What Is The Most Profitable Business Idea and How Do I Get a Startup Loan To Fund It?

26 October 2020

What Is The Most Profitable Business Idea and How Do I Get a Startup Loan To Fund It?

Welcome to our podcast! I’m Aaron Henriques a British digital entrepreneur who is focussed on Growing Online Businesses and Coaching other entrepreneurs to start and grow their own online businesses.

In This Episode…

The most profitable business idea that you can start as your first business.
Ways to get funding to start your new business.
How access to too little or too much money can kill your business before you get started.

Read Episode Transcript

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Opportunity Awaits podcast Episode Transcript

Aaron Henriques (00:03): Hello everyone. And welcome to the Get Growing Online Podcast. My name's Aaron Henriques. And today I'm going to be speaking to you about something that one of my friends has recently spoken to me about, and that is on the subject of what is the best and most profitable type of business that you can start up yourself, particularly right now during the COVID period where half the country is facing lockdown. And lots of people are looking at potentially they may not have their jobs in 2021. And then there's also that question of then once you've got the idea of what it is, what the business idea is, how are you actually going to fund it? Now, I'll just give you the backstory on that. So I mentioned about one of my friends and it's one of my friends you know, from my policing days, actually, who has asked me to sort of sit down and discuss with him and share some options with him of what he could do to invest some of his money in, in terms of running his own business. Aaron Henriques (01:10): And I went down and I sat with him and I, you know, had a little chat with him. And one of the things, and the reason why I've added in the money part here is because lots of people. So when they've got the idea that I'm not quite sure how they go about funding, the business, or how much they should invest in the business to, to get it started or how much it really takes in fact for that. But there's also another problem, which I'll speak about a bit later. And that's the problem that my friend has got himself which can be a bigger problem than the most people think. So I'll get started really with, you know, what is the most profitable type of business? And this is something that I actually get asked quite a lot. I get asked by people who, I don't know. Aaron Henriques (02:01): So people like yourselves who are listening to the podcast, I get asked by lots of friends. I've had family members just general acquaintances, who've also asked that who are not from the business community, who, you know, have seen the sort of things I've done and the people that I'm connected with, how they've done their things. And they want to see, you know, how is it they can get their piece of the pie as it were. And yeah, the only thing I would say to them is, you know, if, if you don't know what type of business you want to start, and your first question is what's the most profitable type of business to start, then that's immediately a bit of a problem because you need to look around you. I mean, literally right now, wherever you are right now, just look around, you do a 360, you know, I'm doing it in, look at all the objects, everything you've got around you, if you're in your house, if you're in the street, wherever you are, look at everything from the cushions to the, I don't know the, to the board, that's in front of me. Aaron Henriques (03:02): My hat, my gloves, pens, literally every single thing you see for someone has been a fantastic and really, really profitable business. Okay. Now that doesn't mean it can be for you or it will be for you. You know, so when people ask me that question, it's really, that's really not, I guess the right question. Who am I telling you what the right question is, right? But it's not the right question in the sense that you shouldn't just be looking at well, what's the most profitable business I can start because there's businesses quite difficult. It's not quite difficult. It's bloody difficult in fact, and for you to get it right, it takes a lot of time and determination and you need to be engaged with it. I can't say to you I don't know, toilet rolls, for example, someone at some point has made a ton of money by selling toilet rolls. Aaron Henriques (04:01): Right. But I don't want to set up a toilet roll business cause I don't care about it. I've got zero interest in, in toilet rolls. I don't care how profitable it is. It's just not something I'm remotely interested in, so I'd never do it. So if someone came to me and said, Hey, Aaron, I hear you can, you can earn like, you know, a 90% markup on selling toilet rolls. Well, that's great. But the thing is, I know I'm not interested in toilet rolls, despite the markup. And even if they were quite easy to sell, I'll get very bored very quickly and I wouldn't be able to see it through. So that's something that you need to consider whenever you're looking at starting a business. And when you're looking at people and asking them, what is the right type of business for me now, there are some things out there that can obviously help you and I'll speak about a few of them where you can, how you can get involved in