News

On Tuesday 6th March 2007 between 1.30pm and 4pm, Lord Bilimoria will be speaking live to the London Business Forum about how he started Cobra Beer.

The LBF and Lord Bilimoria are keen to support aspiring entrepreneurs and have kindly provided me with some free tickets to give out via Flying Startups, the web community I run for start-up entrepreneurs.

I have 25 tickets to give away (each worth £125!) on a strictly first come, first served basis. A maximum of two tickets will be issued to each person.

To receive details of how to claim these tickets please email Anna on: anna [at] steveparks [dot] co [dot] uk. Please be sure to tell her your name, and a little about your business. If you're a registered member of flyingstartups, please also mention your username.

We holding a Flying Startups Christmas competition, with software, books and a CD for the winner (and publicity!). It's a photo competition. Find out more at http://www.flyingstartups.com/xmas

As a Flyingstartups member you can claim a 50% discount on the audio CD 'How to be an Entrepreneur' featuring Steve Parks presenting his ideas live on stage.

To claim your half price CD, visit redshop.biz at:
http://www.redshop.biz/product.php?productid=445

The latest episode of the Flyingstartups podcast has been published.

In this episode we hear from Richard Reed about the beginnings of Innocent Drinks, and from flyingstartups member Ruth Brompton, who has just resigned from her job to run her business full time.

Ruth has got lots of great advice when itc omes to getting out there and making sales.

You'll also hear me live on stage presenting my ideas on 'How to be an Entrepreneur'!

You can listen to, download, or subscribe to the podcast at:
www.flyingstartups.com/podcasts/flyingstartups.

Press Dispensary (featured in the new Podcast) are offering Flying Startups members a £25 discount on a PR training course.

The course will now cost you £100. To find out more, and book your place, Click Here. Mention Flying Startups when you book to receive the discount.

This special offer was announced in the new Flying Startups Podcast, in which we interviewed an expert on how to get your company in the news.

Offer Details

Press Dispensary, a special PR firm for small businesses, is offering a discount of 20% off it's full press release writing and distribution service.

To find out more about this service Click Here.

To claim your discount and try out the service, simply fill out the Online Order Form at this link and mention 'flyingstartups'. The offer is valid until the end of August 2006.
They will then give you 20% off the normal price of £225+VAT.

Your free membership of Flying Startups has just saved you about £50!!

Flying Startups now has its very own podcast! You can listen on the site or download it to your MP3 player. Click to get the Podcast

We've just completed the first stage of a major upgrade of the FlyingStartups website.

Things look a little better, and there's much more going on under the hood too including greater security and user-friendliness.

Changes include:
1. You can now register/logon with your email address.
2. The forums are much more user friendly.
3. You can upload a picture of yourself to be attached to your posts on the site. (to access this log in, then select 'my account' from the menu on the left.)

We'll be unveiling many new additional features over the coming weeks, so watch this space.

I have just relaunched my personal website, http://www.steveparks.co.uk, and I'm now writing a blog!
Soon I'll arrange to have the blog published on here too, so it's easier to access. In it I'll write about entrepreneurial businesses, issues affecting entrepreneurs and other interesting stuff.
And I've very nearly finished my 3rd book - How to Fund Your Business - so I'll be more active on flying startups after that. I've been reading all your pilots logs though, and have greatly enjoyed hearing about your progress. It spurs me on a lot with writing my new book.

I've just been told by my publisher that 'Start Your Business Week by Week' is being translated into Japanese!!

Gakubun-sha of Tokyo has bought the translation rights and will release their version in the summer of 2007.

I'm very excited about this, and will be celebrating with a bottle of Sake this weekend.

I've been involved in the development of an all-in-one business start-up kit -
[?ext:http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=flyingstartup-21&path=ASIN/0273707329 'Startup Business in a Box'].

It contains my books'Start Your Business Week by Week' and 'The Small Business Handbook', plus 'The Definitive Business Plan' by Richard Stutely, another bestseller, and one you may have seen me recommend before.

As well as these three books, it also contains an audio CD to give you some sales training from the experts, as sales is one of the key skills of starting a business.

Plus, there's a CD-rom with useful forms, templates and software - and a book of vouchers worth over £500 with discounts on domain names, company registration etc.

[?ext:http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=flyingstartup-21&path=ASIN/0273707329 you can get 'Startup Business in a Box' from amazon by clicking here]. They're currently doing a special offer on it, so it's very cheap!

Wishing you a fantastic 2006 - and for all your entrepreneurial dreams to come true.
Steve

Hurray! The Small Business Handbook is published at last! What's great (or bad depending on your view) for my ego is that pre-orders are already going so well the publisher had to order the first reprint before the first print was even delivered to their distribution centre!

