The Blog of an Entrepreneur

A good friend of mine is always coming up with ideas for businesses he wants to start, and several times has asked me to get involved either on an advisory role or as one of those frequently mentioned “investment opportunities” :).  Unfortunately for him, some of his ideas sound quite promising, and could perhaps grow to be very successful. So why is that unfortunate?

It is unfortunate because he does absolutely bugger all with his ideas. He mentiones them, bounces off all the walls with excitement, but does nothing until a few weeks later all is forgotten.

Originally I got quite involved with some of his ideas and was considering investing in one, but as I got to know how he  procrastinates and never actually does anything I too lost interest and started to see him as a very high risk investment. My money would end up doing nothing more than paying his wages to do nothing, until the pot ran dry and we would eventually fall out.

The world is full of people who talk a good game, but very few actually make things happen and try their ideas. I almost lost my home a couple of times because I took the risk on my business ideas, my friend will never take that risk. He will forever more be what some call a “wage slave”, despite running his own business he always takes the safe long term contracts with the guaranteed income. There is nothing wrong with this though, an old boss once said to me the world needs worker bee’s just as much as it needs leaders.  What kind of person are you, if you are an Entrepreneur then you are a Do’er, and you will make your business ideas happen at any cost.

It never ceases to amazing me how many “business opportunities” find their way to you when you come in to a bit of money. All sorts of people come out of the woodwork with the next Facebook, MySpace or even UK Business Forums! Only this week I was contacted by someone looking to setup another forum with the plans to sell it for hundreds of thousands, and wanted me to give them all the information they needed to achieve that.

Now I don’t mind helping people, and I will help whenever I can, but what I do not like are people who are looking to make a fast buck by leaching onto someone elses success. Those who know me will know that I devote a lot of time to sharing any knowledge with people who I can clearly see putting in the extra effort themselves, burning the midnight oil, trying their best but simply lack a little experience or expertise in a particular area. I do not like leaches or clinger ons. People who hunt out someone who has something they want, take what they want and dump them.

If you want to make a success of yourself then do it yourself. Seek legitimate help from friends and colleagues, but don’t leach off other peoples success. They will spot you a mile off and you could lose potential mentors or supporters. Also, just because it worked for one person it doesn’t mean it will work for others, how many successful eBay clones do you know of?

I’m very “British”. I know I am and sometimes it’s a serious failing of mine. I’m too polite to complain when the food in the restaurant is not up to scratch, and when our government screws us business owners I bend over and take it right up the backside like thousands of others in the UK.

I’m already annoyed that being a VAT registered business I act as a free debt recovery agent for the HM Revenue & Customs. I collect the VAT duty from my customers on behalf of the government, and then dutifully each quarter I make a nice generous BACS payment to help cover the costs of shipping the publics bank details out to Bin Laden. Then pay tax for the benefit of employing staff, and then my staff pay tax again on their wages, and then I pay corporation tax for making a profit, and then I pay tax on my own earnings, and then I pay tax on my own purchases, and then I pay council tax followed by tax on my car and then tax on my TV, followed by tax on my death and my family will pay tax on any inheritance they get from me. I’m sure I have forgotten about some taxes I pay as an honest citizen, whilst the filthy rich put all their money offshore in hidden bank accounts. The government decides they are far to difficult to chase, so we middle earners take one for England.

Today I wrote a cheque to our lovely HM Revenue & Customs for £245 for the priviledge of being “Supervised” under the up and coming Anti Money Laundering Regulations 2007. You have to love the stupidity of our Government, do they really think that by screwing the good honest business owners in the UK they are going to catch a bunch of terrorists?

So let us get this right, good honest Joe (me) pays more of my hard earned money to robbing bar steward (HMRC) for them to monitor and analyse my business activities just in case Bin Laden decides to use my business to set up a Limited company.  Then just in case he does, and this is where is gets really funny, I have to be skilled enough to identify whether he has managed to defraud the passport office or DVLA to obtain a drivers licence to passport.

That is right campers, we the honest business owners are being penalised and tasked with the duty to compensating for the inadeqacies of our government departments.  Are they going to pay us for this additional workload though, are they hell. Nope instead we have to pay them for the priviledge and cover the additional staffing costs of doing this ourselves, for the good of our country.

Of course, if all us small to medium sized business owners got together to make a stand. Perhaps a small levy on the VAT returns to cover the costs we incure in recovering the VAT payments, what are they going to do? After all, we account for 98.5% of businesses in the UK!