business yourself. Aaron Henriques (04:55): Now, one thing that I would say to people to be mindful of, and I've probably said it before is about fads. Be careful of fads. You know, you might be able to make a quick buck very quickly, but then it will go away very quickly as well. So people who've set up COVID like businesses pure, purely around COVID. So wherever they are, if they're selling masks you know, if that's what they're selling and they weren't selling them before COVID hit, if that's what they're selling, they probably don't have a business for very long. For people who are who've set up. For example, I saw a cleaning franchise and I'm gonna speak about franchises in a bit, but I saw a cleaning franchise that has been set up and it's called like COVID safe or COVID sanitizers or something like that. Aaron Henriques (05:44): And to me, when I saw it, I was like, alarm bells are ringing because if there's people buying a franchise, when you buy that buy into a franchise, you expect to buy a business that doesn't have longevity. It's not something sustainable necessarily. So be very, very careful of fads, these things that will come in and disappear in a matter of months, sometimes it's weeks, sometimes it's months. Sometimes it may be a year or two. Okay. You want a business? That's going to last. Now the next thing obviously is your own idea. If you do have your own idea, you know, if there's been some, some problem that you've been trying to solve for ages and you think you've got a fantastic way of doing it, I don't know if there's a particular product that you'd like to make that you enjoy doing. Aaron Henriques (06:29): For example, one of my friends, she enjoys knitting. You know, it's not something I, I enjoy myself, but she does these big like fat knit rug things. And she's been making the fair whack of money from it as well. When she first come to me, she was going to sell, sell them for pittance. And I was like, no, don't be ridiculous. You know, put your prices up. And now she's making decent money. And I've also got another friend who's into fitness, who I've been helping out at the moment. Who's, who's actually starting up her program. And when she sold her first few you know, but bits of content she was, you know, really, really ecstatically happy. So if you've got your own idea, that's a fantastic way to go down, but I am actually going to speak about the thing of, you know, the thing around having your own idea in a bit. Aaron Henriques (07:21): And then there's also franchises. So franchises are great because it comes with a business model. The downside is obviously you have to pay for the franchise fees. Generally speaking, they will be on you know, you'll have a big lump one-off fee that you'll pay. Plus you'll pay like a monthly fee, but that said, you know, they, they tend to come with proven models in all sorts of industries and the other last one that people don't really think that much about because they feel like they need to be running the business day to day is actually investing your money. You can invest your money into businesses. There are plenty of them places like the Angel Investment Network where lots of businesses will put their will put their pitch decks on and tell you about the business starting up. Aaron Henriques (08:14): So there's ways that you can get involved very early on. And the benefit of investing in a business is that you will get some shares in the company many, many startup companies, but also be happy for the help from you as well. So any help that you get in there, and you may also, there may be things that you make, you can provide to it that really that really sort of compliments the business. So even if looking on these investment platforms, it might give you an idea of the types of businesses that are out there, and it might trigger something in your mind at some point, actually, that's something similar to what I would like to do myself, and now let me go and do my own. Okay. So here's the thing we've grown idea. You need to think about you know, three things in the main, I think and that's, Aaron Henriques (09:04): First of all, is it viable? Is it a profitable business and is it sustainable? Okay. So those three things for me are quite important, you know, is it a viable and realistic business is actually a business opportunity there you know, or are you off in cuckoo land or something? I don't know if you've got some idea that you can sell old pairs of socks for tens of millions of pounds. For some reason that belonged to, I don't know, Doris up the road, then that's probably a crap idea and you're not going to get anywhere. You're not gonna get any customers. So you need to make sure that it's viable, there's a market for it. And I'll speak about how you go about doing that a bit later because that's going to be something that's really important for you, particularly if you've done it before for you to be able to know whether or not you know, whether or not that your idea actually has merit. Aaron Henriques (10:02): So then obviously the profitable side, you go into business to make a profit. I'm sure even if it's small you know, if it's, it depends on what you're trying to do, are you trying to do a lifestyle business? Are you trying to create this big company, a big global company? Its completely up to you what you do and how you want to do it. There