The book is designed to be a desk reference that you can dip into when you need advice on a particular area of your business, but it's also written in a way that you can read all the way through if you like.

[?ext:http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=flyingstartup-21&path=ASIN/0273695312 you can get 'The Small Business Handbook' from amazon by clicking here].

We've just welcomed our 700th member to Flyingstartups - please give a round of virtual applause to GerryK!

Also, at the time of writing, Start Your Business Week by Week is number 2 in the [?ext:http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/268144 Amazon.co.uk Small Business And Entrepreneurship chart] - second only to Mr Branson! Not bad for a beginner eh?

I've been reading through the pilot's logs and so many flyingstartups members are getting close to launching their businesses to the wider world!

[?person:blog/111 Mac] is preparing to open a shop.
[?person:node/651 Shutz] is taking over a former cafe.
[?person:blog/24 Cassandra] is amassing what seems like the world's biggest collection of seamstresses to make her snazzy travel bags for the world!
and [?person:blog/354 joanne] is motoring ahead with her plan to revolutionise the baby food market, with manufacturers interested in licensing her idea for production!

My bet is on Joanne to be our first millionaire (I hope that doesn't add to your pressure too much Joanne!) - or is anyone else going to race her there?

Well, you might have noticed that there is something different about Flying Startups! We've completed the first stage of the improvements, which was to upgrade the hardware and software platform that the site runs on. Its now even more secure, faster, and the new design looks great (I hope you do agree!).

The next stage is to start implementing the new features that will make it easier to use, give you a greater range of information and resources, and build the community feel of the site. Thanks to everyone who posted their ideas and feedback - it's all been taken on board.

(Now I think I'll get some sleep! The one challenge with the upgrade is that we want to do it when it won't matter that we take the site offline for a while - and that's late on a Saturday night. Thanks very much to Scooter, Mouse and the more sensibly named Andy for helping out.)

I've been so focussed on writing The Small Business Handbook that I missed the latest milestone in this sites development!

Our 600th member joined the other week! We're adding about 100 registered members a month now, with many more just browsing around as guests. On average it seems to be that about 10% of the people who buy the book register on the site.

Anyway, please give a very warm flyingstartups welcome to our 600th member, Sarah Cusick!

I have just pressed 'Send' to email the finished manuscript for 'The Small Business Handbook' to my publisher.

It's been a long time in coming because of my operation earlier this year, so it was great to finally complete it. I just hope you guys like it when it publishes in early December!

I've just tidied up my study which was strewn with my research, and I'm now going to have a nice bottle of red with dinner, followed by a celebratory whisky and cigar! (I don't normally smoke anything but it feels like a good way to celebrate!)

Hurray!

:)
Steve

Hi fellow pilots,

Sorry for the prolonged absence from the site - I've ended up writing two books! The next one will be published at the start of December (The Small Business Handbook), the one after that will publish in February.

I've still got a few thousand words to do, but the deadline is a week on Monday.

I'm enjoying keeping up with your progress by reading the pilot's logs - but am having to refrain from the temptation of replying until I've met my deadline. I'll be back in full force in just over a week though.

Cheers
Steve

Just a quick note to welcome the 500th registered member to flyingstartups! kmoores registered today, so please make her feel very welcome.

And, to the hundreds of you who visit each day without registering, do join. It's free and it enables you to be a part of the friendliest, most helpful community for business start-ups in the world!

If you're already a member, please add a comment to this message with your reasons for why it's a good thing to become a member.

Hi everyone,

Please excuse me being a bit quiet on this site at the moment - I'm in the final weeks of writing my next book - The Small Business Handbook.

It's been a bit delayed because I've had a couple of operations in the first half of this year - but I'm now pretty much back to full health so the publisher has chained me to my computer and set me the deadline of mid July! So in the daytime I run my businesses, and I write solidly in the evenings and at weekends.

So rest assured that I'm reading the pilot's logs as much as ever (they're addictive aren't they?!), but will be doing less posting of comments until later in the month.

Hope you're all doing well with your businesses, and finding my first book useful. It's all the great feedback I've had from you guys that is spurring me on to finish this next book, so thanks very much.

cheers
steve

One of the big costs (money AND time) that entrepreneurs face in starting-up is getting the proper legal documentation in place - shareholders agreements, employment contracts, terms and conditions of sale and so on. The result is that many try to ignore this and get by without these, only finding out their mistake later when they lose money or even lose a court case.

