Entrepreneurs

What makes us different?

Edge of Cliff The amazing photo on this week’s blog is of Norwegian extreme artist Eskil Ronningsbakken. Why am I using it? Because I heard a saying about startup entrepreneurs a couple of weeks back that I liked. It was “if you’re not at the edge, you’re taking up too much room”. Other sayings I like on this topic are “If the wheels don’t come off, you’re not travelling fast enough” and also “If you can’t code and you can’t sell, get the f*** out of my way”.

I think a lot about why it is some people can cope with running small businesses and others can’t. In my view it comes down to 3 things.

The first is a stronger ability than most people to be able to compartmentalise stuff. What I mean by this is that you can carry on doing what you need to do at that point in time (be it get up on the podium and pitch to investors, focus on getting a tender response finished or complete a sales call) when something else distracting is going on – either in your business or in your personal life. Being able to compartmentalise in this way also allows you to block out other bad stuff that you would otherwise worry about. When bad things happen, as they do from time to time, I think about them and if there’s nothing I can do right this minute or today to address them, then I put them out of my mind until the time is right to deal with them. I don’t lie awake at night worrying. I put them out of my mind in a locked box that I open when the time is right. If I couldn’t do that, I’d never get anything done. I’d be paralysed with fear.

The second is resilience. I’ve seen a couple of entrepreneur buddies in the last couple of weeks who have really been under the cosh recently. If they weren’t so resilient they’d have given up, one in particular many times over. What is resilience? The official definition of resilience is an ability to bounce back into shape. In a work setting it means being able to continue functioning & making sensible decisions in the face of adversity – which could be a one off event (like a disaster) or longer term (like always being tired from working long hours consistently). Resilience is what you need when the 10^th bank you’ve spoken to that week won’t lend you money & you don’t have enough to cover payroll right now, it’s the quality that makes you get up at 3am to go & catch a plane even though you only got home at 10pm last night, it’s what makes you sit down & start working on another response to tender when you’ve just had a rejection letter in from something you thought was a dead cert. In summary, this is the quality that keeps you going & you either have it or you don’t – so be honest with yourself.

Last on my list is the big one. I used to think the big one was resilience but I’ve changed my mind. It’s also the one out of the 3 that I think you can learn or at least improve. It’s the ability or willingness to make quick decisions. I make a lot of decisions in my job. Some days it’s all I do. But there’s more. It’s the ability to make decisions when you have no or certainly less than perfect information and it’s the ability to make a decision and move on. If everyone worked in an environment where they were encouraged or allowed to do this, the world would be a much better place.

I’m sure everyone has their own views about what should be in this top 3. I look forward to your comments or questions as always.

10 quick questions to find out if you have what it takes to be a startup founder?

Today’s blog takes the form of a quiz to help you determine if you have the right qualities to be a startup founder or small business owner. Not everyone does and this is a topic I’ve written about often in the past. You all know the drill – it’s like one of those magazine quizzes everyone’s so fond of filling out in secret. All I ask is that you’re at least honest with yourself…

1) You’ve been thinking about developing a new product and have done a couple of months market making. You’re in a taxi between meetings in London when you receive a phone call from one of your spies who tells you a competitor is thinking along the same lines as you. Do you:

a) Phone the competitor and tell them to back off – it was your idea first

b) Ring your bank, pitch your idea to your bank manager & see if he or she will lend you the money you need

c) Scratch that idea and move onto the next one on your list – you have loads of ideas anyway

2) You badly need a Sales Exec to help your startup business cover more ground. You engage a recruiter to help you find someone. The next day you get a call from the recruiter – he’s decided he wants the job himself and he pitches to you on the phone. You like the recruiter but he knows nothing about your sector. Do you:

a) Carry on with your original plan and interview according to the schedule – you’re sure to find someone with the right background and experience

b) Decide to give the recruiter a chance – at least you know he will pitch and what’s the worst that can happen

c) Look for a different recruitment firm that employs more professional recruiters

