"The first million dollars is the hardest" Sergey Vatutin. Sergey VatutinThe first million dollars is the hardest About the book "The first million dollars is the hardest" Sergey Vatutin

The book was created for people who think that it is impossible to open their own business in today's market. For start-up entrepreneurs who do not know where to start and how to develop without starting capital.

The first million dollars is the hardest

After studying the book, you will receive answers on how to achieve financial well-being at minimal cost. Learn working techniques to attract a large number of clients, learn about investment tools and develop a positive mindset.

In the book by Sergey Vatutin "The first million dollars is the hardest":

How to choose the right niche for entrepreneurial activity;
Preparation and creation of a successful business structure;
Successful start without a budget;
How to properly prepare and implement a working, not a ruinous PR campaign.

Sergey Vatutin's book is much more than letters and words, it is a concentrated long-term experience of a successful entrepreneur, a practical history of creating and developing a business. Reading it, it seems that you are directly communicating with Sergey, absorbing invaluable experience.

It often happens that books are written by those who have not developed their own project, what can they teach? The First Million Dollar Is the Hardest is a guide with a whole range of effective development methodologies that both aspiring and experienced entrepreneurs should read.

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The first million dollars is the hardest Sergei Vatutin

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Title: The first million dollars is the hardest

About the book "The first million dollars is the hardest" Sergey Vatutin

Do you still doubt that you can start your own business and achieve success?

Read a lot of books but still haven't done anything?

You are tormented by the question: “Where to find clients?”

In this book, you will learn how to start your own business with minimal investment (or even without it), as well as how to create financial prosperity. In addition, you will create a powerful flow of customers, develop positive thinking and get investment tools. Why else should you read this book? The author admits: “If I started now, having my current experience and knowledge, I would take off much higher and faster. I sincerely hope that with the help of this book it will be much easier for you.”

On our site about books, you can download the site for free without registration or read online the book “The first million dollars is the hardest” by Sergey Vatutin in epub, fb2, txt, rtf, pdf formats for iPad, iPhone, Android and Kindle. The book will give you a lot of pleasant moments and a real pleasure to read. You can buy the full version from our partner. Also, here you will find the latest news from the literary world, learn the biography of your favorite authors. For novice writers, there is a separate section with useful tips and tricks, interesting articles, thanks to which you can try your hand at writing.

Quotes from the book "The first million dollars is the hardest" by Sergey Vatutin

Business sale announcements are best placed on www.biztorg.ru. If employees are not aware of the sale of the business, then it is better to hide the name, and also try to distort the description somewhat, so that employees who accidentally get this ad unexpectedly through the fourth hand (and such cases happen) do not ask unnecessary uncomfortable questions.

He refused, and, as it turned out, after a few months this project was closed without waiting for investment. In the end, I decided: rather than trusting other people's business plans with vague prospects for return on investment, it is better to invest in real estate and rent it out.

Mystery Shopper It happens that the eyes of those who have been working in a particular business for many years become blurred. And it is very important to look at the business from the other side, from the side of the client. To do this, we regularly practice visits to our offices by "mystery shoppers".

www.solnushkov.ru Coach, teacher, psychologist, writer and a real holiday person. It is rare to find a person with such a positive attitude.
He knows how to charge others with optimism, joy and cheerfulness.

For those who want a guaranteed income in the stock market, bond mutual funds may be suitable, which, if caught at the right time to enter the market, can give a yield slightly higher than bank deposits. True, this income, unlike deposits, is not guaranteed by the state.
But, nevertheless, as a diversification tool, I still consider the stock market as a potential investment opportunity. You just need to look for the right opportunities to enter.

Usually the sharpest upward moves in the stock market occur at a time when absolutely no one believes in growth. Now (in the summer of 2014) our market is very much underestimated and no one wants to invest in it. So there might be some good investment opportunities coming up soon.

And if you want to build a big company, then think like a big company right away. Often an entrepreneur thinks like this: I’ll earn a lot of money, then I can afford great specialists, I’ll start paying them good money, and everything will be fine.
But the paradox is that until you start attracting great specialists, you don’t start paying them good money, most likely you won’t earn normal money. And you will only spin like a squirrel in a wheel, constantly plugging holes that arise due to the presence of amateurs in the company or, in principle, a lack of employees. It is impossible to take off without having adequate resources to do so.

Dear reader,

with the purchase of my book, you also received a unique opportunity to participate in a special competition and win one of three valuable prizes:

1. Voucher from the network of travel agencies "1001 tour"

2. Business consultation from Sergey Vatutin (1 hour)

3. Prize from the EKSMO Publishing House

The conditions for participation in the competition are as follows

1. Post a review of my book “The first million is the hardest” on OZON.ru

The three winners with the best reviews will be personally chosen by me and receive amazing prizes!

Sincerely, Your Sergey Vatutin

Foreword

Welcome to the brain!

What is a book really?

A book is much more than just pages, letters, and words. A book is the encoded mind of its author. When you read a book, you actually communicate with the person who wrote it.

Your consciousnesses are mixed. You cannot read a book without a trace for yourself.

Therefore, the extremely important question is what quality of consciousness you are dealing with. Not all books are worth reading. Some books are even dangerous to read.

Sergei Vatutin is the result that the reader strives for, embodied in a living person. His book is his way. A path full of big and small victories and defeats. Every word and every conclusion on these pages is not accidental and lived independently.

And this path continues.

I was lucky to communicate with Sergey live and have him as a close friend. This communication has had a tremendous impact on my business, my results, and my life.

Therefore, even if you do not yet have the opportunity to communicate with him personally, you have a unique opportunity to communicate with his mind on the pages of this book.

Have a nice acquaintance!

With respect to Sergey and to you,

Mikhail Dashkiev

Founder of the All-Russian project

"Business youth"

Why did I write this book?

In the book you were lucky enough to buy, I decided to talk about my experience in starting a business. About growth and development on the way from an advertising agent who earns extra money in his free time to the founder of the 1001 Tour network, one of the largest federal networks of travel agencies. Today it is more than 250 own and franchised offices throughout Russia and neighboring countries. Moreover, although almost all travel agencies have complained about a lack of customers and a decline in sales in recent years, we have increased the number of our own offices and sales by 50% in 2013 alone and are not going to stop there!

I want to show you that everything is not so difficult, and you can achieve a lot too!

In the book, I will talk about what specific actions managed to grow such a business and what mistakes were made along the way. No one, I hope, thinks that we were just lucky? :).

The book should be useful both for those who are just planning their own business, and for those who already have a business. I think that you have not yet made all the mistakes that I have made, and reading the book will help you avoid these mistakes.

I wanted to write this book because there is very little information on the market about starting and developing a business from Russian practice. It's certainly interesting to read the success stories of McDonald's or Apple. However, let's be realistic. Not many of us are destined to create a transnational corporation. And even if it is destined, then you will have to start this path from scratch - from small to medium business, from medium to large and from large to huge.

There are also books on the market from business theorists and consultants who have heard from someone how to do business. From specialists who conduct seminars on "How to become a millionaire", and then take the subway and go to a rented Khrushchev on the outskirts of the city. Coaches who teach that Coca Cola's success is based on its values. And how can they know about these values if they have never even been to their central office? Have you read all this in Western books and now retell the same thing in your own words?

Often write books about business and advise start-up entrepreneurs those who have not succeeded in their business. Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.

For example, the founder of the Eviterra air ticket service, which went bankrupt in January 2014 and left thousands of tourists without air tickets, advises on how to create Internet projects for a fee of 1,000 euros per hour. A negative experience is also an experience :).

My task is not to tease you with beautiful pictures from the life of multibillion-dollar companies and not to load you with abstract business theory, but to show the real way of business growth and development, with all the mistakes and difficulties - from self-employment and microbusiness to small and medium.

In my case, this path took many years.

In 2014, my first project Turizm.ru turns 16 years old. However, looking back from today, I see how many mistakes I made, how many things I did wrong. If I started now, with my current experience and knowledge, I would fly much higher and faster.

I sincerely hope that this book will make it much easier for you.

The name "The first million dollars is the hardest" was not chosen by chance. Once you make your first million, you will have a good experience, and the second and third millions will be much easier and faster for you.

After the life of a wealthy successful person becomes your reality, it will be very difficult for you to return back to gray everyday life. And even if fate brings you down from heaven to earth, you will inevitably rise - simply because you will already know the laws of business. Remember Donald Trump. He went broke many times, but he always got up because he already knew another reality.

Personally, it took me about ten years to make my first million. The second and third came almost immediately. At first it seemed to me that the more you work, the better the results will be. But then the understanding came that it was not about the amount of work, but about the accuracy of the application of efforts and the correct prioritization.

