of emotions known to capitalist man and woman.
I have had much sage advice on taking this particular life direction – with the advice polarising the emotional roller coaster as detailed above on an almost daily basis. Lifetime career mentors were universally amazing. I only have three so perhaps a bad litmus test.
Friends, clients and colleagues have made statements ranging from ‘Are you mad?’, ‘There is no soft landing’, ‘What happens if you lose your house?’, (yeah, that one almost made me cry) to ‘You will be great’, ‘What’s the worst that can happen’, and the one I liked the most: ‘It's about bloody time!’
The professional support out there to start your own business is wide and varied – let me give you my quick seven-step guide to what I think works well at this early stage:
- Choose your fellow investors wisely. Go for trust, loyalty and added value before anything else. Partners are not just for dancing.
- Get the right professional advice early – and be prepared to pay for it. There is limited ‘free’ truly professional advice.
- Speak to everyone. Don’t accept all the advice – you will go round in a relentless circle of self-doubt. Make the call on your general direction of travel.
- Take advantage of the mentor support programmes at a local level. The councils have many superb enterprise support and mentor programmes. I have found this support particularly impressive – real experienced mentors who have made the mistakes and know how to avoid them again. Local Enterprise Agencies… I am sorry, so far from the mark I can’t begin to tell you. We will leave that for another day. Invest NI by the way – I honestly can’t fault them based on my personal experience. Responsive, supportive and professional.
- Networks. Choose your networks wisely. We are an over networked tiny place for a 1.7 million population. CBI, IOD, local Chambers, Regional and National Chambers, CMI, Business Clubs, Business in the Community, Small Business Federation, Industry Specific Bodies. In terms of start-up Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) is by far the best value for practical support. Some just want your membership, some are genuinely interested in your business. Take your time. Ensure the return on investment is obvious.
- Get on with it… if you don’t try you are certain to fail. Besides failure after trying is healthy – makes us better people. And don’t become a ‘wantrepeneur’… in a constant state of going to events, meetings, idea generation… sell something!!
- Give back after you ‘make it’ – don’t hog the success – feed the family, pay the mortgage, help your community. In that order. As the Salvation Army state ‘Soup, Soap and Salvation’.
Probably the best and worst film to watch when you are going into self-employment is Jerry Maguire. I know it's cheese. But hey, you got to know when to ‘watch the cheese’. For me you always ‘had me at hello’.
PICTURE ABOVE: Show me the phone: The 1996 film Jerry Maguire tells the story of a slick sports agent who gets fired from a highly-paid job and sets himself up in business for himself.
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