A young man decided that he would be an entrepreneur, came up with an idea for a retail product but never listened to an expert in the retail business who warned him that his initial concept was impractical, too costly to produce and would make no profit.
Being a clever would-be entrepreneur who knew best he went ahead spending thousands to develop his concept with a product design company, consulted an expensive patent lawyer, filed a patent with the intellectual property office, and talked with costly plastics manufacturers to make his product.
Everyone was terribly nice to him but doors slammed shut in his face. Investors weren’t interested. Supermarket buyers gave him encouragement but placed no orders. Crowdfunding sites gave him the thumbs down. He didn’t even have a prototype of his product.
This dogged would-be entrepreneur hasn’t thrown in the towel. He plans to contact manufacturers in China or Europe to produce his product.
I’m sure you can imagine what will happen when he does that. He will very quickly bleed his banking account dry. After that who knows? But it won’t be pleasant.
Enough of this. I don’t know about you but stories about low-information, gullible would-be entrepreneurs who ignore realistic advice make me feel sick. Enough is enough.
Hands-on practical experience beats theoretical information and advice hands down any day.
If you listen to the misguided business start-up advice out there, says Mark Morgan Ford, then this is how you go about wasting money when starting a business: you produce business cards and brochures, rent an office or factory space, protect your “great ideas” by registering your business name, logo and slogan, consult lawyers, call in the marketing experts, buy business insurance, hire an accountant, do a photo shoot and spend weeks or months building a website.
All this and you haven’t yet sold one product.
A financial journalist working for a big London newspaper who had never started a business of his own interviewed first-hand about 50 entrepreneurs to find out the secrets of their success. One thing he was surprised to find was most of these hugely successful entrepreneurs with national and international businesses only had high school education and some didn’t even have that.
These entrepreneurs knew that you check the market, develop a prototype, see if anyone will buy it, scrap your idea if it doesn’t sell and move onto something else.
If you want to get hands-on practical experience quickly that shows you how to start up without wasting your money, then consider this.
