Emma Jones
Serial Entrepreneur and Home Business Expert

There are lots of schemes and scams on the internet offering you a wonderful career, a fast buck with no set-up fees and easy money while you sleep.  It’s like the modern day equivalent of a gold rush.  However, anyone who has really tried to set up an internet business knows how misleading these claims are.  Some people do strike gold, but not without hard work, smart thinking and persistence. 

 

Emma Jones is Managing Director of Redbrick Enterprises Ltd &
Editor of Enterprise Nation, the home business website. She is also
Editor of Go Furness, the website for young professionals.

Emma Jones,  who has set up successful online businesses, would be the first to reinforce this.  Her first business, an inward investment accountancy business called Techlocate hit the ground running during the dot com boom.  Even so, it took her and her business partner a lot of effort to make it so successful.  Eventually, she was headhunted and Tenon Group PLC offered to buy the company, only 15 months into its existence.  She was locked in to working in the company for 18 months and during this time she started plotting her next business.  She realised that she had become an expert in home-working and became increasingly aware of how popular this way of working was becoming.  She also realised that there was very little support for people working from their spare room in terms of resources, advice or support.  She researched this gap in the market thoroughly. 

The end result is www.enterprisenation.com.  This site is an absolutely priceless but free resource for anyone who is starting or growing their own business.  Emma gets about 40,000 unique visitors a month and counting! It is the first and largest online resource for British homeworkers.  Her vision is to develop a multi-media company for anyone who is starting or growing a business from home.

And now Emma has published her first book, and it will be the number one business book at Waterstone’s in May.  The book is called ‘Spare Room Start Up, and having had a look at the book, I can see it will be an absolutely invaluable resource for people working from home.  She is also doing a British tour with this book, and will be speaking in Barrow on…….Book me in to the first row!

I will also be giving her book pride of place on the bookshelf of my best loved books.
It is friendly, easy to read with colourful pictures.  This sets it apart immediately from the heavy text book style books that often take far too long to come to the point. However, don’t let the fun exterior fool you.  It is packed with jargon-free information that is invaluable for anyone dreaming about turning their skills, talents or hobbies into a living.  The book contains easy to follow advice about how to turn those dreams into reality, or take an established business to a new level. It can be ordered directly from the Enterprise Nation website, perfect for busy home business workers.

So how has Emma achieved in her young years what most people don’t in a lifetime?    It is not having a good idea that makes a successful business, nor is it just hard work.  Emma’s success has been built on the combination of both.  But the really key factor has been perseverance.  She says that perseverance was much easier to keep up when she had colleagues and business partners, but as a sole home worker, it has been much more of a challenge.  Part of the thinking behind Enterprise Nation has been to set up a bank of ‘virtual colleagues’ so that home workers don’t feel quite so isolated and can support each other in the tough times when some people might give up.  This could also apply for sole traders who operate from an office.    In addition to good ideas, hard work and perseverance, Emma has achieved success through her very  particular planning, keeping to a time table and staying aware of changing models and patterns in business. 

For instance, she advises anyone who works online to stay mindful of the 3 Cs; content, community and commerce.  In other words, get the site populated with content, establish communication with the online community that it is intended for and then think about the commerce.  She advises that you should expect a new online business to take a good couple of years to really get established.  Knowing this could make the difference between giving up and perseverance.  Be prepared to keep the day job until you are sure that your site is ready to start paying you. 

But for me, what makes Emma Jones really special is her warm and sparkly personality.  She is so approachable, like her book, and has an amazing gift at making you feel comfortable and interesting. This has got to count for a lot in any kind of business. In meeting her, you would never know that she has such a high national profile and such an incredible business track record because she listens and is interested in you.  It’s as if she knows that it is the ordinary things in life can make an extraordinary difference in business.  Check out the website, get the book, you will see what I mean.