Are you entrepreneurial?

[touchingcloth]

I've been thinking about how I'm really not recently, and this post in another thread prompted me to start the thread:

Can I just offer this piece of advice to people: think very fucking carefully about employing people, ever. Ten years of it and there's always something. Once you go down that route, just being their manager represents a good 80% of your job.

I don't understand how anyone starts a business, which I think might come from never having been well off. I've never been on the breadline, but I've always felt precarious in my adult life, and never in the position where I could imagine using my meagre savings on a gamble of a business.

So, how does anyone start a business? A ubiquitous small business here is the car "stand" - second hand car dealerships, usually based on roadsides with business done out of a portacabin and with between 5 and maybe 50 cars on their lots, with larger businesses being more like your classic UK car dealerships. These small dealers exist in the UK, of course, but there are roads here where every second business is a stand.

There's never a stand with under a handful of cars, so will people need to save or get a loan for that number of cars to get up and running? Tens of thousands? Or would it be more likely that people start with one car, do it up, sell it for profit and repeat a few times until they've got the cash for several at once? The idea of that much of my money at risk absolutely terrifies me.

Maybe entrepreneurs just share an attitude to risk with gamblers. I've got a friend who's in no better of a home or employment state than I am, but is constantly trying and failing to stay new businesses, making out credit card after credit card as he goes. It can't be that the successful businesses are just those who manage to keep one step ahead of the debt. Can it? I am nothing if not beholden to my credit score.

And post.

[Thomas]

Just get a van.

Watch my favourite entrepreneur in action.

[olliebean]

Most successful entrepreneurs are successful by virtue of being sufficiently well off in the first place to be able to afford to keep entrepreneuring after they fuck it up the first few times.

[Non Stop Dancer]

Given that my post prompted you to ask, I'll tell you how I did it, and this goes for most people I know in business.

I just realised one day while working for my old company "I reckon I could do this myself. My boss doesn't seem to be particularly clever. Why not cut out the middleman?"

From that realisation it was just having the bottle to give it a go really. I was late 20s at the time, in a relationship but no kids, and figured that if it didn't work that I'd just get another job. What I do is service based so there was no outlay.

Year one was very patchy. I had to borrow a grand from my parents and about £1,500 on my credit card, and I came close to jacking it in when I landed a new client just in time.

From there, I did good work and got repeat business and referrals. After a year my business partner joined me from my old company and after another year we had enough work to get our first office and first employee. Then it just grew steadily from there. We winged a lot of it and continue to do so, just like every other cunt in every aspect of life.

I don't consider myself an entrepreneur though, and I reckon most businesses are like ours in that you just get to a point where you have surplus work so need staff.

[Twit 2]

You make bollocks for gypsies.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Do you not feel worship for entrepreneurs is a little misjudged? They're the people who spot a sure thing after the r&d has been done. Thieves basically.

[bgmnts]

Can you be a communist entrepreneur?

[imitationleather]

I have my morals and so on but if I can find another girlfriend who is fluent in Chinese I will start my English tutoring business and then all bets are off.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Can you be a communist entrepreneur?

no

[Sebastian Cobb]

you might be able to be a communist investor if you started rich, then invested it in r&d that turned profitable then reinvested it in r&d and hived the profits off to communism oh i dunno

[chveik]

your mum is

[Marner and Me]

Fair play to them, they saw an opportunity and took it. Sadly in life you have to look after yourself as no one else will, they'll stamp on your bollocks as they move straight past you.

In the early 2010s I had about 15k saved up, I'm glad now I didn't start up a payday loans company as I'd now be in financial ruin.

[Jockice]

Not remotely. I remember once in my late 20s when I was sick of journalism so went to see a careers advisor who suggested I went on a business studies course. I literally can't think of anything less suitable for someone with my personality - not bothered about money (although probably because of this I'm not badly off. I don't spend very much), terrified by the thought of being in charge of or responsible for anyone else (looking after my cat is quite enough), not into gambling and severely lacking in personal ambition.

In some ways I wish I did have these attributes, but they're just not in me. Several people I know have set up their own companies etc and seem to have done quite well, but of course that could be just for show. Good luck to them but my desire to be left alone is greater than my desire to be successful.

I'm absolutely fascinated by multi-level marketing/pyramid schemes though. Yesterday I wished happy birthday on Facebook to someone who used to work at the gym I go to and saw the name of a former colleague of hers who I'm not friends with but I thought was a nice lass. So I clicked on her page and it turns out she is doing stuff for a cosmetics firm. Which she mentions in practically every post and how it's made her a fortune etc and if she can do it so can you. Hmm.

