Tag Archives: Business Angels

Identifying successful businesses

Identifying a successful business start-up
Every experienced Investor develops a sixth sense when looking at potential business opportunities, but even so it can sometimes be difficult to put your finger on what is the key ingredient in making a new venture successful.

Over the years of working with start-ups I’ve seen companies grow rapidly and then fall away, great businesses that not only grew but sustained their position and of course those that never made it.

In all of the great ventures they got 3 basic elements right and I’ve tried to show those essentials on our model of Start-up Success above.

Much of it is common sense, but like many simple things it can often be forgotten and the whole process of identifying a good high growth business made over complicated.

Firstly, yes you guessed it, is the founders of the venture. It’s said many times that the management team is key, but why? It is because they provide the drive, ambition and ultimate quality of the business.

Not only must they have the will to succeed but also the competence to implement the business successfully. The idea is important, but the excellence of implementation of the idea is critical.

Great entrepreneurs have a vision of what they want to achieve based on an insight to a market opportunity and the capability to pull together the resources to address it.

When you as an Investor look at prospects, or perhaps if you are an entrepreneur thinking through options for starting a business, it’s worth remembering the 3 key ingredients and how they interact for sustainable success.

 

Insights to the Angel Investor world

London-funding-conferenceI went along to The London Funding Conference at the British Library last night and was again impressed by the Library’s ability to host these events.

In football terms the conference had scored a couple own goals, with over-long sponsor’s talks during the first half, but came storming back to win with truly excellent insights into the minds of Investors during the second half.

Michael Blakey (Angel Investor with Avonmore Developments) and Luke Johnson (Chairman of Risk Capital Partners plus much more) gave very open accounts of the state of the investment market and the key tick boxes for an entrepreneur to gain funding.

Let me give you a flavour of the main points that were covered. I’ve noted them in bullet form so as to get as much information down as possible, I’m sure you’ll forgive my poor prose on this occasion.

Michael Blakey:

  • Sees 1000 plans a year and 100 go straight into the bin because the sender has not checked his investment criteria (size of deal and preferred stage/industry).
  • Because VCs are investing other people’s money they have a rigid procedure, Angel Investors are more flexible. Not interested in just “ideas” need to show some revenue.
  • Sees 350 presentations a year and 50% of them don’t explain what the problem is that they are solving and how they will do in the first 10 minutes. Do so immediately you start.
  • Lead investors are important. Find one first, they can help you find others. The lead investor can act as a conduit to the others, so not all your time is taken up communicating.
  • Valuation is the deal breaker 75% of the time. Investors never believe the sales forecasts, cash-flow forecasts are more believable and more controllable. If the valuation is not what you want, work out what would increase it, ie. a CEO joining with an established reputation, or more revenue coming in.
  • Have a due-diligence pack (IP/Business Plan/Accounts/Professional Contacts/Team CVs etc) ready, it impresses investors.
  • No surprises. Reveal all issues upfront, it won’t put investors off as much as you think, they’ve seen these before, but if you don’t and they find out it will break the trust and the deal.
  • Work out what your funding model is likely to be. How much you need now and how much in perhaps 18 months. Not less than 18 months or all your time is spent fund raising and not running the business.
  • No life-style businesses, no high salaries.
  • Get your exit strategy. It can drive decisions. As an Investor he wants to know you have thought it through, not just the cliché of an IPO or trade sale.
  • Michael will not invest if more than 10% goes out in fees. In particular legal fees don’t need to be so high, there are standard documents, the lead Investor can normally help because they’ve done it all before.
  • Pet hate: don’t use the word “conservative”. Investors don’t believe your sales figures anyway, but do want to see you talking as though you have ambition.

Luke Johnson:

  • Angel Investors will expect to see subsequent rounds. Plan for them.
  • Investors back teams. Prefer duos or triumvirates. (btw that’s why we started Company Partners, in order to bring partners together to form a business team).
  • They look for high margins, in the business.
  • IP (Intellectual Property) is key. You must preferably own your own IP, not using someone else’s.
  • Understand your market thoroughly (Michael also said this). Be a market expert when presenting to investors, don’t be caught out.
  • Don’t get worried about valuation. The down side is only that you may give more equity away than you might, if it goes wrong you have actually lost nothing (the investor has lost his money), but if it goes well you have made a lot.

Luke had some tips for Investors also.