To prevent Flying Startups members falling into that trap I've negotiated a deal with a website called simply-docs.co.uk - an online service providing template contracts. It normally costs £95+vat per year to get full access to all their documents, but if you use this offer it will only cost you £70+vat.

Just to emphasise that I get no financial benefit from this deal - and am in fact a paying customer of the site myself. I negotiated the deal for you because I found it so useful.

Visit www.simply-docs.co.uk and take a browse around. If you like what you see, then use these instructions to claim your discount:

1. visit http://www.simply-docs.co.uk

2. click on 'my account' and register as a new customer

3. on completion of your details click on the 'register' button

4. On the 'My Account - Buy Subscription' page, select '6. All' at £95

5. On the 'My Account - Buy Subscription - Confirmation' page, enter this promotion code: 'FSU3695.N' and click 'OK'

6. The price will alter to £70+vat. Finish by clicking 'Continue' to make your payment via the Worldpay website.

The offer is valid until the end of July 2005.

Please do let me have any feedback about the service.

Steve

It was great to meet those of you who came along to the Start-Up show in Birmingham last week. And hundreds of copies of the book were sold over the two days there, so welcome to all those of you who were introduced to 'Start Your Business Week by Week' at the event, and have now joined the website!

Now that I've got a weekend at home at last I've been spending some more time reading pilots logs and answering questions in the forums. Here are some interesting posts (click on the name to read them):

• [?person:blog/394 Gracetrain] is in the first few weeks of her business, but has already been working on getting her first customer - great work!
• [?person:blog/217 Laurajay] has got her own offices - and lots of customers - for her marketing consultancy.
• [?person:blog/236 Mark Gittos] has been active in the forums, but has now started a pilots log too. He's part of a group of small businesses that have decided to work together. Great idea.
• [?person:blog/442 tcjaccounting] is excited, but nervous - and already has some customers.
• [?person:blog/206 irena] came along to the Start-Up show in Birmingham and doesn't think the photo of me in the back of the book looks anything like me!! (I don't know whether she thinks i look better or worse in reality!!). She also took away the message from the day of 'Focus!', and is still searching for a mentor.
• [?person:blog/424 Emily] Openly admits to skipping Week 2 (the focus noticeboard)!!! :) She's already seen the benefit of cutting back on TV though.
• [?person:node/475 Cassandra] has a report of her visit to the Start-Up show to add to her great pilots log - well woth a read for other budding entrepreneurs. She's very open (That's Americans for you! ;) Much better at it than us reserved Brits. ) and you can pick up a lot of ideas and advice from her progress.

If you haven't started a pilot's log yet - start now! It's a great way of picking up advice and contacts from other people, and you'll have something to look back on in the future to remember the early years of your business.

To start a pilot's log.

1. Register for free to become a member of flying startups. [?link:user/register Click Here to register now]
2. [?link:node/add/blog Click Here to create a new entry in your pilots log]

And if you haven't written in your pilots log, add a new entry now, we're all dying to hear how you're getting on.

This Saturday I'll be speaking at the Business Start-up show at the NEC in Birmingham. I have two sessions: one with me talking abut finding and developing your business ideas at 11am in Seminar Hall 5, then I'll join a panel of entrepreneurs and business writers for a debate in Seminar Hall 1 at 12.30.
I know that some of you have mentioned in your logs that you'll be there too, so I look forward to meeting you. When I'm not speaking I'll be on my publisher's stand (Pearson Education) signing books (bizarre eh?!) Do come and say hi if you have time.
For details of the event see http://www.bstartup.com
Steve

I love reading your [?link:blog Pilot's Logs] - and now it's getting more exciting than ever because people who are following the steps in 'Start Your Business Week by Week' are now opening for business for the first time.

Here are some of the most recent [?link:blog Pilot's Log] entries:

[?person:blog/90 pdc] has left his job, started his business and landed his first customer!
[?person:blog/223 nikushka] is going to move to spain and start a business teaching yoga to children.
[?person:blog/217 laurajay] has quickly earned a reputation as a marketing whizz-kid. She has won two clients who are members of this site (I love to see you all doing business together). She'd like your advice on how to network.
[?person:blog/277 james] has been accepted by a Business Incubator scheme in Manchester.
[?person:blog/366 olga] has just started the process of planning her photography business, and has lots of questions.
[?person:blog/24 cassandra77] writes one of the most interesting and in-depth pilots logs on this site. She's making great progress with her business too!

There are many other fascinating Pilot's Logs so take a [?link:blog browse through all recent Pilots Log entries]. Registered members can post comments in reply to Pilots Logs, and thanks to all those who do this, providing useful advice and contacts to other members. You're what this site is all about!