Building a Pyrotechnic Business - 7 x 7 ‘Sure Fire’ Accelerants for Entrepreneurs

Accelerant 1: Lighting your own Fire

1. Passion: Passion is a key ingredient if you are running your own business. You cannot expect anyone else to care more about what you do than you.  Your passion is an accelerant that is transmitted like wildfire through everything you say and do. People will notice it and respond positively – this is how you start to create a presence and build your business.
2. Motivation: If passion is a high revving engine, then motivation is the drive train. Without either you and your business will lack direction and energy. Motivation is not something you can outsource. So when you get out of bed in the morning get yourself into a positive frame of mind. Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is high. You need to be about an 8!
3. Half empty v Half full: How do you see the world – are you an optimist or pessimist by nature? If the latter, frankly you’re in for a very tough time. You need a positive mind set - seeing opportunities and challenges rather than problems and barriers. If you have a negative thought, think about how you might re-frame it in a positive way. Teach your mind to see the good before the not so good – it can be done!
4. Handling Rejection: There’s going to be a lot of this and it doesn’t really go away. The temptation is to view all rejection as personal but this is not usually the case. There’s a saying that there is no such thing as failure – only learning! It’s important then to understand where you can what the basis of the rejection is – it may cause you to revisit what you do and the way you do it.
5. Planning for Success: One of Stephen Covey’s ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’ is to begin with the end in mind. If you’re just starting out then it clearly helps to know where you want to end up. Why? Because it will shape what you do and how you go about it.. It’s often helpful to think about what you yourself might be doing when the business is successful and capable of running itself.
6. Bias for action: Frankly it’s no good waiting for other people to do things for you – for just the right moment – you just need to get on with what needs to be done. Banks, governments, friends, family will all have their own agendas and go at their own pace. It’s no good thinking if only this, if only that. You need to take responsibility and make things happen. It’s very rarely that things are absolutely perfect – so make the most with what you’ve got.
7. Reaching Out: Are you one of those guys who doesn’t like to stop and ask for directions? If so, think again and next time give it a try. You won’t know all you need to know to run your own business. Successful entrepreneurs build a support structure around them – people they can turn to for knowledge yes, but also people they can turn to for empathy. Choose your people and networks carefully to make sure they can deliver on both counts

And finally, if you’re so inclined score yourself on a scale of 1(low) to 10 (high) against these accelerants. I’m going to ask my network what they think a good score should be.

Note: Accelerant 2 will follow shortly

The NABO Strategy Boardroom - 25th October 2011

A trip to pleasant Putney which has always been one of my favourite parts of London with it's proximity to the River Thames. The fact that I couldn't  find the venue first off meant I had to walk across Putney Bridge and back which on a lovely autumnal morning was just fine.

NABO (the National Association for Business Owners) is the prodigy of Jonathan Jay and describes itself as the fastest growing business network which is quite something given the competition there is in this space today. In addition to networking events it offers marketing and mentoring support to businesses. One of its offerings is the a Strategy Boardroom - which was why I was in Putney.

Jonathan offers these free session fairly frequently and today there were 10 or so people around the table. Some one man bands like myself . Some larger - a couple of training companies, an accountancy practice, a company specialising in change management. It was good to be part of a group of this nature - all extremely positive despite the prevailing economic conditions.

In turn we introduced our businesses and outlined what brought us there today. For some it was sustaining revenue in a fickle marketplace, for others the focus was on growth. Questions followed from around the table with Jonathan taking an active role here.

As lunch approached, Jonathan introduced us to his core marketing models,  a number of supporting marketing strategies and a very focused approach to sales funnel management. Here, as previously, he shared his own and the success stories of others with us.

Post lunch continued with an outline of how-  using two structures services - the Strategy Boardroom and the Implementation Programme - he could help us develop our businesses.

Here is not the time or place to go in to the detail or the actual figures, after all in depends on your need and your perception of value . Suffice it to say the investment required would be of the order of several thousand pounds.

Personally, I enjoyed the day and valued the market understanding I got from it. Jonathan's sales pitch was very open and transparent  - we had the option to leave before he went in to it if we wanted too.

The underlying Business Model is fairly familiar these days - some form of membership and various support services - for example, see Paul Avin's Business Wealth Club and Nigel Temple's Navigator offering. At the end of the day it's a 'Can't' (Knowledge) or ' Won't' issue (Motivation). You need to decide what you need.

