You don't need qualifications, money, a planet-sized-brain or even a

particularly good idea. All an entrepreneur ever does is create something

that consistently makes money.

Think of a company as a machine you design and build. Here's

McDonalds:

Your 'machine' always has certain parts. It sells something to someone,

and re-invests some of that to help make more sales in future. What's left
over is profit for the owners. Here's Google:
If you can design, build, own and care for such a machine, you can
become very rich indeed. That doesn't mean it's easy, but most of the
barriers that you think will stop you won't. Interested?

Let's talk about you

Are you young, poor, unqualified - a student, or hating your job? Maybe a
touch rebellious? Perfect. You have no bad habits, and will work until
your fingernails fall out and your eyeballs roll onto the desk. The world
awaits you.

Older, wiser, bit of money saved, experienced with a stable job? Maybe a
mortgage and kids? Your job is much harder. It can be done, but it might
feel like you're trying to dance backwards through quicksand.

The most important qualities of a good entrepreneur are energy and

determination. It doesn't hurt to be persuasive, but this can be learned. I
started as a shy uber-nerd aged 21; I soon learned how to sell when it
was the only way to feed myself.
Enough preamble. Let's make you a bajillion dollars:

The idea

Please forget all of the terrible deluded nonsense you've heard about the
value of ideas. Ideas are cheap, fleeting things; by itself a business idea is
worth less than a half-eaten sandwich. At least you can eat the sandwich.

You do need an idea of course. But understand that even the most
successful companies were not founded on wild or brilliant ideas.
Starbucks chose the brazen path of selling coffee in Seattle. Facebook
built a better MySpace. Google built a better Yahoo search. Microsoft
copied Apple - who copied Xerox.

Original ideas are overrated. What isn't overrated is timing. Google chose
the perfect time to build a better search engine - good luck trying to do
that now *cough* Bing *cough*. What you want, therefore, is an astute
awareness of a need that is currently underrepresented in the market.
You want to spot a product or service that can go places - original or not.
It's usually easier to refine an existing idea that isn't fully realised than to
create a wholly original one.

People fear setting up a business wherever there's competition, but

competition can be a good thing. The best place to setup a new
restaurant is right next to another successful restaurant; they've kindly
done the hard work for you of building an audience. Many a good
business has ridden to success on the coattails of another - it is usually
better to have some rivals over none. You just need to become 10%
better.

I personally recommend trying to deliver something that you and your

friends would buy in a heartbeat. You'll know more about your field,
you'll understand your customers, and you'll be passionate about what
you do. If you can make your company about a why - not a what - you'll
inspire yourself and those around you. And to survive the next step, you
need a fair sprinkle of inspiration:
Starting

Starting a company is a bit like parenting; everyone assumes you know

what you're doing, but babies and companies don't come with instruction
manuals. You stumble through it, learning as you go.

It's at the start where you're most likely to fail. Your aim is to build that
magical money-making machine, but you probably don't have all the
parts and the ones that you need may cost more than you have. Your idea
is probably at least half wrong too, but you won't know which half yet. All
of this is normal.

A big part of starting a company is convincing people to believe in you

before they probably should. When Steve Jobs founded Apple, he had no
money and no customers; what he did next is the hallmark of a great
entrepreneur. First he convinced a local computer store to order his non-
existent Apple computers, with payment on delivery. He then convinced a
parts supplier to sell him the components he needed to build them - using
the order he just obtained as proof he would be able to pay them back.
Jobs and a small team worked in their garage to build the first computers,
delivered them on time and made a tidy profit. Apple was born from
nothing.

Most new entrepreneurs play a few gambits early on like this. If it sounds
scary, that's because it is. I once had to pay staff salaries on my heavily
burdened credit cards when an early order fell through. You fake it until
you make it.

While doing all this you need to juggle between making the perfect
company (idealist) and paying your bills (realist) - an absence of either will
eventually kill you. I believe it's one reason why realist / idealist
partnerships are so common in business.

Do not scale prematurely. Don't try to be a big company early on - just

aim to be one. Be slow to spend and to hire at first. Don't waste time
writing mission statements and policy documents. You're small, nimble
and on a mission. Make and sell things. There'll be time for a HR
department later.
Don't be surprised if you change your company entirely. It's a rare
business that survives first contact with its customers. Try to avoid doing
this more than once though, it doesn't pay well.

Survive long enough, reinvest your meagre successes and compound

them. Eventually, you can move on to:

Extracting yourself

This is the step most small businesses never accomplish.

Up until now, your magical business machine almost certainly contains

one irreplaceable part: you. If your background is accounts, you're
probably the head accountant. If you're a programmer, you're probably
the best coder. Whatever you do, chances are you'll feel essential and
somewhat overworked.

Here's the hard part: you need to make yourself redundant. If you
dropped dead tomorrow, your business should carry on working just fine.
All of your time needs to be spent working on your business, not for your
business. The alternative is you're basically self-employed with assistants.

Some businesses can't escape this trap. If you're a brilliant copywriter -

say - you'll struggle. It's because what makes you a great company is you,
and unless you can bottle up you into a business model, you can't grow.

McDonalds built a business that works even if they hire almost entirely
minimum wage workers. Their process makes it work: every burger is
efficient and nearly indistinct, and nothing is left to chance. Their brand is
so strong people line up worldwide to eat there. Your business may be
radically different, but it should be similarly robust.

If you accomplish this, you now own something that is self-sustaining. You
should be able to pull a good salary even if you never go into work. Your
time is now free to tweak your business endlessly into something better.
Now to conquer the world, all you need to do is:

Scale

The final step is a bit like playing Who Wants to Be A Millionaire. Each
question you get right doubles your money, or you're going home.
Do not make the naive mistake of assuming a big company is like a small
one but bigger. Oh, nevermind. That's like telling your kids to listen to
you, really, drinking doesn't make you cool. You'll learn the hard way.

As a company grows the rules and your culture change completely. You
may even find yourself disliking the company you created (many founders
feel conflicted like this, eventually). If you've made it this far, you have
many options: hire help, sell, or double-down and see where the ride
takes you.

Remember no business can grow indefinitely. Most industries are more

efficient at different sizes - it's easy to be a two-man plumbing company,
but near impossible to build a 1,000 man plumbing corporation. Know the
limits of yours well in advance. Software is an example of an industry that
scales exceedingly well, which is why it creates so many young
billionaires.

And finally
It's never been easier to start a company. You can create a killer product
in your student dorm without even registering any paperwork - that was
enough for Facebook.

I think entrepreneurship is a form of enlightened gambling. Skill and

tenacity are big factors, but luck plays a big part. However, as long as you
can keep picking yourself up when you get knocked down, try different
things and keep learning, the odds are in your favour. You just have to
dare to chance them.