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I’ve joined the fun Flubitron club

flubitlogotaglinewhitebackgroundI was delighted to meet Bertie Stephens (Chief Flubitron) from group buying website Flubit during Tuesdays excellent Marketing Masterclass from Grow.

Their pitch is; For any product you want to buy online, tell Flubit, and we’ll work our little socks off to get you some wonderful bespoke discounts… for free!

And they already have 17,000 fans on facebook so are off to a great ‘pre-start’.

It was great to hear from Bertie how useful they have found the Business & IP Centre in developing their business and protecting their brand. I look forward to them joining the growing ranks of our Success Stories.

Having become disillusioned by Groupon, after too many 75% offers for the Ultimate Facial Using Microdermabrasion, I was happy to sign up to Flubit.

And this was the fun email I received in response:

The Flubitask Force to Manlius

To Balcombe’s newest and most wonderful Flubitron,

Honourable Manlius Buggerflub

Welcome to our world.

Now you are officially a Flubitron (an exclusive club we must add), you are one step closer to being part of a new revolution in internet buying. Soon, whenever you want something, you’ll be able to get it cheaper, just by using Flubit – how cool is that?! If you haven’t already, why not follow us on Facebook or Twitter to keep up with what’s new?

Over the next few months we’ll be finishing off some bits and bobs, polishing the knobs and preparing to launch this Summer. Hurrah!

So what happens now?

In 2 – 3 weeks you’ll receive your official Flubitron membership card (Flubicard – don’t worry you’ll get used to the terms). With this card you’ll have access to a whole range of offline and online benefits. We’ll let you know more about this with our introductory letter, or you can have a read here:

http://www.flubitron.com/

OK, so now we’re going to go and tell our Flubitask Force to start making your membership card, and we’ll be in touch in a week or so to let you know how they’re getting on!

Speak soon Honourable Manlius,

Flubregards,

Bertie & Dan
Chief & Head of Internal Imagination

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The Apprentice Series 7 – the rise of the entrepreneurs

the_apprentice_180x180My relationship with The Apprentice series has been something of a roller-coaster ride since it started in 2005.

I have to admit that I didn’t get to see any of the first series, and regret not having watched the wonderful Tim Campbell succeed without comprising his values. I say wonderful, because he went on from winning the first series to become a friend and supporter of the Business & IP Centre in our early days. And I was fortunate enough to get to know him during this period. He has since gone on to found the Bright Ideas Trust, to help young people turn an idea into a business.

I did avidly watch the second, third and fourth series (the ‘Headless chickens’ shopping trip to Marrakech being my favourite episode. However, I became increasing disenchanted with both the egotistical nature of the candidates, and the appalling behaviour on display each week. From backstabbing their fellow ‘team’ members, to outright lying in front of Allan Sugar.

However, with this seventh series the producers have decided to ‘refresh’ the show with a new angle. Instead of the winner spending a year working with Lord Sugar, something neither party would relish I suspect, they get £250,000 to start a new business on his behalf.

So instead of a group of somewhat dysfunctional, insanely ambitious corporate wannabes, we have a group of insanely confident aspiring entrepreneurs and an inventor.

This brings the show into my bailiwick, as our main activity in the Business & IP Centre is to help entrepreneurs and inventors achieve business success.

Already, during the first three episodes, I have spotted ways in which we could have helped the contestants avoid disaster. So, I have decided to cover each show, and identify where our information or services could have made a difference.

During the first episode we were introduced to the contestants using a set of pithy sound-bites. And already I spotted Helen Milligan who desperately needs to attend our workshop Your Life, your Business, with our amazing business coach Rasheed Ogunlaru. Why? Because anyone who says “my social life, my personal life don’t mean anything to me. I live to work, that’s all I do”, Episode 1 (50 seconds in), really needs to get some perspective on their life.