is no prescribed way for you to run your own business. It can be as big or as small as you like. Okay. But the main thing is you need to make sure that you can show to yourself and prove to yourself that at least on paper, it can be profitable. Okay. And when people look at that, I'm going to sidetrack a bit because I'm going to talk about this so much, but when people look at profitability, it's very, very easy, particularly if it's just your own idea to go off on a tangent and off track and have these crazy, you know, financial forecasts and these crazy numbers in your head where you think that you know, you're going to have this markup of like 90% on this product, and you've completely dismissed all of the other information out there that says, actually, you know, you bloody won't. Aaron Henriques (11:17): So you, you, you need to look at that properly and you need to look at it from both sides of the coin, not just looking for things to back up your hypothesis in, or, you know, you, we all believe some what you think you can make profit, you know, in terms of profit, you need to be looking at the failures as well. Look for businesses that have done something similar and failed, find out why perhaps look at, you know, real statistics from other businesses, other industries that are similar to see actually is what you're thinking in line with reality. Okay. Because they can be very, very, very far apart. And if you launch off into Pluto you know, with some ridiculous sort of thoughts in your head about how profitable your business can be, and then you quickly find that actually it's not then you're going to have, you know, you can have a bit of trouble. Aaron Henriques (12:17): Okay. And then sustainable is your business going to be still a business in five years time in 10 years time. Okay. Now not every business has to be, you know, I mentioned fads earlier. So, you know, if you are someone looking for a quick buck, okay. If you're looking for a quick buck and or you just want to take advantage of, you know, opportunities as they present themselves, I don't like calling COVID an opportunity, but for some, you know, lots of people have lost their businesses, but there are lots of other people who've been able to create new businesses. And also short-term businesses as such where it's only going to be during the period. You know, for, for COVID until a vaccine is found, but longer term, you know, they're going to have to find something else to do, but for you really, I'm sure, you know, you'd be looking at something that's sustainable. Aaron Henriques (13:12): That's not just going to be, you know, you post it out to your friends and family and they buy from you. And then suddenly you've got tumbleweed because no one else is going to buy from you. That's not business. And like I said, you know, if it's something that is just linked to COVID or some particular trend or not a trend, a fad you know, if, if it's linked to a particular fad, you know, something that's happening now and then it's not going to be around in the next couple of years. Yes. You can make your money really quickly, but then you need to think about what's next, okay. Franchises. They give you, you know, a whole system, everything that you need to get started along with the support they give you all the systems and a model, and they do cost money. Aaron Henriques (13:58): You know, franchises in the UK are very broad. You made there's lots of companies. You may not realise are franchise's, they're owned not by the big corporate logo that you see are actually owned by individual franchisees. So you know anything from McDonald's, KFC, Costa Coffee, okay. To name a few, Amazon are getting into it. You've got you've got things like Snap On. Basically any industry that you can think of. I'm in a franchise, but it's my first, you know, what I call proper business, a cleaning company. I've also set up my own one as well, like a separate type of franchise from that. And there are many, many others. Okay. So any industry you can think of pretty much, you can probably find a franchise and even hotels. Okay. The Marriott international is a franchise and there are others out there as well. Aaron Henriques (14:59): Okay. So Aaron Henriques (15:01): Here's another thing to be weary of. And these things are they prey on people, if you are one of the people who were asking the question, okay, what's the most profitable type of business I can start. Okay. Cause you're sick of your job, or maybe you've lost your job or, you know, potentially you may have done or your partner has and whatever it is that your situation has led you to think, I want a business now. Okay. This next thing, I'm going to speak about, preys on people like you. Okay. So if, if you are one of them people, listen to this next bit, very, very clearly, because I would hate it to happen to you, to what happens to lots of other people where they join things like pyramid schemes. Okay. multilevel marketing. I call them schemes or scams. Others don't call it that, but I do things like these, I'm not going to name any companies cause they don't want to get sued by them. Aaron Henriques (16:01): But these juice companies who, you know, sell supplements and juices and stuff, when actually when you look at the business model, the only way you make money is by introducing other people into your network. Who've