Hi. I’m about to start a new business, and this is my blog.
This will be my 4th start-up. Going into business is a daunting thing, and I know lots of people who have the dream, have the skills, but don’t ever make the jump.
I hope that this blog will help. Yes, breaking out is scary. But it’s also a process. There are a set of steps that need to be done, and proven strategies that will vastly increase your chance of success.
Just to be clear right from the outset – this is a totally new venture. At this moment I have no website, no bank account, no clients, no business plan. I have a laptop, a phone and a couple of monitors in my office at home. As I’m writing this, I don’t have a blog site and have no social media accounts for this venture. I have a good idea of what I want to do, and I’m lucky enough to have some time on my hands.
Will my new business work? I’ve no idea.
Will it be fun trying? Yep.
Will I learn a lot on the way? Of course.
Will I be brutally honest here about failures as well as successes? Absolutely – what’s the point otherwise….
It would be amazing to have your company for the ride, and it would encourage me hugely if you could say ‘Hi’.
A little about me
My name is Colin Thorpe. I’ve been involved in small business all of my career (which is far too many years to admit to here!!!). After I graduated I worked in research for 2 years at a large automotive company. It was these 2 years that confirmed my suspicion that big companies weren’t the place for me. I need to see a direct impact on the success of a company from my efforts; I don’t like seeing good people treated badly; and to be totally honest, I don’t like having a boss!
All of the small businesses I’ve been at have been tech companies. I started two of them, was a shareholder in a third, and a very early employee in a fourth.
I sold my last company in 2021, and since April this year I’ve been on an adventure, had some down-time, and used some new-found headspace to figure out my next project.
I live by the sea in the South of England with my awesome wife, and have an equally awesome son who’s just stepping out into the world of work.
So, what’s the business?
There was a bit of a thought process around this.
Firstly, I’m restricted through the sale of my last company from working in tech – at least the type of tech that I did before. This is a good thing! I so need a change…
One of my roles at my last company was marketing, or to be more precise – Lead Generation.
It’s an area that I enjoyed – it plays to my mathematical, process driven brain – but I always felt that I didn’t have enough time to properly delve into it deeply enough; there were always more leads out there to be harvested.
It wasn’t a problem – along with our digital marketing exec we used to supply plenty of leads for the sales team to work with, and we always had plenty of work as a result.
I decided that whatever business I was going to set up next, I first wanted to deeply understand Digital Marketing.
Marketing/Lead Generation is the absolute foundation of any business. No leads -> no sales -> no business. Many leads-> growth. Pretty simple.
Being immersed in Digital Lead Generation techniques would give any new business that I got involved in a massive advantage.
So having decided that, then what business should I do?
Well, it didn’t take a great leap of intellect to figure out that if I’m going to get good at something, why not keep life simple and just sell that?
So the new business is:
Helping professional service companies grow by generating high quality leads.
(Remember – it’s early days. This might develop!)
And along the way, if opportunities arise to get involved in other things with my new hat on, so much the better:)
What’s the aim?
Employing a thousand people, living in a castle and solving world poverty would be awesome.
Call me unambitious, but I don’t think that’s me.
What I’ve always wanted to do is to create a good little company that gives good jobs to people and does a decent job for its clients.
A ‘good little company’ means one that is well run, low stress, profitable, and where the team enjoys working together.
I can’t claim to have always achieved this – perhaps especially the ‘low stress’ part. But I don’t think I’ve been far off.
So this time round, it’s pretty much the same, but with a big effort to learn from my years working in small businesses, and to try to do things purposefully in a better, clear, logical way.
So, in short, I want to create a good, process-driven company that has a high level of recurring revenue, does a seriously good job for its clients, creates easy to manage employment, gives something back, allows me to work flexibly and doesn’t cause me stress.
Easy, hey🤣
I’ll set out my aims more fully in the next blog.
- 7 Elements of Digital MarketingDigital Marketing is a lovely concept. When I decided to make a living from doing Digital Marketing, I thought “Great – having run all aspects of a business for 15… Read more: 7 Elements of Digital Marketing
- 7Ps of Marketing – do they go digital?“The 7Ps of the Marketing Mix” has been around for many years. It is a classic strategy for constructing a marketing plan, used by marketers worldwide in every industry. But does it go digital?
- The WakeI sing in a traditional Male Voice Choir. Not quite normal, I know, but we’re pretty good, and they’re a great bunch of blokes. http://Hampshire Police Male Voice Choir (HPMVC)… Read more: The Wake
- Validation“Do not trust to the cheering, for those very persons would shout as much if you and I were going to be hanged.”- OLIVER CROMWELL We all look for validation. Starting… Read more: Validation
- Weekly thoughtsLast week was a good week. One of my rules for this business is that I’m going to be very selective about who I do work for. Whether or not… Read more: Weekly thoughts
Good luck Colin.