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Peter Carruthers
Most of us entrepreneurs didn’t choose to be here! It kinda happened en route to a real job and career.
Almost all the business owners I have consulted with also fell into owning their own businesses. It wasn’t really planned. At some point in their lives they were retrenched or fired or simply couldn’t find a job. So they began working for themselves.
They leveraged the technical skill they had [software, making coffee, fixing pipes, gynaecology, architecture, ...] and started to sell that skill to somebody [their first client]. As time moved on, they found that other people also wanted what they had to sell, and they began to get busier. And the busier they got, the more help they needed. So they hired secretaries, technical underlings, bookkeepers, salespeople and a few other strange individuals – and then they morphed into business owners. Except that they almost all found that the business owned them and not the other way round.
When they analysed where all their time went, it was almost all spent in keeping running on the technical treadmill. They spent so much time honing their technical skills – constantly making the product or service even more excellent – that they forgot to build a few simple business skills. And then they found that they were in trouble.
If you look at your business efforts – where are most of the problems arising? I am willing to bet almost all the problems you face have nothing to do with the service or product you provide – but are all focused squarely on the business aspects – sales, collecting money, managing staff, accounting, cash flow, banking…
Why is it that even those professionals that we know will own their own businesses – doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers, artists – are offered almost no business courses while in school or college? And where business courses are offered, they simply aren’t relevant to the needs of an individually owned business.
A small business is not a little big business! It exists for a completely different reason than does a big business. And it is subject to completely different stresses. The mere scale of a large business demands formality and controls to protect the interests of the [many] shareholders – and such structures cost time and money. Yet the individually owned business exists for just 1 reason – to prosper the individual owner [or the few individual owners].
I’m Peter Carruthers, and I spent my formative years at Fish Hoek High School wanting to be a gynaecologist – and actually spent a couple of years at the University of Cape Town Medical School. A motor accident in the middle of my 2nd year quickly changed my mind – and I took a break to consider my future. A few weeks into this break my Dad "suggested" that I should either get a job or get out – so I peppered an expectant job market with my resume – and took the first offer that came along. I spent the next few years working at Barclays Bank.
At my next job I fell in love with a large lump of technology – an old IBM S/34 minicomputer – about the size of a large wardrobe – and life hasn’t been the same since! The next 9 years were spent selling data-communications technologies to IBM minicomputer users.
When that firm closed in 1992, I was devastated – both financially and spiritually. As a family we lost everything – and a whole bunch more money that we didn’t even have.
The entire story is in the book CrashProof your Business, along with the many, many lessons I learnt.
After a few years selling life insurance – and trying to find out from all my business clients why they were still in business, and I wasn’t – I realised that most of us business owners are in the same boat. Because I was asking so many questions, people started to think I might actually know something and began referring their friends to me for business help!
That’s when I started consulting and speaking to business owners about how to protect themselves. More than 30,000 business owners (and 4 bankers) attended the CrashProof your Business seminar, and their questions helped refine the strategies that are detailed in the book, currently in its second edition.
In late 2003 I stopped presenting seminars when my health began to suffer from the constant travelling. (I have been diabetic since 1971.) Once the book had been sent to the publishers, it occurred to me that a web community would be a far more effective mechanism to support small business owners - as well as deliver information when it was required, in bite sized chunks - rather than in an overwhelming four-hour seminar session with little follow-up.
In March 2004 the South African Business Warriors site lurched into existence, with 500 Warriors subscribing in the first chaotic week. More than 2500 Warriors now share ideas and support each other on a site that has a life of its own, and contains everything I have written about business, and all my seminars. This isn’t a job – it’s a passion.
I began sharing business and marketing ideas back in 1999 while I was in Australia and very lonely. I emailed a few thoughts to about 250 previous seminar delegates, and this has gently grown into a weekly idea currently circulated to more than 20,000 readers throughout the world.
I currently live in Ringwood, Hampshire. My day job consists of supporting Business Warriors as well as writing and presenting seminars about marketing and selling.
And that’s the bundle – what you see is what you get. After 32 years of working (24 of those self-employed/unemployed - depending on your perspective) I am astounded at how fast life is changing around us. I am enjoying every second – and I think the next few decades will be even more spectacular.
