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112 • The 100 Greatest Ideas for Building the Business of Your Dreams

Quite quickly you will be hardly aware of how much you really do know, which
is why you will, at first, be surprised when you find that the person who looks after
the shop for one day while you go to a wedding has done so much damage in such a
short time.

I know one person who took his skills from his previous working life to an
antique stall in Petticoat Lane. He had previously been in the money markets con-
necting buyers to sellers and depending for his profit on the margin between the two
prices. Everyone knew when he started that he knew very little about antiques and
we wondered how he would survive. The answer was his ability, learnt in the money
markets, to remember exactly what he had paid for every individual item on a crowded
stall, none of which had a price tag on it. This made him a lethal negotiator since he
always looked very casual and never consulted documents or books. In the end he
became an expert in a narrow field, took on a partner and managed a number of
shops.

Idea 66 - Get the timing right

You know the water is warm, you are braced for the dive, so what are you waiting
for?

There is a fundamental rule in business that risk and reward go hand in hand -
the higher the risk the higher will be the reward however that is measured. This
makes selecting the right time to go for your dream a two-edged sword. Suppose
you have a £200,000 mortgage on your property, two children at school and an-
other on the way and ends are only just meeting on a salary of £55,000 a year; at
that time the risk of your dream making an unwelcome but enforced change to your
standard of living is probably too high. But remember those people with super-glue
on their feet and don't wait too long. I mean, seriously, if you have enough money
from your early retirement package to live comfortably without working at all, are
you really going to want to get up six days a week to run a village post office?