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Inspiration for Entrepreneurs
- Introduction
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| Once upon a time, there were three of us sitting in a pub, doodling another less-than-brilliant plan for business success on a beermat. Then one of us had a genuinely bright idea, so bright that it even sounded good the next morning. Five years and a lot of hard work later, we were rich. But I had acquired a serious addiction: I was hooked on start-ups. I’ve been working in them ever since.
Over time, I’ve noticed certain patterns, rules and pitfalls that come up over and over again in new businesses. When the dot-com boom took off, and I saw people getting rich by doing most of the don’ts I’d spotted, I was baffled. When the dot-coms collapsed it started to make sense again.
One of the many things I’ve learnt along the way is the huge value of mentoring. I’ve decided to do some myself, inspired partly by The Prince’s Trust, who insist all the businesses they back have mentors, and who have 60 per cent of their businesses still running after three years. I love success!
Success is about getting good advice and using it well. The best single piece of advice I’ve ever heard about running a small business came from an entrepreneur I worked with years ago. “Enjoy it,” he said. And he was dead right. It’s obviously more fun that way, but you also work better, and, most important of all, you attract the right people. Rule one of starting up is that it is a team business. Forget the cliché of the Lone Entrepreneur, maybe with Tonto lurking in the background: start-ups work if the team is right, and the best way to get the team right is to get people with enthusiasm and passion.
One problem young businesses face is that there are too many sacred cows. From the risky allure of venture capital to business plans that know exactly what turnover a totally new business will achieve in Q4 2006, these myths need debunking. But I don’t want to go on about these here. I’d rather focus on the joy of getting it right.
In the pieces on this site, we’ll be looking at various aspects of the growing business, at the difficulties that can arise and the Beermat way of solving them – cheaply, simply, effectively, positively.
Mike Southon
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Last updated by Julian Bond on Monday, 24/03/2003 - 14:02 |
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