  • Only invest in what you understand.
  • Focus on the team and the competition.
  • Add value.
  • Expect to get references; don’t accept what is said at face value.
  • Expect failures. 40% may fail completely, 40% may tick along and 10% do very well.
  • Look for obsessives.
  • Form a partnership, not “them and us”.
  • Have patience, poor businesses fail quicker than successful ones become a success (up to 10 years).
  • Enjoy. You are investing not just for the money, enjoy the business.

The Investment Market

  • The debt to equity proportions in funding a business have changed. Previously it might have been 25% equity, the rest debt. Now despite what banks are saying, there is less debt available. The proportion of equity is more like 50% to 100% now in many cases.
  • Floatation is difficult so private equity is increasingly used.
  • Do all you can to get longer terms from suppliers and quicker cash from customers to make up for less debt available to fund working capital.

Luke revealed some truths about Private Equity.

  • Private Equity and Venture Capital are not the same. The Private Equity industry is 50 times the size of VC and covers a broader spectrum of industries, VC tends to concentrate on high-tech or bio.
  • The BVCA (British Venture Capital Assoc) is more Private Equity than VC, but calls itself VC for perception benefits.
  • Private Equity firms don’t take over operating control of a company, although they do have people on the board.
  • Private Equity firms sometimes get more from their fees than from the increase in capital valuation of a business.
  • In 2005 – 2008 half of all Private Equity ever invested was invested then, when money was over abundant and some poor investments may have been made. There is a time-bomb of failures waiting.
  • Private Equity investment is not easy; it’s hard to find good opportunities.

Why now is a great time to start a business

  • There is much gloom, but technology is making it easier than ever to start a business. With the Internet you can experiment, try a business on-line and if it doesn’t work, learn from it and try another.
  • Corporate life is increasingly unappealing. There is no longer any job security and if you are taking a risk of being employed you might as well do that for yourself and start your own business. The personal control and enjoyment is much better.
  • The world needs entrepreneurs and governments are encouraging people to take this up.
  • Virtual companies are more common and nearly everything can be outsourced.

Finally

  • Need to move out of your comfort zone sometimes, remember the worst that you can lose is your equity, but the best is unlimited. Never however give “personal guarantees”, keep the risk to the company.

There we have it, these senior Angel Investors don’t have to come and give advice to groups such as they did last night, but do so out of a real passion for creating businesses. We need more successful entrepreneurs to do so as we continue to develop an entrepreneurial culture.

 

Conference for businesses looking for investment

Mark PriskThere seems to be no end of potential experts telling entrepreneurs the best way of getting their business funded and I guess it’s difficult at times to judge just what the optimum route for investment may be.

That’s why I was pleased to see a funding conference where there is a solid grouping of expert speakers and even a closing speech by the minister for Business and Enterprise, Mark Prisk (yes that’s Mark on the left).

It’s on at my favourite place, the British Library Conference Centre next Wednesday (9th March).

I’m hoping to go along, so will report back on how it turned out next week.

 

How much does it cost to find an Investor?

Cost of finding investmentThe first question is should it cost anything? After all it is the Investors who have money, so why should they charge in order to pitch to them?

Well, actually almost all Investors don’t charge a penny for entrepreneurs to present an investment case to them.

Investors are not looking to make money from people presenting their opportunities; they want to make money from partaking in the business itself.

 

You may well ask in that case, where do the costs come in?

In theory, if you could identify and contact yourself prospective Investors, there would be no costs (other than legal or due-diligence fees by your own solicitor/accountant).

But not everyone knows such a person, so what if you don’t have access to an Investor? Whilst venture capital companies and funds can easily be found, they generally don’t invest in smaller businesses, or normal start-ups (exceptionally high-tech or bio-tech businesses occasionally get funded that way).

The normal young business has to rely on private individuals – Business Angels, for investment and these people do not want to appear in a public directory or people would be camping on their doorstep to talk to them, never mind the security issues.

They tend to work through intermediaries, who will protect their privacy and supply them with interesting potential investments. This is where the costs come in. The intermediaries will charge for the work of connecting people with opportunities to people who want to make an investment.

Who pays these charges? Surely the best placed person to pay them is the investor, not the entrepreneur. Whilst there are some Investors who are willing to pay for opportunities to be presented to them, most are not. They after all have the pick of plenty of investments, they don’t need to pay. Whereas the entrepreneur is competing against all the other places that an investor could place his funds, it comes back to supply and demand.