In the second show, we saw the two rival teams, Venture and Logic, develop mobile phone Apps. In this case a couple of hours researching our eMarketer database would have given them plenty of information about the hot trends in this rapidly developing market. Instead their decisions were made in a vacuum and based on their own ideas of what might be popular.

The third episode was all about buying a set of items for the recently refurbished Savoy Hotel, finding the best quality at the best price. As is so often the case with The Apprentice, the producers ensured the contestants were under pressure by giving them one day and just a set of Yellow Pages. Surely I wasn’t the only one to be saying, ‘where is their laptop?’ With the help of Wikipedia they could have discovered what a ‘cloche’ was and where to buy one . They could have used Google Maps to ensure the most efficient route around the required shops, avoiding schlepping from North to South London and missing the deadline. Or perhaps finding their nearest cash and carry branch.

With access to our Kompass database they would have been able to source and locate the producers of just about any product, and start finding out prices, to give them an edge when negotiating with suppliers.

Tom PellereauAlthough Alan Sugar has already ‘fired’ three of the contestants it is difficult to tell who is going to make it through to the final at this point. However, I really like Tom Pellereau, the lone inventor in the group. His refreshing honesty and lack of political chicanery, may be his undoing in the Board Room, but I sincerely hope not. Perhaps I am to naive in thinking that, just like in Series 1, the good-guy might win.

You can read about Tom’s inventions on Steve Van Dulken’s Patent Search Blog

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Boris boots up Business Bootcamps at the British Library

Boris JohnsonWe were honoured to have Boris Johnson The Mayor of London visit the Business & IP Centre on Friday to launch Business Bootcamps.

The Bootcamps will cover a wide range of sectors, including digital and mobile technology, fashion, hospitality, entertainment, creative and bio-tech industries. Co-ordinated by Capital Enterprise, Business Bootcamps will see a total of 27 sessions being run over the next 12 months to provide intensive training.

The programme, with £275,000 of funding from the Royal Bank of Scotland and £135,000 from the EU’s Interreg scheme, will give around 1,000 new entrepreneurs the opportunity to develop the key skills they will need to build successful businesses.

We will be running our own bootcamp, focusing on the professional services, giving intensive training on finance, marketing, branding, business planning as well as strategic decisions and planning.
In his speech, Boris wished there had been bootcamps when he left university in 1980.

“There was a craze for rustic tile kitchen splashbacks back then, So I rented an old RAF hanger, and set up with a couple of friends and my mother designing the tiles, and was all set to storm the market. Then I realised we hadn’t a clue what to do next—it ended 24 hours later, just one night ‘on the tiles’.”

He revealed that he might not have gone into politics, if he had become a successful entrepreneur as “Britain’s rustic tile backsplash king.”

The professionals: business bootcamp

Put together by experts and business owners, this two day bootcamp is designed specifically for sole traders in the professional services, from IT consultants, marketing freelancers to accountants. In times of recession, many people are setting up their own businesses, based on their professional skills.

The bootcamp will give you all the tools needed to grow your business beyond your existing client base. The content will be tailored to your key information needs based on the few questions that will be asked when booking.

This is an intense and effective way to spend your time which in the long-term will save you significant time and money. The content across both days covers all of the essential issues you are facing as a new business.

Along with practical exercises and inspirational presentations, you will receive a fact-file of research reports and guides to use afterwards.  This information alone would cost in excess of £500.

The benefits of the bootcamp

• Meet with like-minded people
• Understand how effective networking can boost your business
• How to present a perfect pitch
• Best practice look at financial viable models
• Get information on professional service delivery from the experts
• Discover more about how to refresh your business plan
• Introductory guide to intellectual property
• Develop a strategy to carry your business forward.

Experts

• Johnny Martin – get to grips with your finances with the no.1 small business numbers coach.

• Nick Winton – understand how to grow your client base and potential profits with clever strategy and lead generation.
• Rasheed Ogunlaru – how you can learn to ‘be your brand’ and grow your profile with effective networking.

