How did you get into the business you are in?

[DavidWH]

Apart from the ones that discovered cocaine.

Probably more cocaine use in other professions than the Armed Forces, from memory it was a handful from a crew of 150ish - Compulsory Drugs Testing, with a zero tolerance approach keeps it at bay.

Seen a lad get discharged because his mum gave him some pain killers when he went home on weekend - Trouble was they were prescription ones, within days he was out.

 

[charcinders]

I work for myself making specialised laboratory equipment for neuroscience researchers. It's been tough to make ends meet at times but now things are good. I get to spend my days designing and making interesting kit for lovely customers (scientists are wonderfully patient, which is just as well).
There is no way on earth I could have planned this as a career path. It happened as a series of accidents, perhaps the most significant of which was a conversation on a golf course between a lecturer at the college where I was working and the director of a medical research organisation. That was my route into the world of neuroscience.
Moral of the story to any young people reading this - make as many connections as you can. Talk to people about what you are good at. They might know someone who knows someone who needs your skills.

 

[Guy Incognito]

I used to work in property (I still own part of a small commercial property business). My wife came up with the idea for a product, we put a small amount of money in to make some of them, and fast forward 2.5 years and we're both working for the business full time, employ a couple of staff and have turned over just under £1.5m this financial year and plan to triple that next year.
I've learned more in the past couple of years than I did in the decade I worked in real estate. The importance of cash flow, the need to proactively monitor costs, planning for the future, expansion etc. Been much harder than anything I ever did, I've never worked so hard and it's still difficult as we reinvest everything to make more of our current products and develop new lines.
What are the biggest things I've learnt?
Have Control - we now only sell direct. We have control over the entire process. Our exit strategy is around creating a valuable brand and by controlling where your products can be purchased you can enhance this.
Demand - it's the one thing you can't manufacture. If there is demand for a product or service, you can normally find a solution around it. What you can't do is create demand if the product or service is not something that is wanted.
Social Media - it's a huge part of business. Clients complain at the drop of a hat (usually trying to get some money off), but manage that, and build a decent social media following and you can make sales through it. We have 20,000 Instagram followers and this is important from a brand value point of view.
Money - you have to be prepared to take risks and take on debt unless you are very fortunate. We have taken on small amounts of debt to grow and scale the business and will continue to do that.

 

[Bigred2019]

I work for myself making specialised laboratory equipment for neuroscience researchers. It's been tough to make ends meet at times but now things are good. I get to spend my days designing and making interesting kit for lovely customers (scientists are wonderfully patient, which is just as well).
There is no way on earth I could have planned this as a career path. It happened as a series of accidents, perhaps the most significant of which was a conversation on a golf course between a lecturer at the college where I was working and the director of a medical research organisation. That was my route into the world of neuroscience.
Moral of the story to any young people reading this - make as many connections as you can. Talk to people about what you are good at. They might know someone who knows someone who needs your skills.

That’s so interesting. I have a “hobby interest” in neuroscience (is that even a thing lol). I really enjoy learning about and practicing meditation, mindfulness and how that can positively affect neuroplasticity. I hope you don’t mind me asking, but what equipment do you design and make?

 

[Bigred2019]

I used to work in property (I still own part of a small commercial property business). My wife came up with the idea for a product, we put a small amount of money in to make some of them, and fast forward 2.5 years and we're both working for the business full time, employ a couple of staff and have turned over just under £1.5m this financial year and plan to triple that next year.
I've learned more in the past couple of years than I did in the decade I worked in real estate. The importance of cash flow, the need to proactively monitor costs, planning for the future, expansion etc. Been much harder than anything I ever did, I've never worked so hard and it's still difficult as we reinvest everything to make more of our current products and develop new lines.
What are the biggest things I've learnt?
Have Control - we now only sell direct. We have control over the entire process. Our exit strategy is around creating a valuable brand and by controlling where your products can be purchased you can enhance this.
Demand - it's the one thing you can't manufacture. If there is demand for a product or service, you can normally find a solution around it. What you can't do is create demand if the product or service is not something that is wanted.
Social Media - it's a huge part of business. Clients complain at the drop of a hat (usually trying to get some money off), but manage that, and build a decent social media following and you can make sales through it. We have 20,000 Instagram followers and this is important from a brand value point of view.
Money - you have to be prepared to take risks and take on debt unless you are very fortunate. We have taken on small amounts of debt to grow and scale the business and will continue to do that.