And most importantly - do not take others seriously, who will definitely say: “Well, where are you climbing? You won't be able to do anything." Especially if these others and themselves did not succeed. They are simply afraid that you will really succeed, and then it will be much more difficult for them to justify their failures.

Try to listen only to the opinion of those who have achieved more than you in the area of interest to you. Learn from the successful! A positive attitude and self-confidence work wonders!

This book presents not only my experience, but also the experience of dozens of businesses that I had to deal with - somewhere as a creator or co-owner, somewhere as a friend of the owner, somewhere as a coach helping to see and correct certain narrow places.

After talking with dozens of business owners, you realize that most of them have the same problems (although it seems to the person himself that his situation is completely unique). And I often recognize myself in these problems in the early stages of business development. Then I also thought that my situation was completely different from others.

One of the most important things that I would like to convey with this book is that the current state of the business depends entirely on the mood of the business owner, his efforts, his energy. Any business, even in a growing market, can be ruined if the owner consciously or unconsciously makes efforts to do so. Likewise, any (well, or almost any) business can be pulled out by the efforts of the owner, his faith in success and the right attitude. If you break through walls with your head for the sake of business growth, then success is inevitable!

I want to note that despite the fact that the book talks a lot about how to start your own business, I will not tell you how to register an LLC, how to balance, what computers to choose for an office, etc. I believe that everyone a person should do what he likes and what he is an expert in. Legal, accounting, technical issues bore me, so I prefer to hire specialists in these areas, which is what I advise you. This book is an entrepreneur's view of how to build a business and life in general.

Analyzing the path that I managed to go through, I understand that the main achievement of my main business - the network of travel agencies "1001 Tour" - is the ability to organize a massive flow of incoming customer requests in our business. A huge number of small businesses suffer and close just because of the lack of customers.

Even if the company's product is excellent, it is not enough for success. We lived most of the time in the opposite situation: an excess of customers. Obviously, being in such a situation is much more pleasant. But in fact, this situation also gives rise to many problems - from an increased load on all departments of the company to a feeling of excessive satiety and complacency among salespeople.

Still, it's much more enjoyable to solve problems in a situation of excess customers, so in the book I pay significant attention to exactly how you can create such an excess of calls in your business.

In this book, I give many examples from the tourism market that I know best, as well as a good number of examples from other industries that I have come into contact with. And I do not advise you to think that if you do not work in tourism, then the book will be useless to you.

I am 200% sure that the problem of many businesses is being locked in their own world, in their own market. You can often hear phrases like "In our market, no one does that." So what? Maybe he doesn't do it right? Will you be the first to do it and suddenly hit the jackpot?

For example, we took a lot of techniques from other industries and adapted them a little. At the same time, I will not be upset at all if some of the tricks and tricks written in this book are suddenly read by our fellow competitors from the tourism market. First, during the preparation of this book, we will undoubtedly move forward and come up with many more interesting things. And secondly, most readers of books do not even read them to the end. Not to mention the fact that something from the book to implement in your business. So the expression of the poet Vladimir Vishnevsky is more relevant than ever: "More and more people are keeping our secret."

I make no claim to absolute truth. I do not rule out that in your business something may not work as it should, or even quite the opposite. This is fine. This book is just an example of what has worked for me personally. Moreover, I do not claim to be the author of all the ideas and techniques that are presented in this book.

Everything that is written here, everything that I live and am interested in - all this is a combination of fifteen years of experience and information that I received from dozens of books, from hundreds of personal meetings, from communication with people whom I am proud to call my Teachers (about the importance of teachers and about from whom and what I learned, I will tell in a separate chapter).

I wish you good luck and patience on the way to your First Million!

The book "How to become rich and famous" - 300 rubles

Book How to Get Rich Unknown - $10,000

Chapter 1

From the student bench to the present day.

The path traveled, the main lessons and mistakes.

I was born into a decent intelligent family. My mother is an English teacher, my father is a professor of mathematics. I think that after my birth, my parents saw me as an ordinary Soviet person - a mathematician, programmer, economist or something like that. The destiny that my parents laid for me did not imply stellar breakthroughs.

The material world has always seemed somewhat secondary to me. I was never focused on things, I did not dream of yachts and planes, but I liked to think and calculate moves. And everything would probably have turned out so calmly if in high school I had not felt a sharp object in my back, suspiciously resembling an awl. I realized that the quiet, modest, withdrawn Capricorn will never achieve anything in this life.

As a high school student, I was a closed boy, I sat alone at home, I had few friends, the girls were not interested in me, and I myself was afraid of them. I had many fears: that I was not good enough, not brave enough, not attractive enough to find a girl, make a lot of money, etc.

I often liked to go for walks in the center of Moscow. I traveled alone because there was no one with me. And I realized that if everything goes on like this, then I will celebrate my thirtieth birthday together with a glass.

I absolutely did not want this.

Then I realized that if you want other results in life - friends, girls, money - you must make certain efforts for this. This path was not at all easy, it took me a lot of effort to break myself.

By and large, this path continues to this day. Of course, I’m far from being that quiet, modest student, but worms sometimes appear: “Well, yes, you deserve a million, but you’re not good enough for billions.”

Now I understand that the one who manages to muffle this voice in himself achieves real success. Convince yourself that you deserve everything you want. And with such an attitude, the sea is knee-deep.

I started my career in 1996 in the first year of the Plekhanov Academy of Economics. A friend offered me a job as an advertising agent in the Golden Pages directory. Now it is no longer there, but then it was a fairly popular reference book, an analogue of the more well-known Yellow Pages now.

I suppose, dear reader, that you are still quite young and you may not believe me that in 1996 the Internet was a rarity and people often looked for information in directories.

The Golden Pages was the first school for me in terms of selling ads. It was there that I met my first, one might say, business teacher. It was Marina Borisovna, the head of our group of agents, who taught us how to sell advertising.

This woman had just unreal energy. We came to the planning meeting sad, uncertain, battered by life (I, a student, was perhaps the most positive there, the rest had problems with alcohol, health, some domestic troubles). And just after an hour of working with Marina Borisovna, everyone felt an incredible uplift, we were literally blown away - everyone so wanted to sell. It’s bad that this happened in the evening, if we received such a boost of energy in the morning, then we would be worn like clockwork all day.

Almost no one had cell phones then, and I had to make most of the calls between couples from a card payphone located in the hall of the institute. Sometimes I skipped classes and then I could make calls from home. Moreover, as we were taught in the handbook, in no case was it even possible to call clients in shorts at home.

Therefore, at home I put on a suit, and when I picked up the phone, I realized that I really felt more respectable. This made it possible to speak more confidently with customers and more easily endure the rejections that are inevitable with cold calls.

In parallel with the advertising business, I also had fun with a friend in various less stable projects. For example, they tried to bet on various sporting events. However, I did not do it very well, and for one win I had two or three losses.

As a result, I stopped doing it, and a friend began to take a serious interest in sports and after a few years began to do it on an industrial scale, sometimes earning hundreds of thousands of rubles.

Also sometimes on weekends we were engaged in avtoperekonka. During our trips from Tolyatti to Moscow, we talked a lot about what we can achieve.

I remember one of the most ambitious goals for us students then was to start earning enough money to afford a cell phone. Then it seemed like an elusive goal, accessible only to the oligarchs. It seemed that we would always have to go around "like suckers, with a pager."

But only a couple of years passed, and in my pocket, finally, a bulky telephone set of the now defunct Sonet mobile operator with a direct Moscow number, and even with an unlimited tariff, appeared. Thanks to the crisis of 1998, after it, cellular communications became much more accessible.

In the spring of 1996, fate took me to the spring tourism exhibition, and there I got my first travel agency clients. I began to place their ads in free print media: Extra-M, Center Plus, Tourism and Recreation, and others. Now almost all of these publications have already died safely, but then they were the main source of customers for thousands of companies from a wide variety of industries.

I was quite persistent, made many calls and meetings, and as a result, by the summer of 1998, I had accumulated a base of active clients - about 20-30 firms. Every day I traveled around several companies, collected money, and once a week I prepared layouts at home until late at night, and in the morning I took layouts and money to an advertising agency. In fact, I worked as a highly paid courier.

My income at that time was up to $2,000 a month, which for 1998 was very respectable. At the same time, my parents were specifically unhappy that I was engaged in “trafficking”, and they really hoped that I would finally find a normal job.

The model of my advertising business was simple to disgrace. The advertising agency gave me a 40% discount, and my task was to persuade clients to advertise in this or that publication through me, giving them a small discount. However, since there were a huge number of hungry agents like me walking around the market, I had to constantly increase the discount to customers in order to keep them. First it was 15% off, then 20% off, then 25% off, and eventually by 1998 some customers were getting 38% off, which left me mere pennies. So we, the players in the unstructured market, dug our own grave in a few years.

