YOU CAN Start a Business for FREE!

Me enjoying a free day out in Central London - British Museum

I can't afford it! 

Something I hear time and time again as an excuse for not starting a business is "I can't afford it" and for some things this may be true, but for others such as to start a business, getting fit, enjoying the countryside, visiting interesting places etc etc it's simply not true. In many cases if we could afford it we wouldn't need to start a business in the first place, one of the key aims for most businesses is to make money for it's owners! An attitude of "I will do these wonderful things when I can afford it" is something that seems to have become ingrained into our thinking.

You may think this has nothing to do with you but in reality all of us from time to time make excuses like this, me included.  I guess it's just less painful that saying to ourselves "I couldn't be bothered" or "I don't have the skills" or "I'm afraid to try". 

Get Yours Started Free

Many of our most famous business people started with next to nothing and by hook or by crook devised a model which created positive cash flow which then bypassed the need for anything but loose change. But times have changed I hear you say - yes they have! For the better! With the online world offering many opportunities to start up on the cheap! 

In my own business, Green Toys And Games (which started trading by buying second hand retro board games from charity shops and then selling online for two or three times the cost) we are facing challenging times and as a result I have decided to test some specific approaches to online selling. 

The first 'experiment' took just a few hours to set up and already has it's first sale! Click the link below to view the site:

www.puppetzone.co.uk

Simple logo for free website

This completely Free Website offered by Free Webstore is so easy to use even I could get something set up in just a few hours, which means you will be able to also! Note: I have no connection to Free Webstore other than being one of their users. 

Act Now!

If you have always wanted a website based business perhaps this article has provided you with just enough to get going, although I am in no way endorsing any particular provider, just pointing out some of the wonderful free resources we now have access to in order to help get our businesses going. Please note that this blog which has now received several hundred hits with the first two articles is another good example of a free website! I will leave you with my top five tips for getting started:

Five Tips For Your Free Business

1) By offering Paypal as your main payment option you will only incur selling costs once you successfully sell something. In addition Paypal offers your customer security and safety as they don't need to share card details with you in order to place an order. In addition Paypal have a robust claims procedure for customers who don't receive what they ordered, which is sure to add confidence to new customers! 

2) If you are selling goods then try selling first and buying later - this means you can sell things you haven't yet bought, this has the advantage of creating a positive cash flow and is the basis upon which billionaire Richard Branson's mail order record company first started trading using. You will need to spend time researching your products well to be sure your suppliers are reliable if you try this option, it goes without saying that you can't afford to let your customers down at this stage. GreenToysAndGames.co.uk own policy is to keep everything in stock in our warehouse that is offered for sale, which means the service customers receive will be excellent. 

3) If you are offering something similar to existing companies, be sure to offer something a little different which enhances the offer. I have used a Three Month Money Back Offer for Puppet Zone which will give confidence to potential customers who are unsure about the product. 

4) Don't be tempted to spend money on things like expensive logos or custom designs, (unless design is an important element in your chosen business field) as it is unlikely to make much difference to your sales, you can look at websites such as Ebay and Amazon which prove that less is sometimes more when it comes to selling. Once you have created some profit and have proved that your business idea is viable then you can spend some money upgrading things! 

5) In most cases, fresh and clean with at least 30% of the webpage being made up of a white background is the best way to make your website look good on a budget. Heavy colour and crowded content and your website may quickly look a bit cheap and nasty. 

Just because it's free it doesn't have to look cheap!

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The Art of Being Creative

Camden Market - Entrepreneurs should all visit! 

I have been pondering my next blog article for a while and have been working on a couple of ideas and even started to write, however, I was getting nowhere and it all seemed a bit too uninspired.

Then last weekend all that changed! I went on a day out to Camden Market in London and I became truly inspired by what I discovered there.

Of course I have been to Camden before, many times, but not for a long while and certainly not with my 'entrepreneur' eyes and ears on.

For the first time I saw something remarkable and it reminded me of how simple good business can be.

Use what you have! 

Many people who talk about running their own business say something similar, that is they don't know what they can do - often they might be waiting for that million-dollar idea that usually never comes. There is another way....use what you have, now! 

Camden was full of people who have at some point decided to do something using whatever interests, skills and passions they already have. If you feel you have no idea what to do then after you have read this entire article make a list of your current skills and interests then pick one or two that you enjoy the most and make a start! 

The Foodilicious Cakes stall provided me with one of the nicest chocolate brownies (all homemade of course) I have ever eaten, and I recommend that you try something from them next time you visit the market!  It seems they have built quite a good small business which has come from a passion for baking cakes, and it shows - the passion that is.

Foodilicious - making probably the best brownies in the world!

Do your own thing, be authentic! 

You may have already noticed that I tend to use my own photos in this blog, this is not because I think my photos are better than the ones you can get from the pro galleries but because I believe by being more authentic in this way it creates something more real and of greater interest. Certainly quite a few of the traders I observed at the weekend were doing their own thing and in many cases they weren't doing anything that you or me couldn't be doing, except they were doing it! While working at GreenToysAndGames.co.uk I have sometimes found by using the non-stock picture for a toy or a game sales have increased. 

