What do I wish I'd known about building successful and 'robust' businesses twenty five years ago?A message from Paul Hurst, founder and owner of ‘The New Business Doctor”This web site has been something like two decades in the planning. I’ve wanted to write it for years, but felt poorly qualified. How could I write about business, without having a Bentley or two in the drive, and an obscenely bulging bank account? The truth is I haven’t got a Bentley in the drive or an obscenely bulging bank account (i.e. with a few million quid piled up in it) - what I do have are a set of superb small businesses providing me with a lifestyle delivering exactly what I want. There are many existing websites and business gurus happy to explain how to take a company to a multi-million turnover, but frankly that is of little interest to me. The truth finally dawned – I never set out to become super-rich, just to enjoy a comfortable standard of living whilst doing something that I enjoyed. That was achieved some time ago – I now enjoy having no mortgage or loans, strong cash reserves, my dream cars (a Morgan and a Subaru) and enough free spare time to have fun each week. In fact, it isn’t meant to be possible, say the accountants and bank managers, to even make much of a living from one of my companies. We provide live folk music for weddings and parties, and as the saying goes “how do you make a million from folk music? Start with two million….!” My expertise and interest (and results) are in starting and building a small, comfortable, clearly focused business that provide a comfortable level of financial freedom and creative success whilst giving great value to every customer. And that’s personally where I want to stop – I don’t want the hassles and worries that come with a large enterprise, just a fun way to earn a comfortable living working about six hours or so a day. If that’s what you want (and I strongly advise that’s what you at least start with before thinking about your £500m fortune business) then welcome to this site. To survive and prosper, I had to find and try out as many different ideas for new businesses as possible, to make the most of every opportunity - even to make my own 'luck.' The experience was well worth it. Let's be clear from the start, as I said above, this is not a guide on how to make millions by working only a couple of hours a day. I personally think that promise is empty rhetoric. It’s rubbish. I’ve also seen piles of human and business wreckage over the last thirty years resulting from people that have trusted those empty promises – ‘make a million in two days a week.’ No! No! No! This site, my book and every method I provide you with are based on actual, workable, tested and proven systems and mindsets and methodology which, if followed to the ‘T’ make it virtually impossible for you or indeed anyone to fail in their new business. I do hope you will listen to them and follow the advice - then I know you will be very shortly writing to me recounting the success you are also enjoying. My book and this entire site are simply the distilled thoughts of someone who has already set up five companies of his own, and who has worked for many others, including a couple of multi-millionaires and one billionaire in the capacity of a book keeper / administrator. I’ll let you know this too; my first 'Limited' company was a disaster! Just about everything that could be done wrong by me was done wrong. And I firmly believe that if I had not experienced that disaster, the success that I have since enjoyed and the knowledge I have therefore gained about how to create a business from scratch that is guaranteed to succeed would not exist. So sit back in a comfy chair, with your beverage of choice and enjoy hearing about all the grizzly details of cock-ups and mistakes I’ve seen others make, or made myself but most importantly then heed every line of advice and act on every line of method that I give you in my book and on this site to guarantee that you don’t experience a business and financial disaster and instead build a lovely financially comfortable, joyous business of your own that enables you to realistically enjoy a lifestyle that very few in the world ever achieve.
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