Loch Leven Seafood Cafe review

I’m straying a bit from my usual territory here with a restaurant review. The Loch Leven Seafood Cafe on the north shore of beautiful Loch Leven near Ballachulish and Glencoe is just too good to miss & I wanted to share it with all of you.

We called in there last Monday night when we were staying close by. The food is divine. Fresh fish & seafood perfectly cooked – no wonder the restaurant was busy despite the fact that it was a Monday & to be honest its location is somewhat remote. If you’re visiting in the summer it’s probably worth booking first.

The company started out as suppliers & exporters of fresh fish and seafood and they used to have a few benches in the car park for customers to snack on shellfish they had bought in the shop. This became so popular that 5 years ago the owners (some Scottish, some Spanish) decided to bite the bullet and open a restaurant. This mix of cultures is reflected in their uncluttered menu.

Everything is about the food and the view from the windows (see my 3^rd photo) – so don’t visit if you’re obsessed by glitzy decor…let’s face it – you can get that anywhere!

The first photo above is of my main course – fresh and lightly cooked scallops in light soy sauce with sesame seeds. Simple and delicious. Without doubt the best meal out I’ve had this year.

I was impressed by their people (friendly and welcoming without being overpowering). I asked for their raw tomato soup recipe and the chef gave it to me without hesitation, even offering to mail their special Arbequina olive oil to me when I mentioned the liquid/hand luggage on planes issue. Also the simplicity of their menu which still managed to have something for everyone. It just shows you that even in a recession excellent businesses that have really thought about their business model, care about good customer service, execute relentlessly and have their team completely on message will thrive.

Two people, three delicious courses, £70 and a view to die for – what’s not to like?

I wonder if they could be persuaded to open the Lough Neagh Cafe…

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Top 5 qualities the start-up CEO wants from team members

You have to be a certain sort of person to get on well in a start-up and there’s no doubt it isn’t a suitable career choice for everyone. I thought a quick “top 5 qualities” may be useful for any of you out there that are wondering if this sort of adventure is for you.

My original list was much longer but I’ve whittled it down to the 5 that matter most to me – I realise that this is personal to me and many of you will have some of your own that you wish to add in the comments section.

Read on if you’ve been bitten by the start-up bug or are thinking you might jump in to the technology bubble that’s rapidly exploding right now.

1. POSITIVITY No-one wants to listen to or work alongside a whinger or sniper. Yeah – things generally aren’t even close to perfect in a start-up environment but get over it & get over yourself & you’ll make a far better team member.

2. HARD WORK No getting away from this one folks. You cannot cover off everything you need to by working 9-5 for 5 days a week. If that’s all you can give, stay well away from start-up land.

3. COMMITMENT I want to know you’re gonna stick around long enough for me to recoup my investment in you – and there will be one. The flip side to that is the minute you’re gone, you’re gone – don’t expect a leaving party & sad farewells in a start-up; no-one has time for that.

4. ENTHUSIASM AND ENERGY Enthusiasm for what we’re all trying to achieve, hunger for success and energy which manifests itself as urgency in all that you do. Don’t come sloping in to work at 9am telling me you are tired. I don’t want to hear it.

5. A SOLUTIONS FOCUSED OUTLOOK Don’t bring me problems. We have millions of those already. Push yourself a bit, work it out & bring me a solution. I like that a lot better.

You’ll note nothing on the list has anything to do with your skills. I guess they’re a given & a secondary consideration.

As always your comments are welcome – keep them coming & I look forward to reading them.

A blog about pride…

Last night I attended the awards evening for SeedComp 2011 – a Digital Derry initiative to uncover the North West of Ireland’s most promising digital business ideas. The process has been ongoing since late March & has resulted in 30 or so new business ideas emerging. This type of competition is a fabulous way for any town to encourage & promote some innovation & entrepreneurialism. The overall prize kitty last night was £10,000 and included a £1,000 prize for the most promising student idea – so it’s a very cost effective way to get some ideas moving in your community & get especially your young people thinking about starting their own businesses. Most brand new ideas only need a tiny amount of money to get started. We’re lucky to have our own Digital Champion, Mark Nagurski, in Derry to come up with competitions like this and then put in the hard graft to make them a success. Definitely worthwhile if your town doesn’t already do something like this.