Isn’t this a wonderful time to be alive?
Peter Carruthers
Almost all the business owners I have consulted with also fell into owning their own businesses. It wasn’t really planned. At some point in their lives they were retrenched or fired or simply couldn’t find a job. So they began working for themselves.
They leveraged the technical skill they had [software, making coffee, fixing pipes, gynaecology, architecture, ...] and started to sell that skill to somebody [their first client]. As time moved on, they found that other people also wanted what they had to sell, and they began to get busier. And the busier they got, the more help they needed. So they hired secretaries, technical underlings, bookkeepers, salespeople and a few other strange individuals – and then they morphed into business owners. Except that they almost all found that the business owned them and not the other way round.
When they analysed where all their time went, it was almost all spent in keeping running on the technical treadmill. They spent so much time honing their technical skills – constantly making the product or service even more excellent – that they forgot to build a few simple business skills. And then they found that they were in trouble.
If you look at your business efforts – where are most of the problems arising? I am willing to bet almost all the problems you face have nothing to do with the service or product you provide – but are all focused squarely on the business aspects – sales, collecting money, managing staff, accounting, cash flow, banking…
Why is it that even those professionals that we know will own their own businesses – doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers, artists – are offered almost no business courses while in school or college? And where business courses are offered, they simply aren’t relevant to the needs of an individually owned business.
A small business is not a little big business! It exists for a completely different reason than does a big business. And it is subject to completely different stresses. The mere scale of a large business demands formality and controls to protect the interests of the [many] shareholders – and such structures cost time and money. Yet the individually owned business exists for just 1 reason – to prosper the individual owner [or the few individual owners].
I’m Peter Carruthers, and I spent my formative years at Fish Hoek High School wanting to be a gynaecologist – and actually spent a couple of years at the University of Cape Town Medical School. A motor accident in the middle of my 2nd year quickly changed my mind – and I took a break to consider my future. A few weeks into this break my Dad "suggested" that I should either get a job or get out – so I peppered an expectant job market with my resume – and took the first offer that came along. I spent the next few years working at Barclays Bank.
At my next job I fell in love with a large lump of technology – an old IBM S/34 minicomputer – about the size of a large wardrobe – and life hasn’t been the same since! The next 9 years were spent selling data-communications technologies to IBM minicomputer users.
When that firm closed in 1992, I was devastated – both financially and spiritually. As a family we lost everything – and a whole bunch more money that we didn’t even have.
The entire story is in the book CrashProof your Business, along with the many, many lessons I learnt.
After a few years selling life insurance – and trying to find out from all my business clients why they were still in business, and I wasn’t – I realised that most of us business owners are in the same boat. Because I was asking so many questions, people started to think I might actually know something and began referring their friends to me for business help!
That’s when I started consulting and speaking to business owners about how to protect themselves. More than 30,000 business owners (and 4 bankers) attended the CrashProof your Business seminar, and their questions helped refine the strategies that are detailed in the book, currently in its second edition.
In late 2003 I stopped presenting seminars when my health began to suffer from the constant travelling. (I have been diabetic since 1971.) Once the book had been sent to the publishers, it occurred to me that a web community would be a far more effective mechanism to support small business owners - as well as deliver information when it was required, in bite sized chunks - rather than in an overwhelming four-hour seminar session with little follow-up.
In March 2004 the South African Business Warriors site lurched into existence, with 500 Warriors subscribing in the first chaotic week. More than 2500 Warriors now share ideas and support each other on a site that has a life of its own, and contains everything I have written about business, and all my seminars. This isn’t a job – it’s a passion.
I began sharing business and marketing ideas back in 1999 while I was in Australia and very lonely. I emailed a few thoughts to about 250 previous seminar delegates, and this has gently grown into a weekly idea currently circulated to more than 20,000 readers throughout the world.
I currently live in Ringwood, Hampshire. My day job consists of supporting Business Warriors as well as writing and presenting seminars about marketing and selling.
And that’s the bundle – what you see is what you get. After 32 years of working (24 of those self-employed/unemployed - depending on your perspective) I am astounded at how fast life is changing around us. I am enjoying every second – and I think the next few decades will be even more spectacular.
Isn’t this a wonderful time to be alive?
Peter Carruthers