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Enterprise Evangelist or Enterprise Coach?

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Enterprise Evangelist Enterprise Coach
Entrepreneurship is a good thing – you should try it. Entrepreneurship is neither good not bad.  For some people it is a wonderful life affirming experience.  For others an unmitigated disaster.
We can turn your ideas and dreams into reality. You can make progress in getting the kind of life that you want.  My sole purpose is to offer you the help and support that you need on your journey.
We need to increase the start up rate if we are to change the enterprise culture in this community. We need to help more people believe that they can take action to make things better -in whatever ways matter to them.
We encourage people to start business quickly.  That helps us to keep up with our contract outputs – and anyway you don’t really learn about business until you are in it – do you? We help clients start business slowly, if at all.  We make sure that they have done as much planning, research and training as possible before they start and got a strong management team in place to reduce the risks of failure.  If they have an alternative to starting a small business we encourage them to consider it – SERIOUSLY!  We understand just how hard small business can be.
We spend a lot of money on publicity and events to attract large numbers (we wish!) to use the service. We spend almost nothing on publicity.  Instead we focus on building a great reputation (we know how to do this) and then encourage word of mouth strategies, referrals and clients telling their stories to gradually build interest.
We usually start with a bang – but numbers quickly tail off – unless we keep the marketing spend up.  We refer clients into mainstream business support or other sources of support as soon as we can.  Our job is just to get them engaged. We start slowly and build exponentially as our reputation spreads.  Within 12 months we would expect top be seeing 200 people a year with about 10% of them going on to start a new business.  Because of our reputation we also get some existing business wanting to talk with us – but that is ok because we know how to help them too!
We do all we can to keep people engaged with our service.  We pay bus fares, pick them up in our cars, provide child care and food to make it easy. We do little to keep people using the service – other than help them build their confidence and self belief in what they can achieve when they work with us.
We don’t mention business failure rates.  If we start enough – surely some of them will survive? We monitor survival rates more closely than start up rates.  We understand that it is business failures that establish a fear of enterprise and do most to damage an enterprise culture.
We design and deliver our services and interventions to deliver policy goals for number of interventions and start-ups We design and deliver our services with the client needs at the centre of things.  Our service is free of charge, competent, compassionate and easy to access.
We believe that primarily our clients need help to develop their ideas from a technical point of view.  It is all about the business plan.  The sooner we can refer them onto a technical expert – such as a business adviser the better. We believe that the idea and the business plan is one small aspect of our work.  More important is helping the client to develop their skills and their passion and commitment towards making real progress in their lives.  Understanding psychology is just as important as understanding business.  We develop the people – so that if they want they can develop their business ideas.
I don’t need to build a strong relationship – I just need to find people and refer them to mainstream business advisers. It is the quality of my relationship with you that dictates how useful it is.

Paths to Prosperity

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The Monitor Group is an international consulting firm founded by Michael Porter of the Harvard Business School.

They have just released an interesting report on entrepreneurship based on research conducted in 22 countries.

The report explores the different dimensions, including attitudes and policies, to encourage entrepreneurship.

I recommend a read – and please do share your thoughts!  Some of the highlights….

  • An entrepreneurial mindset matters – recovering quickly from failure – recognising entrepreneurship as a legitimate career choice – valuing individualism
  • Incubators are less important than they are made out to be…(sorry if you have just invested in them)
  • Teaching entrepreneurial skills (from primary schools to universities) works

You cna get the full report here.

Fulfilling Potential

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Why do we obsess about fulfilling the potential of young people?

Clearly this is an important challenge – but what about the over 25s? Over 50s?

Perhaps we need a more genuine approach to developing the potential of people.

The language of ‘opportunities’ is different to the language of ‘potential’.

Potential is something innate to the individual. It is a product of nature and nurture, passion and purpose. Opportunities on the other hand are usually spotted by planners and employers and waved like carrots under the noses of the populace in a misguided hope that it will prove a sufficient incentive to precipitate change. Most times it doesn’t. Opportunities are the products of economies and markets.

Opportunities are a product of top down strategic thinking and planning. Potential is a product of personal development and can only be developed ‘responsively’. It requires that we respond to the needs, interests and ambitions of individuals.

So let’s develop person centred services designed to facilitate self-belief in potential, possibility and the recognition and selection of options – some of which might include the planners and employers ‘opportunities’.

I was working in an FE college yesterday where there was a focus on ’employer engagement’. Now the last time I looked at the Leeds economy ’employers’ (especially those who would ‘engage’ with FE) were busy reducing employment – not creating it. So how about we spend more time and money on engaging passionate individuals who want to do something with their lives, in pursuit of their own agendas, rather than on the agenda of employers, QCA and LSC.

It might just work….

The Idea Obsession

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Do you have a fantastic business idea?

Why do so many efforts to engage ‘would be’ entrepreneurs start with this question?

My ideal client would answer with a resounding ‘No!’ to this question.

I want clients to be hungry and passionate about trying something new- but they definitely do not have to have a fantastic business idea.

Or even any ideas at all.

The ideas are the easy bit.

And the truth is that most new businesses are not built around some fantastically original idea but are a variation on an already proven theme.

So my ideal client has not yet found the idea that they want to turn into a business.  This way I get the chance to shape the process that they use for developing and evaluating ideas.

The alternative – a client who has what they think is a great business idea – even though they have not really thought about either the marketplace or the industry is a much more difficult proposition to work with.

However most of the enterprise support programmes that I see are based on an assumption that the client has an idea and we just need to help them work it up.

Is your service designed to help the client who has not yet got a fantastic business idea – or any ideas at all?

Do Me A Favour…please?

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..and tell me what I am missing?

The Catalyst Centres in Leeds are into the implementation of  ‘sales plans’ designed to build membership and make the Catalysts the vibrant networking hubs that they need to be.

But the pricing strategy leaves me drop-jawed.

If I understand it properly the starting membership price of access to a ‘hot desk’ starts at £5 an hour.  With a minimum spend of £25 per month.

Now I understand that it is not about price but about value but it also HAS to be about access and inclusion for local people from the communities whose enterprise culture we are being tasked to ‘transform’.

Anyone who has been visiting the Catalyst Centres at Shine in Harehills or Rise up at Seacroft will know that they are not ending 2008 bursting at the seams.  (I am not sure how busy they are down at Hillside as I have not been dropping by there quite so often.)

I suspect that this represents a lot of investment that is not yet being used to anything like capacity.   Buildings, furniture, heating, lighting, salaries, laptops, printers all sitting there – burning cash – and not being used enough.

So the sales plans are underway and the centres are looking for people with money, working from home, who might be interested in a vibrant networking environment to get them out of their isolation. We are talking Sales reps, IFAs, life coaches, LEGI partners etc…

Does this really describe the target market for LEGI investments?

Or are we already witnessing a shift in social and economic policy objectives to achieve economic viability for the buildings and their owners?

I am really pleased that we have this great infrastructure available for residents of the LEGI areas in Leeds and the wider areas of influence. Indeed they may become real assets for the City. They could also become economic white elephants.

To avoid this we must develop a strategy for community engagement around enterprise (this is not the same as selling enterprise) and a funding strategy for the catalysts that allows them to play their part in transforming the enterprise culture of local communities – rather than making life on the road a little easier for an already employed mobile workforce.

So please do me a favour and tell me what I am missing….