3) You’re at the airport when you run into a friend. You’re chatting away when the person he’s at the airport to meet arrives. Turns out he’s a visiting US venture capitalist. You’re tentatively looking for investment. Your friend introduces you and with no warning invites you to pitch to the American investor. Do you:

a) Give him your business card and say you’ll send him some information about your company and give him a call the next day

b) Trot out your elevator pitch as confidently as you can whilst shaking a bit inside

c) Make your excuses and get the hell out of there as fast as you can

4) It’s Christmas Eve and your business partner rings you to say he’s just had a call from the bank and they’ve turned you down for the loan you thought was a dead cert. It’s the 4^th bank you’ve talked to during December and they’ve all refused to lend you any money. Do you:

a) Do nothing – you’re sure it will all work out ok come the New Year

b) Carry on with your shopping, take Christmas day off (it’s Christmas after all) but on Boxing Day, get on the phone with your business partner and start writing a new business plan for the next bank you’ll be calling

c) Cancel Christmas and make your entire family miserable

5) You get evicted from your London “office” – ok it was an apartment and you’ve breached the terms of your lease by running a business out of it. You have a small team and they need desks. Do you:

a) Call an estate agent and start looking for an office – they cost a fortune but hey – it’s one of the overheads of running a business right?

b) Ring a friend whose office you were in the other day. You noticed he had 3 desks but was only using one of them

c) Have a little cry

6) You’re developing a product for market and badly need to generate some revenue to bolster up your pitiful cashflow. The product’s only about 20% complete. Do you:

a) Phone around and see if anyone else you know wants to pitch in and share the risk/reward

b) Call a few prospects and cut them a special deal for being an early adopter of your new product

c) Stop development whilst you scrabble about to raise the cash to continue

7) You come out of a long day of meetings in London where your phone has been on silent. You have 26 missed calls. There’s been a serious security alert and all the London airports are closed. You have an important meeting in Northern Ireland at 10am the next morning which you cannot miss. Do you:

a) Go and find a hotel before they’re all booked up. You’ll get a plane ok in the morning with a bit of luck

b) Run like billy-o to Euston and jump on the first train to Scotland. You know you’ll get an overnight ferry and be able to persuade someone to pick you up at the port in the morning

c) Call and cancel the meeting. It’s perfectly reasonable to reschedule in the circumstances

8) You receive an abusive letter from a supplier who’s threatening you with legal action for non payment of an invoice. You haven’t paid it because the work they did for you was woeful and you’ve explained that to them. Do you:

a) Ignore the letter and hope they’ll go away

b) Call them and make a reasonable offer for the work they’ve done; if they won’t see reason put it out of your mind on the basis that most people who threaten you with legal action never actually follow through

c) Panic and call your lawyer straight away

9) You go and pitch to a VC and they send you a term sheet which you believe doesn’t represent the true worth of your company. Do you:

a) Go back to them and do your best to negotiate a better deal

b) Go back and pitch again, receive an improved term sheet and then turn that one down – you know your company is worth more and those guys are likely to put it down the toilet anyway

c) Take it anyway. You’re desperate for the cash and you’re unlikely to get a better offer

10) You’re 2 years into your startup and at last you can take a bit of money out and get away for a brief holiday. On the day you pay yourself your Mum’s dog gets run over by the postman and needs an operation which just happens to cost the same as your holiday money. Do you:

a) Have the dog put down, tell your Mum there was nothing could be done for it and buy her a new (similar) dog for a fraction of the price of the operation

b) Pay for the bloody dog – there has to be some karma in this world

c) Jump on the plane as fast as you can leaving your Mum to sort out her dog

Ok – so by now you’ve guessed that these are all real life situations that happened in my startup in our first couple of years. For every one of the 10 scenarios above, we or I did (b). Be interested if you agree whether or not we made the right choices. I hope you had fun reading this. It gave me a good laugh writing it and brought back a lot of happy memories from our early days.

Some thoughts from Rosaleen Blair – entrepreneur, Dubliner and superwoman

Great female role model Rosaleen Blair speaking at an IIBN London event

As I’m sure the whole world is by now aware, I’m coming to the end of my first week living back in London. Everyone I’ve met this past week or asked for help has been extremely welcoming and I’ve been fortunate enough to have been invited to a few really useful networking events. Best of all, however, from the perspective of a newly arrived Irish entrepreneur in London has been the Irish International Business Network or IIBN as it’s known. The link is here for anyone that would like to know more or find out how to join http://www.iibn.com/london/

I’m lucky enough to have been introduced to the original Wild Irish Guy himself, Damon Oldcorn, and it seems that once you know Damon, you don’t really need to know anyone else. I’ve always found this to be a good strategy. Bryan Keating was the first business person I met in Northern Ireland, he’s the exact same and it’s never done me any harm.

