Clojurians Log v2

Going to https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs#alternate-installations; I wish to install spacemacs in the alternative location of .emacs.d/spacemacs. folder In the doc it states:

mkdir ~/spacemacs
git clone <https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs.git> ~/spacemacs/.emacs.d
HOME=~/spacemacs emacs

The mkdir and git are done (with the appropraite paths) . In my case the path is /.emacs.d/spacemacs so I have set HOME=~/.emacs.d/spacemacs emacs and have tried the alternative .emacs.d/spacemacs; I have run the env HOME=$HOME/.emacs.d/spacemacs emacs and agin no go, On the command line typeing in emacs does NOT result in spacemacs - any help on this? (I am on Ubuntu 20.04 and using zsh) BTW I add (setq spacemacs-start-directory "~/.emacs.d/spacemacs/") (load-file (concat spacemacs-start-directory "init.el")) into the init.el file