Later, I will intersect with this situation in other markets. When you can't give a customer some unique value, all you have to do is compete on price. And this is an obvious path to nowhere.

The same problem exists, for example, with realtors. Clients do not feel the value in their services and are not ready to pay a monthly rent when renting or 3-5% when buying a property. As a result, due to competition on real estate websites, the same apartment can be offered by different agents with a commission from 25% to 100% of the monthly rent. And for someone who asks for 100%, it is very difficult to explain to the client why this is so.

– Tell me, why do everyone in the market have tomatoes for 10 rubles, and you have 20?

- Yes, I understand that it's expensive, it's just that the money is very necessary.

The same situation exists in the travel agency market, I will talk about this below.

As I later found out, not all clients worked with me for economic reasons. Then I learned about one of the clients that they, working with me, carried out the "social mission of business."

The crisis of 1998 dealt a significant blow to the business of advertising agents, and many of my clients went bankrupt. But on the other hand, 1998 was a time of fanatical faith in the future of the Internet. It was then that the first boom of Internet projects in America happened. And one day, after some regular sleepless night, I thought: “Damn, something needs to be done.”

At that time, he was, thank God, free and cost me an insane amount of 150 dollars for me at that time.

I am clearly not a designer. Moreover, since the Internet then was not as widespread as it is now, I saw Turizm.ru once a week at my dad's at work. I worked on the site at home, and once a week I came to my dad, poured some updates on the site and went back. And all week I didn't know what was going on with the site.

Gradually, the resource began to unwind, advertising began to appear, and the site began to bring in little money. The site grew, developed, and today it has up to 150 thousand visitors a day. Indeed, now it is one of the leading tourism projects in Russia. It contains a lot of useful information, hotel descriptions, reviews and, of course, advertising of travel agencies and tour operators, on the income from which, in general, the project lives.

Then I realized that PR is a very useful tool for promoting a business, and I began to write articles, trying to attach them to various publications. I still remember the storm of emotions that swept over me when in 1998 my first article “Tourism Advertising on the Internet: Opportunities and Dangers” was published in the Turinfo newspaper. Then, for most businesses, advertising on the Internet was a dark forest, and not everyone was sure that there could be at least some benefit from it. I had feelings comparable with the release of the first article only much later, when I held in my hands my first freshly printed book, Profitable Travel Agency.

Only in 2000, when the business was already bringing in little money, I opened my first office, with an area of 13 meters. It was a closet on a flight of stairs in a scientific research institute on the outskirts of Moscow. At the same time, the first employee with a salary of $ 180 was hired, and then the second. We outgrew the first office in about six months.

The second office already occupied about 30 meters, and it could accommodate up to 8 people. It was already an office in the center, in the courtyard on Sofiyskaya embankment. True, it was an old two-story house, and after every rain it was leaking from the ceiling. We had to move the tables so that the jets did not hit the computers.

The third office, on Kurskaya, was already much more decent, although it was located in the basement, but for the first years it was dry and warm there.

Moving to Kurskaya was not an easy decision for me, because it was another "tectonic shift". Instead of one room where I saw everyone, we got three offices. And most of the employees I no longer saw and could not control every minute. It seemed to me that this could be a disaster, and for a long time I could not decide on it. But later it turned out that, being in other rooms, people can also work fully. And then it turned out that with the right organization of processes, people can work normally at different parts of the city and even in other cities.

We have been sitting in that building for five years already, gradually capturing the neighboring offices in our entrance. At that time we saved on everything. The realization that, in some cases, greater spending can significantly accelerate development did not come immediately. But, despite these difficulties, traffic to our site continued to grow.

And in April 2002, I finally opened the first travel agency office.

Then I did not know that it would be a network, it was a small semi-basement agency, where one and a half managers worked, and I periodically worked as a courier.

I remember well the day we sold the first tour. My first and so far only manager worked with the client, convincing him that being the first for the company is not so scary. In the end, every surgeon, in order to become a professional, first needs to get their own cemetery :).

And I sat in the next room and thought with horror what responsibility I take on. After all, the client pays us a lot of money, trusts us with his vacation. And if something goes wrong, then I can’t take my head off ...

The agency was then called "Emerald City". I always liked the green color, and I loved Volkov’s books as a child, so I didn’t think about the name for a long time. As it soon became clear, in vain ...

In the fall of 2002, I met a marketer Alexei Sukhenko, who was engaged in the creation of brands, and thus learned that we cannot use the Emerald City trademark. It turned out that it was already registered by another company, and in the future we could have problems.

In addition, the name symbolized a fairy tale and magic, and it was not very suitable for scaling. I really did not want to change the name, but there was nowhere to go. As a result, Sukhenko proposed another name, "1001 Tour".

This is how Aleksey described the logic of this name in his book "Top Manager's Guide":

It contains a hint of the Thousand and One Nights fairy tales (as well as an oriental flavor), and a large number of tours offered and sent tourists, and at the same time an individual approach: there are no identical tours.

This name also reflects the computer "advancement" of this agency for people using the latest achievements of science and technology: in general, all computer technology.

So, the search is based on the binary system, and here "1" = "yes" and "0" = "no". So they flash, demonstrating the search, units and zeros in the logo on the company's website www.1001tur.ru.

To top it off, 1001 is the number equal to 9, the largest single digit in decimal.

In addition to the name, together with Alexei Sukhenko, a development strategy was also created, which at that time amazed with its ambition: a travel company sending 5,000 tourists a year in the far, far future.

Now we ship so much in less than a month. Frankly, almost immediately after the creation of the strategy was put on the far shelf, and I got it again quite recently, when the company was already 11 years old.

It turned out that there were separate ideas in it that have not lost their relevance so far. Perhaps we still use some of them (another confirmation that it would be better to do everything at once, without delay).

Of course, we didn’t have money to develop a strategy at that time, so for this work we paid off with Alexei by creating a website in my web studio for his branding agency (I assume that at that moment he also didn’t have money to create it :)).

With the new name, things went well for us, less than a year later we opened another office, and then another, and then off we go. At first, we opened only our own offices, and in 2006 we decided to try to entrust our brand to a franchised travel agency from St. Petersburg, and so we began mass replication of the network throughout the country.

For the summer of 2014, the network already has more than 200 sales offices throughout the country, of which about 10% are our own, and the rest work under our franchise brand.

As the business grew and developed, I managed to organize the main processes so that the system would work without me. And in 2010, I opened a new direction - this time it was teaching travel agencies the basics of a successful business. I called the project Turdelo.ru.

As part of this project, I began to conduct paid and free seminars and webinars for travel agencies, sell educational video courses, and also published a book "Profitable travel agency: advice to owners and managers", in which my experience of bringing a travel agency to the trajectory of success was collected.

Later, a book was added to it. Business cloning. Franchising and Other Rapid Growth Models, as well as Franchising from A to Z– co-authored with several other experts. All these books, if desired, can be bought, for example, at Ozone.

For me, the turn towards education and training was quite stressful, since I used to mostly sit quietly in my office. Maximum - could call an employee to him to motivate him with a carrot in front or a carrot in the back.

And then I had to speak in public. To learn how to do this confidently and more or less professionally, I signed up for coaching with Petr Osipov, now one of the founders of the all-Russian project “Business Youth”, and then a novice coach in public speaking.

The training was tough; it happened that on Saturday morning Peter called me and said that in a couple of hours I would have to speak to girls from orphanages. What was there to talk about with them? The maximum that I could tell was about business, but they clearly had something else in mind.

I had to get out, telling funny stories from life. Gradually, I learned to perform tolerably and even sell at my performances. I remember the first time I counted the 50 thousand rubles earned at the performance, I experienced sensations comparable to an orgasm. Previously, I could not believe that it was so easy to earn money with the language. It is clear that these incomes were incomparable with the income in the main business, but such a direct link "action - result" was, of course, pleasant.

Many people say they don't start their own business because they "don't have the money to do so."

I want to note that never in my life there was any "seed capital", investors and sponsors. I have always developed a business using only internal resources, the income of the current business. Of course, in today's situation, many startups consider it simply their duty to start by “attracting investments” that will allow them to live in a big way and try different business models. Moreover, they ask for money from various investors and investment funds, according to an estimate of at least five million dollars, although they have practically no sales. Sometimes that kind of money is asked at a stage when all the founder has is a few slides of a PowerPoint presentation.

Developing a business “on your own” is considered absolutely out of date. I can't understand this.

I agree that in order to scale an already successful model, it may be advisable to attract an investor. But, to be honest, you need to do this already at the stage when the model has shown its success on a small scale, you have learned to count money and really earn money. And you need money not to "try", but to earn significantly more.