As I said earlier, the value proposition is for you alone to judge - I'd put myself in the' Won't' camp the consequences of which are only too apparent!

Business Issues - A Lament for Business Link

I was at the inaugural meeting of the Thames Valley Berkshire LEP SME Forum yesterday – more of that anon. But, interestingly, there were a number of people who felt that Business Link had left the stage prematurely.

 I have mixed feelings about the demise of the physicality of Business Link – as you may know they’re now moving to a providing a web based service only. I guess I have a less than positive view of their impact based on impressions rather than direct evidence. Yes, I admit it’s an outright prejudice! I have no right to be sniffy – as a business consultant, coach and mentor I trade in the same space and probably have many of the same competencies and characteristics.

Were they doomed to failure? I think they were. Why?

1.       It’s all about money

We’re in an age of austerity. It’s not quite back to the ration books and coupons of post Worldwide II but it might just as well be. The only problem is that you have to be of a certain age to recognise the reference – as in Saga you’ve guessed! It doesn’t matter that it’s our money governments are playing with – after all we provide the votes and the hard cash from the taxes we pay that gives them their authority. So against the National Debt, the Health Service, the Benefits dependency on scale of 1:10 where 10 is stellar – where would Business Link be?

2.       Big business wins all the time

Think major industries and sectors – banks, oil, utilities, cars, retailers – who do you think is calling the shots? Is it the Government? I don’t think so, despite the ‘pro forma’ bashing – regulators, commissions, parliamentary enquiries etc. Have mature quasi or totally monopolistic businesses changed their position one iota – no they haven’t!

And my point here? Big businesses generally only like smaller businesses if they can rape and pillage them. Because, perhaps, generally they are not bright and creative enough themselves. And governments acquiesce to this. Yes, I know selling works as an exit strategy for the fortunate few too.

So, Business Link was never going to get any leverage here.

3.       The Public Sector doesn’t ‘do’ small businesses

Tales abound of the hoops small businesses have to jump through to get in to the Public Sector. One rule I heard recently was that a tendering company’s turnover had to be ten times the project value. In this case the project was worth £150k and the company although successful was small and didn’t have a turnover of £1m plus. EU rules designed to encourage fairness in tendering mean you need a degree in business obfuscation and the patience of a monk too.

The Public Sector doesn’t do granularity – which presumably is behind the Coalition’s push for local activism. Business Link tried to fill this space but wasn’t sufficiently loved by its owners or users to survive.

4.       Free is always the wrong model

There are numerous studies that show that providing business support free is not the right answer- see Daniel Isenberg’s article for the Harvard Business Review ‘How to start an Entrepreneurial Revolution’. Free has the wrong connotations and is likely too to result in quantity not quality. The problem is once you let poor quality prospects in it’s the devil’s own job to weed them out as a Pharma incubator I worked with found out when it had to move to a commercial business model.

Business Link as formulated had all the trappings of a cost centre.

5.       One size doesn’t fit all

I’ve raised the issue of granularity earlier. Many delivery models to be economic have to make assumptions and group users in to categories or segments and inevitably become homogenous. SME’s have singularly peculiar and varied characteristics which would challenge most customer facing organisations. Actually, just think how difficult it is even to define a small business.

6.       Being ‘nicey nicey’ is no good

Let’s face it – sometimes you just have to tell business owners their baby is ugly. No customers, no cashflow, no more seedcorn capital. Pack up and find something else to do. If you’re going to fail then do it quickly. Life support for an ailing small business is the wrong sort of support. I admit, I don’t actually know how Business Link handled businesses where the business proposition just wasn’t going to work but one might pre-suppose an inclination to kindness.

7.       Not many Business owners want to listen

Here’s the real rub, not only are they loathe to listen but they don’t often ask for advice even when they know they should. A very successful entrepreneur I met with recently took pride in regularly batting away well meaning support services. At the SME Forum I talked about earlier I’m not sure how many small businesses were actually there – although certainly there were a lot of providers (yes, myself included) who want to work in the SME Sector.

Overall, this is not a satisfactory solution as we sift through the embers of a burnt out economic model where expectations of economic regeneration weigh heavily on the SME Sector. There may be cause for optimism in the wave of localism that the Government is trying to engender but nannies in any form are not the answer – would the real Small Business please come upon the stage!