Unprepared to Entrepreneur

A Method to the Madness of Starting Your Own Business

Sonya Barlow

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781398601475
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Entrepreneurship
• Index: Business

SHORTLISTED: Business Book Awards 2022 - Start Up/Scale Up Times have changed: you can launch a successful enterprise with your phone, sell through social media and tap into a whole world of opportunities. Unprepared to Entrepreneur is an honest guide to launching your own business, sharing real stories from real people who have tested, failed and won at business. It profiles the underdogs, those who brainstormed ideas whilst travelling on the bus, started a business from their phone and managed to create three income streams whilst maintaining a full-time job in the city to show you that you can do it too. From a working Google doc as your business plan, to ideation strategies that live and die off Instagram engagement; they won't teach you this at business school. Sonya Barlow takes a look at the resilience needed to make it in business, the incredible tax on mental health and the non-negotiable steps to creating a viable business. This is the ultimate guide to side hustling, freelancing and entrepreneurial freedom of the future.

CHAPTER ONE

Are you prepared to be an entrepreneur?

It was spring 2018, and I was on my way to brunch at one of my favourite venues opposite London Bridge station. I had already planned my meal – smashed avocado on toast, hot chai latte with extra cinnamon and a tall glass of fresh orange juice. This wasn’t just any brunch, but the first event I had organized as part of my plan to create a community.

The night before, I had laid out my best outfit on the dressing table. I woke up with butterflies like it was my first day of school. I arrived 30 minutes early, sat on every seat to determine which was right for me, then proceeded to order. This was going to be a momentous occasion, so I took out my iPhone and started taking pictures of the venue and the other diners. I wanted to capture this moment as a part of my story – big things were about to happen.

Forty-five minutes later, the waitress kindly asked for the table back and brought over the bill.

After three weeks of planning and 12 reservations, the soft launch was a complete failure. That was my first experience of launching a business, a community, a brand.

Welcome to entrepreneurship

I had 12 reservations confirmed via email, which turned into 12 no-shows. I was disappointed – little did I know that this underwhelming lack of an event would change my life forever.

Entrepreneurship is life-changing. You are taking a risk on an idea and yourself. If that idea fails, it can be crushing, but the notion of not pursuing that idea can feel way worse. It’s difficult to define the limits of entrepreneurship as the possibilities are endless. Letting go of your own reservations and actually starting are often the hardest part.

Stepping into the world of entrepreneurship feels like the first day of secondary school. Everything feels new, everyone seems bigger and more experienced. Starting a business, building a brand, even writing this book takes a lot of hard work and determination. You sit down, ready to put pen to paper, secretly hoping that a flow of ideas will start hitting the page. It’s your business, your vision, your future, and the idea is so clear in your mind, so why is it that as soon as you go to write it down, you draw a blank? If, like me, you have been in this situation multiple times before, then don’t worry. This is common and you will overcome it.

This book will take you on a journey on how to discover your business and brand, and provide you with all the tools you need to become your own boss! Are you ready?

How to make the most of this book

Don’t read this book all at once. It’s imperative that you take time to reflect on each chapter and story. Truthfully, I don’t understand the habit of reading self-help or business books in one go, especially when many require mental effort and take you on a journey of self-realization. There is no rush. Starting a business is a marathon, not a sprint. Take your time, ask questions and enjoy the process. I have included a workbook section at the end of each chapter for you to use for notes or to mind map. This is all work in progress and no thought should be left unwritten.

Becoming an accidental entrepreneur

Entrepreneurship is one cup madness, one cup dedication and three cups of strategically winging it until something satisfactory is made.

I can’t help but laugh to myself that I’ve written an entrepreneurship book. My idea wasn’t necessarily a business idea to start with; I never intended to become an entrepreneur. I just had an idea to try to get me out of my own ‘grey area’, which is an expression that I use to describe a feeling of dissatisfaction with something, or a frustration that one hasn’t found a solution for (yet). In fact, this bad place or grey area was the perfect place for me to start an entrepreneurial journey. As you will see throughout this book, it is also something that other award-winning entrepreneurs have recognized in their own journey.

A bad place makes for a great story

I was a lonely and stressed young professional climbing the corporate ladder only to have it pulled from underneath me every time I climbed a step too high. I felt no community around me, struggled to name close colleagues or allies, and had nowhere to turn when wanting to discuss progress, pay and challenging work scenarios. I felt alone and isolated, despite being globally connected and living in London.

Becoming an entrepreneur wasn’t something I had planned, which is often the case for many business owners. I was an accidental entrepreneur and unprepared for what this new world would ask of me. Within 18 months, I went from being unhappy and unfulfilled working in the technology industry, to winning awards for my business idea, starting a second business, impacting the lives of people globally, failing fast, finding gratitude in every moment and writing this book. It wasn’t always easy.

