It Takes Balls! to Start a Business: Learn Here What You Need to Know Before Starting Your Own Business and Discover the Road to Profitability from an Experienced Business Insider

By José Calero

This book is like no other book on starting a business. It’s not about the ground-level details of starting a business. It’s more of a tree-top view of business in general. So before you make any decisions about what kind of business you’d like to start, read this book first and get a thorough understanding of how business works. There are a variety of subjects included in this book and each is geared to provide you a deeper understanding of the world you’re thinking of entering. In this book I discuss the purpose of a business; the need to prepare; what it takes to start a business; a product business vs a service business; brick and mortar vs online; best business types; launching and growing a business; and the need to innovate or die. I sincerely believe you won’t find another book like this one. It’s specific and sufficiently detailed to give you a complete understanding of the processes and hidden mechanisms of starting your own successful business enterprise.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781796093209

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Copyright © 2020 by José Calero.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 03/20/2020

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CONTENTS

Read This Section Before You Buy The Book

Foreword

I The Full Story and How We Got Here

You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do. Carl Jung

II What’s a Business For?

There cannot be a stronger natural right than that of a man’s making the best profit he can of the natural produce of his lands. Benjamin Franklin

III Preparation Is Everything

I will prepare myself and the opportunity will come. Abraham Lincoln

IV What Does It Take To Start a Business

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, Discover. Mark Twain

V Product Business vs Service Business

Whenever you see a successful business, it’s because someone once made a courageous decision. Peter Drucker

VI Best Business Type for You

Your life changes the moment you make a new, congruent, and committed decision. Anthony Robbins

VII Four Business Models and How They Operate

When you make a choice, you change the future. Deepak Chopra

VIII Launching your Business

I knew that if I failed, I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying. Jeff Bezos

IX Building your Business

My friends, I tell you that unless you have a vivid picture in your mind of what you want to create; you will not be passionate about pursuing and actualizing the goal. Cosmos Maduka

X Innovate or Die

Innovative ideas are the golden wealth of a growing business. Wayne Chirisa

XI Why Customer Service Matters

Men are rich only as they give. He who gives great service gets great rewards. Elbert Hubbard

XII Marketing, Advertising and Promotion

Don’t find customers for your product. Find products for your customers. Seth Godin

XIII Sales

Nothing happens until somebody sells something. Peter Drucker

XIV You Succeed One Step at a Time

Have a bias towards action – let’s see something happen now. You can break that big plan into small steps and take the first step right away. Indira Ghandi

XV Resourcefulness and Initiative

Effective leaders know that resources are never the problem; it’s always a matter or resourcefulness. Anthony Robbins

XVI Never, Never, Never Give UP

Never give up for that is the place and time that the tide will turn. Harriet Beecher Stowe

XVII Rules Rule

Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively. Dalai Lama

Epilogue

Entrepreneurial profit is the expression of the value of what the entrepreneur contributes to production.

Joseph A. Schumpeter

DEDICATION

I wish to dedicate this book to my wife, Leslie, for all she’s done for us and our life together these last 50 years. Our home-based business would not have developed as it has if not for her contribution and partnership.

I wish to extend special gratitude to Lee and Linda Ireland for their friendship and professional assistance in editing this book.

And to my three sons, I want to say that we made one heap of all our winnings and risked it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss, and we didn’t lose. We won and this is the life example I wish to leave you and your children: life is short, it’s never too late, prepare for your quest and never give up.

Read This Section Before

You Buy The Book

So you’re thinking of starting a business and you’re looking for something to help you learn a little more about the subject. You could not make a better choice than this book. Here’s why. I have 50 years business and sales experience including fifteen years mentoring on business at a state university. I can help you with what you seek. (The truth is that whatever you’ve learned up to this moment, means you’re capable of learning the nuts and bolts of how to start, manage and grow a business.) You’ll see that it doesn’t take a genius to start a business. It’s not rocket science. It takes an understanding of how your business will work and the industry you’ll be working in. It’ll take a well-thought-out game plan and a little courage. I can help you with the knowledge and the game plan … you’ll have to provide the courage.

I believe the advice I’m going to share with you will give you all the information you’ll need to make an intelligent and informed decision about starting your own business. No matter what kind of business you’re planning to start (product, service, brick and mortar or online), at the end of our chat, you’ll know all you need to know.

I wrote this book in a conversational style so it would be easier to understand. I want you to imagine that you and I are having a leisurely conversation on this subject and I’m simply giving you a complete overview of what the business world looks like and what it takes to start, manage and grow a business. We’re NOT going to explore every minute detail of how to start a business. There’s an army of books available that deal with the ground-level details of starting a business. This is not one of those books.

When we’ve finished our chat, you’ll have a lot to think about. At the least you’ll understand what it takes to compete in the business world. After completing our chat and you decide to pursue your business dream, review some of those army of books mentioned earlier. They will give you the ground-level details you’ll need to complete your Business Plan.