Thanks for the message what is your product out of interest?
Reading your post, you sound similar to me in regard to learning after trading for x amount of years. I’ve been involved in heat pumps over the past ten years on pretty much every level now from sales to marketing to manufacturing, but its only the past couple of months where I’ve actually started learning how to run a business. I’ve always, wrongly, been under the assumption that having a perfect “cog” (marketing or product or service etc) is the key to a successful business, but I’ve learnt recently that all of that means nothing if you don’t have a “machine” / business to put the cogs. (I.e. cash flow, forecasting, planning, keen eye on the actual finances etc).
The social media comment is interesting. Are you business to consumer? We are business to business 99% of the time, so Facebook, twitter and instagram work ok for us, but I feel like LinkedIn is a better place to spend our time and money....
Do you do any print advertising?

 

[Bigred2019]

After saying to my employers' I told you it wouldn't work', far too many times, going down with the ship I should have left months before, I felt the time was right to have a go at working for myself. Started in the bathroom at home (unfinished at the time - ran out of dough - drilled a hole in the wall and ran a phone line through from the kitchen, sat on an upturned crate the plasterer had left behind, with a board over the bath as a desk).

I like being self employed, but probably enjoy seeing ideas come to fruition more than anything else, a problem in itself as I have dozens of them.

A board over the bath?? I used to work from home so I could dive from my bedroom to my office (the spare bedroom) and be at work in minutes. Sounds like you could do that even quicker. Shower, dry, at work what is it you do from your bathroom office?

 

[dcuttridge]

I built my first website in 2004 when I was a nerdy kid playing games and me and my friends wanted a basic website for our clan (as it was called back then).

Fast-forward to 2010 and I actually started web designing professionally.

Then the theme marketplaces really exploded and this forced me out around 2012/13 and I transitioned into SEO full-time.

The rest, as they say, is history.

 

[Bigred2019]

No f££k No !

It went to 15 to 20 at one point and it was a nightmare I hated it
Now it is 4 -5 and if some lucrative work is around we have good sub contractors
I also have around2 jobs a day sub contracted in other parts of the country mostly London and into Europe each day
This is the happiest I have been with a smaller manageable set up

There is definitely a theme, on this thread anyway, that smaller is better. No point in being big and unhappy.
Within my business we have recently been seriously looking at how and if we expand to take over the market. We tried it temporarily a year or so ago and it was horrible. I seemed to spend most of my time managing staff than actually working on or even in the business doing what we do best. We down scaled and we’ve never been happier. Our worry always was that if we didn’t keep in growing we would just get overshadowed, but I think our approach is now to keep lean and adapt if we need to. The plan is to keep on going after the potential that’s out there, and when that has run out, adapt to suit (downscale or provide another service etc). Thing is, in my industry, that could be in another ten years, so we’ll get plenty of time to see a shift in the market and adapt.

 

[Bigred2019]

I built my first website in 2004 when I was a nerdy kid playing games and me and my friends wanted a basic website for our clan (as it was called back then).

Fast-forward to 2010 and I actually started web designing professionally.

Then the theme marketplaces really exploded and this forced me out around 2012/13 and I transitioned into SEO full-time.

The rest, as they say, is history.

LOL I remember building a website for our Quake clan years ago. I cant even remember what we called ourselves. I remember the website was very red and black, and was built completely on HTML with a flash banner.
We use themes for our site through Wordpress but I have still have a web fella on retainer to tweak the site. There are always new ways to do things, so I think that we if we aren’t keeping up with new design trends you’ll look dated.
Is SEO a dark art? I’ve tried to get my head round it before and it just seems really difficult?

 

[Bigred2019]

Left school worked as an undertaker... realised the boss was a prick, was told I wasn't qualified to press a button one day, so sacked it off, joined the Navy, spend 4 1/2 years as Sonar Operator on nuclear submarines, where there were more buttons that I knew what to do with, and was even allowed to press them.

Left the Navy as promotion was at a standstill, it was all about bums on seats, and started training to be an embalmer, planning to make my return to the funeral trade. After I completed the first part, it dawned on me the length of time it would take to qualify, the amount it was costing, and then no guarantee of work at the end of it.