Right, so the person looking for the funds pays for an intermediary to help him find an Investor, how does that payment work?

There are 3 ways in which such intermediaries, sometimes called business angel networks, get paid. Firstly there is almost always an upfront fee, with no guarantee that you will definitely get an investment. This initial fee helps to pay for the preliminary work done and gives an indication that the person looking for funding has thought it out and is serious in what they are doing.

Why no guarantee? Just think of the range of proposals that will be coming through, some will be very good, but others will not be so good. Also, it depends on investors liking the business’s management and many other factors not controllable by the intermediary – it is not possible to guarantee that every proposal will get funded.

The amount of this upfront fee will vary a great deal. Some will charge many thousands; one of the most well known ones has an average upfront fee of around £5k. For that they will ring round their list of Investors and see if anyone is interested.

Where the interaction is by allowing entrepreneurs to come along to a “speed pitching” event the upfront fee is £800 (plus another £400 for every additional pitching event).

Depending on the company, you may get additional help in refining your proposal or pitch included in that fee.

So not cheap so far – but there’s more…

The second way they charge is to levy a “success fee” on top of the initial payment. This is around 4 – 5 % of any money raised. Many entrepreneurs might say they don’t mind paying a success fee, but don’t like the idea of an upfront fee, but generally that’s not going to happen, partly for the reasons mentioned above and partly because everyone would try for funding if it cost nothing initially. There would be a lot of low quality proposals and the intermediaries wouldn’t be able to handle the quantity for the price.

If that wasn’t enough, the third hit comes when some intermediaries also want 1 – 2% of the final company in shares. You can see that it can all add up to a daunting amount.

That is why when I set up Company Partners I looked for a more efficient (hence lower cost) way to connect those with opportunities and those looking for interesting investments.

After trying different models we arrived at the concept of a member’s site where a small monthly membership fee of about £30 was used and the site’s database was programmed to do most of the work, making it very efficient. I also did away with every other charge.

Now that’s good news not just for the entrepreneur, but also for the Investor, because when a young business pays thousands to be connected to that Investor, it doesn’t just come from the personal account of the person running the young company. It comes right out of the business that the Investor is putting his money into. In fact most of the intermediaries tell the fund seekers to add on top of the funds required, the fee that they will charge.

 

Learning from great Entrepreneurs

Questions for Business Angels

Last night I attended the keynote event of Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW), yes it’s this week, how could you miss it? Sitting in a packed conference centre of the British Library, I looked around at the alert eager faces of budding Entrepreneurs and thought this has to be the future for Britain.

Tom Bewick, the CEO of Enterprise UK, who have organised GEW put the feeling into words “Make a job, don’t take a job”. This also fits nicely with the Government’s need to increase private sector employment to compensate for the coming job losses in the public sector.

Called “Question time for Entrepreneurs”, it followed the traditional format of a panel of eminent and famous figures asked questions by an audience hanging on their words of wisdom.

On the panel was Deborah Meaden, (Dragon’s Den), Cath Kidston (Cath Kidston Ltd), Brent Hoberman (Last Minute.com & Mydeco), Tom Bewick (Enterprise UK) and chaired by Adam Shaw (BBC’s Working Lunch).

As always, well organised by the British Library’s Business & IP Centre. However I left feeling a bit frustrated that the questions and responses were really just skipping round the edge of what most entrepreneurs wanted to hear about.

Most questions seemed to centre on the way that entrepreneurship could be fostered and at times the answers became a fraction obvious. “Should we encourage youngsters into being entrepreneurs?” Yes was the reply. “Are entrepreneurs born or can they be made?” Deborah Meaden thought they had to be born with the right characteristics. But Cath Kidston believed they could develop the skills.

Interesting intellectual issues, but I felt an opportunity was missed to have the practical questions answered by this famous group that would be on most entrepreneurs minds.

“How can I find funding?” “How do I get visibility for my fledgling company with little money for marketing or PR?” “What should I do to find customers?” These were barely covered.

So what nuggets did I pick out of the event?

