How not to run a business in 10 easy steps.

Every once in a while, somebody will say "you should do that as a business - you're very good". Certainly - basket weaving might be your passion and you might indeed be very good at basket weaving but there are a few steps in between basket weaving as a passion and basket weaving as a business - perhaps enough to turn the average person into a basket case. Thus, straitjackets at the ready, we shall begin.

1. Listen to your friends when they tell you, you should start a business. They know more than you about how much money your hobby - from which you probably make a tiny amount of money occasionally - will make. Your friends are never wrong about how your should run your affairs.
2. Listen to the people that try to sell you advertising and produce impressive figures on how 1,000 junkmails will produce 3 transactions and how junkmail will make you loads of money.
3. Buy advertising space in newspapers, magazines and online. You have to spend money to make money and this is the only way to make sure your presence is seen. Don't question whether your potential customers will see the magazines, newspapers or online adverts.
4. Get advice from the business advisors at business advice centers without questioning how the advisers can be such experts without actually owning a current and successful business. 
5. Take out a loan to buy equipment - when you get customers the equipment will soon pay for itself - if you actually get customers.
6. Don't look to see how many of your future competitors are going bust for lack of business. They must be awful and you're not because you're new and inexperienced.
7. Of course there're enough people in the local area to support another business doing the same as what half a dozen others are doing. They're only barely making money because they're awful and you're going to be so much better straight from the start.
8. Listen to the credit card companies. Credit card payments are so much easier to take than actual money and so much easier than checks. Ignore the fact they have a large monthly fee plus a high percentage per transaction - your future customers will pay for it gladly.
9. Everything is tax deductible as a business. Remember you can claim lunch with your girlfriend is a business meeting and you can claim it as a legitimate business expense. Ignore the fact the tax office might get a bit narked and come after you with a baseball bat. Ignore also that it's totally immoral and that you'll only get 20% back as a deduction.
10. Your business equipment is an investment. You need to buy the best and you need to buy it all brand new. You need to listen to those that tell you that you need backups of everything and backups of the backups, just in case a couple of things fail on a big day.

OK. That's how not to run a business. Notice it's all about listening to what other people say about running a business and all about spending money to make it all happen. Throwing money at a problem never ever solves the problem - it masks it and makes it feel like something has been done.