Many of you will not know who Brian Clough is. He was one of the best football managers ever and achieved something which I sadly think will not be achieved again – (unless someone like Wenger can do it with Arsenal). That is to achieve greatness without spending a King’s ransom. One of his quotes was that he would only tell someone they were great – if they were. It was cruel in his opinion to tell someone that they could excel as a player when they did not have it in them to be great.

It comes down to honesty and clarity. People like to know where they stand and what is expected of them. It is amazing that we accept this as a rule when it comes to the way we manage and communicate with employees, but not when it comes to business relationships.

Last week a good friend of mine told me of a story that is all too familiar to me.

They were running a great business with real promise and I for one fully expected the business to do very well. They got into negotiations with a Business Angel and the Angel was very enthusiastic about investing. He spent a lot of time with the business and even went on a lot of customer visits. He made it clear before Christmas that he wanted to invest in the business. The entrepreneur was also very clear that failure to get investment by January would have a serious impact on the business. The angel reassured the business that investment would be forthcoming.

You know how the story will go. Earlier this week the investor pulled the rug on the investment. The business is now in a serious position and will probably have to either close down or go into extended hibernation.

There is a school of thought that believes that all is fair in love and war and business. I have never believed this. The ‘strategy’ (if it can be called this) is to say yes to a deal and then wait till the last minute to change your mind. The idea is that at that time, the business will be so desperate that they will do a much better deal (for the funder).

I am old fashioned and I still believe that your word is your bond. Do not say yes unless that is your intention. I have said yes and then said no. But this is because of something I have learned through the due diligence process or basically being told a lie. Simply changing your mind is not an option.

So my advice to anyone looking for finance is to always do your due diligence on the investor. I will write the next blog about questions you should ask potential investors.

But till then remember “trust is good, but contracts are better”. Very sad but true.

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As I mentioned in a recent blog, I ran a three day course in Halifax recently from St Mary’s University called From Mind to Market. Given the last blog was all about looking for an idea – it seems to be appropriate to talk about what to do next.

Thank you for the emails requesting more information about the course, given the interest, I thought it made sense for me to write a blog. I would appreciate your feedback on this blog as I am seriously thinking about writing a book called “From Mind to market” – if your feedback is positive, I will start writing it, if it is not so good, perhaps the book can wait! Furthermore, I am running the course again at the end of March and am thinking of filming it. If you are interested, please do let me know if you would like a DVD or web access to the course.

The course was split into five courses over three days;

1. Is the Market Ready?
2. Writing and Financing a Business Plan
3. Sales
4. Planning for High Growth
5. Planning for the very long term

I trust the sequence of the courses makes sense. The first stage is to ensure your idea is validated. There are many ways of doing this and electronic media makes it possible to dry run an idea at a very cheap cost. Twitter/ Facebook and especially Linked-In, make it very easy for you to test out the appetite of your idea at a fraction of the cost associated with proving old ideas. I am very sceptical about market research – be careful that the results do not tell you what you effectively were paying someone to come back and tell you. We have all seen episodes of Dragons Den where we all know the idea is stupid. However, someone else has convinced, the would be entrepreneur that they have a good idea!

Once you have established that there is a market for your product/ solution, you will probably need some sort of financing. There are lots of sources to consider. Depending on the nature of your business, different sources may be more or less attractive. Remember that as a general rule, debt is cheaper than equity. Debt though is hard to get and especially in the current business climate. Make sure you clearly understand what the different providers of finance are looking for.

Sales is the lifeline of any business and once you have raised the money the best thing you can do is make sure you get selling and get selling quickly. If everything is not quite ready, let the customers be the ones to tell you what further hoops you have to jump through to get their business; let them co-author your final offering. Too many times I see companies develop solutions which are perfect for them but not the customer! You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression – so really put a lot of work into your sales process and execution.

High Growth sounds great, but it brings with it a whole heap of issues that you need to plan for. Critical to this is your ability to manage cashflow. As a high growth coach and as a manager of a turnaround fund, I see many businesses run into predictable problems – that could easily be avoided by managing cash.