In my situation, such external investments were irrelevant, since scaling did not require large expenses and I simply did not know where I could spend the large funds raised. Yes, to be honest, it would be scary to do it. Now I already feel confident in myself to increase not only my own, but also other people's money, but the path to this conscious confidence takes years.

Sergei Vladimirovich Vatutin

The first million dollars is the hardest

Dear reader,

with the purchase of my book, you also received a unique opportunity to participate in a special competition and win one of three valuable prizes:

1. Voucher from the network of travel agencies "1001 tour"

2. Business consultation from Sergey Vatutin (1 hour)

3. Prize from the EKSMO Publishing House

The conditions for participation in the competition are as follows

1. Post a review of my book “The first million is the hardest” on OZON.ru

The three winners with the best reviews will be personally chosen by me and receive amazing prizes!

Sincerely, Your Sergey Vatutin

Foreword

Welcome to the brain!

What is a book really?

A book is much more than just pages, letters, and words. A book is the encoded mind of its author. When you read a book, you actually communicate with the person who wrote it.

Your consciousnesses are mixed. You cannot read a book without a trace for yourself.

Therefore, the extremely important question is what quality of consciousness you are dealing with. Not all books are worth reading. Some books are even dangerous to read.

And this path continues.

I was lucky to communicate with Sergey live and have him as a close friend. This communication has had a tremendous impact on my business, my results, and my life.

Therefore, even if you do not yet have the opportunity to communicate with him personally, you have a unique opportunity to communicate with his mind on the pages of this book.

Have a nice acquaintance!

With respect to Sergey and to you,

Mikhail Dashkiev

Founder of the All-Russian project

"Business youth"

Why did I write this book?

I want to show you that everything is not so difficult, and you can achieve a lot too!

In the book, I will talk about what specific actions managed to grow such a business and what mistakes were made along the way. No one, I hope, thinks that we were just lucky? :).

Often write books about business and advise start-up entrepreneurs those who have not succeeded in their business. Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.

In my case, this path took many years.

I sincerely hope that this book will make it much easier for you.

Try to listen only to the opinion of those who have achieved more than you in the area of interest to you. Learn from the successful! A positive attitude and self-confidence work wonders!

Do you still doubt that you can start your own business and achieve success? Read a lot of books but still haven't done anything? You are tormented by the question: “Where to find clients?” In this book, you will learn how to start your own business with minimal investment (or even without it), as well as how to create financial prosperity. In addition, you will create a powerful flow of customers, develop positive thinking and get investment tools. Why else should you read this book? The author admits: “If I started now, having my current experience and knowledge, I would take off much higher and faster. I sincerely hope that with the help of this book it will be much easier for you.”

* * *

The following excerpt from the book The first million dollars is the hardest (Sergey Vatutin, 2014) provided by our book partner - the company LitRes.

Chapter 2: Beginning. Choosing a niche

It is important to do what you love to do. Ideally, you should want to do this without money. What businesses did I manage to take part in and what came out of it. Key indicators to consider in your business. Manage by performance, not by feeling.

Two brothers, the children of a shoe merchant in Europe, went to explore the market in Africa. Father received two letters.

From the first brother: “Father, there is no market here, everyone goes barefoot. No one will buy our shoes.” From the second brother: “Father, this is an amazing market, everyone goes barefoot. We will cover the whole country!”

On your marks…

I am sure that every person, even if he works in a foreign company and is happy with everything, sometimes comes up with the idea: “Why not open your own business?”

True, this idea comes to many people all the time, but they do nothing for it. Often people who want to open their own business and those who actually open it are completely different people.

Mystery. Three birds were sitting on a branch. One of them decided to fly away. How many birds are left on the tree?

If you answered "three" - you are absolutely right. “Deciding” and “doing” are two very different things!

What can you advise a person who is now an employee, but wants to start his own business? Or a student who is just thinking what to do in life?

The most important thing is to understand what he really wants. You need to mentally draw an ideal picture of life and check if there is a place for business there. Not every person is created in order to "grow" their own company.

For centuries, initiative has been killed in a Russian person, and the vein of entrepreneurship has been etched out of most people, even if a person is not ready to admit it either to himself or to others.

To better understand what to strive for, sit down, set aside 20 minutes, close your eyes and formulate, imagine to saliva how you want to live in 5 years. Because there are other ways to become happy and successful. Maybe you want to raise children, or sing from the stage, or paint still lifes.

You don't have to be in business to be happy. Yes, and money for happiness is far from the main component. We all know a huge number of very well-to-do, but absolutely unhappy people who wake up every morning with horror and anger at the whole world, despite any millions in the bank account. And the happiest people, as you know, live in poor Africa and Asia.

Think also about your personal qualities. Are you responsible and disciplined enough to go to your company office every day, at least initially? Get up every morning if you know that no boss will scold you if you suddenly oversleep and cannot come? Of course, this does not mean that gouging is impossible to succeed in business. I know of such examples. People who are very poorly organized in everyday life, but are extremely talented. But for success, they must have a counterweight that will organize and systematize their creativity.

I have seen several pairs of such a plan, when a chaos boy achieved good success with an excellent student. A boy without a girl would definitely be lost, but together they did great. Of course, you don't have to have a responsible wife to succeed in business. You can limit yourself to a personal assistant :).

Are you resilient enough to handle the challenges of your business? And problems in business, as you know, end only with the business itself.

Are you ready for the hard dirty work?

In order to push people by personal example, at one time I had to carry furniture, and dry the floor with rags after the flood in the office, and carry heavy bags with catalogs as a courier to offices.

Doesn't the prospect scare you? Or do you think that business is sitting in the office and only sometimes asking the secretary: “Katya, please make me coffee with profiteroles”?

Well, how did you draw your vision of life? It is very important that you really believe in him. Whatever fantastic picture you draw, there is probably a person living on this planet, and most likely not one who has it all.

And the question arises: are you something worse? Why can't you have it? Therefore, you must sincerely believe in what you want. And if you truly sincerely want something, then it will definitely work out!

The layman is hindered from starting his own business: administrative barriers, ill-conceived legislation, high interest rates on loans, lack of guarantees for private property rights, excessive tax burden, etc. In a word, all this is called laziness.

Attention…

So, if the decision is made, and you are sure that yes, you will get nowhere without a business, and you want to develop in this direction, then you need to think about choosing a direction.

Here is the first and, probably, the main advice - you need to do what is interesting and what you like. After all, it is better to get money for a hobby than to engage in an unloved activity. And the greatest success can be achieved in what you like. If you like to cut dogs, relatively speaking, then you will do it better than someone who, grimacing, feeling hostility and disgust for a shaggy animal, tries to cut it.

How to determine that this topic is yours?

Ideally, you should feel it for yourself. The Real Business of Life is what you would do even if you weren't paid for it. Something that will make you wake up before the alarm, run and do it because you're just interested.

I have a cook friend who says that if he doesn’t cook for a day, then he literally begins to break down physically. And he cooks, of course, awesome. Moreover, his goal was not just to cook, but to become the best in this business, constantly improve and, as a result, open a restaurant, which he did. Only if you have such a passion, you will truly burst with energy and the result will be simply inevitable. And happy are those who manage to find this passion, especially at an early age.

For example, I was always attracted by the romance of traveling, but since at the beginning of the institute I had not yet thought about the travel agency business, I expressed myself in a rather original and risky way: together with a friend, we went to Togliatti on weekends, bought used Zhiguli on the market there. ”, They brought them to Moscow, and until they were sold, they drove them. And then we went to Tolyatti for the next cars. So at one time I regularly spent weekends on the train - and enjoyed the romance of travel, hauls and dubious hotels.

On the one hand, it is necessary to take into account your interests, and on the other hand, the relevance and relevance of the idea. It is very easy to evaluate this, spending literally a few thousand rubles. Choose the lines of business you are interested in and test them.

Make a simple website, launch an advertising campaign in Yandex. Direct and see what happens, if there is demand. If there is demand, then this topic should be moved further. If not, look for something else. Of course, sometimes there are situations when there is still no demand for a product or service, but in the end, after the launch, it will really “shoot” without multimillion-dollar promotion costs. But this doesn’t happen very often, it’s much more likely that such a “unique idea” will turn into an “elusive Joe” that no one fucking needs.

For example, when opening a travel agency, I was not at all stopped by the fact that there were already several thousand travel agencies in Moscow. For some reason, I was just sure that I could make a travel agency much better than most other people. Remember that for one Mark Zuckerberg who created a completely new type of site - the social networking site Facebook - there were millions of entrepreneurs whose unique businesses ended up failing.

There are niches that look insanely promising (from my personal experience, this is, for example, the wholesale of LED lamps), however, in order to achieve serious success in them, you will have to spend several years and a lot of money. Are you ready for this?

