“Starting a business in an industry you have no expertise and zero experience in is suicide. It is impossible and silly to even think you can do that.” said a well-meaning friend when I told her I intended to start a skincare and beauty company.
She was correct that I had no background experience in the beauty industry. But these were the sort of words I needed to hear to help drive me to attempt such an audacious goal. This goes against what many would think of as standard rules for business. Rules that my friend thought would be foolish and forbidden to push against. But I fancied the challenge and I backed myself – thus Forbidden Beauty Ltd, and the www.forbiddenbeauty.nz website, were born.
Even before actually starting the Forbidden Beauty journey, I had always possessed a burning desire to start an eCommerce business. My only problem was that I couldn’t think of any product to create that could be needed by consumers, AND that would be scaleable and not geographically constrained like most businesses.
High-value products that logistically ‘work’ are the essence of a successful internet business. But the journey from just an idea to having a retail-ready finished product was still fraught with many challenges. I am not going to paint a rosy picture saying that it is easy. It was a steep learning curve for me and I would be lying if I said I had never thought of giving up at various stages. But it can be very rewarding. Perseverance is a key trait in being self-employed and the dogged determination to prove my naysayers wrong helped me climb over the mountains and across the deep troughs necessary to meet my goals and realise my vision.
Everything I learned from this journey is contained in my No Rules Start-Up ebook, available from this website. Each chapter contains the necessary steps I took to create my eCommerce business that now sells in multiple countries. I did not write this book in a self-congratulatory manner – I started my own journey (into the unknown) , and wrote the book, in the hopes that I can show you, the reader, that you can achieve what many may tell you is impossible. So please buy this book for little more than a price of your next coffee, and learn what the doers don’t want others to know, and the dreamers say is forbidden to them (their excuse for inaction).