Finally, once you are at a stage where you are confident that you have a good business in shape, you need to ensure that the business is equipped to deal with long term issues. For example, global warming means that weather extremes are more likely to occur with greater frequency. Does your business have a plan to cope with at this? (I was recently surprised to learn that some cheques I had paid into a HSBC branch were delayed by a week for clearing because the snow had meant that the cheques were not picked up by the delivery van on time! I am amazed to see even now how many retail businesses in the UK, don’t have plans to clear the entrance to their store when there is snow!

I hope this snapshot – and it is just that is useful. The course went for a full three days – so of course is much, much more. You can help me conduct my own cheap market research and let me know if yes you are interested in either

1. Attending such a course if it was run near you
2. Buying access to a video of the course
3. Buying a book

It is good to practice what you preach!

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I was watching some old TV footage of ‘alternative’ comedy in the late 1980s. The comedy was seen as alternative at the time (although it is mainstream now). The comedy was based on simple observation and finding the stuff that is funny and unusual about our everday routines. It was groundbreaking as it wasn’t telling jokes or finding a victim – the victim in this humour was us – we were being encouraged to laugh at ourselves rather than at a minority.

I know some very funny people and their ability is not based upon their ability to tell jokes but rather to just observe and make witty comments in any given situation. I could not help but think that the Entrepreneur has a similar ability.

They look at everyday situations and see opportunity. They see that things could be done better and that there is value to be provided in making things better. All of us are ideapreneurs – but some of us have an additional ability to take things beyond an observation and do something about what we observe.

Again, like comedians, it is about recognising the skills you have. Many comedians have a team of script writers providing the jokes and they practice the ability to deliver a performance. The script writers create the content – but perhaps lack the ability to perform (or more importantly, perhaps don’t want to) on a stage.

I always thought that Angus Deaton (former presenter of Have I got news for you) was hilarious and then I saw him in other programs and realised he was fantastic at reading scripts (a skill not to dismissed). In a similar vein, I was disappointed to learn that Elvis did not write any of his ‘songs’. Neither did most of the Motown legends. Does this diminish the power of some of their music? (It was actually The Beatles that were one of the first music acts to write and perform their own material). Scarily, you could argue therefore that Simon Cowell is taking music back to where it was pre-Beatles!

Back to the main point, we need to recognise that not everyone is a John Lennon and that the best businesses are all about a team effort and approach. I tend to have a good business idea at least once a week, but there is very little if any value in that. An idea is not a business. As one entrepreneur said to me – “until you have a customer, all you are is an idea”. But making the idea ‘happen’ is for another blog and is a course in its own right. (Cheeky plug here – I do run a three day course called “From Mind to Market” – if you are interested, please contact me for more information).

If you are looking for ideas – just be an observational comedian for a week or two. You will be surprised at the wealth of opportunities that are just waiting for you to make them happen.

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With the New Year now in full frozen swing, many people are looking at starting a new business. It is not rare for people to ask me if I could help them with a business idea they are working on or developing. The following paragraph is based on something that really happened three years ago.

I was asked by a neighbour to help him with his business idea (I have since learnt to never tell neighbours what I do for a living!). So we go out for a coffee and I ask him about his business. His reply is “it is something to do with design”. I obviously needed something more than this – but he refused to tell me as he was worried I would steal his idea. I could understand his fear – but then he should not have asked me for help. As it happens, it turned out to be a very quick coffee.

Last week, I was having a conversation with someone about their business and they were worried (rightly) that once they launch their business, they will generate competition and other companies will try and do what they are doing.

Sometimes, people can get carried away with this fear of competition and the need to keep things secret. You need to look at your business and recognize that most of your business value is not in the formulas, IT system or even brand design. Most of the value will be in the relationships and partnerships you form within your business ‘eco-system’. This part of a business becomes very difficult if not impossible to replace.

