Is "entrepreneur" the most over used word of the 21st Century

Although I'd agree with the above, with the advent of the internet, exposure to new lowcost advertising and marketing mediums, seed capital now is no longer such an inhibitor.


This is a misconception of the multitude of back bedroom webdesigner for dummies brigade. I would hazard a guess that 70% of "online businesses" could be classed as hobbies, with no longterm passion, drive or investment, be it time or money. But that doesn't include the 30% that are genuine businesses in every sense as bricks and mortar businesses. As Mary says, paying their taxes and following HRMC's rules.

If these can be run as an owner business without employees, then good luck to them. Outsourcing functionality from bookkeeping to VA's seems to be more and more common place. The amount of redtape and associated costs when you do employ people, makes you wonder sometimes if its worth the hassle

A. Just because the barriers to entry are lower, doesn't mean that capital is not a problem. Two ways to growth: organic (in which you wait for capital to be generated in order to expand) or acquisition (in which access to capital is a problem). Only businesses that want to remain in the bedroom part-time dismiss capital. Think bigger.

B. Running a business without employees is rare. At a minimum you'll have a very overworked admin assistant. You can keep it in the family and outsource a lot of the stuff - but this is small minded; you're not thinking BUSINESS, you're simply calling a small, income stream a business. We're thinking/talking GOOGLE, not Mom&Pop.

C. Employing people is a hassle. But most of the time you outsource this to an accountant or hire a HR person. Again - you see - the reason you consider it a hassle is because you have to do it yourself and DO NOT HAVE THE CAPITAL to employ an accountant to do more than a basic return or hire that HR person.

Alot of this stuff is obvious once you get out of the bedroom. No offence to bedroom businesses. But it's idiocy to ignore the capital argument.

It's not just capital, it's also inclination and aptitude. What's wrong with being a small income stream, single-person business entity? The one that isn't ever going to become Google, and uses outsourcing rather than employees, but is nevertheless earning one person a respectable living? Why is it necessary or even desirable for everybody to think bigger? Can't we have a range of business sizes to suit all requirements?

I strongly feel that no matter how often you say "no offence", terms like "bedroom business" and "hobby" to describe the way a person makes a living can only be construed as disparaging. I'm hardly crying into my keyboard, but it's not exactly polite to make your contempt for people who work alone so transparent. Let's at least pretend to respect one another.

Some businesses really are better as one-person enterprises. The most obvious example is those skilled services that depend on a depth and quality of understanding in a one-to-one relationship between client and provider, such as tutoring, gardening, beauty treatments, or counselling services, to name but a few. Clients of these services don't hire the company, they hire the person because they like that person's work.

And some people are just better as one-person enterprises too. I do what I do because I enjoy it and I'm good at it. I can do management stuff, I have done it professionally in the past and I employ and manage my personal assistants. But I can't bring myself to aspire to spending my whole life managing other people and not getting to do any of the actual work that I enjoy! Do I have to be a manager to be a business?

@VirtuallyMary

What I find contemptuous is ignorance and small-mindedness.

We are ASSUMING motivation, competency and that the product idea is there.

To reduce the role of capital is DUMB, DUMB, DUMB.

Agreed, but as I said, not having access to seed capital is no longer such an inhibitor.

Having seen the amazing waste first hand during the dotcom fiasco, organic growth is the way to go, if you can finance yourself, even better, but access to too much money too quickly can massage ego's, and blur otherwise good judgement. Slow steady, with a solid foundation, then build on success.

I don't think you'll find many businesses that will dismiss capital, but without the shackles of an angel investors seed capital, online businesses have been able to grow organically thanks to the minimum of overhead. This wouldn't have been possible years ago. Call it the incubator stage, as the revenue and profit grows, you go to the growth stage and move to the office, collect a few employees etc.

Then again, there are some good examples of businesses that stay at the incubator stage, generating a respectable revenue, and a better profit ratio than bigger companies would be envious of.


All sounds a bit Harvard Business school lesson number 1.

If someones making a nice standard of living, relatively stress free, who are we to mock and say this isn't a proper business?

Mom&Pop has a big house mortgage free, a big pot of cash in the bank and Pop spends his summer in Vegas, do you reckon he gives 2 hoots about being the CEO of Google?


On reflection, I liked the bedroom stage, and anyone who is still there, enjoy it before life gets a whole lot more complicated

ps - don't employ freinds and family, no matter how tempting (obviously not including my main man Clive)

The argument that only people with employees is complete tosh.

"Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity"

let me think what I would prefer a room full of people who can massage my ego or a pocket full of cash.

I recently had a web dev company turn down a project of mine as they only deal with companies that have a minimum of 50 staff. as that is the number of employees they deemed you need to call your self successfull.

lets break that logic down.
a car dealership for example
50 staff
5 mil turnover
if we take an average across the board of 50k per staff member that will include salary,tax and pension = 2.5mil
another 500k in overheads
then you need capital re-investment another 500k
we are at a total of 1.5 dont forget the tax man wants hit cut as well.
so know we are down to 1.08 mil

wow that seems like a lot of work.

alternatively
you have got a 1 man band with half a dozen successful web sites and a freelance IT practice.

each site turns over 150k
plus another 130k from the IT pracitce.
1.03 mil
minus tax = 802k

which one would I prefer? now taking into account I do have a huge ego???

the 1 man band each and ever time without fail.