Thursday night’s IIBN event started with drinks & chat and it was very easy to circulate and get talking to a few people as everyone’s very friendly and open. Everyone has an Irish connection even though many, like me, don’t have an Irish accent. Don’t let that fool you! – they all know their Leitrims from their Letterkennys and their Dungloes from their Dingles. Our diaspora is a beautiful thing. There were bankers, recruiters, reps from private equity houses, lawyers, entrepreneurs, investors and no doubt many more besides. If you’re Irish, in business and in London you need to join IIBN.

As part of the evening, our speaker was the charming and self-effacing Rosaleen Blair. Rosaleen is one of those women who have achieved a helluva lot but doesn’t go around shouting that from the rooftops. She just gets on with things. Most of all, I liked the way she described the values her company operates by and I liked her statement of the 3 things she demands from people in her team and recruits against. I’ve used these a few times already in conversation with others I’ve met this week but having chatted with Rosaleen on the evening, I don’t think she’ll mind. They are as follows:

· Trust – the members of a team have to really trust one another; of course this takes a bit of time

· Collaboration – people need to be able & willing to work on projects with each other and to work hard to make that collaboration work

· Sharing – Rosaleen hates it when people hold back knowledge & refuse to share it with other members of the team

I also loved what she said about encouraging a culture of “intrapreneurship” within your own organisation as a way of motivating and retaining the people in your team. If anyone’s unsure what that means, it’s about encouraging positive aspects of entrepreneurial behaviour but within a large organisation. It’s something we always tried to do at Learning Pool.

Rosaleen told us her story about how she arrived in London from Dublin in the 1990s, not knowing a soul but with a background in recruitment and having run a few small businesses in Ireland, believing herself to be fairly unemployable. She went to work at Alexander Mann and over the course of time, persuaded her employer to allow her to try something new to fill a gap in the market and co-create adjacent services with clients (the first one being ICL/Fujitsu). As it happened, she, working along with James Caan, became one of the early pioneers of what these days is known as RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) and the rest is history. In 2007, Rosaleen led her team through a £100m management buyout with the backing of private equity house Graphite Capital. These days her company Alexander Mann Solutions employs 2,000 people working in 70 geographies and 42 languages.

Rosaleen also gave us some priceless bits of advice which I hope she won’t mind me passing on here to others:

· When looking at which private equity house to go with, do some research and talk to some of the companies your main players have divested themselves of

· As CEO, always keep your bank manager close & don’t give them any surprises; don’t pass that bank relationship off to someone else in your team

· If your company is going to be working in some way with a private equity house, get yourself a CFO that has previously worked with a PE house, a CFO coming from a big corporate background won’t have the right sort of experience

· Trust your own instincts and that of your team every day of the week over the advice given to you by external “experts”

Thanks Rosaleen, thanks IIBN and hello London!

Forget Fight Club, what are the rules of Start-Up Club?

We all know the first rule of Fight Club – (shhh – don’t mention it) – but what are the rules of Start-Up Club? These are the 10 Rules I’d suggest to someone starting out with a new business:

Rule 1 – Just Do It – the time will never be right & there’s no point in procrastinating, obsessing over the fine detail (you’ll find out soon enough you can’t control things anyway) or delaying. Grasp the nettle & get going. Entrepreneurs have many sayings but one that I like a lot is “Leap and a net will form”. Well – it either does or it doesn’t but there’s only one way to find out.

Rule 2 – seek out a great name and then get a great strapline. It might not be the one you start out with but keep looking. All our companies (so far) have had great names including my very first company which was called Kicking Assets. Keep thinking – it doesn’t cost you anything to think but this is stuff that makes a high impact.

Rule 3 – network like mad both online & in real life. Not to the exclusion of all else of course but do work at it. I’ve written a previous blog about networking which you can read here https://kickingassets.co.uk/so-you-want-to-network

Rule 4 – be well informed, there’s no excuse these days not to be – we have the internet! Join the appropriate groups (online & real life, like Northern Ireland’s Digital Circle) & talk/listen to other entrepreneurs. You have to work at this too.

Rule 5 – ask for help if you need it. Most people are generous with their time & advice and everyone wants you to be a success. When people help you out, be gracious & don’t abuse their good nature.

Rule 6 – look for innovation in your product or service, your product delivery channel and also your business model. Innovation in your business model can be a real differentiator. Again – this doesn’t cost you anything, you just need to think about it.