been pay a load of money to be introduced. And then the only way they make money is by introducing other people into the network because none of them are selling the juices. Okay. They're not there or certainly not on a level where they've actually got a business. Right? So those things you need to be very careful of. And if you look, if you see any program, if you see any Facebook ad, okay. Particularly Facebook, although they have locked up on it a bit now, okay. They have, they have stopped a lot of this nonsense that has gone on the zero to a hundred grand in six week nonsense ads that you'll see, they're complete nonsense. Aaron Henriques (16:58): You're if you're clicking on them and then paying a thousand pounds for this course, the only person making money by doing that is the person you paid, because you're not going to go from zero to a hundred grand in six weeks for 99.99% of you, that is a fact, it's not going to happen. Okay. You may not even go from zero to a thousand pounds in six weeks, let alone a hundred thousand pounds. Right. But they will have you believe that you can do that easily, as long as you take their three hour course. And then after their three hour course, you're set, you're now a life coach after their three hour course. Okay. You're now a business coach. Despite the fact you've got three hours of business training. Okay. That are sort of things that will go on. Right. And that you really, really, really, it needs to be careful of them, even if they're like 30 quid courses or something like that, don't bother, you know, it's not going to, you're not going to go from zero to hero in, you know, some, two penny course that's, you know, taken, you know, a couple of hours of your time to do. Aaron Henriques (18:10): You're not going to learn much. You'll, you'll learn some stuff. There's, you know, granted, if there's stuff you don't know about starting your business and stuff. Absolutely. But if they're promising you things like go from zero to a hundred k (£100,000) I've seen, you know, zero to seven figures and stuff like that. Okay. Just be very careful. These pyramid schemes are all over the place as well. These juice type schemes, they're all over the place. I've even seen it. There's one company as well. I'm not going to name them, but I've had so many people inbox me on my LinkedIn before about them. They're doing very, very well. Obviously these people sign up to sell utilities and energy as distributors, they pay money to become a distributor. And for the majority of them that I've ever seen do that, or certainly the ones that I previously connected with have I actually got rid of all of my old LinkedIn connections to anyone, I didn't know. Aaron Henriques (19:11): But they, you know, it don't tend to last very long because again, it's quite similar in a way to these juice programs where actually they really actually make their money in the main from introducing other people, which to me, isn't a business. Okay. Not to me anyway. I don't feel like that's a business. I don't feel like that's really a good way to go in, in, in, in getting started out in your own way. So that's what I wanted to talk about profitable businesses. And you know, for some of you, sorry, it's not going to be the case that, you know, you, you may not have had the answer. You're looking for this magic answer of what is it, what is it that I can do? You know, there isn't a magic answer I'm afraid, you know, it really, really depends on you. Aaron Henriques (20:02): Cleaning industry has done me well, you know, allow me to leave my job in the police, that was the domestic cleaning industry. I've now started my own commercial cleaning business alongside that. And you know, that we'll be operating as a franchise as well separately, but it's not for everyone. You know, it's really not for everyone. You might want to, you know, become a franchisee of Papa John's or something depends. And lots of these particularly franchises, you know, because you've got that high upfront cost or if you're doing any development work. So if you have like any online work and I have some work in progress at the moment for the Handlr App which we'll be launching in January, which I'm really happy about with the development has been in progress for what four months, five months now. And it's going well, it's five months. Aaron Henriques (21:01): Yeah. Five months actually in progress. And then two months before that was the planning the planning with the developers and prior to that was my own planning which had been going on for quite a while. So yes, we've got, I've got off track there. We have franchises quite often. Obviously you need that upfront fee. They can range anywhere from, you know, a few, a few thousand pounds, £10,000 pounds. I think that average cost to enter a franchise about 50. I mean, I've reading everyday. I think it's like £55,000 pounds or something like that. There are other franchise, some franchises are much more money, you know, for, if you want a Papa John's for example, your fancy pizza. I believe that you need about a hundred thousand pounds (£100,000) and that's not the fee, but that's what you need to show that you have access to, to be able to start one of their franchises. Aaron Henriques (21:52): And I think McDonald's and KFC and the likes of that whole like a million (£1,000,000), not their fee, but you