One of the posts is how about her and her husband missed out on buying their dream home but every cloud has a silver lining and it must mean that something better is on the horizon. After going through her page I called up a warning website about MLMs and apparently this is quite a common one and they're trained to do the 'missing out on the dream home' bit. In fact a former workmate's wife works for another cosmetics firm and is also apparently incredibly successful but also apparently missed out on buying her dream home recently. Double hmm.

Sorry for going off track there but every time I see this sort of thing I just sit there shaking my head for hours on end.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

The thing about entrepreneurs is to shag them. Get in there. It has to be fairly assertive too, no half-measures. They don't respect that.

Maintaining a motivational mantra during the act may help, eg

'When I fuck someone, they stay fucked'

Visualise, actualise. Think fuck. Do fuck.

This approach is promoted by Dame Margaret Hodge

[QDRPHNC]

I paid $60 to register a business name.

[touchingcloth]

Not remotely. I remember once in my late 20s when I was sick of journalism so went to see a careers advisor who suggested I went on a business studies course. I literally can't think of anything less suitable for someone with my personality - not bothered about money (although probably because of this I'm not badly off. I don't spend very much), terrified by the thought of being in charge of or responsible for anyone else (looking after my cat is quite enough), not into gambling and severely lacking in personal ambition.

In some ways I wish I did have these attributes, but they're just not in me. Several people I know have set up their own companies etc and seem to have done quite well, but of course that could be just for show. Good luck to them but my desire to be left alone is greater than my desire to be successful.

I'm absolutely fascinated by multi-level marketing/pyramid schemes though. Yesterday I wished happy birthday on Facebook to someone who used to work at the gym I go to and saw the name of a former colleague of hers who I'm not friends with but I thought was a nice lass. So I clicked on her page and it turns out she is doing stuff for a cosmetics firm. Which she mentions in practically every post and how it's made her a fortune etc and if she can do it so can you. Hmm.

One of the posts is how about her and her husband missed out on buying their dream home but every cloud has a silver lining and it must mean that something better is on the horizon. After going through her page I called up a warning website about MLMs and apparently this is quite a common one and they're trained to do the 'missing out on the dream home' bit. In fact a former workmate's wife works for another cosmetics firm and is also apparently incredibly successful but also apparently missed out on buying her dream home recently. Double hmm.

Sorry for going off track there but every time I see this sort of thing I just sit there shaking my head for hours on end.

I hate the MLM types, and I think you're right to wonder which things are done "for show".

I know someone who sells Juice+ Plus, and he totally fakes a lifestyle - posting pictures of new hifi kit or phones or cars with comments along the lines of "just got my first cheque through as a Juice+ Plus Megambassador - love being my own boss". I've always known that those pyramid schemes only work out for a tiny proportion of people, so I assumed he was one of the lucky ones as he's nothing if not persistent, but, nope, turns out the stuff he was showing off was all on hire purchase and he doesn't actually make much money at all from the thing.

I read an interesting blog by an ex-MLMer once, and I'm even more convinced that essentially no one but the parent company stands to make any money. People do make small amounts of cash, but never amounts that cm be prorated to anything near a minimum wage, and their higher ups in the network repeat mantras to fake it til you make it. Noel Edmonds style cosmic ordering - rent a Ferrari and one day you will own one!

[Sebastian Cobb]

Nothing screams 'good business acumen' like getting a load of non-essential shit on tick.

[Jockice]

I hate the MLM types, and I think you're right to wonder which things are done "for show".

To be fair, the two people I know who I was thinking about in my second paragraph aren't MLM types. They've set up publishing/lifestyle companies off their own bat. i like both of them as people (I've even written stuff for both of them in the past. Didn't get paid for it though. It was in the early days) but it does get a bit boring when practically every post they make on on social media is trying to sell something. As far as I'm aware they're doing okay and best of luck to them. But it's not something I could do. Another bloke who was a 'bad lad' at school is into property development, which is as far as I'm concerned is the last refuge of the cunt but he seems fairly successful. However as with the others I don't know how successful he really is. Actually, I haven't seen him for a while. It wouldn't surprise me if he was behind bars. We used to call him 'Arthur Daley' even when we were teenagers. He basically is a born spiv.

I have had people trying to recruit me for MLM things a couple of times in the past. Without success. And this is before I even knew how dodgy MLMs were. One was my next door neighbour at the time who persuaded me to put a suit on and travel to Leeds with him on a Sunday morning (he drove, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered) to go to a meeting which appeared to be entirely made up of the sort of people I'd pay to keep away from me in pubs. I decided not to join and it was never mentioned again, although I take it his business venture (selling some bollocks, I can't even remember what it was) didn't succeed. But at least it  gave me a bit of forewarning so when a couple of years later, a bloke I used to work with and someone else I knew vaguely teamed up to try and get me into the Amway scam. I made my excuses (that my headlights suddenly stooped working) and never turned up for the meeting.