Rule 7 – don’t go it alone. Find a business partner or a couple of non execs or perhaps seek out a mentor or join a collaborative network. Starting a business is too hard for a person to do by themselves and a problem shared is a problem halved. I have another blog about this specifically which you can read here if you want to know more https://kickingassets.co.uk/two-heads-are-better-than-one-10-pros-of-havi

Rule 8 – get good advice. Shop around for an understanding bank (we quickly moved away from our first bank when they wouldn’t support our growth strategy & these days bank with the fabulous Northern Bank) and once you find them, have an open and honest relationship with your bank manager. Talk to other entrepreneurs and start-ups about the accountants and legal firms they use. Look for modern professional advisers that understand online businesses and who use technology and social networking themselves. Cut a good deal by promising them they’ll get a decent payback when you exit. Agree all your fees up front. Never get any of these guys out of the Yellow Pages or equivalent.

Rule 9 – work hard and always be open and alert to opportunity. Usually it doesn’t come up & slap you in the face – you need to be watching out for it. I’m afraid working hard has to be a given. Without doing it you will fail and anyone that tells you anything different than that is a liar.

Rule 10 – have some fun. Running your own business or working in a start-up is the most fun you will ever have at work. Sure it’s hard work & the lows can be pretty awful – but the highs are AMAZING & you get to hang out with some great people in your own team.

Send me your own tips in the comments below – I can’t wait to read them.

What does the startup founder director want from team members?

Working in a small business is not for everyone. The working environment is transparent to a degree that many people find uncomfortable (your colleagues and manager, maybe even your directors are likely to be aware of your every move – which is great if you’re performing). New business is rarely turned away so the only way quality can be maintained and delivery deadlines met is by team members working longer hours; this happens a lot when your small business is growing. Your founder directors, although appreciative of everyone’s efforts, are always looking for “more”. Performance issues are likely to be addressed sooner rather than later and perhaps more bluntly than many people are used to or prepared for. The runway between joining as a newbie and being deemed to “fit in” may be viewed as too short by most. Also, the swift exit if your colleagues decide you aren’t going to work out is brutal.

Of course – there’s a lot of upside too. If there wasn’t, no-one would bother putting themselves through startup discomfort & pain. But that’s not the topic of today’s blog. Today is about what I as a founder director expect from team members as a minimum. Here’s my top 10:

1. Commitment to our customers, to the business and to our common goals. This covers everything from being on time for meetings, doing your prep, being reliable and a host of other stuff. Real life recent commitment examples from our own small business are being in the office on a bank holiday because a project review must take place, giving up a Sunday to travel to a company event – even though family plans had already been made, changing plans and flying to see a customer the next day because they needed you to.

2. Passion about our company, customers, products and mission – this has to be real, it can’t be fake or people can tell. See my accompanying blog photo of Eddie Ryce from Learning Pool’s sales team if you don’t believe me (photo credits to Paul Clarke & Ruth Cassidy).

3. Honesty – about where you are, what you’re doing, why something failed, what you think about something.

4. Hard work and an eye on the prize – yeah – long hours sometimes but an outcomes focused approach where you can easily prioritise what’s important and make sure that’s done first. Linked to this I expect you to travel in your own time and to make sure all your follow ups and admin are done without anyone having to check or nag you.

5. Self-sufficiency. Not everyone has this on Day 1 but everyone needs to strive towards this. Spending time managing team members’ performance is an overhead I’d rather do without. You should make it easy for your line manager to manage you.

6. Self confidence but with it the ability to know when you need help and the confidence to ask for it.

7. Self-awareness – required to be a good team player. It should be obvious to you before it is to anyone else when you’re verging on asshole behaviour.

8. Enjoyment of the here and now. Everyone wants to and will move up – but try and enjoy what you’re doing to the full when you’re doing it.

9. Responsiveness – if I’m trying to get hold of you out of hours it’ll be for a good reason. If I can’t reach you despite having provided you with every device known to mankind (at your request usually) that’s annoying. Please note – being available in this way isn’t for everyone.

10. A desire to improve. Everyone should have this although in truth, some need it more than others. That’s life!

They’re my top 10. I’m sure there are loads more. Keep your comments coming. I love to receive and read them and so does everyone else.

10 Annoying Behaviours of the prima donna CEO

We’ve all seen it – the nightmare behaviours of the prima donna MD/CEO. These are my personal favourites & I can’t wait to hear yours – so please add them in at the comments section below:

1. Travelling in a different class to everyone else & expecting special treatment everywhere they go. I used to work for a CEO that travelled business class when our start up could hardly make payroll some months. Even worse – his PA was sworn to secrecy & if any team members happened to bump into him at the airport or getting on or off a plane, he used to pretend he’d been upgraded. Pathetic.