12 fledgling ideas were shortlisted at the start of May and the new promoters presented yesterday. The judging panel included some tech industry veterans, one of Facebook’s senior executives, a couple of local entrepreneurs and a (friendly) VC. A terrifying prospect and indeed one of the competitors shared with me at last night’s event that although he’s presented to both Steven Spielberg and James Cameron in his career so far, he was more nervous going into the room yesterday.

It was therefore with great pride that Paul & I witnessed our very own Breda Doherty pick up a prize as part of her new venture with her business partner Catherine Morris. An all girl geek team. What could ever be nicer? Breda & Catherine met on the Invest NI/Digital Circle funded mission to this year’s SXSW event in Austin, Texas (thanks Matt!) and they’ve wasted no time in coming up with a new business idea & putting together a plan. Their new idea has elements of the passion of the original Craigslist (Breda interviewed Craig Newmark at SXSW) and it uses Bill Liao’s homespun advice on marketing messages (Breda interviewed Bill in Washington DC); I’m hoping their relentless execution against plan will show that Breda has maybe even learned something from Paul & me along the way (good stuff only Breda!). She’s certainly a different person today than the one who walked into the Learning Pool office in April 2008 to bring order to the chaos that existed at that time – more self confident, more informed about technology and investment, more assertive, more aware of how to get things done, more experienced, more of an all rounder…but still as sweet, still as stylish and still universally loved by her school chums, the whole of team lovely, our entire customer base and basically anyone who ever meets her.

Go Breda & Catherine – we’re all rooting for you & we can’t wait to see where this takes you.

Addendum to this blog (11 June 2011)

A few people have asked me why Paul & I are so supportive of one of our own star team members thinking about starting her own business…hmm…being a small business owner isn’t just about finding people & extracting your pound of flesh from them over the time they work for you. It’s also about adding to your local community & giving back where you can, providing careers & challenge for your people and equipping them with the skills they need to go on & do something else. Learning Pool is 5 years old this summer and we are lucky to have a high performing star team that’s the envy of many other companies. But after 3 years in a job, people are entitled to try their hand at something else and if they go on to take a stab at being an entrepreneur themselves, Paul & I see that as a perfect 10 scored for ourselves – our work is done & we’ve achieved one of the things we set out to.

The other day a local entrepreneur I met at a lunch told me how he’d had someone come in to arrange the desks in his company so that everyone could see each others screens – his reason for doing that – so that no-one would be on Facebook during the hours of 9-5. What did I do – I just sighed a bit to be honest. He wasn’t interested in what I had to say anyway. Old fashioned companies with old fashioned opinions – think on. Your days are probably numbered.

Stagecoach 2011 – Day 2 Review

The acts we watched at Day 2 of Stagecoach 2011 were a mix of excellent, bad & downright offensive – ah well – you didn’t expect that I would go to a US country music festival and not be offended did you? Day 2 was another good day of people watching. The stuff I saw in the crowd that I found most distasteful was mainly t-shirt slogan related and here are a few examples:

· Guy with his girlfriend wearing a t-shirt that he’d hand written on the back of “Ladies, what happens at Stagecoach stays at Stagecoach” (see pic no 2 attached)

· Grossly ugly guy with a t-shirt reading “Free Chorizo” and featuring an arrow pointing towards his rather grubby pants (his mate next to him was wearing a green t-shirt that simply said “Stoner”)

· Old man with a t-shirt that said “The Dixie Chicks still suck” – yeah – I’m sure they’re also losing sleep over what you think…

· A lot of anti Obama general redneck stuff.

All of this paled into insignificance however when Jay deMarcus of Rascal Flatts (yep – that’s a band for anyone who’s wondering) stopped playing 30 minutes into their set and announced from the main stage to the 55,000 person strong, alcohol fuelled and very patriotic crowd “that sonofabitch Bin Laden is dead”. The reaction was surprisingly flat. I guess everyone was thinking – Wow – that took a long time.

