Category Archives: Blog

Blog, Motivation Techniques, Skills Development

Why you shouldn’t start a business

I often talk to people about why they should start a business, normally convincing the majority of the audience to do so. So what if I was being paid to talk people out of starting a business. I know we already have the BBC and popular press who have taken this mantel on, but thought I would give them a helping hand this month.

The clear fact of it is you are not an entrepreneur.

Location Location Location

If you were truly an entrepreneur then you would chose to start your business in one of the top 10 growth economies in the world, so China, Brazil, India and Russia would be on the top of this list (From your IP address I can see you are not from these). These economies have amazing growth, cheap labour, low taxes and little bureaucrats when compared to us in Europe. If not there you would place it in a high growth high population density city such as Mexico City, Singapore or Hong Kong. You could quickly prototype your idea to millions of newly rich and enjoy the inherit growth in the economy.

If not there then create a start-up near your customers or more importunely, your highest paying /grossing markets (A simple measure of GDP multiplied by population). Therefore you would be in the USA, Japan or Germany.  These are great markets to achieve scale and profit margins putting you in a great place for world domination. Think of the major brands, Coke, McDonalds, Starbucks, they all start in the USA due to its scale and spring board effects.

Finance
The vast majority of businesses will need some form of finance at some point. Given the banks are global, they will favour you if you have taken the location advice. The availability of financing from very small amounts, cash flow support, major loans, venture funding, and developing companies for IPO is an important structure for all entrepreneurs to live in. Every economy needs entrepreneurs to growth their start-ups and sell them on, getting ready to start new ones. This creates wealth for the nation through taxes, jobs and exports.

Motive
If you want to be truly rich then take a look at the Forbes rich list and see which countries the self made billionaire are from. We don’t want you to succeed in this country and if you do, we will force you to live in another part of the world for tax reasons. Most of our successful entrepreneurs stay out of the media attention for the very reason of not wanting the media to attack them for providing jobs and taxes to help pay for those that do/do not need it.

Popular support
The general public don’t want you to start a business. They want you to work in a newly build factory paying your taxes, pension and union contributions for the next 45 years. This ensures you fit into our 1950s model of our UK society which proves job satisfaction and security for life. Your only chance in life is therefore to work for a gov’ner who thinks little of the time and effort you put into the role. You should be happy to have a job, any job and accept your lot in life.

From these four points, its clear you are not, nor will ever be an entrepreneur, so just give up reading about it now and get yourself a nice safe job at the local supermarket!

Blog

Being Excellent – A hard mantra to live up to

Before we had The Matrix we had Ted. Not that TED but this Ted.

Ted was striving to be excellent and this is the greatest mantra for anyone to have. Excellence comes in all flavours and allows for all opportunities. So ever since 1989 its been one of mine.

Yet the vast majority of people don’t recognize excellence, want it or even accept it could be part of their daily lives.

The problem with this mantra is that its constantly changing. What was excellent when Ted started out in 1989 is not now in 2012. The ‘special effects’ look less special and more amateur. I’m sure we could debate the acting skills or their lack of as well.

So excellence is about the time we live in. About our current ability and the ability to move the bar, one further notch up. Knowing we are doing our best and getting the best.

The major reason this is important for entrepreneurs is that we have to create opportunities, those are only valid at one point in time, the idea, execution and delivery of the business idea must all be created in a way which our stakeholders desire.

And of course they all require us to be excellent.

We should all have a commitment to be excellent to others in our society (que guitar riff), not just to expect it, but also to provide it.

Have an excellent weekend!

Blog, Skills Development

Are Computer Skills the biggest barrier to Starting a Business?

Computer skills are very important in everyday life. However when starting and running a business they are one of the major factors in enabling growth and also reducing costs through automation and online communications.

These skills are very diverse from spreadsheet analysis of the cash flow to  creating a viral marketing campaign via facebook. The start up or self employed person has the greatest challenge as money and labour costs are too high to use outside help. So the successful start-up is one which has mastered their computer skills needs.

The truly hard part is where to develop these skills, as schools lack application, teaching skills and issues with responsibility in teaching student to promote themselves on the web. So the task comes to Colleges and Universities to ensure that these diverse, yet important skills are developed.