Many people argue that because of the internet, the value of these relationships diminishes. I would disagree. Most e-commerce sites still rely on partnership arrangements and it becomes very difficult for new entrants to replicate this.

In this specific example, we were able to realize that by tying up contracts and agreements with just twelve very specific companies, this new company would have most of the market tied up and make it very difficult for a new entrant.

So in this new decade and indeed in this new supposedly depersonalized world, I believe it is firms who employ people with the best interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence that will build great businesses that will be able to withstand the competition from new entrants. Networking and relationship building will take on a greater importance.

So to conclude, when you are thinking about protecting your business – focus on the areas that are truly difficult to copy such as great service.

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Like finding a suitable name for a new band that you are going to launch, much time is wasted in defining luck and the importance it plays in business success. I like the definition that luck is where opportunity meets preparation.

A successful friend of mine told me that he believes that most of us (but not all) get the same amount of luck in life. It is just that some people are able to take advantage of it and some people pass up on the opportunity.

When I purchased my very first property to rent out, I remember someone close to me at the time telling me not to do it because “if it was that easy, everyone would be doing it”. It is true that you should avoid acting with the herd, but equally, it is not a good reason to not do something.

If you pardon this ego-trip, I would like to share the history of my Canada experience with you and highlight the role that ‘accident’ has played in my latest venture which I am very excited about.

My good friend and business partner, Fergus got off a plane from Portugal and told me that he thought I should write a blog. This was over a year ago – and with a lot of help from him, I started writing a blog.

This blog got ‘picked’ up by some Canadians working at the National Angel Capital Organisation and a guy called Bryan Watson – started commenting on my blog and being very encouraging about the whole thing. Before his comments, the whole thing felt very lonely! I was as a result of this invited to speak at their Annual Conference in Halifax Nova Scotia, 11 months ago.

Whilst there, I met some very interesting people including someone who worked for a great University based there called St. Mary’s University. When I next visited Halifax in February this year, I spoke at the University to some business students. I also met a person there who invited me to have lunch with her and some of her business partners.

At that lunch on the last day of my trip some interesting discussions emerged and it seemed possible that there could be the makings of an interesting business venture between us.

Earlier this year, I was also at a European Angel Conference in Madrid and I met many of the Canadians I had first met in Halifax last October again, including the President of the Organisation.

I then went to Halifax for five weeks in May this year to start this business venture. It was obvious after just two days for reasons that I won’t go into (for fear of being sued!) this venture was not going to work. I then contacted my old friends from the conference and they invited me to a few dinners and networking events. By ‘accident’ at one of these dinners, I happened to be sat next to two company executives who were both looking at the UK market for their business. I was able to help them (and since then I have invested in one of them).

Because of this evening, I was also introduced to some local government officials who were able to put me in touch with other companies that I could help and as a result of this, I was able to get a lot of paid work to help local companies – and am now going back to Canada at least one week in four.

In the interim, I have been able to use this experience of Canadian and UK angels to launch a new venture with the head of the Canadian Angels called www.newmarketspartners.com

This venture will bring 25 of the most promising Angel funded Canadian businesses into the UK on September the 30th. These companies are looking for UK based angels with market expertise and contacts in their chosen fields to help them expand into the UK.

There is another trip taking place on November the 25th in Toronto where UK companies looking to expand into North America will be invited to present to North American based Angels with strong market expertise.

The partners in this venture believe that angels add most value when their money is combined with expertise and market know-how.

If you are an angel – please email me and I will be able to send you an invite to the event. If you are a company looking to expand into North America, please get in touch via the website.

Back to the point of the blog! When I talk to entrepreneurs, what strikes me is how fluid their plans were and what an important role accident played in shaping the way their business looks today.

The lesson here is to go with the flow – but always be looking for new ways in which you can help others.

I do hope you found this blog useful – who knows what this may lead to for me or for you!

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Thanks to the guys over at wooshii for sending me this one.

Love it

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It has been some time since I have delved into the lessons of my MBA to write a blog which may actually be of practical use to readers who are running a business. I hope this blog corrects this.