need to have that available to be able to get out the stores and everything like that. Cleaning franchises can be anywhere from sort of like 10,000 pounds up to like 30, 40,000 pounds, depending on what it is. Domestic cleaning on the lower ends commercial tends to be on the higher end because there's a lot more money in it. And that's it really, you know, there are, there are lots of ways that you can actually get funding. So the first things that, you know, lots of people tell you to look at is yourself, you know, do you have money yourself? Are you willing to back up your own idea then friends and family. And of course, if that's, you know, if they don't believe in you, who else will believe in you now I take a particular objection about I don't, I don't like dealing anything financial with friends and family. Aaron Henriques (22:51): I don't deal with it. You know, if, you know, if one of my, it sounds really harsh, what do I, you know, brothers or sisters or whatever, you know, if they come ask, you know, if they want to borrow money off me, but I know not to even ask me because I tend to get lost and it's not because I'm tight. It's just because I don't ever want to be in that position where I'm having to ask them where's my money. Okay. Cause that's really awkward. I've been in that position before and I just don't do it anymore. Okay. And likewise, I don't want to, I don't want to take, you know, my friends or family's money and invest it into one of my ideas and if they may lose it, you know, that happened before in my last business where one of my friends invested his savings into the business and the business went under, you know, one of them went under and it happens and there's nothing, you know, you cannot guarantee your success from the outset, no matter how good your plan may be, no matter how many people have looked over it and thought, yes, that's a really great plan. Aaron Henriques (23:54): Do it. You know, there are things that are outside of your control, which you may not have thought about, you know, I learned a hell of a lot from that business, from that, you know, I learned, I lost a lot more than my friend did. And that, but that is it. And you know, we're still friends and you know, he's never even mentioned it, but that's something you need to consider. Obviously I don't, I don't know your friends and I don't know your family, but if you do have money yourself, like I, myself, I invest in my stuff. First of all, always, you know, I started my, the development of the Handlr App myself without any investors before. Well, well, well, before I approached any, so, you know, this is something that you can do. Okay. And then you can look at private investors, okay. Aaron Henriques (24:42): Angel investors, VC firms, you can apply to them. Depending on they all, they're all very, very, very, very different. Some of them will not hang out on on places like the Angel Investment Network or places like Crowdcube, which is a crowdfunding platform. Some of them you need to call, you need to find them and contact them, yourself VC firms that, you know, the same sort of thing where, you know, do your own research. Cause they tend to specialise in certain areas or they have certain preferences of types of businesses they want to work with. And there's no point you wasting your time in spamming them all. Just find out the ones who actually are interested in, you know, the business that in investing in businesses at the stage that you're at and then contact them, okay, with a viable plan and pitch deck, and you can then look at things like business loans. Now there are lots and lots of business loans. The high street banks will do business loans. There are, there are companies that are specific to giving out business loans. That's all they do. Okay. So there's lots of different startup companies out there who will more than willing to lend you money, providing you can show a viable plan. The thing is with business loans, I just need a sip. Aaron Henriques (26:09): The thing is with business loans is, now whether you're a limited company or not, they tend to, so for the banks, they will put the, loan in the company name quite usually. But they will make you sign a director's guarantee, which means that you are personally liable for that money. If the business goes under right for startup schemes for the startup loan scheme, which is a government backed scheme there are lots of startup loan partners. They actually put that onto your personal credit file. And so you need to be wary of that because it could stop you from getting things like a mortgage. Okay. it could stop you from getting credit or whatever in the future, because it will sit on your personal credit file as a loan. Okay. So you need to be mindful of that. And obviously if you default on those loans if you default on the one that's shown on your business credit card, yes. Aaron Henriques (27:20): You're now going to have to pay that, but it shows on the business it shows on the business credit file rather than your own personal one. Obviously if you default on your own, that's probably more personally difficult for you going forward. So with that, whichever type of funding, you go for that, isn't yourself, your friends or your family. If you're going through private investors you know, angels, VC firms or business loans, you should have a business plan