How to Make a Good Living Running Your Own Business: A low-cost way to start a business you can live off

This book is a detailed description of how to start a small business from scratch, with relatively little money, and how that business can give you a comfortable standard of living with little or no risk in the long term. Based on what entrepreneur Robin Bennet has found to work over the last 20-odd years in business, it is a frank, witty and revealing look at exactly how to become your own boss without going mad or broke. Discover: - what a real USP looks like (and why it doesn't have to change the world unless you want it to) - the simple secrets of effective business planning (from a man who has started more than ten businesses) - all the places you can get money to start your business (often for free) - the ultimate guide to sales and negotiation (and how to deal with others haggling your prices down) - how to hire the right staff and get the best out of them (without coming across like David Brent) - how to run a business everyday whilst keeping a beady eye on the future (so that you don't go broke, your competitors don't put you out of business, and you can grow healthily). This is a brilliantly revealing, often laugh-out-loud guide for every dreamer, college-leaver and second career-er who has ever thought about starting their own business but fallen asleep in the first chapter of a book by Alan Sugar. Read it and find out how you too can make a good living and still live the good life! From the Introduction: "When all's said and done, the next 115 pages describe how £5,000, judiciously acquired and spent, should allow for a £35,000-£50,000 salary in the first year and anything between £100,000 and £200,000 thereafter. I am prepared to admit that this might not be enough for some, and I have a feeling that there are quite a few people out there who would scorn such an obvious lack of ambition. And, to an extent, I'd go along with that. Like anybody, there are days when I do wonder what it would be like to be stupendously rich, own an island somewhere and have footmen . . . But for now, I think, this is enough; and what's interesting is how completely achievable it is for anyone who is moderately determined."