My cousin had walked away from his business, sign making and left my uncle with all the equipment and no idea how it worked. Luckily my dad worked with my Uncle, and could see where my cousin had gone wrong, and that there was potential.

With a little bit of help from the old man, it was mine, then a few years later my uncle retired, sold the property they traded from, had lost a few big clients, and we merged the two into what it is today.

The industry has changed a hell of a lot, it's more competitive, but we're surviving. I enjoy being my own boss, but it has it challenges and stresses... and is better than coming home stinking of formaldehyde.

how have you found the industry since companies like vista print and hello print have come on the scene? We use a mate of mine for our signs, but I’ll be honest, for banners, and flyers (pretty much anything which can be posted) we use helloprint. The quality is there 80% of the time, but when it isn’t they are quick to provide reprints. I just make sure I don’t leave it to the last minute to get things printed, so I’m not left with poor printing

 

[Gordon L]

Apart from the ones that discovered cocaine.

To the OP; pure chance. My favourite place (in my industry) closed down. I had nowhere to go, so I started my own. From that spawned four other businesses.

We had our fair share in the army - though as someone else points out, drug use in the forces is far lower than most other professions.

 

[Gordon L]

@Guy Incognito gets it spot on. demand. I think many people forget this! and of course marketing.

 

[Guy Incognito]

Thanks for the message what is your product out of interest?
Reading your post, you sound similar to me in regard to learning after trading for x amount of years. I’ve been involved in heat pumps over the past ten years on pretty much every level now from sales to marketing to manufacturing, but its only the past couple of months where I’ve actually started learning how to run a business. I’ve always, wrongly, been under the assumption that having a perfect “cog” (marketing or product or service etc) is the key to a successful business, but I’ve learnt recently that all of that means nothing if you don’t have a “machine” / business to put the cogs. (I.e. cash flow, forecasting, planning, keen eye on the actual finances etc).
The social media comment is interesting. Are you business to consumer? We are business to business 99% of the time, so Facebook, twitter and instagram work ok for us, but I feel like LinkedIn is a better place to spend our time and money....
Do you do any print advertising?

I'd rather not say what we do as we're the only ones currently doing what we do in the UK and so we've got a nice little niche!! However, there are barriers to entry as our products are expensive to make and require quite a lot of marketing.

We're B2C, though that does include some professionals within the industry. What we don't do is supply any middle men, partly because we don't have the margin, and also to drive people to our website and our social media, with the idea being to build our brand as much as possible.

We don't do print advertising, we have been featured in the Evening Standard and some other magazines. We have also done some stuff for a few TV shows, but we do most of our marketing spend on adwords and Facebook / Instagram.

The biggest problem we've faced is our manufacturing lead time and not being able to make enough product quickly enough. We're putting prices up a bit as I figured if we can't make it fast enough then it's probably a bit too cheap! Growing quickly presents challenges of scaling and having to take on sensible debt to do that, but we're happy to do that.

We will look to sell a small percentage of the business to an investment company next year and have already had discussions about this. They specialise in scaling businesses from £5M turnover and taking them to the next level, which is what we want to do.

It all boils back down to demand though. You can have the best marketing, the best processes but unless you have something people need or want, it will be tricky.

 

[Lucan Unlordly]

A board over the bath?? I used to work from home so I could dive from my bedroom to my office (the spare bedroom) and be at work in minutes. Sounds like you could do that even quicker. Shower, dry, at work what is it you do from your bathroom office?

Back then i'd lost a well paid but commission heavy job selling advertising, so with a former business contact set up to produce in house newspapers for garden centres and the like. The client would tap up their suppliers to take some ad space, provide the editorial, competition prizes etc., and we'd put it together and piggy back delivery with the local free newspaper.

I had 90% finished a massive extension, doubling the size of our house from 2 to 4 beds and couldn't afford to finish the bathroom so the bath, still wrapped in plastic, made the perfect base for a bit of tongue and groove flooring on which to put the layouts and a phone!

 

[saton]

I've been working in sales for a long time. It was shops, insurance companies. For me it was the main thing to build a network of sales of goods. But everything changed the birth of my children. They loved different plants and flowers and we started to grow different flowers. So there was an idea to open his own flower shop. At first it was just a small shop. Now I am engaged in decorating the rooms with flowers. Flowers I continue to grow . To do this, I already have my own greenhouse. For flowers I pick different indoor plant pots on https://getpotted.com/planters/arrangement-indoor/. I already have my regular customers. I like my business.