prepared and a financial forecast. Okay. Now there are lots and lots and lots of templates online that you can do. There are, there are online systems that I actually use as well, which just make your life so much easier because particularly with the financials, you just put your numbers in and it does everything for you. The business planning side, it makes sure that you don't miss out any vital areas. Aaron Henriques (28:17): And of course there are, there are courses, you know, I've may have mentioned mine before. I do have a business plan course that I have on my site, it's getgrowingonline.com, so that there is a business planning course there, which we'll talk you through the main bits, just to give you a bit more understanding about how they're structured and what and what you should really have in them, okay. Then there's raising the right amount of money, right. And that's important because if you don't raise enough, you're going to have problems. If you raise too much, you're gonna have problems. Right. But before I go into that, what I'm going to speak about is working capital. Now I mentioned earlier about one of my businesses before it went where that way, and eventually had to pull the plug on it. Aaron Henriques (29:08): That was one of the hardest things I ever had to do by the way. Okay. Was knowing that I'd spent nearly two years on a business, I'd left the police for it. Okay. I'd invested a ton of my money at tremendous tremendous amount of hours of work went into that business. Okay. And having to pull the plug in, it was one of the hardest things I think I've ever done. I I'd rather have lost my leg. I think I would have rather lost my leg, I don't know. But anyway, the, the, the, the, the thought of it, of, of raising the right amount and having the working capital was the biggest problem. Okay. Because I, I was partially funded by a government startup loan scheme. So that debt is mine. Right. And I also put in a load of money myself. So it was 50/50. Aaron Henriques (30:07): I put in half the money they put in the other half. And that's how I started up. Now, the problem is, and obviously, I didn't know it was a problem then. And the thing is that you do get with these startup schemes is you do get an experienced business mentor to have a look at your, your plan. And they have to approve it all if the previous financials and all sorts of stuff, but the problem is, and it's a big problem is that they never picked up on as well as I didn't, you know, it's something I didn't think about too much is I didn't have, I didn't plan for enough working capital in my business plan. And the reason, the main reason why I ended up having to pull the plug on it was the fact that we we'd run out of money and there was no more. Aaron Henriques (30:56): Okay. and then when we ended up losing the, the software as well, cause it wasn't mine. It was a white label system that I paid for paid a lot of money for, but it wasn't my software. I didn't own the rights to the source code or something that making that mistake this time, I've written everything from scratch, it's being done ourselves not owned by anyone else. So that was a problem because I'd planned for, if everything goes perfect. And it had a really, really small buffer, I mean really small, like a couple of grand (£2,000), more, which wasn't even like a week of, of runtime small, right? So it, it was a problem. The fact that I didn't have enough working capital working capital is the having enough money in the, in the, in your accounts, enough money available to you to be able to keep the business running. Aaron Henriques (31:51): Okay. If you're having problems and we've seen lots of companies fall fall flat on their face, even massive companies have fallen flat on their face for that very problem during COVID where they've not had enough working capital in the business to make sure that they can sustain a bad period of time. Okay. Now obviously COVID is an exception because it's a such a long, bad period of time. Right? But that was one of the biggest, biggest things I learned from, from that business. And that's something that going forward in any other company I ever start, and the future is making sure that there's enough of a buffer to be able to sustain the problems because there will be problems. That's the only guarantee I can give to you, no matter what you put in your business plan, how much thought you put into it, it may go well at the start and then bang, something will hit you, that you were not expecting. Aaron Henriques (32:50): And it's going to be how you navigate that. And some of that, unfortunately, no matter how good a person you are or how good a business person you are, some of it, sometimes it does just come down to, do you have enough bloody money to pay the bills? All right, can you make enough money to pay the bills? Can you access enough money to pay the bills? Okay. So that was a problem. And that's where raising the right amount of money is so important because if you don't have enough, you're screwed, potentially screwed. But if you have access to too much money, that can be a gigantic problem, too. Okay. And for different reasons. So I mentioned my friend earlier and I'll go back to him. I have another sip quickly. Aaron Henriques (33:43): Yeah. So I mentioned my friend earlier and I'll go back to him. And the reason for me