10 Lessons from 10 Years as a Founder: #1 Start by Starting

When is the right time to “make the jump” and start your own business? Truth is, there probably isn’t ever a right time. Or perhaps any time is right. But unless you try, how will you know? If not now, when? I know people who have been pushed into starting up on their own – being made redundant for example. I also know people who have always known that this is the only thing they ever want to do; somehow never fitting in to the “mainstream” job market and felt like being their own boss was the only way.  

But for most of us, it is a conscious decision. 

 

Starting with an idea 

You feel deep down you have an idea or you have seen a gap in the market. You might have watched others running companies – and think “if they can do it, I reckon I could too.” You read some books and watch some YouTube videos (I got about half way through “Starting a business for Dummies” before I thought I knew all I needed to know – which I clearly didn’t!) and then start writing down your ideas. I’m sure for some people that is a proper business plan – but if you’re anything like me, or if you don’t know what a proper business plan looks like – then it is just a set of ideas, names, straplines, products, services, target customers; or anything your intuition tells you might add up to a viable business. 

If you work a 9-5 already, and your business idea can be done around that routine – then great. My only real side hustle has been organising and promoting music nights. I did that when I was young and interesting. But it wasn’t a “real” business. There are loads of real businesses which people do 5-9 (or probably at their desks while someone else is paying their wages). By the way – if you are at school or college – and have the discipline to start a business alongside your studies, I think that is a GREAT time to start.  

But for now, lets assume that you will need to quit your current job, or decide not to go searching for a new one – and start your own business. First you should weigh up what you stand to lose if it goes wrong. Have you got savings you can use to pay the bills? Did you get a payout from a redundancy? Could you go back to the “mainstream” easily if you try this for a year and it doesn’t work? If the answer to all of the above is yes. If you back yourself. If you need to find out whether your idea would work. Then at some point you have to start. To take the jump. To commit. The only way your business will start, is by starting it.

 

Quitting my job at Microsoft 

At the beginning of October 2014, I asked to see my boss at Microsoft. Chris Perkins his name was. We were booked to talk at 2pm and I was at my desk rehearsing what I was going to say. Then he came over about 11am and said “I can’t do 2pm anymore, lets meet now instead.” I froze. I wasn’t ready for this conversation yet. Next thing I knew I was in his office and the words were coming out of my mouth. I was quitting a very well paid job at Microsoft to start Hable. Then I was driving home thinking “OMG I’ve actually done it” 
 
Next thing I know it was new years eve 2014 and I was dropping off my laptop and security pass. Then I was driving home again. Thinking “OMFG I’ve actually done it!!” 

Then I had started. I had no salary. No healthcare. No pension. No fancy office. Just me and the whole of 2015 ahead of me to really find out whether this was going to work.  

I cannot explain the emotion really. But I had started and I knew what it felt like to be an entrepreneur. I’d wanted to feel that for so long. I knew that if I messed it up, I could go back to Microsoft, or somewhere else – and knew that I would not be embarrassed to ask Chris for my job back that time next year. But I parked that thought in the back of my mind somewhere and committed to it. You have to commit. 

 

You can do anything you want   

Oh – I forgot one important piece of the jigsaw – to help you understand how I felt at the time. I knew my family loved me and that although my wife and parents probably thought I was bonkers, that they were there for me. If you don’t have that, does it make you more determined or less, to show the world you can succeed? I don’t know. But I was blessed to have Angela at my side. And she believed in me. One of my big motivators for wanting to make the jump was to show my 3 sons that they can do anything they want. If you want to start a business, you can. I hope that lessons is lodged in their heads somewhere. They were 6, 9 and 12 at the time. If they are 30 and hate their jobs, I hope I’ve shown them that there is another way to make money. I hope they look back and think I was brave for doing what I did. 

I don’t know if I will run businesses for ever. Part of my brain yearns for a 9-5, where someone else has to worry about paying the wages. Like Forest Gump mowing the lawn. But now I’ve learnt how it works, and seen that its not actually that hard, then I’d love to start other businesses one day. And I don’t think I could have ever learnt what I’ve learnt, working for someone else. 

There is only way to start a business. By starting.