Hand painted t-shirt from Camden Artist!

I bought this menacing looking t-shirt from a Camden Artist and had a brief chat about which ones sold the best. The Union Jack Flag design was her most popular, now that is interesting as it's something that almost all of us could paint ourselves! The t-shirts, like my photos, were not the best finished you will ever see, most have paint splashes over them which is part of the charm!

Learn something new!

If you feel that you are not able to offer anything with your existing skills then I would urge you to learn something new, why not learn something you have always wanted to do?  Then in the future you will be able to offer your service, sell your product or teach others! Even if you can't turn it into a business you will no doubt enjoy yourself and gain a lot from the experience! 

In addition here is an excellent article in The Guardian which may give you some ideas about existing business ideas and other possibilities. 

Action Plan

I have enjoyed writing this article and I would urge you to consider the following while you are looking for new business ideas:

• Use what you have, Today! 
• Do your own thing, your own way. 
• Be Authentic!
• Learn something new.

In addition I would urge you to go for a day out at Camden or some other similar place near you where you can also become inspired by watching creative business entrepreneurs in action! 

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Losing weight can help you to start your own business!

Healthy? Fruit and veg in Barcelona street market

During the first three months of 2013 I have lost a significant amount of weight, from just under 15 stone to just over 12 stone - so almost 3 stone! This success came quickly and easily and I started to think about the process of losing weight and how similar it was to the process I went through when starting my own business back in 2006.

In this article I will be defining this process in a series of easy-to-follow steps and hope there is something here that will help and interest you.

• Lose three stone in three months!

You will need a clearly defined goal, I would suggest it should to be as simple as possible. I would recommend writing it down, I have developed a habit of writing down many goals recently and I would suggest you try this powerful technique for yourself - there is something almost magical about writing goals down, it helps to bring them to life and will focus your mind. I will talk more about this in future articles when we cover how NLP techniques can help your business.

My own goal on the 1st January 2013 was simple, to weigh 12 stone by March 2013, so I wrote down "I will weigh 12 stone by 31st March 2013". You can use this format if you like or come up with your own similar statement of intent. 

It's not important to know exactly how you will achieve this plan. Just having the goal is enough at this stage, during the next steps we will look at how to come up with something you can work with. 

• Lose one stone in one month! 

So you have an idea of what you want to achieve but it will need to be broken down to make progress. We want targets which are bite sized that help us work towards our goal. Keep it simple, for me I set out to lose one stone by the end of the first month with a broad idea of repeating this process for the following two months. 

I then started to think about how I might achieve this smaller target. I decided there was two ways I could achieve my goal, the first was to reduce the amount of fat-storing carbohydrates consumed and the second to reduce the overall number of calories I would consume while keeping my level of exercise roughly the same. I won't go into details of how I actually achieved these here but I lost my first stone in around three weeks. 

• You can't do that! 

When you start working towards your goals you will probably encounter many doubters. When losing weight I was told "I shouldn't lose weight too quickly" or  "I would just put all the weight back on again" or "it was unhealthy to miss meals." It was the same when I started my business too, there were many doubters.

I only have one piece of advice to offer, IGNORE THEM! Yes, ignore them and work towards your goals by focusing on what needs to be done each day, week or month. I have come to the conclusion when people doubt in this way it's because they are not comfortable with the idea, not that it's not possible! The only time I would recommend listening to someone is when they have already done what you want to do, then you can learn from them - nothing can be learnt from "you can't do that" so I recommend you ignore comments like these. 

• Make a start - do something! 

I knew I had to lose weight, my big belly bursting out of my trousers told me what I needed to know. I didn't really know how much I needed to lose though. I had done a little research which suggested just below 12 stone would be ideal for my height and age. At the start I didn't know what that would mean in terms of how I would feel or look. I also didn't know if my methods would work but I had an idea of what I wanted to achieve and was prepared to try something new. At the time of writing I am slightly off my original target and would still like to lose slightly more but this doesn't change the fact that the diet has been a massive success which has left me looking and feeling much better. I will need to set new goals and try some new methods to make further progress and the same is true of my business, both are work in progress! 

One of my original goals during the first month of my business was to simply sell one product a day, this is not a bad place to start, of course you will need to double that number many times to make a viable income but the amount you will learn from the process of taking action can't be underestimated! Make a start and do something! 

Action Plan

During the process of starting your own business I have recommended you consider the following steps:

1. Have a clear and simple goal which you can write down.
2. Break your goal down into bite sized targets which cover a specific period such as a week or month. 
3. Decide what you will do each day to achieve these targets. 
4. Ignore the doubters who tell you it can't be done.
5. Make a start - do something today!.... If you want to own a business selling shoes  then buy and sell a pair of shoes and learn something about the process! 

My final recommendation is for you to apply these simple steps to your idea or business dream and get into the habit of making goals and targets - good luck! 

Please share this  with your friends and family who may be interested.

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