I’M OFF on a magical mystery tour and I’m not enjoying it one bit. When I’m not sitting blankly in front of my computer screen about to embark on a mystery tour of my mind in a bid to write this weekly column, I’m one of those many thousands who run their own small business.

As it is for many others in the same boat, what I do is a labour of love for I’m attempting to turn a lifelong passion into something that provides a bit of an income.

I don’t want to earn oodles of dosh or become a self-made millionaire – not that I ever will – but I would like to think that my efforts to make my small business work reap enough reward to keep the monetary wolves from the door.

In pursuit of the dream the junior manager and I have ploughed substantial savings into the venture in a bid to be self-sufficient as the business took shape. Neither of us wanted to be beholden to others as we took the first steps on our dream-enhancing journey.

And now, it’s that journey that’s become the magical mystery tour. For having invested countless hours from dawn until dusk and beyond, on more days than I care to remember, we now need a cash injection leg-up to make the business grow and take it to its next logical step.

Small businesses are told time and again there’s grant funding here and investment funds there, all of which is ours for the taking. But trying to track down what cash is where is the stuff of meandering wayfaring, a mystery tour of biblical proportions.

And when you do eventually find out some information and take the tentative first steps of eligibility you get knocked back before you’ve even gathered your haunches to attempt the first fence.

Sometimes you’re told your turnover is too low. But it wouldn’t be, you tell them, if you had the cash injection to grow the business because that would increase its turnover. Very Catch 22….

Or they say that only matched funding is available, when you’re not in a position to pay like-for-like because you’ve already spent your savings setting up the business in the first place.

As for the banks, many of them promise you the readies but only if you put up your house as security if it all goes wrong. Strikes me as daft to re-mortgage yourself up to the hilt and gamble away the roof over your head…

We could, we’ve been told, borrow against our pension. But as we’re already technically retired (!) and therefore drawing off our former employers’ pension pot, that’s a no-no too.

What makes it worse is that geography is a factor in putting up barriers for small businesses to easily create success. I was talking to a fellow small business owner the other day whose crime is to live and work in East Yorkshire.

His fabulous-tasting food has won numerous awards and countless accolades, but his local environmental health officers appear to have an overly risk-averse approach that’s affecting his capability to grow his business.

Why? Because they insist on his products having a shorter use-by date than his direct competitors in North Yorkshire and other parts of the country, all of who are using exactly the same methods as he is to produce exactly the same style of food.

As a result, he can’t possibly hope to compete on the open market because his produce has a shorter shelf life and is therefore a faff to deal with for potential sellers, compared to other suppliers who have greater flexibility while still complying with food legislation.

And all this is even before my food producer friend has conducted his own magical mystery tour of the small business funding circuit. For he began in exactly the same way as we did, using family savings to kick-start the dream and harness the passion.

We’re not alone either. There are thousands of us out there who’ve tried to go it alone because they believe in something so much that they want to make it their life work.

So it really sticks in the craw when having already committed so much you get knocked back by people and processes and systems that haven’t a clue about living the dream.