2. Being unable to as much as fart without the involvement of a long suffering PA. I followed up with a Northern Ireland executive that I’d met in Washington DC about a mutual opportunity we’d discussed when we were in the USA. He referred me to his PA to book a meeting with him. I’ve never been back to him since.

3. Going on & on about how brilliant they are & being the big “I am”. Linked to this is telling everyone constantly that they are the CEO. I used to work for a CEO in Belfast (some of you may know him, dear readers…) who at least once a day we would hear shouting from his office “But I am the CEO”…Boy how we used to roll around laughing at that.

4. Hideous uncalled for temper tantrums. One CEO I used to work for threw a chair at me one day – and I mean a proper typing chair with a solid metal base. Had I physically attacked him. No – I’d caught him in a bad moment & made some comment that he didn’t like & that was the result. I managed to dodge the chair for anyone who’s wondering.

5. Spending their investor/shareholder/VC money recklessly – how many times have we seen that? $50k on a domain name, $150k on a booth used twice a year at conferences, flashy company car, unused apartment in Palo Alto that no-one in the team but the CEO is allowed to use and so on…complete waste of money & no-one dare say anything.

6. Getting team members to do non job-related stuff for them. One MD I worked for used to come in late to work & ring in for someone in the office to come out & first of all wait in the car park queue & then park her car. If I ever get even slightly uppity, Paul says to me – “you’re getting more & more like X” – that puts me straight back into my reality box. Same MD used to take a taxi from central London to Heathrow airport because she “didn’t like using the tube”. Other examples of this might be asking members of your team to book personal travel for you or take your cleaning to the dry cleaners. CEOs – do it yourselves!

7. Dominating team brainstorming meetings with their own brilliance so that no-one else gets a look-in.

8. Always hogging the limelight instead of encouraging others to have a go & try taking a lead every now & then.

9. Leaving meetings when they’ve had their say – their time is clearly so valuable!

10. Having ridiculous amounts of the latest technology gadgetry – half of which they don’t even know how to use.

I’m sure there are loads & loads more so let’s get them all out there. This was an easy blog for me to write as I seem to have worked for more than my fair share of CEO assholes over the years (if you’re reading this John Thornton, you are not included in that pile!). Having said that, it was one of my main drivers for starting my own business as I thought to myself, this really can’t be too hard if that asshole can do it!

Sherry Coutu – entrepreneur, investor, philanthropist, mentor & role model

It’s been a while since I’ve told you about someone interesting I’ve encountered in my travels so this blog is all about Sherry Coutu, award winning entrepreneur and a successful angel investor. She has the smarts (MSc with Distinction in Economics from the London School of Economics & an MBA from Harvard), the track record as a practising CEO (her first start up was acquired by Euromoney plc and her second was floated via an IPO in 2000 when Sherry was five months pregnant and it was later valued at $1 billion), a successful investment track record (she’s invested so far in over 35 companies, one of the most recent being Artfinder) and the network (she sits on the boards of LinkedIn and Zoopla.com as well as being an investor in two VC firms). Are you impressed yet? There’s a lot more. Sherry also has 3 young children and aims to spend one day per week putting something back via philanthropic pursuits (she’s on the board of Cancer Research UK, a trustee at NESTA, a non exec at Cambridge & Harvard universities and she works with NSPCC on a programme for disadvantaged teenagers). I suspect on the philanthropic front there’s probably a lot more. I know for a fact on the professional front there’s an awful lot more. Wired Magazine voted Sherry one of the 25 most influential people in the wired world in May 2011.

I hate to tell you this but Sherry Coutu is also very understated, very cool and very nice. I met her first a couple of months ago when Learning Pool was selected as one of the 9 SME finalists in the Cabinet Office’s Innovation Launchpad competition. Sherry has been the driving force behind this initiative which seeks to improve in a practical way government engagement with SMEs. I snapped the pic accompanying this blog when Sherry was delivering her presentation last Tuesday to the 120+ civil servants gathered at BIS. We’ve been lucky to have her input and insight into our Big Society School idea as part of the Launchpad process.

My favourite Sherry Coutu quotes that I’ve come across so far are “I think the most important question for any startup is “Is what they’re aiming for going to change the world somehow? Is it going to make it a better place?”” and about working in the technology space “it’s a great industry that we’re a part of … being able to peer into the future and to invest in things that are likely to change our world. … It’s a huge privilege”. In one video interview she tells how her father waved a bunch of fibre optic cable at her when she was 5 years old & told her it was going to change the world. Life is all about those moments, isn’t it?

