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Reflecting for Effective Practice?

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  1. What percentage of your clients come back to you for further support?
  2. What percentage do you just see once?
  3. What percentage of your clients go on to open a business?
  4. What percentage decide that enterprise is not for them?
  5. What percentage decide that they want to run their own business – but decide that they can’t make THIS business idea work.
  6. What percentage open a business – but don’t make it through the first/second/third year?
  7. How many different clients do you meet in a month/year?
  8. How many 121 sessions do you run in a month/year with clients?
  9. What is your average percentage occupancy? ie how much of your capacity is being used (by the people that you are meant to be supporting)?
  10. Are you really contributing to the development of an enterprise culture?
  11. What is your reputation with:
  • clients and their friends and families
  • funders
  • partners
  • other regeneration and community development professionals in the community?

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.

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….

The E-Factor

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Had a great morning yesterday when I got to meet some of the team responsible for the development of the LEGI programme in North East Lincolnshire – and got to enjoy the splendour of Cleethorpes!

So what impressed me about the e-factor approach?

  • The enthusiasm and belief about what could be achieved in North East Lincolnshire
  • The commitment to real outreach work (facilitating an understanding of enterprise rather than trying to sell services and facilities)
  • A commitment to develop the demand for enterprise services before investing in too much infrastructure (an ambitious property development programme is underway – but only after the outreach and adviser teams have already got some hungry and ambitious clients)
  • The functional, astute and prosaic approach to developing property – this is about affordability, commerciality, sustainability and flexibility – not about signature buildings and grand statements
  • The close integration of all parts of the delivery team – most of the key staff work for a single social enterprise.  They share an office and have a close commitment to, and history with the communities they serve
  • There is a real sense of ‘shared destiny’ across the various strands of project development – a real recognition of how success in all aspects will be critical to the success of the project as a whole
  • Some really great case studies of significant progress already made to transform the lives of clients – these will provide a strong platform for developing an excellent reputation where it matters – in target communities.

Big thanks to Charlotte, Tony, Matt and Paul for spending  time with me. I am really interested to see how things develop in North East Lincolnshire.

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