Forty years running businesses, several agencies, an electronics company, a distribution business, mostly without much money behind any of them. This book is what came out of all that. Not a polished success story, an honest one, the stuff that went wrong along with what actually worked. The whole thing sits on one idea that took me longer to learn than it should have: a business isn't built on what you want to sell, it's built on what customers actually want to buy. I still catch myself forgetting that one occasionally, forty years in. It's live now, paperback and ebook. Paperback's $9.99 at the moment, usually $17.99. The Ebook is $2.99 for now, I've dropped it there partly to make it easy to pick up and partly because I'd genuinely like more reviews, and I'm not going to pretend the price didn't have something to do with that. Check the cover (below) matches what you see: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B095PXX3JJ/ it might not yet be available on Amazon.co.uk, probably any minute, or tomorrow. Each chapter comes with its own worksheet too, not a summary, an actual sheet you sit down and fill in. A negotiation prep sheet, a client concentration audit, a referral network mapper, a full ten-step framework workbook. None of it's published anywhere else. All are free, no signup needed. If you read it and it's not worth five stars, tell me why. I'd rather know. I am still learning to write.

Before a boat leaves the dock for real, it gets tested first. Engine running, still tied up, checking whether it holds up before you commit to anything further. No risk taken. That's the entire point of a sea trial. Five books, each with its own shortcut and app to match. The Horizon Method, Star Referrer, and two more are written and coming, one every couple of weeks. What's live right now is the first one, the five customer shortcut built from How To Start A Business Without Any Money. Free, one comment to unlock, no signup beyond that. If you haven't introduced yourself yet, that's your sea trial. If you have, go take a look, it's sitting there waiting on you. You'll find it in the Classroom, look for Casting Off. https://www.skool.com/income-engineers-guild/classroom/735a2dbe?md=3b505f5213c54f7f87748848c8bda50b

A few conversations yesterday were all about reviewing progress in the past year. I wonder how the past year has been for you. Has there been a big shift for you in the last year, or has it been incremental. Do you have a business or are you still planning one? Has AI helped or hindered? Are you spending more time on AI but not progressing, or has AI helped to take you to a better place? Has your business taken off, or are you still at the same place? How do you feel about your business now compared to last year? Has your business evolved or have you doubled down?

Your avatar, sometimes called an ICP or target client, is the person you want to know better than anyone else in your business. Most people struggle with this because they haven't picked one, or they're not clear on the business they're actually in. Choose one person. Start narrow, even if you end up with several avatars eventually. Being ruthless about the first one is what makes the exercise work. Once you've built the profile, feed it to AI and see what comes back. Usually there's nothing genuinely new in the answer, the value is in the different angles it suggests, and that's where the useful discoveries tend to show up. Get clear enough on who you're talking to, and what motivates them, and the language you use starts choosing itself. Done well, your avatar reads what you've written and thinks, this is for me. My example: Alex I know there are women in this group, but the majority of my customers have been men, and being ruthless means starting with the one I know best. So the example is a man called Alex. I can picture him clearly. I've also built a separate avatar for someone I know called Julie, who is an entirely different profile with an entirely different story. Different avatars need different treatment, not a shared template with the names swapped. Answer just a few questions: (be ruthless) Give them a name: Alex Demographic: Age: 50+ Gender: Male Location: On the edge of a city, where others are doing well and Alex is wanting to do well, like the others Occupation: Business person, made some money, has competence, makes good decisions Income: It has been good, but happens to be in a reset period Education: College/University, a specialist in some kind of technology, or at least knows his subject deeply Family Status: Has family concerns, different members at different stages, always something to cope with, potentially on the edge. Emotional landscape Values: Family Fears: wasting time, spending money without a return Motivations: wants a better life, or secure retirement

This is early days for the Guild, and I mean that literally, everything here gets built based on what actually helps, not what I assume will. So tell me straight: what's the one thing that's really concerning you in your business right now? Vote below, and if none of these quite land, say so in the comments. That's just as useful to me as the vote itself.