 

[Opinion87]

intresting Topic..

Another great post, Floyd. Thank you for your continued contribution to the forum.

 

[WeddingsInWales]

I bought a house in London in 1983 and filled it with lodgers, occupying one room myself. For a few years I cleaned the bathroom, loos, kitchen and communal areas myself at weekends, as part of the service, while working in Insurance Sales during the week. After 5 years of this I decided I should really employ a cleaner. But I did not want to pay an agency fee. I advertised for a cleaner on the local newsagents window and got 7 apply. Since I only needed one cleaner, rather than waste the others who all seemed very good, I photocopied some leaflets promoting a cleaning service and put it through local letterboxes. I soon filled the other 6 cleaners available time with clients, and had to recruit more cleaners. After 7 years I had 2,000 clients in my own agency and I was busy franchising the concept. Eventually I had 96 franchised branches - each looking after a licensed 100,000 territory. Turnover above £1m across both businesses (the turnover comprised just the agency fee and franchise fee, as I never employed any cleaners directly - they were all paid direct by the clients). Profit was about 35%. With the profit I bought more houses locally and rented them out to Lodgers just like the first house.

The business relied on leafleting. After buying houses in London, I decided on an Escape to the Country lifestyle change and bought a derelict castle in Wales for less than the cost of a terraced house in London. It was a vanity project and cost £3m in 10 years to restore and needs at least another £2m to finish it. It is still only worth a little less than a terraced house in London, so not a wise investment. Meanwhile the cleaning agency started to suffer excess competition from other agencies all setting up websites, and dropping leaflets through people's doors no longer worked. The internet and competing websites saturated the market with agencies, including two or three who not only copied my idea but also franchised it to hundreds of other agencies in turn!

Meanwhile I had a castle which was costing a fortune, income dropping in the main business, and had to do something with the Castle. Roll on ten years and it is now a wedding business doing 140 weddings a year, with a sideline in ghost hunting in the remaining derelict areas, plus some dog friendly B&B midweek. It turns over more or less the same as the cleaning agency did, but employs far too many people, is very labour intensive, and each year it is a challenge to break even and pay myself something. But it is great fun and I now know a lot about weddings, ghost hunting and dogs. A few of the London houses had to be sold to bail out the castle but I get by.

Looking back, had I not bought the castle, I would have had a simpler life but far less 'interesting' and I would have more income. But had I not created the cleaning agency, and franchised it, I would still probably be in insurance sales.

Had I not bought a house and filled it with 12 lodgers to pay the mortgage, I would not have been cleaning it myself and eventually decided to hire a cleaner. In those days you could buy a terraced house in London for under £40k, about 3 times my earnings at the time I bought the first house in 1983.

 

[SillyBill]

There is definitely a theme, on this thread anyway, that smaller is better. No point in being big and unhappy.
Within my business we have recently been seriously looking at how and if we expand to take over the market. We tried it temporarily a year or so ago and it was horrible. I seemed to spend most of my time managing staff than actually working on or even in the business doing what we do best. We down scaled and we’ve never been happier. Our worry always was that if we didn’t keep in growing we would just get overshadowed, but I think our approach is now to keep lean and adapt if we need to. The plan is to keep on going after the potential that’s out there, and when that has run out, adapt to suit (downscale or provide another service etc). Thing is, in my industry, that could be in another ten years, so we’ll get plenty of time to see a shift in the market and adapt.

A lot of busy fools in business. And it is frustrating when you come up against them at times but you have to learn to leave them to it. According to the latest available annual accounts my competitor turned over 2.75 times more than us, and drum roll...made 40% less net profit than we did. They employ almost 40 staff vs our 10-11. Needless to say I prefer my business model to theirs and I am proud of the operation we run. Their gross margin is only just above my net margin. You just have to have confidence that while the price winner will make the turnover you will focus on the jobs where you can earn a profit.

But it does come with its challenges. I have had to let staff go before now when I could easily of kept them on by chasing low margin business to keep them busy. Not nice explaining to someone that while the business could secure more work, you are not seeking to as you don't run the business to provide a job but for it to earn a profit. I have culled turnover and staff when the numbers pointed to the fact I was under massively more stress for what amounted to peanuts. Plenty of businesses seem to create jobs and no money in my experience.

