Now is the time to start a business. When we say that we would be right at any point in time. Now, when the world is inside could be your time.
When else will you have time, time to think, time to plan and time to act. There are no social obligations and nowhere to go.
To get you started we partnered with The Six Day Business to bring you a step-by-step guide to launching your brand. The full book can be bought here and for now they’ve said that we can share the full text with Baxter House readers to help them get started.
Without further ado, here is the Six Day Business. When you’re ready to create your first collection, or source your first products, please get in touch.
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHORS
Entrepreneurship is extremely difficult (the understatement of the century).
It’s stressful.
It’s rewarding.
It’s not for everyone.
This book is the manual we wish we had when we started our business together in 2015. Looking back we realised there were a number of key questions we could have and should have asked that would have saved us time, heartache, and money that we’d worked long and hard to save.
Even after going through this process we don’t have all the answers. What we do have is questions. Questions you need to ask yourself before you dive headlong into your own business.
Our business idea turned out to have a number of critical faults—faults that we did not see because we were blinded by the riches that we would be making in no time at all. Faults that in retrospect (it’s always easier in retrospect) we could have identified if we’d asked the right people the right questions.
The Six Day Business is the direct result of what we learned from our experiences.
Our own journey started in 2014 when we met in M60 (a coffee shop in Bucharest—highly recommended!) and immediately started throwing ideas around. Anyone who has experienced this ‘high’of idea generation will know that the energy is flowing and you just want to get on with the ideas that you came up with. For us we were talking about making villages from old shipping containers or bags designed with the global traveller in mind.
We both love coming up with ideas and this first meeting was no different.
We settled on an idea fairly quickly—importing and distributing premium eyewear brands into Eastern Europe. We had a good mix of skills (some overlapping) and knew a brand who was looking to break into Eastern Europe.
We were immediately hooked by the margins that distribution provided, we didn’t have to manufacture, all—we say allwith a grin on our faces now—we had to do was to find retailers.
We went full throttle—buying samples, then stock, forming a legal company and travelling around, without actually stopping and asking a key question—would anyone actually buy these products.
It seems so simple in retrospect.
This is where The Six Day Business would have been invaluable. We would have stopped, reflected, asked the right questions, and discovered the critical flaws not 12 months later when we did figure it out but in the first week.
A good friend of ours once told us that “there’s never as much pressure to do something in the moment as you think there is.”
We like to think that this sums up the essence of the book. Pause and ask the right questions. You’ll thank yourself later.
Every business started somewhere, and that somewhere was not reading and planning. At some point a business actually needs to take a first step.
We will provide you with just enough content to get started—the rest is up to you taking action on the questions that we ask. We want to get you doing, not reading. The Six Day Businesscould be seen as the prequel to many books on the market right now and you should be confident in the knowledge that even putting your idea down on paper is an important first step.
Introduction
An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory” Friedrich Engels
The Six Day Business is that ounce of action. It’s that first step to get you started.
There are literally thousands and thousands of books available to help you grown and scale your business. They’re very dense tomes—we’re talking 300+ pages of content!
What is usually missing is the action—and action is key. In our minds taking one simple, small concept and applying it with rigour is much more rewarding than being inspired by many great ideas, but not applying any.
The Six Day Businessis written by and for aspiring entrepreneurs, for anyone who has a business idea that they want to test. It is a process to help you decide whether you should pursue an idea further.
The beginning of any business is a very exciting time—the temptation can be to drop everything you’re doing, invest your life savings, create a 94-page business plan outlining where you’ll be in five years and then being shocked when it doesn’t work (we’ve been there).
If you’ve ever watched Dragon’s Den or Shark Tank you’ll have seen this time and time again. Through the years there’ve been many situations where we’ve thought to ourselves “I really hope this person didn’t invest their life savings in this.”More times than not they did, and it’s tough to watch. This isn’t the way to go about it.
We don’t want this to happen to you, and as with anything, you need to start from the beginning. We know that you think it’s a great idea, otherwise, you wouldn’t be here. But who else have you talked to about your idea, or even better, sold a product to?
Don’t quit your day-job yet—you owe it to yourself to give yourself every chance to succeed. Think of this as a safe place to test the idea without putting everything on the line.
I know you’re keen to get going, but first, spend a few hours with this book over the next six days to form your big idea and take it ‘to market’in a simple form. You can complete each step in a few hours a day, and if you’re really dying to work on this idea you will be able to fit in before or after work (we would never recommend doing it AT work…). And if you’re in-between jobs, then even better, you’ll be able to get started quicker!
There will always be a reason (money, family, time) that means it’s not the ‘right time’to try, but in reality, there’s never a perfect moment.Nowis the right time. Get started, and see where it will take you. After all, it’s not quitting your job—it’s testing your idea cheaply and quickly.
These six days will get you closer to making your business a reality. This book is designed to:
1. Give you a step-by-step guide to developing your core idea.
2. Give you the confidence to talk to family, friends, and customers.
3. Help you decide whether it’s a good idea, and whether to continue working on it.
4. Help you figure out your next steps if you want to move forward with your great idea.
For Day 1 please click here.