共用题干
Interview with Allan Gray
1. I was working for a multinational company in the early 1980s,and my brother asked me if I was interested in going into partnership with him to set up a language school.I'd always wanted to work for myself,and I was a bit fed up with working for someone else,so I said yes.Primarily, I wanted the freedom to make my own decisions,I wanted room to be creative,and also I wanted to be able to get the credit and keep the profits if we were successful.I was also happy to carry the can and take the blame if things went wrong.These things are not possible if you work as an employee in a large organization.
2. I had to borrow money to help start the business,but we were lucky because we also had some outside capital to put into the business.These days it can be really hard to persuade banks to lend money to people who want to start a company,so we were fortunate .It was fairly easy to set up the business,because we had a very clear idea of what we wanted to do.The problem was,all our preconceptions（预想）about what it would be like to run a business were wrong. We made lots of mistakes, and we almost went bankrupt（破产的）at the beginning. At one point, we only had two students in the school.
3. Far too long!We lost money for the first four years and,as I was saying,we nearly went out of business.It took quite a long time to start making profit. The best thing we did,though,was that we hired some really good people to work for us.In fact,some of those people are still work-ing for us,24 years later. Now we're doing well,but it was very risky at first.
4. One is financial constraint（约束）.It can be very tough. I think all small businesses have cashflow problems-it often takes a long time to get paid by your customers.The second big prob- lem is marketing. It takes a lot of funds to market your business,and you have to get your name known and build a reputation .But the biggest challenge is managing the people.All businesses are about people,and you have to learn how to deal with all kinds of people-and I think we've been extremely good at getting the best of our staff.
The difficult thing to start a business is to persuade banks______.
A: to lose your house
B: to manage your employees
C: to keep independent
D: to lend you money
E: to take the responsibility for it
F: to make profit