I’ve always thought I was a decent enough plate spinner and until I met Sherry, I’d never been envious of another person’s career. I now realise I can surely do more. Sherry’s tutor at the LSE talked to her about considering becoming an entrepreneur…I turned down my place at the LSE when I was 17 because I didn’t feel ready to move to London. I wasn’t brave enough. I’ve wondered over the past few days about how different my life may have been if I’d grasped that particular nettle – but then I also got to thinking about all the good things I might have missed and I’ve concluded that life really is too short for regrets. It’s only in Kurt Vonnegut novels that we should visit those forks in the road & examine different outcomes.

I’ll leave you today with another great Sherry Coutu quote “As entrepreneurs you’re either seeking to disrupt something, or as a dominant market player, you’re seeking to retain your position. You know, you have to ask yourself, “Where’s the puck going to be in 25 years?” Yep – the gal’s still a Canadian! Sherry – it’s been a privilege to get to know you.

10 ways to punch well above your weight as a small business…

We all agree it’s great to be a small business but sometimes, especially if you’re just starting out, you might want people to think you’re bigger than you are.

Below are 10 ways you can do that. I’m sure there are many more – so I’ll be glad to see your comments. Also interested to hear if people think some of this is “wrong” to do as a small business…as in do you think it’s deceitful or just resourceful?

1. Be professional from Day 1 of trading. By that I mean have a logo & a brand, get business cards, have a decent website (not one of those dreadful one page affairs that tells you there’s more coming later), get collateral printed if that’s part of your sell…and always behave in a professional manner.

2. Work hard to keep your website content fresh and changing; write newsy articles and blogs and aim to have new “stuff” on your home page every day or every other day at least – if your website isn’t refreshed, people will stop coming back & you’ll lose momentum from your launch.

3. Use freelance resource if you don’t yet have a team in place, but present those people as part of your team & give them business cards, company email addresses etc. Don’t lie about this if you’re asked outright…most people will be sympathetic to what you’re trying to achieve.

4. Speak at conferences and events and be visible – a lot of people do this very well. You have to hustle a bit to get onto the event organisers’ radar but it’s no doubt worth the effort it takes.

5. Gather up a small advisory board & feature them on your website. Most people will be prepared to help you get started & won’t demand 30% of your company or £1,000 a day in return. A lot of luminaries like to dabble in interesting projects so make yours so & find an innovative way to reward them.

6. Get yourself some testimonials. Ideally from early adopters or your first customers. If you don’t have any customers yet, offer some of your prospects a free trial or a discount in exchange for a written or video testimonial.

7. Use a proper landline number. When Learning Pool was starting out, we obtained a London phone number to give the impression that we had a London office, even though we were based in Northern Ireland. We never lied about this to anyone & always told the truth when asked – but the truth is that no-one asked. They recognised it as a London number & assumed the rest. Along the same lines have a co-working space or concierge service to use as your company address – don’t use your residential address.

8. Register for VAT from Day 1 – even if you won’t get anywhere near the turnover registration hurdle in Year 1. It makes your company appear bigger from the get-go and therefore more credible.

9. Partner with a larger organisation if you want to pitch for a big contract or piggy-back onto a bigger company so that you can use their government framework if they’re on one – you will usually pay them a percentage of any contract you win in order to avail yourself of this but it might be well worth it.

10. My last & favourite one – hold all your early days business meetings in the poshest hotel you can find. We used to use The Goring Hotel as our “London office” in the early days of Learning Pool (it was the hotel the Middletons stayed in the night before this year’s Royal Wedding – that’s how posh it is). We would stay in there for days on end ordering tea but never any food as we couldn’t afford that. You’d be amazed at the number of people that have since told us they were convinced we used to stay there. Ha – I won’t tell you where we did used to stay…but it will be in the book when we eventually get round to writing it!

That’s my top 10 folks – can’t wait to see your additions. Keep ‘em coming.

Entrepreneur tips from the uber Rich Felix Dennis Part 2

This is the second part of a two part blog reviewing extracts of Felix Dennis’s book “How to Get Rich”. In Part 1 we went over Felix’s view on the 5 most common start up errors. Now the bad news is out of the way we can move onto the Cardinal Virtues of the Entrepreneur. Anyone who is a long time reader of my blog will recognise many of these “virtues” as themes I’ve touched on before – let’s face it there can only be so many virtues. First up is:

· Persistence. Felix has a different view on this from most writers of business books. Basically his view is that you need to be terrier-like in persistence when it matters but with an ability to stop being stubborn when all the evidence shows that you’re on a mission to nothing. So – you should try harder than you think you can for something that’s worthwhile but you should also remember that quitting is not dishonourable. The skill comes in recognising when you’ve crossed the line from being persistent to flogging a dead horse – and that’s the difficult bit.