  • Everyone agreed that government should assist companies to provide apprenticeships, or internships, which would give youngsters a kick-start in business life. At the moment it is left to individual companies and the quality and even whether the young person gets paid varies a great deal.
  • The best time to start a business is always right now. Do your research and business plan, but don’t wait forever.
  • Get the summary of your business plan succinct and hit the key points quickly. What is your business concept, what differentiates you, why will you make it work, how much do you need and what will you spend it on? The revenue and profit of the business and what does an Investor get out of it?
  • Deborah Meaden gets 200 plans a month (or was it a week) and now has to employ an assistant to sift through them. The Exec Summary is all important; unless that is right the rest of the plan never gets read. No fancy tricks, just a solid, thought out summary that ticks the boxes quickly.
  • Check the interests of who you are sending it to, not all Investors are interested in every market sector. Find out their background, Investors more often put their money into concepts they understand and are comfortable with.
  • If a plan is turned down, by a bank or an Investor, ask why. Learn from that. Also ask if they know of anyone else to approach.
  • Get a partner. This is one of the reasons I set up Company Partners, to help people find a business partner, so I was gratified that this came out. Even the famous entrepreneurs that we all know had partners. It may be that one took the lime-light, but the other was there with complementary skills, to bounce ideas off. It’s lonely by yourself.
  • Get good people around you. Choosing your first employees is difficult, but always get the best you can.
  • Contracts for partners and employees are needed, but it is much more about the relationship. That must be right.
  • Cath Kidston started her business part-time, while working to pay the bills and thought that was acceptable. But Deborah Meaden said: “As an Investor I want to see that the entrepreneur is fully committed” and wouldn’t invest unless the entrepreneur was working full-time on the project.

Finally, all felt that the most important characteristic of an entrepreneur was ambition and that you need to have a passion for what you did. I agree, you can teach many things, but you can’t put a fire in the belly unless it’s already there.

 

A checklist for Business Angels

business_angelBusiness Angels are often thought to be tough and worldly-wise and it’s true that they are people who have made a success of their business life, but even a Business Angel needs to remember to use their head rather than just their heart when making investment choices.

There are a number of new business angel investors entering the market, because of falling interest rates and limited opportunities for investing elsewhere, so it’s worth repeating a few essential guidelines for sound business investment:

  1. Invest in areas that you understand and have experience of, your knowledge & contacts will be worth more to the business and you will understand the risks better
  2. Be interested in the business area, get enjoyment from the activity, you’ll then be happy to put the time and effort into the business
  3. Do due-diligence
    - check that the people you are talking to are who they say they are
    - credit checks are easy now days to obtain
    - check thoroughly yourself the financials of the business, or use an accountant
    - examine all claims (market size, patents, etc) to ensure they are correct
  4. Choose entrepreneurs who are realistic, know their market/business well and with who you feel you can have an open working relationship
  5. Do your own investigation of the market potential, look at competitors
  6. Weigh up how much time you will have to spend in the business – does it fit your time available?
  7. It can take longer for a business to be a success (average 6 years) than to fail (less than 3 years), so plan accordingly
  8. Make sure that your overall aims for the business and use of the investment are in sync with the entrepreneur
  9. Agree the respective roles and responsibilities of yourself and the entrepreneur (would you be a working Director, or non-Exec) – agree who would do what.

    10.  

    Clearly there are many more issues that a Business Angel would want to cover before making the investment, including negotiating around equity/debt, agreed exit strategy and sorting out partnership / legal documentation, but by doing the basics right you’ll be in a better position to judge a sound and workable investment.

     

Can EIS make your business more attractive to Investors?

Should you use the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS)?The EIS (Enterprise Investment Scheme) was set up to encourage Investors, by giving them various tax breaks if they help to fund growing businesses.

The business must be set up as a limited company and the shares not listed on the stock market, which means a lot of small companies could use this to attract Investors, but I wonder how many are?

If your eyes glaze over at the mention of CGT Deferral Relief… and calling this a “scheme” doesn’t help, visions of unfathomable, complicated rules pop to mind… you may think that it is like most government business support, just too much trouble to be bothered with.

I recently went through the process of looking at EIS for Company Partners (a couple of potential Investors were keen to use it) and actually it’s not that hard.

You have to firstly make sure that your type of company qualifies, it must be small (

The company has to have been in existence for at least 4 months, but the business doesn’t need to be trading, since the investment could be used for example to start the company up (must start within 2 years).

Each Investor under this scheme can only have up to 30% of the company and the shares that are sold must be ordinary shares (no special rights). The investment goes to the company (by raising some new shares), rather than for instance to the business owner, by him selling his shares.

In return for investing into the company, apart from of course getting a part of the business, the Investor will get 20% of the investment back as tax relief and if the shares increase in value, there is no Capital Gains Tax.

