You will hear five people talking about the businesses they set up, and about what caused problems in the first year. For eac

Part Two. Questions 13 to 22.
You will hear five people talking about the businesses they set up.
For each extract there are two tasks. Look at Task One. For each question, 13-17, decide which reason each speaker gives for setting up their own business, from the list A-H. Now look at Task Two. For each question, 18-22, decide what caused problems in the first year, from the list A-H.
After you have listened once, replay the recording.
You now have 30 seconds to read the two lists.
[pause]
Now listen, and do the two tasks.
[pause]
Speaker One
Woman: I set up about five years ago. I’d just finished my degree in business administration. It was very enjoyable, if rather lacking on the practical side. I was wondering whether I’d made the right choice of career, and was about to approach my uncle for advice on import-export when I was struck by the fact that there were not enough businesses to meet the demand for good quality food packaging, so I took the plunge. In the first few months, everything moved along nicely -I got together a reasonable team of workers and had some healthy sales figures, and then I came up against something I hadn’t bargained for - someone else had come up with something which was virtually identical, and set up just down the road from me. I panicked at first and then realised that I had the edge when it came to hi-tech machinery.
Speaker Two
Man: I’d always thought that running my own business would suit me, but I was hanging around for quite a long time waiting for inspiration as to what to move into. I was actually beginning to give up hope when a friend of my parents contacted me - he had a bit of redundancy money which he wanted to invest, he knew something of my background and felt I could make a go of running a small computer software outlet. I jumped at the chance, of course. And that was five years ago. I feel I’ve done a good job, although in the early days I made the mistake of taking on some over-qualified staff who weren’t suited to the work. I learnt from that though.
Speaker Three
Woman: I’ve been in business for almost four years now, making corrugated packaging for mail-order companies. This wasn’t an area of great expertise for me ... prior to starting up on my own. When I left college, I worked in developing chemical dyes. Then I inherited a bit of money -I was about to use it for a deposit on a house when I heard that a workshop unit in a nearby industrial park was becoming vacant, with very reasonably-priced corrugating machinery as part of the job lot. I did my homework and decided to go for it. I only needed to take on a couple of staff, but it was surprising how many mistakes I made when it came to things such as on-site noise containment and ventilation for us all. I eventually had to fork out on a specialist consultant to sort everything out.
Speaker Four
Man: I’ve been running my own business for ten years now and although I had quite a tough start, on the whole I haven’t regretted a day of it. Basically, I’d been working on an idea of a disposable protective cover for oven interiors and managed to secure a patent. But could I get a business to take me seriously? So I thought I’d go it alone. I managed to persuade people to invest enough for me to set up the workshop and I topped up with bank loans. I initially took on a couple of technicians I’d known from my previous place of work - good people with a lot of commitment to enterprise - but where I went awry was not giving them proper tuition and guidance in precisely what I wanted. Thank goodness they stuck with it though, and we came through our difficult first few months together.
Speaker Five
Woman: Although my grandparents and uncles ran a shop for many years, I really didn’t have much contact with the business world. I started my working life in nursing which I enjoyed a great deal, and then I had what I felt was a life-changing experience. In my late twenties, I applied to go on secondment overseas to work for four months in a remote rural hospital. It was there that I saw some marvellous work being done in setting up small-scale businesses run by local people - mainly in the production of handicrafts for catalogue sales. I saw a lot that I felt could be applied in my own home environment. Anyway that’s how I got started. I had a few hiccups at the beginning, mainly in trying to co-ordinate the huge amounts of customer information, but now we’re well established.