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La Diosa and their right Royal wedding connection

Blue_Topaz_Sterling_Silver_PendantOne of our creative success stories came from a chance meeting in a Philosophy class between Natasha Faith and Semhal Zemikael. Together they went on to create La Diosa jewellery and now have a shop in Hatton Garden.

They have a knack of attracting celebrity interest in their contemporary designs, with Sarah Brown (our previous Prime Minister’s wife) a fan, and Michelle Obama pictured wearing their jewellery during a G20 summit.

As fans of Kate Middleton (soon to be married to son of the heir of the British throne), they created a pendant called Honey-moon, specially for her. And were pleasantly surprised to receive a letter in reply to their gift, saying that Miss Middleton was ‘touched’ by the gift, and wanted to thank them personally.

Given the current media whirlwind in the build up to the wedding day on 29 April, this story was eagerly snapped up by the Evening Standard and resulted in a half-page story last Monday.

So congratulations to Natasha and Semhal for their brilliant designs, as well as a sparkling approach to promotion and dazzling use of the media.

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Business planning workshop with Company Partners

My colleague Raika Wokoeck kindly agreed to write up this workshop for the blog:

As part of my Masters in Information and Library Studies I am completing a management course which requires me to write a business plan for a fictitious new service. If, however, you have only ever worked in Humanities based environment this can prove not only tricky but quite difficult. Yes, I’ve read the literature and I can write it in a Word document but putting theory into practice turned into a challenging task.

However, being an employee of The British Library does have its advantages, and I was able to attend one of the Business & IP Centre’s workshops on 16 March.

company-partners-logoLawrence Gilbert, the founder of Company Partners and Alan Gleeson of Palo Alto Software were presenting a comprehensive ‘how to do’ workshop on the do’s and don’ts of business plan writing. The attendees came from various backgrounds and were interested in start-up as well as continuing business plans, and contributed actively. This very interactive group made the workshop even more enjoyable.

After everyone introduced themselves, Lawrence started the half-day workshop by talking about the secrets of successful entrepreneurs. The part that I found the most helpful, however, was the following presentation on how to structure a business plan and what makes it a successful one. Lawrence provided a practical insight through case studies and examples helping us to understand the practicalities and purposes of a business plan.

Business-Plan-ProAt the end Alan took over and presented the Business Plan Pro software, how to use it and what it can do to help you writing your business plan… I so want this software now. There are two editions available, Premier (£129.99) and Standard (£79.99),

Sadly the workshop was the last one at Business & IP Centre for the time being due to funding issues, although I hope it will return soon. Keep an eye out for it on the Business & IP Centre website at or Palo Alto’s website.

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The Marketing Master Class – Social Media for Business

Kimberly_DavisOnce again I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the second of Kimberly Davis‘ Marketing Masters Series, this time the hot topic of Social Media for Business. See Apprentice Kim and her Marketing Masters Series for my notes from the first.

Kimberly promised us eleven ways to turn free resources into powerful marketing and sales tools, and she certainly delivered, with additional excellent contributions from Warren Cass and Stefan Thomas.

Here are my notes from the day:

Definition of Social Media – A conversation between you and your customers (or potential customers).

Why you should use it:

  • ­    Powerful
  • ­    International
  • ­    Instant
  • ­    Connects people
  • ­    No barriers
  • ­    Viral
  • ­    Easy (you don’t need to be tech savvy)
  • ­    Is the future of marketing

 

Facebook

  • ­    Half of UK population is now on Facebook
  • ­    Average user has 130 friends

Twitter

  • ­    “The SMS of the Internet”
  • ­    58% of tweeps have +$60k income

Linked In

  • ­    Six degrees of Kevin Bacon
  • ­    Job searching

YouTube

  • ­    Owned by Google
  • ­    Increases your SEO

Research – Use Social Media to find out what are people saying about you and your competitors?
Surveys – Test – Feedback
Tools

  • ­    www.Uservoice.com
  • ­    www.Openmind.com
  • ­    www.Topsy.com
  • ­    www.Clueapp.com
  • ­    www.Surveymonkey.com

 

  • Build a database
  • Building your Brand
  • Trust is essential
  • The power of blogging
  • Customer Service
  • Events and promotions
  • Networking
  • Referrals
  • Recruitment and Refresh
  • Sales
  • Create a Social Media Strategy
  • Do you need a Social Media manager?