It also makes sense to think about what will happen to this area of activity in 5-10 years. Who now remembers, for example, about pagers? And a few years ago it was a very relevant business. One of my friends was very unlucky, he managed to seriously fit into obviously dying niches twice. For the first time, he built a large and successful chain of printing photographs from film. Who needs it now? In the second stage, he traded wholesale DVDs. As you understand, this topic will also become completely irrelevant very soon.

In tourism, with which I linked my fate, there are also such risks: the departure of tourists into self-booking on the Internet. But opposite trends are saving here so far: firstly, only five to seven percent of the population in Russia go abroad, which means that the market still has great potential. And on the other hand, "1001 Tour", as one of the most advanced Internet travel companies, on the contrary, can only benefit from such a trend. And people will always travel, without it life will not be bright and interesting enough. I am 100% sure of this.

If you want a more permanent result without the risk of being thrown to the margins of evolution, consider Warren Buffett's quote. When asked where to invest money, he replied: “People will always eat, shit and fuck. You should always invest in the natural needs of people, and then you will succeed.”

And most importantly - initially you need to think about sales.

Often, when planning their own business, people begin to dream: I will rent an office, make beautiful business cards on expensive paper, I will have a secretary with long legs, I will sit in a meeting room with partners and drink tea. Well, and so on. But first you need to have money for all this, and for this you need sales. If sales have started, you can increase the turnover, and then think about the office and staff expansion.

Think about who will be the client of your business.

It will be very cool if there is already a constantly high demand for what you plan to do. Creating demand from scratch is much more difficult.

Not long ago, I saw a wonderful scene in our office. We were engaged in a fairly large-scale sale of tickets for the Ice Hockey World Championship in Minsk, which began on May 9, 2014. We have been selling tickets since December, that is, more than six months. But a Russian person always starts moving only at the last moment. And on May 8, there was a real stir in our office!

Almost the whole day there was a live queue in the office, reaching up to 20 people. Some customers even almost got into a fight over the last tickets for the match they were interested in. My employees had already gone home at about 11 p.m., because they had been sorting through documents on perfect sales for a long time, checking the balances. In one day, several hundred apparently expensive tickets were sold.

Being in the office that evening, I felt like a flower seller on the evening of March 8th. It is at such moments that you realize how cool it is to do business. It was a very cool feeling! Everyone was tired, but happy with the results.

And then our team began to win constantly, and the wave of demand increased even more. Only during one of the games, which took place late in the evening, in just a couple of hours we received more than 200 ticket orders!

One can only dream of such an interest in your products. And it’s a big science to make sure that what you do arouses such interest, and constantly, and not just once a year.

Of course, the creation of such a demand is not our merit, thanks to television, which, by showing the matches, greatly whetted the appetites of the fans. But you can create such demand on your own. Apple has mastered this technology to perfection. Try it too!

But it may turn out that there is no demand for what you do.

It happens that a person says: “I will do this, because this is nowhere to be found, but I need it, which means it will sell well.” But the fact that you need it doesn't mean anything. It is important that a large number of people have such a need. Basing your business decision on your needs alone is like doing a “What Percentage of People Use the Internet” survey only on Internet users. The answer will always be “100%”, although if you look at the entire population, this will not be the case at all.

Another very important point that you just need to think about is the environmental friendliness of the business.

Of course, there are enough people who are successfully selling vodka or cigarettes. But I still believe that the consequences of such actions are inevitable.

Not so long ago, I was approached by acquaintances who offered to buy a network of points for issuing microcredits in one regional city. The business was successful and rapidly growing. For a year and a half, about 2 dozen points were opened. And in numbers, everything looked beautiful: the average loan was 5,000 rubles. Interest rate - 2% per day.

This is if you pay without delay.

And for delays, the fines were even more draconian. For a year, a person, having borrowed 5,000 rubles, could pay 50,000 in interest. An impressive net profit.

When I began to understand the reasons for the sale of such a “chocolate” business, it turned out that the owner was seriously ill. And a little later, through third parties, the following quote from the owner reached me: "I'm tired of robbing old ladies."

Indeed, it is clear that a reasonable adult would not take out a loan on such terms. They take only the most disadvantaged, who have no other choice. Of course, there is such an expression: "If you want to become rich, sell to the poor." It may be so, only "sell" does not mean "rip off".

For myself, I realized that I have no desire to engage in ripping off our poorest fellow citizens. I still want my children not to be ashamed of what I do. As a result, my childhood dream of becoming a banker was shattered to smithereens.

I realized that I want to do only business that does not harm the world and the people around me. What do you advise!

Well, in general, no matter how trite it may seem, it is beneficial to be honest.

It is very pleasant if your activity is of irreparable benefit to the world. And you do this business honestly, without throwing partners and employees. I know that there are companies in which the “throwing” of employees, for example, dismissing them without pay, is part of the business process.

But if you want to build a stable, respected company with a good reputation, I advise you to take only ethical steps. At the beginning of my activity, of course, I could underpay someone, take the opportunity if someone forgot to demand some payment from us.

I am ashamed of these situations. And now I try not to allow them, even in small things. And if the cashier gave you extra change in the store, do not forget that she will have to cover this shortage from her own pocket. And she may have a sick mother and three children. Let's bring goodness and openness to this world, sow reasonable, kind, eternal!

In summary, as a first business, it makes sense to take something fairly simple that someone is already doing in the market, but you can do it better, put in more effort, organize advertising more correctly and earn your first money fairly quickly. And only then, having gained experience, you can do something unique, for the soul, etc.

Despite the opinion that there is a lot of competition in almost all industries, many companies work disgustingly, do not know how to attract customers, and do not know how to establish high-quality work. Even the fact that there are already thousands of companies operating on the market does not mean anything, by and large. It may very well be that all these companies perform equally poorly. They do not invest resources in their development and improvement. And bypassing such companies will not be difficult at all.

If you've made up your mind about something, take action.

For some reason, some people think that they have 500 years ahead of them: “I will have time, I will start on Monday, the day after tomorrow, after the holidays” and so on. And life goes away, and the further you go, the less opportunities you have to do something, to change something. So we decided to take action.

There are no wrong steps, the most important wrong step is to stand still. As the saying goes, it's better to regret what you did than what you didn't do. So put the book down right now and analyze what kind of business you would like to be in the next few years.

In my case, the delay played a rather sad role. For example, I wanted to start a travel business back in 1999. I had partners, the premises, in general, it was necessary to start. But I didn’t dare, I slowed down, and everyone around me was frightened by the crisis. And in the end, I lost three years. And those years that were the time of easy money in the tourism business, when one small ad on the Internet could bring several dozen tourists.

If we had started building the network three years earlier, we could have reached our goal much faster - to make the 1001 Tour network the No. 1 retail travel company in Russia.

Some people are also perfectionists. They want to bring their business to perfection before launch. The site must be perfect, the repair must be perfect, etc. Personally, I really like the expression “better once on time than twice right.”

Look at what Bill Gates managed to achieve with his obviously not ideal product. If he had perfected his product for a few more months, it could very well be that it was not him who distributed the operating system around the world, but someone else, not such a perfectionist.

I would not make a very complicated business plan for your project. It will be enough to formulate just a few key figures. Anyway, a lot will change along the way, so it doesn’t make much sense to plan everything to the smallest detail.

Just keep in mind that, as a rule, the situation develops a little worse than you planned. For example, a hostel I knew made a financial plan in such a way that at 50% load they would go to zero, and over 50% of the load would already make a profit.

Look at your business from this perspective. It is completely wrong if you make a profit only at 100% business utilization. Also evaluate the market you plan to work in. Isn't it so that you planned to occupy 50% in this market at once?

I also do not advise doing business entirely on money borrowed from a bank. And, of course, do not forget to take care of having a reserve amount that covers the expected expenses of your business, at least for the first few months.

It would also be very good if the creation of this business was your last hope. In a situation where you come from another city, you have nowhere to live and nothing to eat, the probability of success is much higher than if you just decided to try to do business when everything is fine with you and your dad or husband gives you money. In this case, internally you will consider that you have the right to make a mistake, it is unlikely that you will be thrown out into the street and forced to starve. And it is unlikely that in this case you will give all your best. We have had cases when the head of one of our franchised travel agencies, together with the manager during the summer season, closed the office in the middle of the day and left for lunch. What business breakthroughs can you talk about if lunch is more important to you than customers who could come to the office at this time? After all, in fact, for good results, you often have to undereat and lack sleep.

That is why very few Muscovites achieve noticeable success in Moscow. They have an apartment, a job, and it makes little sense to give all the best. When at some trainings they ask those from Moscow to raise their hands, usually, except for my hand, practically not a single hand is raised.

