PRE RECORDED BUT BACK TO MAKING THE MILLION SOON

Good business
Bad company

If you really want to develop your business your going to need help. Now, what's the first thing that pops into your mind when you think of help? More importantly what's the feeling that goes along with the word HELP. It's a word that many people don't use because it represents out of your depth, SOS, not quite capable to go it alone. Well the truth is few of us are, capable that is from the outset of going it alone, without making a whole host of mistakes that with a little prior knowledge we wouldn't have wasted our time on, maybe even aborting our business baby in the first place to focus on a more promising fetus. 

The point is everybody in business is on the same journey, but there are a few common factors that separate those just staying in business from those actually  going somewhere. You could put success down to luck, but you do make your own luck, and I'll come back to the true meaning of that statement in a while and how fundamentally far reaching that statement actually is later.

But making the right decisions at the right time in business is the simple key to success but the elusive holy Gail to about 98% of people in business, the would-be entrepreneurs. One lesson of business is delegation, or the ability to buy in the skill that's necessary to achieve your goal. If you're no good at marketing, get someone who is on board, if your no good at sales, get someone who is on board, if you can't add up, get some who is, if you don't know who's good from bad to recruit on board , get someone who is good at that too. The art of delegation, and what an art it is to.

Help comes in all forms and generally there's a lot of forms that profess to give advice. Every man and his dog seems to be setting up as a consultant or coach these days, the world is awash with wannabes and geeky entrepreneurs all ready to enlist the aid of dubious business coaches who have done a course in this or that academy, NLP'rs who have done a weeks course and can now save the world if not your soul. The level of skill of middle management turned business consultant is to say the least low simply because there are very few true entrepreneurs out there that have the experience or skill to be able to advise. Unfortunately, in society anyone can set themselves up as anything, which tends to muddy the waters as to where the real ability lies.

Ideally if you want good advice it's not going to come cheap, but then again the benefits of good advice are priceless. Rather than going through all the types of consultant out there, let's build a picture of the kind of person who will be able to really bring value to your business, not an excel spread sheet and a 5 page report.

Top of the list is a full cycle entrepreneur, that means someone who has made it lost it and made it again. These are the guys that really have got the brains the balls and the experience to add real value to you business. Don't worry about the lost it stage, the very fact that they have been on the up and all the way down the other side to recover and start again means they have the drive, determination and personal experience of all aspects to the business cycle of beginning, middle and end to help you, plus they may have the analytical ability to take what they did wrong the first time and make the changes necessary for success for you.

Unfortunately these guys are usually too busy running a successful life to bother with you unless they take a share, simply because you are a problem they don't need, mentoring takes patience and skill in it's own right so a mixture of success and coaching skills is exceedingly rare.

So second on best on the list are the guys back on the way up after the fall. Now these are people you want to align yourself with, because they have the same skills set and resilience and hunger to make it again combined with the right mentality will take you on under the heading of mentor. But don't be confused with the word mentor, as our society continues to water down the meaning of every word in the dictionary with an ever decreasing level of ability, success now verges on a few words of Twitter, which is a sad enlightenment of society. Andy Warhol's 15 minus of fame extended to 6 weeks on a reality tv show, right back to a retweet in a second, but things  have a way of balancing themselves out. 

A few definitions are called for. Firstly what is an entrepreneur. 15 years ago the the word entrepreneur was awarded like the Victoria cross, only in cases of true accomplishment in the field of endeavour, Richard Branson's level. After years in business i would never wear that badge as i never felt i had reached those glorified realms. Now it's spread around like peanut butter, everyones an entrepreneur. The property boom and the Internet made the word loose it's kudos, and value. There are successful full cycle entrepreneurs , these re people who have businesses turning over millions, there are half cycle  entrepreneurs , these are people who have had businesses that have made millions, there are entrepreneurs , people who are on their way to or running a successful business turning over millions, and then there are the wannabes, these include anyone who thinks about it, and the proportion of the 250,000 people that incorporate a business in the UK alone very year and the 250,000 that go out of business every year having made considerably less money than a proper job would have provided at best.

So from that cross section of the entrepreneurial world, you have to place the relative expertise or skill of your potential  business consultant or mentor. Organisations such as Action Coach, The Coaching Academy to name but a few will take literally many thousands of pounds off of willing individuals to train for a nice shiny certificate in helping businesses do business with absolutely no experience of really having done any business, except being done in business by the aforementioned companies, who make a profit from turning out coaches with shiny certificates. It's a recipe for disaster of your business, but as 95% people are going out of business anyway, it's nice to know there's a coach to hold their hand on the way out...the blind leading the blind.. In football terms, coaches usually have played the game before they become a coach on the loosing side or winning side...but this is a brave new world of business for the ego...not profit and loss.

The main equation is do people want your product, how much will it cost to get them your product, how much will they pay, and how much do you make for running the process. Time & money employed verses potential/ certainty of returns.

Many true entrepreneurs are known  for their risk taking, an all or nothing approach to business, bending the rules and walking the legal or sometimes moral line is the path of balance between a good citizen and a stretch inside. That line gets blurred from time to time and so does the prize.

Of the guys I've worked with in the past some are on the run from something or someone, some have met with an untimely end, some are enjoying a  long spell at Her Majesties pleasure and others have made literally hundreds of millions. What did they all have in common, the ability to reach for something more, to break out of every day society and go their own way. What differentiates them, intelligence and the ability to cheat and not get caught. Not your academic intelligence but the practical focused kind that comes with a hunger for winning and a hunger for money, but also the intelligence to know what to do with it when you get it.

To get rich you have to be lucky, hard work helps but lucky and a sense for success is an absolute must. Not every body is going to hit the big time, be rich and lay about on a beach. However the good news is there is a very attractive middle ground to be considered. 

The purpose of The Game is to give you an reality insight into the darker side of entrepreneurial life, a hazy line between success and failure, the beach or a prison cell. Greed is usually the primary motivator coupled with a good strong dose of power. These two bedfellows are the insatiable drivers of the dark entrepreneur who never stops living thinking or breathing the next venture and how to accomplish the wealth that appears to be a secondary gain, the primary addiction is simply to keep going and going even though the juice has long since been sucked out of the fruit, or the golden goose is about to have a very heavy bout of diarrhoea