I can totally see why people get sucked into it though. It's a fascinating psychological subject. Like how religious cults work. I think my  complete inability to pretend to like something I'm not interested in saved me there.

[paruses]

I am not entrepreneurial.

Now for my question which I think spans the original premise and the MLM strand. At the start of LOCKDOWN I had lots of YouTube ads playing that were mainly about selling on Amazon. In particular one woman/husband and wife setup who would show you the secrets. I never watched the free sampler vid for fear I would now have 10,000 Amstrad emailers stacked in the house waiting to be sold.

Has anyone ever watched one of these things? After Jockice's post it suddenly occurred to me that it's probably an MLM of some description.

[Jockice]

Thankfully I seem to have avoided them so far.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I am not entrepreneurial

For some reason heard this in Worf's voice.

[Marner and Me]

Could you do the washing up without washing up liquid?

[touchingcloth]

And your friends and family: could they?

[Hand Solo]

Can you be a communist entrepreneur?

Trotsky started Communism with only a $10,000 investment.

For some reason heard this in Worf's voice.

Sir, I protest.

[Non Stop Dancer]

All Jeff Bezos had was a $300,000 gift from his mum and dad to get started. Makes me think anyone can do it.

[Icehaven]

I couldn't ever be if it involved debt, which it almost inevitably seems to unless (as others have pointed out) you're somehow 'gifted' a huge amount of cash. I've spent my entire adult life in some degree of debt, either loan or overdraft or both so I'm extremely wary of how worrying that can be. I guess it depends on your approach to risk, if you can deal with, maybe even thrive on it, or if you're massively averse (as am I).

[paruses]

All Jeff Bezos had was a $300,000 gift from his mum and dad to get started. Makes me think anyone can do it.

I came here in 97 with nothing but £5 and my brother's passport, my passport and look at me now

   - Chabuddy G (entrepreneur)

[mobias]

I quite like buying and selling stuff on eBay. There's a bit of fun and a thrill to be had selling something and watching the bidding go up at the end of the auction. I can see the the wider appeal but you need a lot of energy to want to make a living doing it. People I know who run their own successful businesses all share various qualities like being thick skinned (something which I'm definitely not) and not having a fear of failure.

Someone I know goes to these auctions they hold to sell off the assets of bankrupt businesses and buys up loads of junk essentially, at a very low price, and then sells it all individually on eBay and various other places. Its a real Del Boy Trotter level of entrepreneurial business but he does make decent money from it. A lot of effort though but I can see the appeal. 

[Jockice]

Could you do the washing up without washing up liquid?

You have no idea how much I love that sort of stuff. Actually, about a year ago I got a message from someone I was friends with on Facebook asking how I was, which I replied to saying I was fine and then another a few minutes later saying we should go out for a drink. Very unlikely* I thought but decided to play along. Then I got another message asking if I would prefer to be happy or wealthy. I replied that I'd prefer to be both and got the expected 'well you can be. I can tell you how' response. I then looked on his home page and the stupid bastard had (accidentally I presume) posted a video from the MLM he was involved with about how to lure people in. Which he'd followed to the letter. I was very tempted to actually meet up with him just to take the piss but shortly afterwards he vanished from Facebook, never to return. At least under that name

(*Background. He'd met a friend of mine - although I'm more friends with her brothers - through a dating site. They were married six months later. And had split up about a year later. Apparently he was extremely emotionally abusive, tried to cut her off from friends and family - and told those she was allowed to remain friends with (such as me) that they weren't allowed to have any contact with her previous husband**. And then when they'd split up tried to claim that he owned half the house that she'd lived in for about a decade before they met. Just the sort of man you'd trust with your money of course.)

(**Sadly I did defriend the former hubbie on Facebook but felt bad about it, as he's never done me any harm. But as soon as it was definite that marriage number two was over I sent him a friend request, which he accepted. Decent bloke. I'd go for a drink with him anyday. And tell him about my wonderful new business idea.)

[touchingcloth]

and told those she was allowed to remain friends with (such as me) that they weren't allowed to have any contact with her previous husband

Have I understood this correctly? Your friend's new boyfriend spoke to you to say "hello, Jockice, you are not to speak to my new girlfriend's - your longer-standing friend's - former husband"? Or was it that he spoke to her to tell her that you weren't allowed to? Horrific and unpleasant in either case, of course, but slightly more mental if he'd actually revealed his abusive behaviour to you.