I dread to think what Larry Gatlin from the Gatlin Brothers has made of this bit of news although I’m glad he wasn’t on stage at the time and able to announce it. His was the musical performance that I would rate as the most offensive of the day. He’s a pompous & odious little man, full of his own importance. He stopped playing one of his songs to berate the audience as he’d deemed they weren’t reacting in a sufficiently excited way to being present to hear the Gatlin Bros playing one of their biggest hits. He claims to keep politics out of his show but talks about nothing else from the stage – oh except for a story about how he & his wife used to live in a small house same as everyone else (he bizarrely included details of how small their tv was) until the day he received a phone call saying that Elvis wanted two songs he’d written and they were able to go out the next day & buy a great big house.

Earlier in the day, Rosie Flores had done her level best to get the crowd in the Palomino tent moving with her lively rockabilly mix but it wasn’t until she was joined on stage by Big Sandy (of the Fly Rite Boys – what a voice he has!) that they shifted their arses out of their portable chairs & got dancing.

The highlight of Stagecoach 2011 for me was seeing Wanda Jackson again. Wanda is the undisputed Queen of Rockabilly and there isn’t anyone out there that can touch her. Yesterday she was in good form and in fine voice and clearly on a high from her recent collaboration project with Jack White of the White Stripes (their album is called “The Party Ain’t Over). She sang 3 or 4 songs from the new album, all of them appear to have been selected to make the most of Wanda’s unique voice – I’ll certainly be buying – it’ll wake me up in the mornings driving the Fig up to Derry.

Wanda played a long set yesterday & even came back on for an encore – something I’ve never seen done before at any of the Coachella family of festivals (Leonard Cohen disregarded his finish time a few years ago & just carried on playing). She had time to tell some of her legendary stories including a few about former boyfriend Elvis. Last time I saw her play was at Pappy & Harriet’s in Pioneertown, CA and Robert Plant was in the audience – that’s how much of a legend Wanda is. She finished up yesterday with her famous “Let’s Have a Party” and everyone in the Palomino tent was up on their feet. (Wanda had previously advised the crowd it would be good for them to have blood circulating to some of the places it might not have recently been. A cursory look around confirmed that she was probably right).

Wanda always has a lovely way of interacting with the audience & making her shows very personal. Yesterday she expressed interest from the stage in the guy beside me’s very impressive Mohican, asking him if he had to start from scratch with it every day and saying she thought keeping her own hair nice was hard enough.

Thanks to Wanda Jackson & Kris Kristofferson for two great shows at Stagecoach 2011 – says something when the septuagenarians are clearly leading the way – long may you both reign.

Interested in your stories if you were also there or comments/questions if you weren’t.

Stagecoach 2011 – Day 1 Review

For those of you that aren’t familiar with Stagecoach, it’s a country music festival that takes place in California in April at the Indio Polo Grounds – the same place that the Coachella Festival happens – way out in the So Cal desert. It’s on this weekend & this year is its 5^th year – but my first time attending. Why am I there this year. 3 reasons I guess – it’s definitely an experience & an opportunity to see Americans at leisure on their home turf, we usually go to Coachella but this year the tickets sold out so fast we weren’t in time; some of the music is interesting and thirdly my friends wanted to go.