To decide to move to another city, you need courage and courage, which are very necessary even when starting a new business. So if you come to another city to do business, consider that you are already half a head ahead of your local competitors.

What if it doesn't work?

If you are just starting your business, I am sure that you have doubts: “What if it doesn’t work out? What if I can't? I am an ordinary person, and only outstanding people can succeed in business.”

Do such thoughts visit? They visited me too. In fact, most people don't start their own business because of this kind of uncertainty. And those who can overcome this uncertainty in themselves succeed.

Many of our fears and doubts come from childhood. Of course, most likely, you did not find the time when entrepreneurial activity was a criminally punishable act. But surely your parents or grandparents told you that it is impossible to honestly get rich in our country. That all entrepreneurs are traders who do not deserve any respect. That there are only criminals on the Forbes list. Here an engineer is a respected profession, and an entrepreneur is not clear who. Get busy, granddaughter, it’s better to do something useful, go to college, find a normal job, etc.

I think very few of the older generation were told, "You have to build a big successful company." This is where all the fear comes from. After all, a lot of money is bad. So, to go further, you need to believe that you are worthy of success!

Communicating with many business owners and managers, including quite successful ones (I'm not talking about Rosneft and Gazprom, of course :)), I see that they are absolutely ordinary people. With their cockroaches, sometimes complexes. But at the same time, they had the determination to take and take the first step, the second, the third. And then everything went on and on.

I am also an ordinary person, not some super smart, modest and not too sociable. That didn't stop me from getting involved in the story that got me to where I am today.

Think every day that you are worthy of success.

Think back to yourself as a child, that kid who was only a few years old. What did he dream about then? I am sure that he dreamed of an interesting, eventful life, and not of a boring job, an ugly wife, and that "A mortgage for half a century is not a hindrance to a bright life."

All you need is to develop confidence in yourself that you will succeed. Create the feeling that you are an outstanding person! And then success will be inevitable!

But can they put me in jail? Rob? Throw?

Many people who have never been involved in business have the illusion that as soon as they start their own business, immediately a vigilant state, including its not too honest representatives, will immediately want to lay hands on it.

And immediately scenes appear in your head: your house is cordoned off by a detachment of OMON, submachine gunners descend on the roof of your house, put you in handcuffs and take you to prison. The crying mother is supported by a serious father, and the ex-girlfriend tells reporters: “I knew that he would end badly.”

Such forebodings are greatly supported by the news about Khodorkovsky, who spent many years in prison, as well as messages from the series “Another grouping that illegally cashed out 6 billion rubles has been uncovered.”

In fact, if you do not have some very large turnovers (in Moscow, for example, within 40–50 million rubles a month, in the regions, perhaps 10–15 million), and at the same time you are not engaged in completely black affairs, do not work with a government order and do not require VAT refunds, then the likelihood of significant and painful contact with government agencies is very small.

The state machine is complex and clumsy, and it does not care about any small online store, beauty salon or advertising agency. Unless, of course, one of your ill-wishers has not "greased the track" for this car. And if your turnover has grown, hire a lawyer, and everything will be fine.

But if you are deliberately doing something illegal, then prepare more money.

I heard about the guys who created a large illegal cashing business in one of the regional cities. Profit there was well, very good. But after they were covered, it cost them more than 200 million rubles to pay off the prison. And before that, they spent 11 months under house arrest. So draw your own conclusions. In Russia, it is not without reason that there is such an expression as "Only the poor sit."

Engage in normal, socially useful business, do not meddle in criminal areas and do not try to run for president. Just in case:). Because in the case of a political order, you will be presented with everything, including rough treatment of cattle and smuggling of toffees.

I will also add that a meeting with the mafia in our time is extremely unlikely. So your biggest enemy is your own insecurity and indecision. And do not scare me with all sorts of crises! They are also in the head.

At the same time, there is a chance to meet with petty crime, as well as theft of employees. These are the things to be safe from. Do not leave large sums of money in the office, even in the safe. A safe is a tasty thing for any thieves, and at first we had a lot of situations with opening a safe at night.

There are some activities that for some reason attract all sorts of nasty things. For example, a klondike for theft, both external and by employees, is the sale of cell phones. In my online cell phone store, which I eventually closed a few years ago, you could be 100% sure that if a person orders two expensive phones, then this is a scammer. At first, we got hit a few times when a fragile grandmother-courier was sent for such an order, from whom, of course, these phones were taken away. Nevertheless, anonymous material values are a terrible temptation for some comrades. I think it is superfluous to say that the police officers were by no means eager to drop everything and run away as soon as possible to unravel such crimes.

What I like about tourism is that hitting couriers on the head and taking away tickets or air tickets is somehow not very accepted yet :). Although, we had a case when we ordered railway tickets to the NE for the Moscow-Vladivostok train, and then, on delivery, they snatched the tickets from the courier and ran away. The courier had only two passports left in his hands, which later turned out to be fake. And after 15 minutes these tickets were handed over at the nearest railway ticket office.

Put CCTV cameras in your offices. If there is no money, you can at least hang a dummy. Of course, you will not deceive employees, but for stray thieves, the camera is an annoying factor. And don't forget - "trust but verify". The less opportunities for employees to steal, the calmer for you and for them. Nobody needs extra temptations.

But I want you to understand. Sooner or later, there will definitely come a moment when you find out that one of your employees is stealing from you. It's not a "if" question, it's a "when" question. Such is the nature of some people. Don't make a tragedy out of it.

“What are you stealing from your losses? Steal from profits!”
M. Zhvanetsky

In fact, this situation is most likely your fault. You were not able to establish sufficiently effective control, you could not identify an unscrupulous candidate at the interview, you trusted the employee too much. You have to blame yourself. Well, if such a situation is revealed, fire the person immediately. Once having smelled the smell of stolen money, a person is unlikely to stop.

Well, if we are not talking about obvious theft, then I would not advise conflicting with employees once again. Nobody canceled the labor inspection, and if you wish, you can find fault with anything, even if you have a 100% white salary.

It is also better not to swear with partners. Try to agree on all issues, preferably on the shore, and not when some negative scenario has already taken place. In general, for example, I try to be positive, to work honestly with both employees and partners. And gradually, in some magical way, all the characters with bad intentions disappeared from my life. They just spread out in different directions.

We build business as a system!

Another very important topic that you need to carefully work out at the start is what and how you will manage.

It often seems that an entrepreneur in business manages people, sales. In fact, in a properly organized business, you need to manage numbers, figures.

We, as business owners, must definitely understand where we are going, where we are moving, to what numbers, and not just build work on sensations. It is clear that you consider your revenue, your profit. But besides this, there are still quite a few other important indicators to consider.

For example, the number of calls in your office, the number of visits to your site, the number of requests from the site, the number of customers who came to the office, the number of customers who bought, the number of customers who left without buying.

As trite as it may seem, you need to clearly consider the “sales funnel” in your business. I will not dwell on what it is, a huge number of authors have already done it before me. Type in the “sales funnel” in Yandex, and you will get a comprehensive description.

As for me, I try to control a huge number of numbers in my business. Every evening, I get a big sheet in my email that shows, broken down by line of business, revenue, revenue, number of calls, number of orders, etc.

This data is collected automatically from several sources into a single table. And looking at it, it is already very easy to see what is happening. For example, we see that the number of hits has grown, but sales have not. This means that you need to work with conversion, and this concerns the quality of work of managers. Or, for example, the average check has fallen, which means that it is necessary to strengthen the promotion of more expensive products.

For a sample of such a table of statistics, visit the bonus page for this book: www.vatutin.ru/bonus.

When you analyze the numbers and manage exactly the indicators, everything becomes much easier. And there will no longer be such a mess in my head: “What can be done to increase sales? Maybe put a sofa in the office? Or change the logo from red to green?”

And if, as your business grows, you can afford to hire a business analyst, then the quality of your solutions will increase many times over. A lot can be learned from the correct analysis of numbers. And it is the scorecard that will be the most important step towards building a systematic business that is not too tied to the owner. So that you have the opportunity to calmly go on vacation, and at the same time everything would continue to work, and you would not return from vacation to the ashes.

The next step after building this scorecard is to link employee motivation schemes to the business indicators that you need.

For example, a person who is engaged in attracting customers to your business (now it is fashionable to call such people “marketers”) should have a motivation scheme tied to the number of customers attracted to the business.

Even an accountant's income, in a good way, should be tied, for example, to the percentage of turnover taxes that you pay in your business. When you build such a system of motivation and put the right people in key positions, they will begin to discipline themselves.