With no real starting plan, I began following a few basic and fundamental steps that required me to create, test and launch my business idea.

Contrary to what you’re taught through institutionalized education, a business plan is not the first thing you create when becoming an entrepreneur. In my opinion, the idea that you must have a formalized business plan in order to even start a business is outdated and unrealistic. Having to curate an intricate plan that is foolproof means that you are committed to a script for your business, thus often acting as a deterrent to you even getting started. As amazing as my journey sounds, I can’t help but still feel like I am on a loop within a video game; running through fire, jumping through hoops and catching gold coins only to realize there is another level that is much more challenging. But only through having started can I progress and adapt to what the world throws at me.

In March 2020, we saw the world go into lockdown. The COVID-19 crisis meant job losses and a looming recession. During this time, I had hundreds of messages every week asking how I had started my business and if I could share my business plan and support people with their own entrepreneurial journeys. With job security at its lowest and many members of the public finding themselves in their own grey areas, it was inevitable that people would start exploring other ideas outside of the standard nine to five and this was one of the reasons I wanted to write this book.

If the global COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that life is ever-changing. The same companies that weren’t able to provide remote access before had to shift 100 per cent of their offerings; universities were forced to deliver their lessons online and we realized that digital connectivity was fundamental to staying afloat; the real winners of this new world were Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Hangouts, to name but a few. A bulletproof business plan doesn’t save you from disruption. Getting yourself out there and being able to adapt are what will propel your businesses forward. Read on to learn how to prepare for launching your adaptable business.

Why must one prepare to be an entrepreneur?

Starting a business will shock your system. There is no such thing as a perfect plan or the best time to start. If you keep waiting, the right time will never come.

Start by focusing on the golden circle (Sinek, 2021) of ‘what, how and why’. What do we do? How are we different? Why are we doing what we are doing? For many, the ‘why’ is the most important part of the circle as it confirms your business ethos and overall objective. According to more traditional ways of marketing, businesses that have a solid golden circle wouldn’t need to adapt to the market as their objective and reasonings are sound and stable.

Fast-forward to 2021, this certainly isn’t the case any more. Companies such as Apple and Uber have had to constantly evolve their business objectives, just to keep up with consumer needs and societal requirements. This type of innovation is what makes these companies stay afloat but this isn’t to say that these types of business don’t slip up from time to time.

When Apple launched in the 1970s, their main objective (or their why) focused on changing the way people viewed computers and wanted the technology industry to be more inclusive in terms of who could access the equipment. Despite their objective leading them to global success, a failure of theirs can be seen in the launch of the Apple Watch in 2015. According to The Verge (Duhaime-Ross, 2014), the initial Apple Watch prototype featured fitness tracking, health-oriented capabilities and wireless telecommunication but not a period tracker. This was rectified in 2019 when Apple released the upgraded version of the watch, but since period trackers had been around since 2013, this could be seen as a non-inclusive oversight that goes against their initial business plan objective.

In an interview with Womanthology (2017), Canva’s founder Melanie Perkins shared that her initial business plan was to build a design toolkit that students could use without having to spend money on expensive design software. She mentions that because of her lack of experience, she was rejected by a number of investors before one decided to invest. If she had stopped after that first knockback, then Canva would not be the tool it is today.

These stories present a clear problem that the founders were aiming to solve. In each, it took hard work, many attempts and some failure along the way to become the business and brand that we all know today. What is the learning from this? It’s okay if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing, it’s completely fine to fail and face rejection, as long as you learn and are ready to change tack along the way.

Within the media, stories of wealthy and privileged founders are usually showcased. You read about the glamour of being your own boss, but you rarely read about how hard it is. There are very few stories narrating accessibility, business failures and real entrepreneurial challenges such as learning to say no, money management, how to prioritize your well-being and conquering your own procrastination. I am an ordinary person who has been able to build a successful business. However, despite attending business school and watching the likes of Dragons’ Den on the television, it wasn’t until I faced my own problems that I was able to find my feet in the world of entrepreneurship. This book is meant to share my journey and hel...

Table of contents

• About the author
• Foreword by Abadesi Osunsade
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Are you prepared to be an entrepreneur?
• 2 Entrepreneurship – nature or nurture?
• 3 Does your customer understand who you are?
• 4 Social media for your business
• 5 Converting your network into your net worth
• 6 Does teamwork make the dream work?
• 7 The three Ps of leadership: people, power and purpose
• 8 Mind over matter
• 9 Shifting your money mindset
• 10 How to influence people and win clients
• 11 Eleven methods to the madness of starting your own business
• References
• Index