This is a quick review of Day 1. We made the mistake of hanging out at the main stage most of the day. Really the place to be was probably either of the two minor stages. As a result the first 3 acts I saw were more like pop music with a bit of country twang thrown in – Steel Magnolia (a young poppy country couple), Chris Young (again – something for the younger pop crowd – he sang a lot of songs about saving water by drinking beer which the crowd loved) and Darius Rucker (once of Hootie & the Blowfish, a rocker turned country – he was wearing a very cool t-shirt). It was all very enjoyable & provided a decent “day out” backdrop for chatting with a gang of friends. The real action at the main stage however was in the people watching. In my life I have never seen as many:

· cowboy hats & bras (the latter on young girls but I saw quite a few men that would definitely have benefited from a bit of “support”)

· semi-naked girls – a lot of them quite drunk

· bad dancers – again – a lot of them quite drunk (American dancing looks strange to us Europeans anyway – lots of waving of arms in the air goes on) (see photo number two for a real horror sighting)

· tattoos

· sunburn

· portable chairs – fine during the day but a menace at night once abandoned

Kenny Chesney was the big act Saturday night at the main stage. We ducked out to go & see Kris Kristofferson at one of the side stages. Very glad we did because he was entertaining & excellent whereas this morning’s Los Angeles Times described the Chesney performance as “lite as usual” & “including many songs about the choice to be made between a beer & a margarita”. Kristofferson is 75 in June but he’s every inch a real heavyweight star – no doubt about that whatsoever. He sang & talked for over an hour and his set included many of his great & famous songs – Me and Bobby McGee, Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down, For the Good Times, Help Me Make it Through the Night, The Silver Tongued Devil & I, Here Comes that Rainbow Again. He is clearly adored by his fans and I’m pleased to have snapped one really good photo of him (featured). He told stories as he went along & said he wished he was in better voice – but then went on to say it had always been that bad. He was well worth seeing.

Annoyed to have missed the Cleverlys and Mel Tillis yesterday but better prepped for today & especially looking forward to seeing Rosie Flores, the great Wanda Jackson, the Gatlin Bros and Leon Russell. I’m also going to take photos today of a lot more of the side action going on around the music as that’s at least half of the craic. Part 2 tomorrow folks – happy to receive comments/stories from anyone else that was there yesterday.

Growing old can still be a lot of fun

The photo above is one of our neighbours here at the Ocotillo Lodge in Palm Springs, Ed Rooney. Yep – Ed’s part of our Irish diaspora & when he isn’t sunning himself over the winter in Palm Springs he lives up in Portland, Oregon – which as everyone knows is more like Ireland than Ireland itself – even the weather is the same. Ed visited Ireland a year or two ago with his son, Ted Rooney. Ted’s an actor (isn’t everyone in southern California?) who’s been hampered throughout his acting career by simply being too tall – all the romantic leads are automatically snapped up by short men because all of the Hollywood starlets are tiny.

Ed is exactly how I hope I’ll be when I’m in my mid 80s and he’s a shining example of how a person can still have a lot of fun, even when they’re getting a bit older. He’s independent, keeps himself active, he’s out & about every day, has loads of friends and he’s always got plenty of stories to tell which I love to listen to. I snapped the pic yesterday just before Ed was going for a swim. He’d just been telling me about how his brother Art used to try & pass himself off as THE Art Rooney when they were young, growing up in Pittsburgh. I’d been telling him about how I was next to Art’s famous son, Dan Rooney, in the White House last month on St Patrick’s night – Ed wasn’t too impressed by the whole White House thing but he was impressed that I’d met Dan Rooney.

I wonder to myself why it is that Ed’s the way he is – so positive and so cheerful. Is the answer as straightforward as having been born with a sunny disposition or is there something more that we can do to as we get older to make sure we maintain a positive outlook. Ed has a computer & keeps up to date with what’s happening in the world. He uses skype to keep in touch with his family & many grandchildren. He was a schoolteacher & reads more than most people I seem to meet these days. So is that his secret? Remaining plugged in & up to date with current affairs? Look forward to your thoughts on this subject.

There’s a big outcry in the US at the moment re the price of petrol – it’s $4.50 a gallon in Palm Springs (it must surely be 3 x as much as that in the UK). Everyone’s baying for blood on this – especially as the oil companies’ (massive & obscene) profits were announced this morning. Ed’s talking about trading in his big saloon car for a Mini Cooper – someone’s told him they’re perfectly comfortable for guys 6’3” & taller – I’m only sorry to be leaving Tuesday & missing out on going out for a spin in it. I hear someone in the desert is selling Mini Coopers that have been “Kiss” customised – gonna see if I can persuade Ed to get one of those before I leave…

Top 10 things I love most about Palm Springs

I’m on holiday in Beautiful Palm Springs in the southern California desert this week so it’s only right that I should tell everyone how lovely it is here. This is my top ten not anyone else’s – I’m just getting that in now before people start giving out about the fact that golf or celeb spotting aren’t mentioned anywhere on this list!