And it doesn’t hurt to link the income of line managers to the results of the business as a whole, so as not to give rise to the feeling in them that “everything is fine in my department, but what is happening in others does not interest me.” We had this a few years ago, for example, with a marketer. She was able to provide us with three times more customer requests than our managers could physically process. And she said: "Well, why should I suffer because you cannot process all the clients I attracted?" And this happened because she had no interest in the work of the company as a whole.

In addition, it is necessary to prepare a significant number of instructions and regulations that will streamline the interaction of employees among themselves, as well as with customers and suppliers. The more situations are described in detail there, the fewer questions you will get as a business owner. Now, if an employee asks me a question, I first find out if he has read the instructions on this topic. And only if you read and did not find the answer, we continue to analyze this issue.

An extremely important topic is the creation of a knowledge transfer system in the company. In most small companies, knowledge about how to do things is passed down by word of mouth, from grandfathers to fathers, from fathers to children.

When leaving, the employee shows his successor in a few hours everything that he usually did, and then the newcomer begins to boil in it. Most likely, not all knowledge will be transferred in these few hours. And as a result, the new employee will persistently fill those bumps that his predecessor has already filled. And it will also pull everyone around, and first of all you as a leader, in order to find out some points that are obvious to all people working in the company. It is in such a company that the leader will be in soap from morning to evening, especially in the weeks when a new employee comes to work.

To overcome this problem, it is necessary to systematically accumulate knowledge, create a corporate Wikipedia, a warehouse of instructions. The process of adaptation in the company of new employees is also very important. For example, we regularly conduct so-called “Welcome-training” for new employees, which tells how the company works, who is responsible for what, where to find this or that information. And after that, a mentor from the "old men" is assigned to the new person. The mentor receives a bonus if the newcomer successfully completes the probationary period.

All these steps will allow you to significantly unload yourself from routine tasks and program your employees for effective, fruitful and autonomous work.

How much does it cost to open a travel agency?

Choose a country and choose a hotel.

We will give you a tropical paradise.

For months of office long torment

Give yourself an ocean of impressions

(From the corporate song of the company "1001 Tour")

Are you also interested in tourism business?

It seems to many that this is a simple, beautiful and highly profitable business that travel agency managers are constantly traveling. In fact, the profitability of most travel agencies is very low. As an acquaintance of the OBEP put it: “In the summer they have plus 500 dollars, in winter - minus 500 dollars. Well, what to take from them?

But, on the other hand, the owner of one large tour operator company told me: “You will not become a millionaire by being engaged in the travel business. But you can live like a millionaire. You will live in expensive hotels, you will see the world.

Well, when I say that "the returns of the majority are low", I certainly mean the fact that there is still a minority that is an exception. Companies that invest more energy than others and get quite good results. So, as in other areas, everything is in your hands!

Let's talk about money now.

According to our estimates, in order to try to enter the travel agency market, you need about 500-700 thousand rubles. Rent an office, equip it - furniture, office equipment. It is important to choose the right location for the office - so that there is good transport accessibility, a large flow of people.

I would open the first office in the center, because all the money, all the people move here. Two-thirds of the agencies in Moscow are located in the center, and this is no accident - indeed, the profitability is higher here.

But be sure to remember that the client must be able to park. That is, the office should be located in a place where it is convenient to get to both public and private transport. The office does not have to be very large and chic - three or four workplaces, 20-30 meters of area is enough to start.

The next step is to sign contracts with tour operators. The most convenient way to do this is either at a spring or autumn tourist exhibition. There is an opportunity to massively spud the maximum number of tour operators.

In general, we recommend starting work somewhere in March. That is, during the winter, resolve all preparatory issues (rent, equip an office, hire staff, conclude all necessary contracts, advertise), and start selling in March-April. By the way, employees are a very important point, and it is not at all easy to find good managers in tourism.

My book is completely devoted to the issues of opening your own travel agency. “Profitable travel agency. Tips for owners and managers, which you can buy on "Ozone" and in other book and online stores.

Or maybe buy a ready-made business?

– You know, I want to start a small business…

– Buy a big one and just wait a bit.

Sometimes people have a desire not to build a business from scratch, but to buy something ready-made. Such situations are especially frequent when, for example, a husband-entrepreneur buys a travel agency or a beauty salon for his wife so that she has something to do.

The market for buying and selling a ready-made business is quite active, there are several companies that specialize in this. The range of businesses offered for sale can be found, for example, on the portal www.biztorg.ru

For my practice, I have acquired several Internet sites, a couple of web studios, about five travel agencies and one beauty salon. This is not counting the businesses in which I invested money as a passive investor. In this section, I will talk about what came out of it and what conclusions I drew.

The first important point when buying a business concerns the price. Very often, business owners inflate the price at which they are willing to sell the business. In English, this is what is called "seller's dream price", that is, "the price of a dream."

It is quite understandable that, having spent several years to create a business, the owner wants to receive a decent reward for it. But the problems of the seller should not interest you.

Your task is to pay for the business as much as it is really worth.

A reasonable evaluation criterion in this case will be some ratio to the profit of the business. For small small businesses without serious tangible assets, you can focus on one annual profit. For larger, more stable businesses, we can already talk about two or three years of profit. Actively growing Internet companies can be estimated at 10-15 annual profits. And there are examples when such a company has no profit at all, but it is valued at exorbitant money precisely because of its prospects.

Sellers of a business often like to point out that the business has a lot of potential for profit growth, untapped reserves, etc. I recommend that you treat such statements with skepticism. If profits were easy to increase, then the seller could do it himself. And since he does not do this, it means that everything is not so simple there. And if you manage to increase business performance, then these will be your achievements, and not the achievements of the seller. And there is no reasonable point in overpaying for these improvements.

So bargain actively. Very few businesses have a large number of real applicants (although the seller will probably say otherwise). The advantage is on your side.

I'll tell you more about my experience in the market for the sale of a ready-made business.

In 2004, I began to have free money, and I thought that I needed to expand. At that time, in addition to tourism projects, I had a fairly actively developing mobile communication portal - www.sotaland.ru

The site made money on advertising, which at that time was very effective on the cellular market and sold well. And when I was offered to buy another similar site, www.sota1.ru, I thought it was a good idea. The site also included a small web studio and about ten employees.

As a result, after long negotiations and an agreement on the purchase of a business in installments, a Gazelle was ordered. All property of the acquired company was moved to our office, compacting our employees. Since the areas of activity were similar, the teams united quite successfully, with almost no losses.

But with the business itself, everything was not so good. It turned out that two projects in the same niche is not always an advantage. Instead of growing an absolute leader in our subject, we were torn every time on which of the sites to implement this or that feature we invented. As a result, both cellular portals gradually began to lose their positions, and were subsequently sold for little money to private investors. It should be noted that these investors have not been able to increase the attendance and profitability of these projects. Now they hang on the Internet with such zombie projects that have not changed much since 2005.

However, there were also successful examples. For example, we had to buy travel agencies, usually for the sake of a good location (and until 2008 it was very problematic to find a good small space for rent) and an accumulated client base. After such a purchase, under the management of the 1001 Tour network, the offices increased profitability many times over and paid off in just a few months. Therefore, I recommend that you immediately think about what you can bring to the acquired business.

If you just buy a business and manage it passively, then most likely the yield curve will gradually decrease (and perhaps not at all :)). So look for points that will allow you to fundamentally change the situation and increase profitability.

One of the main pieces of advice to give when buying a business is never trust the seller.

In my personal experience, in only one case in ten, the results of the business after the sale exceeded what the seller originally said. So it is much more correct to approach everything with distrust, carefully check all the figures and evaluate the expediency of buying a particular business based on the most pessimistic forecasts.

It is quite possible to buy a successful business, but you need to be very careful. Here is a short list of troubles that can happen after buying a small business company.

The lease of the occupied premises will not be extended or the rate will be raised. Here is a “horror story” from our latest examples: the shopping center near the Belyaevo metro station, where our office worked for about a year, turned out to be built illegally. As a result, in March 2014, the whole building was demolished, and we learned about it just three days before the demolition. As a result, only ruins remained from our building.

Employees will quit the day after the handover of the business and take the customer base with them.

The seller himself will launch a new similar business. The collusion of the seller with the employees is not excluded. I know examples when, after buying a travel agency, the owner opened a new one in a neighboring building and took all the employees for himself.

The tax inspectorate will present claims for past periods.

Customers came to the business due to some personal efforts of the seller, and at the stage of purchase it was not obvious. For example, the seller has a number of Internet sites that advertised the business you were buying. After the sale, this advertisement, of course, is removed.

When buying a business, some important asset will be forgotten, without which the business will suffer significantly.

