Neither one nor the other, aye, and that's the truth.
What is the truth? Well, personally, I'm closer to Joe. Or at least I was, thirty-odd years ago.
Hustling Joe was me in my twenties. I went the self-employed route and even managed to get the government to pay me a weekly amount to help out.
So, after a year of doing very little in the way of satisfying customers, I was introduced to the taxman, who very kindly gave me an estimated bill for a year's worth of tax.
If I can give you one piece of advice, whether it's HMRC or the IRS, speak to them. Don't hide.
I spoke to them, scraped together a few poorly written receipts and had the bill erased. Lesson learned.
There was another venture, removals. We bought the truck. I didn't have a licence, but my best friend did, so he did the driving. We managed to snag a contract with a city centre furniture store, and we were flying high on the fumes of entrepreneurship.
Alas, they were only fumes. The engine broke, badly, and guess what? We hadn't put enough money aside to fix it. The bank didn't see us as a credible investment, not even for an overdraft. The dream was over.
Now, at fifty-nine, I'm bringing the dream to life, and it feels different this time. I still don't have a corporate career behind me, but I do have experience. Experience of different kinds of business, certainly different kinds of people, and definitely of life and living.
I don't know how many broken dreams are out there. How many attempts at being in control of your own destiny have failed?
In 2024, about 850,000 new companies were set up in the UK. In the US, there were 5.6 million applications to start a business in 2025. That's a lot of dreams.
I wonder how many of them turned into nightmares?
Sources: NatWest Group (UK company incorporations, 2024); Finder, citing the US Census Bureau (US business applications, 2025).