1. It has to be the weather. OK – so it gets a bit hot in the middle of summer but the rest of the year you can’t fault it. It makes outdoor living a reality. Even Palm Springs airport is outdoors (it calls itself a resort-port instead of an airport – how cool is that!)

2. Our wildlife – especially the glorious variety of colourful garden birds & hummingbirds that you see everywhere. I also have a soft spot for the bats that appear at twilight and the roadrunners I see running across the lawn when I’m swimming early in the morning. You can also visit the Living Desert if you want to see the stuff that lives here but isn’t readily visible – owls, tortoises, big horn sheep – check it out at this link http://www.livingdesert.org/

3. Healthy, tasty, cheap vegetarian food – it’s everywhere. Without doubt the worst thing about living in Northern Ireland for me is the poor choice of restaurants to visit for people that don’t just want to eat steak or chicken (I know – market forces – small population – I accept it’s my fault…)

4. The people – most people who live here are blow-ins so there’s a rich tapestry of stories from pretty much everyone you meet

5. The ubiquitous palm trees – who would have thought there’d be so many different types – don’t knock em until you’ve tasted a date shake

6. Location, location, location – easy driving distance to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix & San Diego – just in case you ever get bored

7. The flowers – especially the spectacular cactus flowers that are blooming right now and this year’s flame red ocotillo flowers – absolutely spectacular

8. The mountains – changing colour all day long & allowing you to walk in snow at the top of the tram ride – even when it’s roasting hot down in the valley

9. Mid century architecture everywhere & giving Palm Springs it’s unique retro look – it’s what we’re famous for & you can’t see it anywhere else

10. The Ocotillo Lodge where we live – built in the mid 50s by the Alexander company & still exactly as it was the day it was built – just beautiful & with the best pool in town – that’s it pictured in the photo.

That’s my top 10 – would love to hear from you what I’ve missed.

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.

Entrepreneurs and Criminals…maybe it is quite a fine line…

I was delighted to meet the very interesting Sheena Leaf in Exeter on Friday. That’s Sheena in the photo. Sheena was originally a psychiatric nurse and these days is working on a project in Devon called “The Entrepreneur Inside”. It’s a project that aims to deliver entrepreneurial education to prisoners and Sheena’s part way through a prison pilot that will connect offenders with business professionals and a regional university business school to uncover legitimate entrepreneurial potential.

This is something that’s never occurred to me before – although a cursory Google search identifies a couple of serious academic research studies comparing especially drug barons & gang lords with entrepreneurs.

I find this a fascinating idea – as it’s all to do with circumstance and life chances as well as morals. On the flight back to Belfast on Friday evening I jotted down a few thoughts of my own about what some of the similarities are. This is what I came up with:

· We all like ducking & dealing – although perhaps we call that negotiation

· We all like to make money – sometimes even just for thrills

· Both sets lean towards being manipulative and control freaks – again we probably call that negotiation

· We all resent being told what to do & like to be our own boss and make our own independent decisions

· Everyone has a healthy disdain for the competition (there’s a famous story from a non-Disney theme park who used the objective “Kill Mickey” internally)

· We all work hard to make ourselves indispensable to our customer base and we all want “addictive” products to sell

· Both of us like spotting opportunity & backing “horses”

· We all monitor and respond quickly to market trends

· We both have a strikingly different risk profile than other groups of people

· We all like to break the rules although we tend to do that by using armies of professional advisers to look for legal loopholes.

Interesting eh? I’d welcome your thoughts on this & I wish Sheena every success with her ground breaking pilot.

Mary McKenna's Blog

Come ramble with me…