When running a business you are always faced with the challenge of how to grow the business. A useful analytical tool used by marketers and taught on business courses is the Ansoff matrix. It is a tool that I think is incredibly good and I do use it all the time. I hope you find it useful as well.

The starting point is that you are already in business selling your existing products to existing customers. You have three possible options in terms of where to go next.

1. Sell new products to existing customers
2. Sell your existing products to new customers
3. Sell new products to new customers

The options are listed in order of ease. The strategies should be pursued in this order. And yet many companies try to pursue option 2 or option 3. For example, I know too many examples of companies who are successful trying to pursue a strategy of selling into the USA. I believe that this is primarily driven by ego rather than a crying business need.

When selling into the USA (or indeed other export markets) you may find that your products do need to be substantially adapted. You are therefore moving to option 3 without even realizing it!

Selling new products to existing customers is always the best option to pursue. And you will notice that many of your customers will be looking to cut down on the number of suppliers they deal with. This could provide you with a golden opportunity to take a category approach and to link up with other suppliers who provide complementary products or services to the ones you may be supplying to your customers.

This can improve and strengthen your relationship with your customers as it may increase the number of times you see them – and build up more of a partnership approach. The margins will probably be lower than on your own products but it can be a very useful incremental revenue stream.

You will need to of course continue to focus on selling your existing products to new customers. Business needs you to continue to diversify risk and having more customers is a way of increasing revenue and diversifying risk. I have written many blogs before about increasing your sales (my specialty) and I hope you are able to use some of that advice to good effect.

With all things in life, planning is very important, but the execution is always more important.

Best of luck with the implementation!

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April is a great time of year. Spring is in full swing and we look afresh at new opportunities and we have the energy to revisit old promises we made to ourselves. In the spirit of this new month, here are my top five business ideas for you to look at and follow. Feedback is welcome – and if you do make a success of any of these ideas – please feel free to include me in your shareholder list.

1. Adjustable umbrellas. As a tall person, one of my bug bears is walking across London and bumping into umbrellas that are being held by people a lot shorter than me. I have a few contacts in Government and am pleased to announce that later this year they will be passing legislation to make sure that umbrellas are held at a distance of 8ft from the ground. Shorter people will have to have a longer umbrella than tall people. This will offer huge business opportunities in a low cost product area.

2. Widi roll outs. As Wi-fi becomes ubiquitous, there is a great opportunity to create narrow width. A new company has created Widi devices. These allow you to ‘bend’ bandwidth in an area so that internet access has to go through the Widi device that you ‘own’. You can then charge up to £5 per hour to allow users to have access to wi-fi that you get for free. This might sound like extortion, but I have been told it is perfectly legal. The company is called Computer Access Safe Houses (C.A.S.H) and they are looking for Franchisees in the UK. I have permission to sell areas on their behalf. Please feel free to send me cheques payable to CASH. Each area is available for just £1,000.

3. Green Tea bags. I did not realize the damage that tea bags can do to the environment. We go through a huge amount of tea bags every year. I came across this company last week at the International Food Exhibition show which had a great product. The solution originally came from someone working as a steward at TWA (the airline). Basically, it is a reusable teabag because it is waterproof. The company is called TWA Tea. Again, please contact me if you are interested in learning more.

4. Digital fax machines. I used to work for Duracell, and when I was there one of my customers refused to believe that computers would take over the world. He had a great business selling fax machines. Working in isolation, he has come up with a way that you can actually send documents from one place to another without you ever needing to actually send hard copies through a fax machine or the post. It looks great and I am sure it can work. The company is called For Fax’s Sake. Again, I am happy to send you details if you like.

5. Spring Fuel. One of the sectors, I have, experience of is beds and a colleague of mine contacted me last week to let me know of this very green and worthwhile business. He wants to use discarded bed springs en masse to generate electricity. As he is starting the business this month, he has come up with a great name for his business – April Fuel.

