{"id":1031,"date":"2009-01-27T03:22:04","date_gmt":"2009-01-27T07:22:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.local\/?p=1031"},"modified":"2009-01-27T03:22:04","modified_gmt":"2009-01-27T07:22:04","slug":"the-art-of-the-zero-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.local\/the-art-of-the-zero-start\/","title":{"rendered":"The Art of the Zero Start"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The art of building a business from absolutely nothing with no money.<\/p>\n<p>I have built four small businesses from a zero start. The first three I sold successfully the fourth failed to get off the ground.<\/p>\n<p>So I thought hey why not share some of my experiences.<\/p>\n<p>Firstly why would you take part in a zero start?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If you have no capital<\/li>\n<li>Your idea is too risky to raise debt financing<\/li>\n<li>It forces you from day one to be creative about achieving objectives<\/li>\n<li>To prove an idea works with minimal capital<\/li>\n<li>To give yourself a huge challenge<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What are the personal pros\/cons?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Forces time management<\/li>\n<li>Stimulates fight or flight response, really need to drive the idea to fruition<\/li>\n<li>Can develop workaholicism which impacts on the rest of your life<\/li>\n<li>Doing things you never thought capable<\/li>\n<li>Can be a time sink if you do not manage your time effectively<\/li>\n<li>Can get stuck in the mud and forget the strategic macro level<\/li>\n<li>Helps you realise what is truly important to you<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Overall I think it has been a huge learning curve for me, forced me to grow up and provided challenges I wouldn&#8217;t have gained elsewhere.  I would highly recommend everyone to give it a go.<\/p>\n<p>I think that doing this can be a bit of trap for some people so I highly recommend some steps to take to avoid this.<\/p>\n<p>Here are the Top 10 Must Do for Entrepreneurs starting a zero start:<\/p>\n<p>1) Have a<strong> board of directors<\/strong> (whether they be friends or family) Report to them as you would a real board of directors.  They will help you recognise (and admit) problems in a faster manner.<\/p>\n<p>2) <strong>Take<\/strong> <strong>time<\/strong> <strong>out.<\/strong> Have your limits.  Keep home time, family time, your own time.  This is essential.<\/p>\n<p>3) <strong>Eat<\/strong> <strong>healthy,<\/strong> <strong>exercise,<\/strong> keep up with your favourite recreational activities.  When your sick and have a day off you lose earnings.  So suddenly life \/ health balance is vital.<\/p>\n<p>4) <strong>Review\/Reflection.<\/strong> Force this every week, month and quarter to check your up to par.<\/p>\n<p>5) Set <strong>Key<\/strong> <strong>Performance<\/strong> <strong>Indicators<\/strong> (KPIs) and report to board of directors.<\/p>\n<p>6) Watch your cash.  <strong>Cash<\/strong> <strong>is<\/strong> <strong>king.<\/strong> This needs to be your top priority, a business without cash is nothing.<\/p>\n<p>7) <strong>Quit<\/strong> and <strong>quit<\/strong> <strong>often.<\/strong> I fail at lots of projects a year, it helps to recognise something is failing and quit early.<\/p>\n<p>8) <strong>Persevere,<\/strong> in contrast to 7, persevere with your business, its up to you to drive it to fruition.<\/p>\n<p>9) <strong>Delegate,<\/strong> as soon as possible bring on others to delegate responsibilities to.<\/p>\n<p>10) <strong>Read.<\/strong> Read as many reputable business books as you can. This will help you draw new perspectives and learn.<br \/>\nCosts<\/p>\n<p>How can you be creative with money to get your business off the ground?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Minimise your fixed costs (till you get significant cashflow), ie trade work for office space, use a home office.  Try and make all others variable costs.<\/li>\n<li>Use free software and online tools.<\/li>\n<li>Pay your suppliers on time, you will get more efficient pricing from them and give you leverage when you need it.<\/li>\n<li>Bundle your technology costs, mobile, internet, phone.  Save by bundling where possible.<\/li>\n<li>Stretch every dollar, business meetings have tea instead of a coffee, use public transport, skype for meetings.<\/li>\n<li>Give equity to key suppliers in exchange for services, not only builds better relationships but keeps them with a vested interest.<\/li>\n<li>Share the love, if you can&#8217;t deliver what a customer wants, send them to someone who can, this may return.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That concludes Part 1 of of my Art of the Zero Start.<\/p>\n<p>I suspect that you may have questions or more of your own to add, I welcome both just post in the comments.<\/p>\n<p><em>Also note for my readers there is only <strong>24 hours<\/strong> left to grab my Blogging Strategy at <strong>half price<\/strong> which you can find <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.local\/blogging-strategy-updated-edition\/\">here.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The art of building a business from absolutely nothing with no money. I have built four small businesses from a zero start. The first three I sold successfully the fourth failed to get off the ground. So I thought hey why not share some of my experiences. Firstly why would you take part in a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[57,82,700,1187,1412],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}