 

[SillyBill]

Despite being a chemist by education, I started off as an engineer in construction (got a foot in the door and pursued it for a few years), hated every minute. Moved into a regulatory job for a group of chemical businesses, my background helped me move up the ranks and I ultimately ended up running one of the companies while the ageing owners/directors enjoyed a well deserved semi-retirement. This continued for a while but when the final retirement came around, I sold everything I had, including my house, and borrowed as much as I could, to buy the business outright. The deal was favourable as much of the principal was structured against the future earnings of the company; I'd have never been able to afford it otherwise. It was punishing nonetheless though and many sleepless nights over many years worrying about whether repayments could be met and whether I'd lose everything.

 

[Alison Moore]

After University I was working for a company that asked me to test some software, and I found that I was good at it and loved it - the developers didn't like me much though as I kept finding bugs in their code. Then I met my husband who was a software programmer and the rest, as they say, is history. We've written our own business and stock control software specifically for the SME market. It's definitely worth doing a job that you enjoy. I've had some very mundane jobs in the past and nothing is more soul-destroying than turning up for 8 hours in a job that you hate. Both my husband and I love what we do, it's not easy, but I wouldn't change it for the world.

 

[Paul Norman]

I do business management projects, including selecting, and installing, new software. The software bit, of course, I do not do myself, I find businesses to do that for my clients.

One business that I placed a big contract for in 2004 interested me sufficiently that I ended up acquiring a 50% share of it. I still am involved in that business today.

 

[MEAVO]

Most of the time you will find that Founders start their business due to a pain / need they experienced, whether at work or in their personal life. A few years ago my Co-founder and I were working in a well funded London based HR tech start-up. We were in an office with noisy sales consultants. Often, we needed to get on calls with colleagues but the problem was that we couldn't find any quiet space or privacy in the office. Sometimes, we had to step into the hallway or the staircase to make calls, other times we just went outside. So we looked up whether something like an office phone booth exists and to our surprise, there were several manufacturers. When we contacted them, however, we were even more surprised about the price. The cheapest solution was over £5,000. We asked ourselves two questions:

1) Are there others out there searching for affordable office phone booths?
2) If so, why are current office phone booths so expensive, can we make them cheaper?

To answer question 1), we set up a mock website with some office phone booth images and affordable pricing. We then turned on some Google Ads and inquiries started coming in at a very reasonable cost-per-click (or cost-per-inquiry), some even from reputable companies. This told us that there was demand out there.
To answer question 2), we hired a consultant to design a prototype. With the specs we contacted furniture manufacturers across Europe. Some quotes were very high, but others sounded promising.
We decided to take the plunge and this is how MEAVO soundproof booths was born. We've been trading for over a year now and business is going very well (we're launching in Germany this year). One thing I would mention to any aspiring entrepreneur. The saying "no pain, no gain" is so true. It was a tough first year, but we finished on a high and I'm excited about what we can achieve in 2020!

 

[Opinion87]

Most of the time you will find that Founders start their business due to a pain / need they experienced, whether at work or in their personal life. A few years ago my Co-founder and I were working in a well funded London based HR tech start-up. We were in an office with noisy sales consultants. Often, we needed to get on calls with colleagues but the problem was that we couldn't find any quiet space or privacy in the office. Sometimes, we had to step into the hallway or the staircase to make calls, other times we just went outside. So we looked up whether something like an office phone booth exists and to our surprise, there were several manufacturers. When we contacted them, however, we were even more surprised about the price. The cheapest solution was over £5,000. We asked ourselves two questions:

1) Are there others out there searching for affordable office phone booths?
2) If so, why are current office phone booths so expensive, can we make them cheaper?

To answer question 1), we set up a mock website with some office phone booth images and affordable pricing. We then turned on some Google Ads and inquiries started coming in at a very reasonable cost-per-click (or cost-per-inquiry), some even from reputable companies. This told us that there was demand out there.
To answer question 2), we hired a consultant to design a prototype. With the specs we contacted furniture manufacturers across Europe. Some quotes were very high, but others sounded promising.
We decided to take the plunge and this is how MEAVO soundproof booths was born. We've been trading for over a year now and business is going very well (we're launching in Germany this year). One thing I would mention to any aspiring entrepreneur. The saying "no pain, no gain" is so true. It was a tough first year, but we finished on a high and I'm excited about what we can achieve in 2020!