All the best

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One of the highlights for me of last year was to successfully start up a fund management business – www.flightandpartners.com The company is now managing over £12m and is doing well (very well if you consider the way the markets are performing). In the process of doing this though, I realized how much I enjoy setting something up.

Since December I have been working on another start up business. It is so exciting – it reminded me why I got into this area of business in the first place.

I went to see my first potential customer in Manchester on Friday last week and when he said yes – the feeling of utter joy was marred with my nerves jangling because I realized I now had to deliver!

Starting a business is one of the best feelings you can experience (along with jumping out of an aeroplane – but that is for another day!) You realize that entrepreneurs don’t do these things just for money but for the sheer thrill. I have met many would be entrepreneurs seeking investment from me in the last few years. I do get turned off immediately if I suspect the only desire driving the team is money. It simply is not enough to keep you going.

I also remembered a quote from an entrepreneur that I had worked with on a project a few years ago. She said that you do not have a business until you have a customer. The events of last week brought that to life for me.

Many of us come up with great business ideas and some of us may do something with this idea (like form a company) but very few take the critical step of turning that idea into a business. That is truly the scary bit – but it is about emotions rather than money.

I will not invest in a business that cannot prove strong customer demand. Sometimes all you need is a letter of intent or pre-orders and you have transformed your idea into a business.

My advice in this blog is to all of those of you who have a great idea but have not done something with it….

Go for it – make it happen. I promise you that even if you crash and burn – the thrill of having gone for it will give you a smile that will last for eternity. To misquote Dickens “Better to have loved and failed, than not to have loved at all”

All the best, and as always, I am happy to help.

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I am off to Egypt for a week and I have promised myself no email or even phone access for that week. It remains to be seen how long I am able to survive. I have not been without the use of a phone for more than 24 hours in over ten years!

It is a funny thing, but I remember getting my first mobile phone (through my employer Duracell batteries). It was very strange technology and I couldn’t get over how cool I must have looked – talking into a phone whilst driving on the motorway with my jacket on a hanger and popping into Little Chef for tea (I didn’t know what a latte was at this stage. Yes my perception of what I thought was cool then is very different to what I think is cool now! At this point I should apologise to those thousands of salespeople who live this life – yes it is still cool (especially white socks with dark trousers).

Again, I remember when emails started. Again it felt very strange to use this new technology. I was at Fujifilm and I remember how the sales team had a secretary who used to do the typing for us. The process was as follows

1. We used to first write something up on paper and then submit it to her
2. She would type it in draft and then let us have it back to check.
3. There would always be error so we would then make the corrections and then submit it back
4. We would then get a letter printed out on proper paper which we would sign and send

This was a little over ten years ago. It is amazing to think that a business which was producing cutting edge digital technology (1Mega Pixel cameras!) were not using laptops.

Again I remember when we did get a laptop, we only used it for sales presentations – and the sales team had to share one between four people!

My point is that the way we do things can rapidly become obsolete. And it is very difficult to know what technology will work. I remember getting my first text message (Thank you Mark Bryant) and thinking how stupid that was. I remember saying “that will never take off!”

If you are working on a new technology, my advice would be to learn from 3M Post it Notes. This is a classic case study of how a failure (glue which was too weak to stick) became a massive new market which did not exist before. The key thing that happened here was that what led to the success of the product was the company giving out lots and lots of these products as free samples. People were free to invent the way they wanted to use this product – and I think the result is that now you would be hard pressed to find any office which does not have Post it notes.

If you have come up with new a new product or solution, my advice would be to ensure that you have allowed enough budget to just give out a lot of your new solution. And let people to play with it. The most amazing thing about new technology is that we all different reasons for using it. The classic case is the iPod and the iPhone. The way the iPod was sold to me is very different from the way I perceive the benefits. I travel a lot and I like the idea that I can take my entire music library with me wherever I am.

When I run my sales training courses, one of the key things I try to teach is for sales people to appreciate the difference between knowing what you are selling and what your buyer is buying. This is very important when selling a new solution. If you let the buyer ‘get it’, you are more likely to get a sale!

Happy playing with technology

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