Dr David Bozward

Month: July 2011

  • Entrepreneurial Summer Holidays

    The Summer holidays for students are a great time to just sit in the sun and dream away the long hot summer days, enjoying their youth, a care free spirit and the lack of real responsibility in a modern digital debt laden society.

    Or are they?

    The first thing I will say is that they should be, those endless summers created some of the best literature, greatest relationships and most inspirational events this great country has to offer. There is no better place to be on a true summers day that in the English countryside. (Sitting on a packed train, in the rain)

    So lets get back to the 21st century.

    Most students have around three months off (around 25% of the year), so they should plan what to do as most parents don’t like such long periods of parental supervision thrusted upon them after having recently finding their freedom.

    The answer to the long summer break has always been to gain experience: Life, Work, Places, Travel, Opportunities, Skills, Extra Learning and Revenue. So you need to think about how to do this entrepreneurially.

    So going out and getting a job during the summer basically means three choices, paid casual work e.g. Bar, Internship e.g. major corporates or run your own business.

    How do you ensure you get real benefit of working in some casual job? The answer is to think outside the box, how about working in a bar in Goa, help the owner to double their revenue during the summer,.. just make it different, make it fun and ensure you get some great contacts and references.

    There are loads of Internships and one of the best websites to get you started is www.Enternships.com. Here they have jobs in many sectors in various locations, which you can apply for. What is interested is the length of time you can spend in some businesses, so over the summer you could work in 3 or 4 companies gaining a vast amount of experience in a particular industry sector. This is very valuable for your CV and also in deciding what you want to do for a permanent role.

    I meet a lot of students who run businesses and the summer provides the opportunity to increase their income from a part to a full time amount. It also allows them to take the business to the next stage and ensure they are in good shape for the following years studies. The balancing act of studying for a degree and running a business can be difficult, however, some students have turnover of between 20,000 to 200,000 per year. Its about time management and focus.

    The summer is a great opportunity to revisit your entrepreneurial side and think how can I make a real difference to my life.

  • Entrepreneur E-Learning

    Over the last two weeks I have been developing a new online service for Entrepreneurs, an eLearning site providing courses in Sales, Marketing and how to start a Business. Further course are planned in the Autumn 2011.

    Entrepreneurs are amazing people, yet have certain traits that make them hard to work with. First of all they are time limited, by the very nature of starting a business and also very geographically diverse. Secondly, they tend to have very little money and I feel wrong in taking too much money from people who should be investing in their businesses. Thirdly, they tend to learn in different ways.

    So we have designed these courses to fit their entrepreneurial needs…

    The design of the courses ensures the pace of the course is dictated by the entrepreneur. The can take as long as they desire and also review, redevelop and re-understand the course element in the context of their business.

    The core cost of running course is training, venues and organizing everyone and everything to be at the right location at the right time. ELearning allows us to have the course starting any time and always open. The entrepreneur also does not have to travel and therefore has more time to spend on their business.

    One aspect we do lose with online course is the loss of the real face-to-face networking which is so important when learning, knowing there are others who have the same problems. This we will fix using LinkedIn.

    One important lesson which the internet is very aware of, if content is free it has no value. Everything known to mankind is available on the internet, however it’s the application of knowledge is where value lies. As an entrepreneurs we understand this. The courses develop knowledge through the application of this knowledge, in an entrepreneurial way.

    For many years I have know that there are three type of learning styles (Fleming’s VAK/VARK) model:

    1. Visual
    2. Auditory
    3. Kinesthetic or Tactile

    Kinaesthetic learning is a learning style in which learning takes place by the entrepreneur actually carrying out a physical activity. This means we have incorporated an element of developing their business in every course.

    These courses are now in beta release and having our first set of beta-entrepreneurs from UK Universities through and if you would like to join then please email me.

  • Apprentice: G is for Growth

    In the last week I have read about three European G-countries, Germany, Greece and Great Britain and thought how would they do f they were teams on the Apprentice. These are three very different countries within the European Union having three very different experiences with the current economic opportunities. So lets have a bit of fun during this blog, and it’s just that.

    So picture this: The third teams are lined up and told they have taken over a small business and this business needs to start growing by increasing their sales and revenue. The target is €7bn.

    The teams then go off, brain storm, SWOT analysis and then run around phoning each other,..etc etc until they have to pitch.

    The first to pitch to the customer is Great Britain, they first take the client sight seeing and act out some poetry by one of the worlds most famous authors. They show the customer around the birthplace of the author and create one of the best relationships with the client. Then it pitch time with the Project Manger takes centre stage, who then went on to tell the client how to do business, about business ethics and what is wrong with the client’s shop. The client provided €1.6bn in sales. These sales are good, but will not help the project manager develop the growth required in the business in the short term.

    The second to pitch along the European high street is Germany and again did a little sight seeing but lower key. The pitch from the project manager is very powerful and business like, this time after some exchange of ideas and a common approach to long term development did €10.3bn in sales. This has placed this team on one of the best growth paths of any business and a sure winner. You would expect no one in this team to be going home this week.

    The third country Greece is currently closed for business did not receive the customer. The project manager had a team meeting to agree to receive €270bn in investment without providing any equity. They also reduced the wages of everyone in the team, agreed to sell some assets and decided to make the other teams pay part of their earnings to them over the next 30 years. The customer is current looking at this team as an equity investment opportunity, when the team is ready to do business.

    Then we move back into the boardroom to receive the feedback from the customer. Germany will be a long-term partner, customer and investment opportunity. Greece has developed an innovated yet unorthodox approach to business, however the customer believes there are long term opportunities. Then we come to Great Britain, the customer did not like their approach to business and thus the low sales, the pitch was heavy handed and the customer did not see a long term business future. Someone in this team will be out this week, the Project Manager has to decide who will be coming in with them to answer why this task went wrong.

    In the words of Lord Alan “And then one of you will be going home.”