When we look at people who would start a business then vocational courses are those, which will lead into self employment. The self employed have the greatest need for computer skills, as there is only one person to do it and also the product or service is more personalized.

Students at grade 11 (general education) have a rather high mean score (2.93) in their confidence to use the internet responsibly, while this mean score decreases somewhat at grade 11 (vocational education).  (http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/digital-agenda/scoreboard/docs/2012/scoreboard_digital_skills.pdf)

So how do we get vocational students to develop useable enterprise computer skills?

Blog

How to increase UK Exports

There is only one good way out of this recession thing, we need to export more. We need to sell more stuff (products and services) to the rest of the world, they pay us and we they get more money to spend. This money then helps us continue to live in one of the best counties in the world (RE: Amazing Olympics 2012).

I don’t think anyone is will disagree with this strategy, however the hard question is how do we do this? Do we need some amazing Quango, a new £200, programme or a new Lord/Minster) Don’t worry I have the answer.

We tell people where to try and sell their products.

Yes it’s that simple.

So how?

Everyday I and many others listen to the news, read the papers and go online to see what is happening in the world. Everyday I learn where NOT to sell my products, currently Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan (News for 23th Aug 2012).

I am not an arms dealer or supplier to medical services, so have no need or desire to sell into these countries.

I know the news is coordinated in the UK, otherwise why would I get the same news on all channels. When I go to the gym, I have the opportunity to watch three news channels (BBC, ITV and Sky) at the same time and guess what? They are the same, timed to the nearest minute. They cover the same stories within about a minute of each other. How can three competitive channels do this without talking to each other or being told what to cover? I would love to know?

So all the government needs to do is tell the news stations to cover the countries that have opportunities for our UK businesses and show it on the news channels.

Then all 4m businesses in the UK would know where to sell to (rather than promoting where not to sell to) and we would increase the UK GDP, exports and jobs available in the UK. Tell us the positive news, opportunities and stories around the world and we can develop relationships with these countries.

When was the last time we had a positive story about Brazil, Russia, India and China that are the growth economies, which the UK is not currently able to sell to or grow exports to these markets. How can you sell to a country you know nothing about? Our news channels have failed us. They have created a state, which we do not even get told the basis current affairs of the largest growth economies in the world.

It’s that simple. Get the news channels to promote positive stories and opportunities.

Blog, Motivation Techniques

Direction or Momentum?

I listening to Gordon Lord at a breakfast talk at Birmingham Science Park, he asked the question : Is it more important to have Direction or Momentum? He stated in his view it was momentum, and as a coach he could develop someone’s direction if they was moving forward. However no momentum is hard to direct.

This got me thinking about business and my own startups. Sometimes its difficult to see if we have any direction and the momentum is all but gone from our sails. Being in a start-up is about getting thousands of things done to achieve one step forward. Sometimes in the dark.

I have always looked at developing businesses which could be faster than others in the market. Software is very hard to patent and therefore the fastest product to market with an innovation gains some market share, do this over an over again and this generates a loyalty, a brand loyalty which many companies would only dream of. It also forces me and my business, to constantly innovate the technology, business model and also the customer proposition. This also ensure we are lean and mindful of our competition.

To do this, I think of my products as they were t-shirts, when every T-shirt is made of the same cloth, but its about the design and how that design gains empathy with the buyer. Why would want to sell only one t-shirt to a person? No one (very little people, anyway) buys the same t-shirt twice, so you must be constantly designing new designs, understanding you target demographic, the up coming trends and hype which you can use to ensure your products benefit from the free marketing and attraction. The portfolio of design capture a market presence which attract browsers, then buyers who virally market your products by simply wearing your t-shirts.

No business knows the direction these trends will take them. Being on trend with a large enough market is the only important factor that ensures growth and success in the t-shirt business.  It’s a design numbers game.

So I have spent the first six months of 2012, getting a business with no direction and no momentum (a bootstrapped start-up) to a place where it has we have 10 brilliant people creating, new game titles, new brands, building associated products and services which people throughout the world will play, interact and engage with for many years to come.

Now all I need is a little more momentum towards the direction of launching one of our titles for me to say we finally have true business momentum. I guess then we can look at the direction travelled and ask if we need to pivot.