· Self-belief. This is the big one. Without it you probably won’t start on the journey to become an entrepreneur anyway. As Felix says, “self-belief is a priceless asset” and he’s right. One of my very earliest blogs was about a lecture I’d attended given by Dr Dennis Kimbro. Dr Kimbro researched 150 very successful African Americans as to why they were successful & self-belief was one of his 4 pillars. The example Felix uses in his book is a wartime Winston Churchill but every successful entrepreneur has self-belief. If you don’t believe in yourself it’s unlikely that you’ll convince anyone else to believe in you so get used to trampling on doubt (after you’ve confronted it in a sensible way – not at 3am in the morning!). Dr Kimbro also talks about this at length – especially the doubt caused by your family and other friends and well wishers who seek to “advise” you.

· Trust your instinct. This one is necessary but tricky as it’s about knowing which horses to back in terms of all the opportunities that you encounter. There is no easy way to get into a place where you’re able to trust your instincts. You have to put in the long yards, kiss a lot of frogs and make a lot of mistakes along the way. Eventually you find it becomes easier and your hit rate has improved. Entrepreneurs aren’t managers – they go with their gut feelings and often make decisions on the spur of the moment with inadequate information. It’s impossible to trust your instinct in a deliberate, considered manner.

· Diversify. It’s worked for Dennis & other legendary entrepreneurs like Richard Branson. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Launch products that compete with each other so that you own the whole market – think about it for a minute – strangling your baby in order to grow your business is more common than you might at first realise. This virtue is tricky. Other business gurus tell you that laser like focus is key to success. Which of them is right? What I can tell you is that things change (terrifyingly quickly) all the time and in business you need to be ahead of that curve and ready to adapt. When your business is in start up phase you need to focus with all your heart and soul but when things start to get easier and money is flowing in, start a few new baskets. Felix claims it was his 20^th basket that made him super rich…see number 1 above – persistence!

· Listen and Learn. The last of our virtues. Felix says that listening comes in at number 3 after self-belief and persistence for the entrepreneur. If you’re not listening you’re not learning and if you’re not learning it’s time to get out of the kitchen & let someone else do the cooking. I’m fortunate enough in my position to meet a lot of people. Not as many as Felix Dennis of course but as many as I can keep up with. I love to meet people and listen to their stories and help them kick around opportunities they may be considering. I enjoy it and I also get business benefit as sometimes it keeps me in touch with what’s going on in obscure corners of my industry. Time is a precious resource but spend some of it listening to others who present themselves to you – you’ll be amazed at the things you find out.

I’d like to add another quick virtue of my own – be as generous as you can be with your time and with your advice to others – make sure you put something back – karma is important too. That’s the end of the book review. As I said at the start of blog No 1 – it’s not your usual business book & indeed it annoyed me immensely the first time I read it a couple of years ago. It’s worth a read if you’re interested in becoming rich as there are a few nuggets of advice in there. Having said that – I predict that most people will find Felix’s advice distinctly unpalatable and they will decide their comfortable existence rules ok for now!

As always – interested in your comments and thoughts. I’m in southern California on holiday this week so expect a few blogs in the next week or so on far more frivolous subjects…

Entrepreneur tips from the uber Rich Felix Dennis

For today’s blog I’m straying from my usual format & embarking on a 2 part partial book review of Felix Dennis’s “How to Get Rich” which I’ve recently been reading again – more for the entertainment of Felix’s unique way of writing and his mad bits of homespun advice that really do make a lot of sense. Also for his poems & the quotations from others he sprinkles throughout his writing which always make me smile. Whatever you might think of Felix Dennis, you can’t argue with the fact that he’s made a helluva lot of money through his own hard graft & through doing things his own way. Many of his enterprises he owns outright so he hasn’t had to accommodate the views of investors or VCs – he’s made a lot of his own calls.

I’ve enjoyed the book more second time round 2 years later – it annoyed me a bit the first time I read it. I think the main reason I’ve enjoyed it more is because it’s written in a much more refreshing style than the hundreds of other “business” books I’ve read in the interim.

Before I start let me tell you about my own rather tenuous connection to Felix. One of my friends, Catherine Bishop, used to be my partner’s accountant when he was just starting out & when she was just starting out – about 20 years ago. She (wisely) moved from Alan to Felix & in that way she has been personal accountant to one of the richest British entrepreneurs and also one of the poorest!