The first step, however, is to understand the business landscape. Once I’ve explained what that looks like, you’ll be in a much better position to fill in the blanks. Think of the landscape as a topographical map and your job is to fill in all the major landmarks like mountains, valleys, buildings, highways and railroads. The ground-level details have to do with the traffic lights, stop signs, cross walks, trees, shrubbery, etc.

I also understand that in order to believe what someone is saying to you, you must be able to trust what they’re telling you. I’m not a well-known guy and this is my first book. But I want you to have confidence in what I’ll be sharing with you. So what you first need to know is that yeah, I do know what I’m talking about. That’s not bragging, it’s confidence based on experience and education.

Here’s a brief glimpse into me and my background. I’m a 73- year-old Mexican American man. As of August 2019, I will have been married to the same woman for 50 years. I have three sons, all whom are degreed professionals, six grandchildren and a Pit-terrier mixed dog (with way too much energy) named Jax. I own my home; my retirement is set in concrete and we are debt free.

During my early years I went to six high schools and was expelled from two of them. (One of them was a very fine boarding school in Mexico.) I spent three years in the Army and one of those years in Vietnam where I received a Purple Heart. After I was married, I attended night school at Los Angeles Valley College in the San Fernando Valley for three years where I concentrated on business courses. But to be honest, I went to night school for the money. The GI Bill was paying me $800 per month and at that time that was a lot of money.

I married my wife at 23 years old and up to the age of 37, I was mostly unguided and unaware of my primary purpose and responsibility as the principal bread winner for my family. I realize that may sound really stupid to some of you. My problem was that I had ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) and back then, no one knew what it was. So at parent-teacher conferences, my parents would be told that I was crazy, lazy or stupid. (This is also the name of the first book published about ADD.)

During this wandering time in my early business life, I had a few sales and business misfires. One of them, in fact, ended in bankruptcy in 1976. This misguided period of my life ended when I awoke from a two-month clinical depression and began a new chapter in my life that finally had purpose, meaning and direction. I started working as a packaging salesman and stayed with the same company for almost 20 years.

During my time in the packaging business, I called on a wide variety of business types in Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties. I also had a few customers in Tijuana and Tecate, Baja California, Mexico. I had excellent relationships with all my customers of 80 loyal companies and purchasing managers. Each of these relationships lasted for many years, (I seldom lost a customer), so I was able to learn how these companies worked and what made them successful. I also learned what made less well-managed companies, not so successful. Unknown to me at the time was that these many years of packaging experience exposed me to an exceptional learning experience. I would often chat with my customer’s employees, managers and even executives about their duties in the company. My understanding of how businesses works comes from years of learning from those employees on the ground. They taught me what makes them all work – to one degree or another.

I retired from packaging sales on March 31, 2000 and the next day I started our home-based business that now lists 75 products on Amazon and generates an average of $1.5 million in annual sales. I launched our business with our retirement savings at age 54. (And yes, it was definitely a risky move on my part to bet our retirement on one roll of the dice.) The business was launched on the strength of a new product I had invented called the ‘AutoDesk’ which turned out to have a limited market opportunity. I re-purposed my AutoDesk invention from an AutoDesk to a ‘Laptop Desk’ and suddenly I had a brand-new product with a huge market potential with notebook computer users. I partnered with Targus, Inc. in the retail channel and within months of launching the newly branded Targus Laptop Desk in 2003, it was selling 25,000 units per month at a retail price of $29.95. This relationship lasted for six years and was highly profitable for Targus and my business.

In 2004, The Entrepreneurial School at California State University Fullerton recruited me to serve as a mentor in their department. Since 2004 I have assisted undergrad student teams who perform a variety of consulting service for local businesses. (The school recruits these businesses and charges them a small consulting fee.) These years of mentoring experience layered on top of my earlier packaging experiences substantially added to my knowledge base. I learned how companies develop and launch new products and learned why some companies struggle to succeed. Ill-conceived decisions not based on facts but on guesstimates, can have a devastating impact on the health and well-being of any business. Mentoring broadened my business knowledge in a substantial way as a result of the wide variety of business problems the student teams and I were asked to solve.

OK, that’s a brief background on me and what I bring to the table. If you’re interested in what I have to say about what you need to make an intelligent and informed decision about starting your own business, then please read on. If I didn’t convince you that you need this book, then thank you for reading this far. I’m sure you’ll find your way.

*     *     *

Foreword

This book is meant for anyone who would like to learn how businesses works and/or what it takes to start a business. It is written in clear and simple, conversational English so that everyone can understand it.

The first chapter of this book is a more detailed explanation of my history. For the purpose of providing business examples of what to do and not do, I’m using our experience with our business as reference. There are some really good business lessons here because I made some whopper mistakes and I also had some big wins. So stand by and I’ll tell you how we built our business using our retirement savings as the seed money.

The major part of this book will be dedicated to business practices and rules I’ve learned over my many years of real-world sales and business experience. Including the time I spent from April 2000 as a full-time entrepreneur growing my home-based, online business to $1.5 million in annual sales.

My hope is that you will seriously consider the knowledge contained in this book and all the guidance it offers so that you can make an intelligent and well-informed decision about starting a business. To be clear, this book will focus almost exclusively on starting, managing and growing a business that sells