mentioning him earlier was really because he's going to have access to so much money. For some, for some inheritance, he's got, he's going to have access to so much money that a problem can occur. Now think about lottery winners. You've probably heard the stories before where, you know, someone's won like 50 million pounds (£50,000,000) and then five years later, somehow they're broke and you're like, well, how could that be possible? Right. And that's because the majority of us, me included, okay. I've had no real financial training in our upbringing types of people who, you get it, you spend it, where your goal is to just spend it because the numbers, it looks too big. It's, you know, there's too much money there. It's not within your normal comfort range. Aaron Henriques (34:43): So we need to get rid of it and believe me, that happens. Right. You might think, I know it doesn't happen to me. It happens to lots of people. If you're not financially educated the need's going to do some financial training yourself. And that's something I've been doing over time. And there's a few good books that I could mention, like The Barefoot Investor, he's an Australian guy. You've probably all heard of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, but it is still a good book. It's old, but it is a good book. And The Richest Man In Babylon, actually, it was a weird, weird book because it's, it's, it's a story book. But the first time I read it, the first time I listened to this, I listened to all these on audio books, by the way, I don't, I read very slowly. Aaron Henriques (35:25): So I listen to audio books, the best thing ever. So The Richest Man In Babylon it's a storybook, but actually if you actually listen to it and then listen to it again, it's really, really applicable to our life today. It's based in, you know, sort of like 2000 years ago or something, but it's, it's so applicable to life today. And it's all about financial training and money management. So I would honestly suggest if you haven't, you know, if you haven't grown up in the type of family where, you know, your parents are investing in staff and I don't mean in like getting a house, that's not investing like in my mind anyway. It's, you know, if, if they're not investing in stuff they're not running businesses and stuff like that, get some financial training, even if it is just listening to these, these books, listen to some podcasts as well to find out, you know, the sorts of things that people are doing. Aaron Henriques (36:29): This Is Money Podcast. That's another one I listened to a lot, learnt so much stuff on there. It's fantastic. That's a UK podcast as well, which is great. So get some financial training, but having too much money can be a problem because I had it when I started my first cleaning company, I had a franchise, I'd say the first one, I've still got it. The franchise business. When I got that, I had probably, you know, I probably put too much money in and I thought, you know, buying all this stupid shit, but you know, you just don't need you know, this a hundred pound wall map. I've never looked at literally this gigantic wall map laminated hundred quid. Why did I get it? Like it showed the area that I cover. And yet the only time I'd ever looked at the area I cover is on my laptop. Aaron Henriques (37:22): So what the hell did I need the a hundred pound wall map for? Okay, you start, you start convincing yourself. That things seem like a good idea. Fleeces, you know, we've embroidered fleeces. Well, why do I ever need that? Because I've never met one of my customers ever, right. So I didn't need it. Who am I showing that to? You know, there's the types of stationery or these business cards. I've never handed out one of those business cards to anyone. And yet I spent hundreds of pounds and all that crap that I ended up throwing away when I sold my house, because it was just literally in boxes under my stairs. And it had been for like seven years. So I chucked it all out, obviously its complete waste of money. But as other things, things start getting more expensive, cause you're like, Oh yes, you get a sales call. Aaron Henriques (38:10): And you're like, yes, I've got loads of money here. It's okay. If I tried that, and then I ended up spending 900 pounds (£900) on a yellow pages, advert. Yes. A yellow pages advert and got one, one identified customer from that in an entire year, from that 900 pounds still my most expensive customer to date. I don't advise yellow pages, if you're doing a cleaning company personally, from my own personal experience, doesn't work. But there you go, you start spending money on crap you just do not need, if you have access to too much money. So I would say to you, if you have got money, if you've got any money or if you've, especially, if you've got too much money at like you've got, you know, 10%, 20% of what you've actually got move some of that money out of your main account so you're not seeing every day, if you haven't got that control and discipline in you, then do that because very, very quickly, you'll, you'll find that you've spent thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds on useless toot that you didn't need. Aaron Henriques (39:19): Okay. And it can be worth you doing, you know, SWOT analysis, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, or whatever, to, you know, to sort