How to Start a Business from Scratch – an insider’s guide
I’ve had my ups and downs with How to Start a Business from Scratch by Stewart Jacobs. I’ve had moments of “that’s a good point, must remember that” and moments of utter bewilderment. My verdict is that the book has definite value … but it could definitely do with work in certain areas.
Shall I start with the good stuff or the bad stuff? Let’s start with the negatives so that I can end on a positive note.
One of the things that I found astounding is that there are practically no examples used throughout the book. Lots of statements of fact but no scenarios to back them up. A simple example is that he mentions you should get a domain name but doesn’t give an example of what a domain name is. I say “practically none” because there are a couple of instances that I can think of where the author mentions a couple of example businesses. Examples, real life or otherwise, would have helped with my understanding of the points made and with engaging me with the content of the book. As it was the style was easy but unexciting.
One area which I felt was strong (which I’ll touch on below) was financial information – in this case some example calculations were given (yay for examples!) but the figures were given as percentages which I found difficult to get my head round. Some made-up figures would have been much easier to grasp I think.
To round up the negatives, I’d say the book is more theoretical than practical, and one of the things I particularly look for in a business book is practical application.
That being said it does (as I mentioned above) have value. The author gives an overview of all the areas you need to consider when setting up a business. It might not give you all the detail you need but it is a good overall guide. What’s more the author has the courage to cover the less exciting areas of setting up and running a business. Although one of my criticisms is that the book is unexciting, the flip side of this is that it isn’t afraid to mention the areas (such as cash flow forecasts) that are less sexy. This is something to look out for in other startup books I think – I do like a book that is inspirational but do some of them run the risk of sexing it up a bit too much and missing some important info?
In particular I was particularly keen on the coverage of financial management. I picked up on this because it’s an area that I need to do some more work on myself. When talking about finances for startups it’s easy to get caught up in the ins and outs of bookkeeping – important but what about monitoring your finances so that you know exactly where your business is at? That’s what this book does well – the advice is to use a bookkeeper for the day-to-day bookkeeping but to have a system in place to oversee and monitor the business finances. Some of the techniques mentioned are exactly what I’ve been looking for (and haven’t found recommended elsewhere in other general business books) so I’ll definitely be going back over them and seeing how I can adopt them … using real figures of course not just percentages.
How to Start a Business from Scratch is not an in depth guide to starting a business but it does cover a lot of ground. You may find yourself crying out for more detail to clarify what the author means in certain areas, but if you use the book as a guide to what you need to cover you can fill in the detail from elsewhere.
So, not a particularly inspiring book but one which is worth keeping on your shelf as a reference.
Rating: 
Buy “How to Start a Business from Scratch an Insiders Guide” from Amazon >
Back on track
I’m pleased to say that we’ve got our worklog back on track. Digging out the previous week’s backup did unearth a couple more missing tasks but I’m now feeling much more confident that it’s up-to-date. The lesson I will take away from this is to not mess with Excel filtering on a vitally important spreadsheet – from now on I’ll always work on a copy if I want to manipulate the data. Not the most efficient way of working, but much more efficient than having to recreate a broken spreadsheet!
Technology or human error?
I’ve just discovered something rather worrying. We track our current task list on a spreadsheet which we call our ‘worklog’. It’s a central place for us to record everything that needs doing, whether it’s client work or business tasks, which we can both access. The idea is that we have a reliable place to track the jobs we need to do rather than keeping it all in our heads or on random bits of paper. We’ve been using it for a few years now and it’s worked really well for us. Until this morning…
What I discovered this morning is that a load of what was in there has been duplicated and a load of other stuff has gone missing (and not because they’re tasks we’ve completed). Eek! I’m trying to figure out if it’s something I’ve done but there’s so much wrong that I can’t see how I could have accidentally done it without noticing. Or is it because I was using some filtering to inspect different parts of the list? But filtering a spreadsheet shouldn’t mess with the data should it?
What’s going on??
I’ve spent the last hour removing duplicate entries and brainstorming anything that should be on there … but the whole point of it is that I shouldn’t have to remember everything so I’m sure there will be things I’ve missed. Might have to dig out last week’s backup, but of course that will only give me what was included a week ago, a lot of which we would have done anyway. Am also going through emails from clients to make sure I’m not missing anything there.
What a nuisance!
The importance of business planning
My last post was a review of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People last September – now that doesn’t make me feel like a highly effective person! But I’m still here, still reading lots of business books and working hard at my business.
The last year has been an interesting one. We moved into our office last June and our finances instantly took a turn for the worse. But we didn’t let that stop us. We tightened our belts and did some serious financial planning to make sure that we started bringing in enough money to cover costs and our living expenses. As a result I feel much more in control of our finances and have got a detailed budget for the different areas of running the business. And I’m pleased to say that business has picked up again and our finances are looking healthier than they have done for quite a while.
The last few months we’ve had a lot of work on, so we’ve mostly been keeping our heads down and working at keeping on top of our workload, but this week has sparked off a new phase of business planning. Wednesday turned into an “Emily you MUST do some business planning” day. First thing was my weekly business breakfast at Tregenna Castle, St Ives where we were given inspirational talk on branding by Joy of Approach (thanks Joy!). We (that is myself and my partner) then went off for a meeting with a business mentor – this was a guy we’d met a couple of times before but hadn’t seen for a loooong time. It was great to catch up with him and as always he was overflowing with ideas on how we can develop our business.
The result of this is that we’ve agreed to set aside a half day each week to concentrate on business planning and implementing the ideas – with the focus on taking action. It’s not that we haven’t been thinking about business planning for the last six months, but we do tend to get caught up in working for the business rather than developing the business. So, now we’re looking at things with renewed vigour. Let’s see what we can achieve!