The chapter I’m reviewing today is Felix’s opinion of the 5 most common start-up errors – Blog no 2 will be on the Cardinal Virtues of the entrepreneur – both themes I’ve touched on in previous blogs. I’m going to give you what Felix says & augment that with a few real life stories of my own. So – let’s get on with the errors – bad news before good:

1. Mistaking Desire for Compulsion – we’ve talked about this before folks. To be a start up entrepreneur you’ve got to be driven to succeed in a way that most people just aren’t. Most people just aren’t prepared to make the sacrifices needed, have no social life, neglect their families, risk everything they own and work every waking hour – not just for a month or two but for years. If anyone had told me 5 years ago how much work & personal sacrifice was going to be needed to get Learning Pool up & operating like the beautiful machine you see before you today I’d have run a mile – or cried a lot. It creeps up on you incrementally – each week you just do a bit more and a bit more until you seriously do start considering if you can manage on less sleep. Other people will tell you about successful entrepreneurs who don’t work very hard – they’re either lying or they’ve set the bar very low. If you know in your heart of hearts that you lack this compulsion walk away now – don’t put yourself through it. Felix talks about how an invisible sliver of ice exists in everyone’s heart but people keep it small & hidden away. Being a successful entrepreneur requires that sliver to grow over the years – I’ve seen it in myself – we need it to slay demons, beat off competition, harden ourselves against loss and disappointment. If you don’t want to become like that – walk away.

2. Over optimism Concerning Cash Flow – something else we’ve talked about before. Competent cash flow management seems to me to be such a vital requirement in any enterprise that it always horrifies me when other entrepreneurs seem to disregard it. There’s at least one person in the Learning Pool team who’s experienced over optimism in a start up’s cash flow before & more importantly had to deal with the consequences of poor cash management. I’m sure you’ve all witnessed it. As an entrepreneur you can leave balance sheets to your accountant but you must grasp the concept and importance of cash flow – it’s your organisation’s life blood. This is one of Felix’s pet topics and his views on how companies waste money is well worth reading in full. With cash flow forecasts, plan for the worst and hope for the best but don’t bury your head in the sand.

3. Reinforcing Failure – this is about making a call to cancel a project which isn’t going to work. It’s one of the hardest things anyone involved in a project ever has to do because they have personal buy in and also because they fool themselves into believing that things are better than they really are and in this way justify continuance. Felix talks about the millions of dollars he’s lost carrying on publishing magazines that no-one was buying; we’ve done it with pet projects that seem like a great idea – but which at the end of the day no one will pay for – even though they may want it. Remember that you are running a business and without sales it’s not a business but a hobby.

4. Thinking Small and Acting Big – oh dear! I love this one because I’m 100% positive that neither myself or my business partner does this. I used to work for a start up CEO who wasted money on stupid things whilst the rest of us scrabbled around trying to get enough cash together to meet payroll and pay our creditors. He travelled business class but even worse used to pretend to the people that worked for him that he was lucky and got upgraded a lot – he said that a number of times to colleagues that met him by accident at the airport and wondered why he wasn’t also flying economy to the West Coast. He rented an apartment instead of staying in hotels, even though he was hardly ever there. He insisted that Hertz had his hire car ready & running with the keys in the ignition when his plane landed & he didn’t care how much extra that cost. Not for him the modest lifestyle of IKEA’s (very wealthy) CEO, taking the bus or using a 20 year old car to run around. He was the BIG ME. At least once a day we would hear him shout “How dare you – I’m the CEO” – that used to really make us chuckle. It’s not nice to strut around like some obnoxious mini-mogul – that’s what Felix says and he’s right. We need to think big & always act small. Be a nice person & set a good example to everyone else.

5. Skimping on Talent. This is so easy to do and for so many reasons. Hire great people that are more talented than you are. Seek them out & offer them whatever you need to in order to bring them into your organisation – it isn’t always money – it might be something else. Don’t hire people that you believe to be lesser people than you. It’s easy to do because it stops you from feeling threatened – but remember in all likelihood they will do the same and in this way your start up will become a den of mediocrity. Look for great people. For a long time at Learning Pool we used to struggle to attract great people but in the last little while we’ve been living with the motto – Better a Hole than an Asshole – and it seems to be working because our team is stronger than ever before. Remember this when you’re recruiting.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this chapter review & I’d love to hear your views on common Start Up errors – so please share.

Mary McKenna's Blog

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