Not bad eh? But there’s more… If the opportunity doesn’t work out, the Investor can claim any amount that they lose on the shares against their own tax.

It is all run by the SCEC (Small Companies Enterprise Centre) on behalf of the Inland Revenue and there is a nice service that they provide, where you can fill in a form to get them to look at your company and the shares you would issue to say whether you qualify. It’s called the advance assurance scheme. This assurance from the SCEC is useful for companies to show to potential investors.

If you want to do this, you should probably have your accountant delve into it for you, since there are always going to be some complications, but find out all you can yourself first.
Here are some links to find out more:
Company Partners (EIS)
Inland Revenue (EIS)

It seems a useful tool to encourage Investors towards your business, so I wonder why more companies don’t do so?

Oh yes, how did we get on? Well it took about 5 weeks for the SCEC to come back after we filled in our form and we did qualify.

 

7 Tips for Inventors.

InventionsI originally put a similar article to this in our resources section, but we continue to get questions about what to do if you have invented a new product, so I’ve also put these 7 tips here in the blog to reach a wider audience.

1. Work out whether it is an “invention” or a more of a “good idea”.

The difference is that with a new invention, you can patent it (legally own it and no one else can make it). Whereas a good idea for a product or service may not be patentable, but you believe that you can be first into a market and so don’t want others to latch on to that idea.

The Patent Office does a patent search service that will help you decide if you have a case for raising a paten, they do charge for this however. Company Partners has fact sheets on patents, trademarks and copyright in the Company Partners resources pages, have a look down the resource list to find them.

2. Be careful when you tell anyone about it.

Often inventors are concerned that people may steal their idea. However if it is an invention that may be patentable, if you tell people about it first, not only may they steal the idea, but more importantly from a legal stand point…. you no longer own the idea! This is because it is now in the “public domain”. It can no longer be patented.

What can you do? Before you tell anyone, have them sign a NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement). This is a simple agreement that protects your idea or invention. Here is an example agreement. If it is likely to be a novel and patentable invention don’t tell anyone at all without an NDA. If it is more of a good idea but not patentable, you will have to decide if you want a NDA signed in every case. Some people will happily sign, others won’t.

3. Companies that help you put your idea or invention into production.

If you type “invention” into Google you will get several pages of companies all offering you help. Why? What do they get out of it? Well mostly they will want to sell you their services. It may not be obvious from reading their literature at first, but it starts with you submitting your idea.  Then they will suggest that they can give you an assessment of that idea/invention – for a price. Normally a few hundred pounds. This is their bread & butter money.

They may then commit to do more (like find a buyer to license the invention from you) in exchange for a share of the royalties, but with an expenses fee attached. Or they may say that after their evaluation there are things that you can do to improve the chances of it being marketable, or of finding an investor to provide funds. This second stage normally costs a few thousand pounds.

So you can see that you have to be careful who you go with and indeed if you should go with such a company. There is a lot you can do for yourself without paying thousands of pounds. Many Mentors and Investors in Company Partners will contribute their expertise and knowledge in exchange for equity without you paying anything at all. Also try the British Library’s IP & Business Centre, they provide a wealth of information and help, almost all is free.

4. You have a great idea now you want someone to fund it.

Okay you have a great idea. Do you believe that it’s so good that you’ll remortgage your house and spend all your savings (which is what James Dyson did)? Or maybe you need some additional funds beyond that which you have access to?

This is where Angel Investors can help. These are private individuals that are looking for interesting opportunities to invest into. However Business Angels and private investors have seen it all before, most of them will expect you to also contribute some of the finances and put yourself on the line for it to succeed, or they also will not invest.

5. Implementation is king (ideas are 10 a penny).

Well some ideas are better than others of course. But everyone has some good idea for a new product or service inside them. It’s those people that get out there and make it happen that are different. 99% of great ideas never get further than a chat down the pub, or wishful thinking.

Then when you do start to make it happen, how well you implement the idea makes the difference to success or failure – not just the idea itself. If you are not best at marketing, sales or even detail planning, look for a business partner.

6. Be realistic.

It may be a great idea, but will people part with their hard earned cash and buy it? Sometimes they are great ideas, but ones that no one would actually pay money for. Be especially wary of “gadget” type inventions. Check that people really would buy them. These sound great, but often too few would be sold to make your fortune.

