Here at Young Upstarts we’re of course strong advocates of starting your own business. Often we receive emails asking for advice on how to start a business; and in many cases, we can’t help because we don’t have the necessary know-how in those industries. But with Richard Wallace’s “The Start Your Own Business Bible: 501 New Ventures You Can Launch Today“, we’re in a better position to answer some of them now.
“The Start Your Own Business Bible” compiles some 501 business ideas and gives you an overview of the nature of each possible venture, as well as a lowdown of how to enter that business. Not only does it give you a rough indication of what your startup costs may be like, it recommends you the typical fees you can likely charge, what kinds of advertising you can pursue, the qualifications you’re likely to need, required equipment to get started, highlight potential hidden costs and even tells you if you can do it as a home business. The entries are broken down and categorized into five categories, which are based on the amount of money you’ll need as startup capital – which I thought was odd, and would be better off in pure alphabetical order so it’s easier to search for the entries one is most interested in.
To my amusement – although I shouldn’t have been surprised – there’s an entry for “Blogger”. As you can imagine, startup costs are extremely low, but which also means the barrier of entry is low and financial rewards aren’t that impressive. And since I personally love my beer, I instantly went to check out how much startup capital it would take to start my own “Beer Brewery”. What I read broke my heart. At US$150,000 to US$1.5 million for startup costs – more expensive to start a winery, which also has its own entry in “The Start Your Own Business Bible” – my dream was instantly torpedoed and shattered beyond repair.
There are also a few useful chapters at the back of the guide that gives you the lowdown of business basics – it’s hardly comprehensive, but it’ll give you a great head-start if you’re totally clueless about starting your own business.
While there’s a great deal of excellent information in “The Start Your Own Business Bible“, it’s unlikely that you’ll be interested to read the entire tome. Which means you may be better off looking for this in some business library – and all libraries should have at least one in its business section – when you’re doing research for starting your own business.
