What Is Kitchen Table Entrepreneurship?

Put simply, it’s where you find something you really enjoy doing and then look for ways of turning your hobby into a successful, profitable business without any huge financial risk or investment on your part.

Let’s say, for example, that you’re a keen walker and enjoy spending all of your spare time exploring and walking. You now want to run your own business doing something around your favourite hobby.

There are lots of potential opportunities. The ones that immediately spring to mind are:

• selling walking gear
• organising walking holidays
• writing and selling walking guides
• starting a pet-sitting service
• a gardening maintenance company
• a playschool
• a language school
• running your own hire business renting out anything from bouncy castles to boats
• starting and running your own holiday company: walking holidays, sailing holidays, history holidays...
• organising tours: garden tours, history tours, mystery tours...
• arranging dinner dates for single people
• offering your services as a home-sitter, pet-sitter, chaperone service....

Whatever your hobby or interest there is no end to the types of businesses you can start. The possibilities are endless. Who knows where this journey will take you? One thing’s for sure, it will never end. That’s the wonderful thing about running your own business. You’ll never stop learning new things. You’ll never wake up in the morning with that awful feeling that your life is dictated by someone else. Because, starting today, you’re taking control of your life. Starting right now you’re going your own way.

When I embarked on this same journey some years ago I was filled with excitement, which was overshadowed by worry. I’m delighted to say that some years on I’m still as excited as I was when I first started out. The only thing that I’ve lost is the worry factor. For I’ve learnt that worry is the most unproductive emotion that you can have. When you decide to take control of your own future, you lose that worry for you alone are responsible for your future.

I’ve also come to accept that on this road you never stop learning. Neither is there a right or a wrong way. Provided you have determination, passion and motivation there really is no such thing as failure. Although it’s quite likely the business you start out with will not be the same business you end up with!

My first dip into the water of self-employment was a catering business, which died on its feet shortly after it began. The experience didn’t deter me, but made me more determined to succeed. My next business was a gardening business, which is still with me today. Along the way I’ve been instrumental in starting a cycling business, a boat hire business, a gardening school as well as having a hand in lots of other areas. That’s the great thing about being a KTE (Kitchen Table Entrepreneur). You can get involved in lots of different things. If something doesn’t work, learn from it and move on. That’s the secret. Move on. Only fools dwell on mistakes and failures. Successful people simply pick themselves up and start again.

The Concept

OK. So let’s look a bit more the concept of Kitchen Table Entrepreneurship. Let’s imagine that you’re a keen walker and have decided that you’re going to sell walking gear.

As a keen walker you’re in an excellent position to know what gear’s worth buying and what to avoid. So you could set up your own mail order business, either working from a website and/or advertising in magazines read by walkers.

Where Kitchen Table Entrepreneurship differs is that rather than rush out and open a traditional walking/outdoor shop you instead run your business from home. The reason I suggest the kitchen table is that if you’re like I was and don’t have the luxury of having a spare room available, let alone any spare space in your home, you can run the administration side of your business from somewhere at home, and then hire some form of relatively inexpensive storage for your merchandise.

The advantages to this are:

• low overheads – no shop or office rents, insurances etc
• the advantages that come from working from home
• you can run your business around your life as opposed to running your life around your business.

At the same time, you could organise walking holidays. You could run this business either separately or alongside selling your walking gear. Again, rather than sign up to an expensive, tedious shop lease agreement, you could open an online business where not only could you sell walking gear but also walking holidays.

The enormous benefit of having a website as opposed to a high street shop is that you have access to a worldwide customer base, something you won’t get with a traditional high street business.

Of course you could have a high street business and a website, but is it worth all that additional expenditure? And what about the hours? To survive and succeed your shop will need to be open seven days a week and are you really ready to commit yourself to standing behind the counter for long hours, or having to hire in costly staff to do it for you?

The smart alternative is to take the KTE route and work the business around your lifestyle, keeping overheads low and profits high.