The tourism market is a prime example of this. One of the largest tour operators, Tez Tour, shared the business with its Turkish partners. And in the process of dividing buses and hotels, they forgot about such a “trifle” as the domain www.teztour.com, in the promotion of which tens of millions of dollars were invested, including advertising on Channel One. As a result, on one not very beautiful day for Tez Tour, their website ceased to open for thousands of tourists and travel agencies at the usual address. Tez Tour had to urgently launch a backup address. Proceedings on this matter have been going on for several years, and the disputed domain still does not work.

In fact, any experienced entrepreneur will be able to supplement this list with their "horror stories" from personal experience or the experience of their friends. To minimize these risks, I developed the following scheme for myself when buying a business (you need to understand that this is a scheme that protects the buyer, so you will have to try to persuade the seller to accept it):

Try to negotiate with the seller on the maximum possible payment by installments. In my practice, there were installments for a couple of years, but a period of 2-3 months can be considered more realistic. And keep in mind that the amount of payment in installments must be fixed in the currency in which the business receives its income. That is, in Russia - most likely, in rubles. Otherwise, currency risks will also be added to the risks of buying a business, and this is already quite dangerous;

It is optimal to link payments to stages, for example: the lease agreement is reissued - one payment, phones and the website are reissued - another, employees are transferred - the third;

Key employees should be spoken to in person, preferably before a deal is finalized. If the seller is against such an open conversation (and I completely understand him in this situation), then at least pay a visit as a "mystery shopper". For example, when we bought a beauty salon, the masters during the manicure told the client a lot about their interest in work, and about the success of the business in general, and about the personality of the current business owner, and of course, about the problems - with special pleasure :). ;

All employees must be formally registered in your company with all necessary documents. It is possible that they worked for the seller on the basis of some informal agreements, and after his departure, nothing will keep them. It is important for you to know about such situations in advance;

Insist that the seller personally introduce you to the landlord, Internet service provider, main suppliers. Agree with them on maintaining the terms of cooperation after the change of business owner;

It is advisable to start calling the customer base or sending them information about the changes before the end of all settlements with the seller;

Do not buy the old legal. seller's face. It is much more reliable and safer to register a new one and re-register all assets to it. As a rule, in a small business, when a legal entity the person does not own any real estate or other assets, it is not at all difficult to do this;

Do not forget to re-register everything related to the business: rent of premises, contracts with employees, phone numbers (especially those that were advertised), domain name, website hosting, contract with an Internet provider, contracts with suppliers and customers. Get passwords to all systems from the seller, such as site statistics, content management system, contextual advertising accounts, electronic wallets, etc.;

Get full information from the seller about the necessary payments and payment schemes. It is especially important to get information about salaries and motivation schemes for employees, so that under the “new government” the conditions for people remain at least as good as they were. This also applies to non-vacation holidays, sick leave compensation, etc. Otherwise, the departure of employees, which sometimes happens when selling a business, will become even more likely;

Consider who will run your business. Options when you come once a week or even once a month for dividends very rarely work in a self-built business, and such miracles do not happen at all in an acquired business. And if you yourself are not ready to constantly be present in the purchased company, then be sure to put your trusted person there.

If you follow all the above measures, then it is likely that you will be able to buy a good business and be able to successfully develop it. Although in general, of course, most of the businesses presented for open sale are of dubious quality and with dubious prospects.

So be careful!

And how to earn more?

I think for many business owners the issue of increasing income is very relevant. For example, I always wanted to work as much and earn more. To do this, you just need to slightly expand the scope of your perception.

There are a huge number of tools that will require more than one book for a detailed description. In this section, I will give several tools that will allow you to increase income without significant efforts and revolutions.

Extend your work time. When our network of travel agencies was just starting, our offices worked on a very gentle schedule: from Monday to Friday, from 10 to 19 hours. On Saturday, we practically did not work. Then, when I began to analyze the statistics of applications and calls to our offices, I realized that customers call at 9 o'clock and at 21 o'clock. And even on Sundays. It is convenient for many to come to a travel agency after work, and many work until 19 or even up to 20 hours. After that, we began to expand the opening hours of the offices. Now, for example, Saturday + Sunday give us the same sales as one business day.

Calculate for yourself: six active days instead of five is a 20% increase in revenue. Another ten to fifteen percent adds an extended working day. I don't think it's bad at all. If you work remotely with clients from other regions, then the lengthening of the working day will be even more relevant for you. Do not forget that our country is large and many people live in completely different time zones. It's a pity to lose such clients!

Of course, you can't just tell an employee, "You used to work from 10 am to 7 pm five times a week, and now you will work seven days and from 9 am to 10 pm." Nobody can work like that. A person will complain to the labor inspectorate and will be right. Therefore, for example, we had to introduce a shift schedule for some employees, for example, “2x2”. At first, people were not used to it, but gradually they got used to it. A person with such a schedule gets fewer working days.

True, the disadvantage is that a person’s weekend will not necessarily be on Saturday and Sunday, but often in the middle of the week. Not everyone will like it, because often the second half works on a five-day basis. But there are enough people for whom such a schedule suits.

And do not forget that it is important to optimize not only the office schedule, but also the number of employees working at one time or another. Analyze when your business peaks and when it falls. And plan the exits of employees so that not a single client of yours is left unserved, so that he does not have to wait long.

Also a good tactic would be to work on holidays. Previously, for some reason, we had a rest on March 8, May 1 and 9, etc. But when we finally started working these days, even if on duty, we got quite good sales.

At the same time, many competitors sleep on such days. Well, let. We'll get more!

Remember to also plan ahead for seasonal peaks and troughs.

In many businesses there are emergency periods, and you need to be prepared for them. For many companies, this period will be the second half of December. Recruit additional workers for such periods to get the maximum profit from the New Year holidays!

Not so long ago, I saw a couple of clear examples of large losses due to unpreparedness for seasonal surges. I often travel to major sporting events. In 2014, he was at the Olympics in Sochi and at the Ice Hockey World Championship in Minsk. In both cases, the organizers made only one, albeit a large, store with sports souvenirs on the territory of the sports facility. There were always huge queues at these stores, and many people turned around and left, and the organizers lost revenue. At many other events I have been to, there were many such stores, and they were dispersed throughout the city.

Increase in the average check. For some reason, many entrepreneurs only sell to customers what the customer asks for. No effort is made to sell the customer a more expensive product or offer something extra. These skills need to be instilled in employees.

Try to go to McDonald's, and I am sure that they will definitely try to “sell” something to you: potatoes for a hamburger, etc. Have you ever traveled around America? If you have, I'm sure you've also regularly encountered an attempt to sell you something more expensive or extra. Apparently it's in their blood.

And I recently listened to the telephone conversations of my managers and heard such a wonderful phrase from an employee: “Well, why do you need to go to a 5 * hotel? You will only sleep there. Better take 3*”. Such remarks must be burned out of employees with a red-hot iron. The task of the right employee is the opposite: to try to offer a more expensive option.

Selling cheap is usually those who do not know how to find out the needs of the client and simply offer him what he asks for. But in fact, you need to find out the true wishes of the client and then show that a more expensive product better meets these needs. You yourself understand that a more expensive product is better? So convince the client of this, then he will be grateful to you for it.

What about upsells? I came across a good upselling technique, for example, in the cell phone market. One online store sold not just phones, but kits. Standard set, advanced and mega set. In addition to the phone, each bundle added something else useful - a case, a protective film, a car charger, downloaded applications, etc. Individually, all these things would have cost much more than in a bundle. But it was also very profitable for the entrepreneur, because usually the cost of such additional things is several times less than the selling price. And, of course, both the website of the online store itself and the call center were sharpened to sell the most expensive sets.

Consider whether any packages are appropriate for your business. There is always a certain proportion of clients who are willing to pay more than usual for a quality solution to their problems.

Give the client the opportunity to choose how much to pay you - little, more or very much. And then tie the motivation of sellers to what package the client receives.

When selling a minimum set, the manager's interest should also be minimal. For the company, such a deal is not at all profitable.

It can be not only packages, but also, for example, a different level of service. Consider, for example, business class on airplanes. Such things are appropriate in many businesses. Even at trainings, they began to offer business-class tickets, which involve seating in the front rows and a set of additional services.

Options can apply not only to your main product, but also to additional ones. For example: standard delivery - 200 rubles, urgent delivery - 300 rubles, night delivery - 500 rubles. Return and exchange of goods with the departure of the courier for an additional fee.

Try wholesale. If you are selling something at retail, there is nothing stopping you from trying to sell the same thing wholesale. Make a separate page on the site "For dealers" or "For wholesalers". List your benefits there, launch additional advertising. I'm sure there will be clients. Even if at first you are not such a deep specialist in wholesale, there will still be customers, especially from the regions, who will want to buy from you. Suppose that in wholesale trade your margin will be, say, 5%, and not 30%, but then you will sell not one piece, but a hundred. It will be clearly more beneficial.

End of introductory segment.