of, you know, if everything that you're looking at buying well, do I actually need this? Okay, you're looking at it. You know, what is the reason I need this? Okay. If I don't buy this thing or this service, what is my current alternative to get the same job done? Okay. How much time is this going to save me? Sort of thing. Look at all of these things before you, you know, before you sign on a dotted line and buy stuff, you just don't need, particularly if you're getting into longterm contracts and stuff or high one-off payments. So that's really something that I wanted to share with you. And I'm going to wrap up here because I've got a sore throat. And to be honest with you, it's the end of the day. Aaron Henriques (40:13): And I just really, really just want to go and sit down with a nice cup of tea. So if you have what I'm gonna do is I'm going to quickly summarise, if you have an idea, map it out with a business plan. If you want a you know, if you want to hear my course on business planning, then you just go to getgrowingonline.com and you'll be able to find the links. If you click on my work with me, and then my courses, you'll be able to find a link to that. You can, you can buy that course. And it's a mini course, so you should be able to do it fairly quickly. It will talk you through what should be in a business plan and also give you some direction on where to go and actually create one. Obviously if you don't have to do that, you can go off and you can find one of the templates online. Aaron Henriques (41:05): I suggest that you really do do one though, because a business plan starts drawing things out of you that you haven't thought of yet. Often people don't think about every thing or even the most of the things that they should be thinking about because it's too focused on this fantastic, great idea they think they've got, and they don't think about all the other things around it because it's the, the business is more than just the idea. Okay. So if you don't have any idea, look, franchises, okay. There are plenty of franchises. There is literally thousands available to you. So have a look at the franchises that are out there. If you want some help looking at them, I can certainly point you to my own. And, you know, give you some pointers on that. Get in contact with me again, go to getgrowingonline.com and you can do that. Aaron Henriques (41:54): Or you can contact me on Twitter or Instagram using @AaronHenray that's AaronHenray. So go and contact me there and be careful with your necessary spending. Okay. And get support. And training is really important if you are starting out on your own, particularly, it's not something I covered really, but I'm going to do it in a different episode because I haven't got time now. But what, what I would say is if you are going it alone without the support of a franchise, without the support of a partner who's already experienced in business, in starting a business and growing it from, you know, to, to the first, I don't know, sort of low six figure incomes sort of thing, then get some support. Okay. If it's a mentor, if it's a business coach or whatever, okay. Aaron Henriques (42:47): It can save you a lot of time and money. Trust me if I need to stuff that I know now, back when I started my cleaning company and that bearing in mind, I was in a franchise, right. Bearing in mind I was in a franchise. So I really had a bit of support, but if I knew the stuff I know now I would have saved myself a ton, a ton of time and money. Okay. I've been able to get the business to where it is now. Very, very, very, very quickly. Okay. Because once you know how, like most things you know, it's, it's, it's easy to do. It's easy to replicate once, you know how, but the thing is, you don't know what you don't know. And right now you don't know a lot. If you're listening to this podcast, you just don't know a lot. Aaron Henriques (43:30): So get support. If you need, if you need help with anything like that, if you need, you know, if you need to sit down on a, on a webinar and talk things through for an hour, sometime get in contact with me more than happy to you know, to show you and how you can do that with me. If there's other types of business, if it's not the type of business I work with, then more than happy to put you in contact with other types of coaches or other resources that you can use to do that is more applicable to what you're doing. Okay. So until next time, have a great time, enjoy your business journey. Remember, forget the pyramid schemes, forget those juice thingy, schemes that they do. These multilevel marketing scams, I'm going to call them and, you know, look at viable, sustainable businesses. Aaron Henriques (44:22): Oh. And go and subscribe. Right. So if you're listening on Pod on Apple or Spotify, subscribe to the podcast, I am going to try, I say, try and make some more of these because I do get good feedback when I'm actually putting them out. And I realise I don't put them out enough and I will try to put more out for you. So one way that you can help me by doing that is by letting me know, you're listening, subscribe to the podcast and get in contact with me. Let me know you're listening. Let me know any questions that you have, and I'll be more than happy to put that into a future episode. Okay. Take care.

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