Do some market research; check whether other similar products or services are selling well. Put together a questionnaire, or a prototype and ask members of the public if they would spend money to buy it (friends and family don’t count). What is the addressable market for this? If it is sold, will it be at a profit (add up all expenditure and costs, including salaries and selling/distribution costs)?

7. Persevere and put in the energy.

If you’ve been realistic and after considering everything, you still want to get this invention or good idea into the market, you have to be persistent. We’ve all heard of the great businesses that were originally turned down by funders.

I listened to Tim Waterstone once describe how he was turned down for a loan to start the book chain by various banks. He persevered, mortgaged himself to the hilt and found an investor. When he was successful and eventually sold for millions to HMV, he sent the banks that turned him down a newspaper cutting of the sale.

He was however a driven and energetic man who didn’t believe in just dreaming. Not all of us are the same, but you do need determination and it helps to have a business partner or mentor. They can give you motivation and together you can bounce ideas around.

Think in business terms and understand that no one is going to give away their time or money unless you can prove the concept is a winner. That will require upfront effort and investment from yourself. But you can’t just dream – you have to make it happen.

 

How long does it take to find a Business Angel?

Time to find a Business Angel?Angel Investors are not listed in the Yellow Pages and finding one can be a time consuming and expensive business, especially if using some of the pricey business angel intermediaries that are out there.

Actually the topic of where to find investors for a business opportunity deserves more attention and I’ll cover that in a later posting. You won’t see this covered in any of the other Business Angel networks blogs since they don’t invite comparisons, but Company Partners is probably the most cost effective and we aim to be open.

But back to timing. You’ve got a great opportunity, written your business plan and are just starting to look for an investor. How long do you think finding one will take? A couple weeks? A couple months?

The shortest time that I’ve seen that one of our members take was 2 days. The longest time 18 months. That’s in finding an Investor that was new to them (not family or friends).

There are so many variables at play; market area, quality of opportunity, how determined you are in searching, etc., that giving an average time can be misleading. However it is safe to say that it can take months rather than weeks and involve a lot of your own time.

There is a random variable also, Business Angels have a pattern of behaviour that means at any one time not all are available. They tend to dip in and out of the market, because once they have identified a couple possible opportunities they are out of action while investigating them. Coming back into the market if those opportunities hadn’t panned out, or just for more investment.

Finding an investor is though only one of the time elements, since you will also want to take some time to get to know each other and do due-diligence. The advantage of a Business Angel over for instance venture capital, is that they will make quick decisions, but both you and the Business Angel should do all you can to ensure that you will work well together before proceeding.

Finally there will be legal and accounting work to be completed in terms of possible partnership agreements (I suggest you do write down the roles and expectations you have of each other), share allocation and sorting out when funds may be input into the company.

As you can see this is not an overnight activity. Think of it in terms of buying or selling a house, the searching and surveyor (due-diligence) work necessary, together with the contracts, probably means they take a similar time and just like finding a Business Angel will be affected by the market and quality of what is being offered.

 

Why businesses don’t get started.

Dreaming of starting a businessOver the years I’ve had friends that have talked about starting their own business but never got around to it. More recently I’ve also had hundreds of entrepreneurs contact me about various aspects of either starting a business, or making a significant change to an existing business to move it to a higher level of activity, but then not done so.

It’s been a puzzle, because not all of these were due to lack of finance, or capability. Many of these people had money, were well qualified and experienced at what they wanted to do. So what was going on here?

The first observation I had was that quite a lot of them were individuals, rather than those with business partners. Even the ones in businesses already started, were often founder/directors of the business, with limited additional leadership in the company.

It makes quite a difference in committing to get actions done, if you know that you have a business partner who will be chasing you.  It was one of the reasons that we set up Company Partners, in order to allow individuals to find a business partner to start or grow a business with.

But it’s become apparent that there is also a “psychological” aspect to why people just dream about starting their own company, or committing to the big change that will push their fledgling business forward.

While it’s a dream it’s warm and fuzzy. You can go to sleep at night thinking about how your life can change for the better, fantasise about the great time you’ll have when your business takes off. How your friends and family will admire you. It’s very comforting.

But as soon as you take the plunge into the cold waters of reality, starting a business may be a nightmare. You’ll have difficult decisions to make, it might not work out.

The result is that for many, the warm and fuzzy dream becomes preferable, even if unconsciously.

Sometimes to make significant changes we have to push ourselves outside of our comfort zone and just do it.