I've had adverts for these (not yours) popping up everywhere over the last month.

 

[Mitch3473]

Lived in Spain with 3 properties, 2 of which were rentals, got bored and coupled with my usual 7 year itch and an ailing mum back in Blighty, returned. SWMBO asked me what we would do, I said I dont know, I'll find something so she decided to do a bit of ironing for the old folk of the town........something wasn't working so we tweaked a couple of things and 18mths later we had a 2000 sq ft unit and 4 girls working for us fully laundering hotels, pubs, B&Bs and holiday rentals. I was back to my usual early start late finish, 7 day week scenario and a few big contracts came on board, one of which we shouldn't really have had but hey, strike while the iron's hot.
I've calmed down a lot recently though........

 

[GolHiii]

I, if I may say so, still a young entrepreneur. But I didn’t come to this right away, and now I can’t say that I directly plunged into the business.
The thought of my own business came to me when I realized that this could not be further: there is no development, a constant routine, and there is not much money either, and I was especially depressed by the situation that I can not manage my time. This was the beginning of the search for "his own business." At first I thought about what I can offer this world, people. Then I began to watch what I was interested in, that I knew what my hobbies were. And so in this way I came to the conclusion that I have my own school for entrepreneurs, and now I’m creating my school’s website

 

[Tin]

I'd been a firefighter for 20 years but got pensioned out following an injury at work and was looking for a job when a good friend asked me if I could create a website for his sister who was a qualified chef. Not having a clue about design, or the web, or websites I plunged in. I asked her for a brief and she simply said "I like the colour blue, so do a blue one".
It took me 5 months to create a 5 page website for her including messing about with that techy stuff they call FTP, that to a complete novice was another world all on its own, it took ages to get the complete site online! That was back in 1996.

By complete fluke it ranked very quickly and very highly on the old search engines that were used prior to Google coming along like, HotBot, Excite,Dogpile, AskJeeves, Lycos etc . A researcher for the Prince of Wales trust had apparently been asked to look for a chef who can provide outdoor catering aboard a ship, my tiny website kept popping up in the researcher's face often enough for her to recruit my client for the job. The 'job' ended up being a full year's catering contract for £1.25million. The client told everyone about it, long story a bit shorter - that has kept me in full time work for the last 23 years providing SEO services to online businesses.

 

[Desamark]

Interesting info.
Thanks!

 

[Paul FilmMaker]

For 20+ years, I worked for companies like Oracle and Salesforce in recruitment. I used to ask salespeople what they wanted from a company and they all told me 'x' which would all help them make more sales

My hobby was video as I loved creating stuff and realised no-one in the market was creating B2B video that actually did what salespeople wanted. i.e. generate them leads and help close business.

I think I'm a bit slow because after 20 years of listening to salespeople saying they wanted 'x' and that no company was supplying them with it, I should have moved a little earlier! And eventually I did and opened a video business doing exactly that.

 

[Michael Beaumont]

After being out in the freezing snow and rain at 4am patrolling a barracks I vowed I would get an inside job with a nice cosy office. Many years later I have managed it and now look out of the window at the rain and say, "I did it!"

 

[Rob Halstead]

I was made redundant suddenly and just couldn't find a business that I wanted to work for. I set up on own 2 years ago as I saw that there was an opportunity in the market to provide a real personal service to businesses looking for utilities consultancy. I now have 60 happy clients and have saved them £90k since May 19. The energy sector is saturated with call centres that just offer prices, I have cut a niche by managing my customers personally and visiting the majority of them face to face. Just added card payment services to the portfolio and looking to venture into other areas soon... I love it, so much more rewarding working for myself, should have done it years ago.

 

[Express_Couriers]

Got drunk one night, had loads of discussions about businesses, next thing you know I woke up to an email from companies house confirming that I am a director of a brand new logistics company

 

[Higgsy]

Step One: Came back from serving with the forces.
Step Two: Tried multiple jobs, hated it, so made my self a business...
Step Three: Realised that business was harder work than it looks. Gave up, found a job in a government service.
Step Four: Realised business really was better than working for someone.
Step Five: Started in business again, consulting what I use to teach and grew from there.

 

[Mal91]

Wow, this is one of the most inspiring threads I have read in a long while! Puts a lot into perspective now that I am planning on opening a business myself