Tools

  • ­    www.tweetdeck.com
  • ­    www.hootsuite.com
  • ­    www.cotweet.com

Words of caution

  • ­    Facebook owns your photos – and changes the privacy rules regularly
  • ­    15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes at night
  • ­    Friends don’t equal love
  • ­    Beware of bots

The Marketing Master Class

Social Media for Business

Kimberly Davies

Story of Sarsaparilla

Flash, fluff and fakers

11 ways to turn free resources into powerful marketing and sales tools

Definition – A conversation

Powerful:

International

Instant

Connects people

No barriers

Viral

Easy (you don’t need to be tech savvy)

Is the future of marketing

Pre social media customer experience sharing

Good = 3 people, Bad experience = 9 people

Social media connects you to the world.

22% of online time in the US is on social networking

40 million tweets per day

20% of Twitter updates mention a business or brand

The Big Four – YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Linked In

Twitter – 190 users – more tech savvy and higher incomes

Facebook – 600 million – casual not business – B2C

Linked In – 90 million – more service based businesses.

Facebook

half of UK population is now on Facebook

average user has 130 friends

90 items of content per month on average

Gets more visits than Google, people asking friends they trust for recommendations

25 fans enables you to get your own facebook domain address

Friends activities are recorded on stats page

Only .04% of adverts work on Facebook – compared to 8% on Google

Wall post conversions work better

Point your adverts to your Facebook page, not out of Facebook

Set your keyword campaign to run for two days, then go back an use same words at a lower price

Twitter

“the SMS of the Internet”

58% of tweeps have +$60k income

Mentions of you are visible

Needs a better tech understanding

Enables a direct link to people

Search topics and see what people are saying

You can brand your Twitter page

Tools – tweepi.com, twitpic

Hash tags – follow events and trending topics

Linked In

Six degrees of Kevin Bacon

job searching

gatekeeper

B2B

Great SEO – at least put in your basic profile details

Get recommendations for your business – much better than promoting yourself

YouTube

owned by Google

increases your SEO

for people who like to learn by watching than reading

can use Flip or iPhone – cheap and easy

Research

Use Social Media to find out what are people saying about you and your competitors?

Surveys

Test

Feedback

Tools

www.Uservoice.com

www.Openmind.com

www.Topsy.com

www.Clueapp.com

www.Surveymonkey.com

Build a database

lists, groups

get people to register their data

offer something for free in order to get people to sign up

don’t do it the wrong way – quality is more important than quanitity

www.getsatisfaction.com

Building your Brand

establish yourself as an expert – answer questions

have an opinion

loyalty

write articles and promote

www.ezinearticles.com

www.scribd.com

What can you write about?

What are you an expert on?

Trust is essential

– Your customers need to trust that you genuinely have their interest at heart.

Warren Cass

www.warrencass.com

www.business-scene.com

Why you should Network Online

Examples of Will it Blend and United Breaks Guitars on YouTube

Useful tools

www.Tweeteck.com

The power of blogging

host guest bloggers who have lots of traffic

comment on popular blogs

Customer Service

Monitor and respond to service issues

Give support

Answer questions

Respond to people’s comments, good and bad

People want to talk to people, not companies

Tools

CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

Via www.CoTweet.com

Events and promotions

invite

register

contests

direct people to your website, blog, etc

fundraising via sites like www.kapipal.com

increase awareness of who you are and what you do

ReTweet and Follow to enter

Networking

Keep up to date with what everyone is doing

Who moved

Build relationships

The world is listening

Reach a wider audience

Referrals

Introduce people to each other

Pay it forward

Recommendations – use in your marketing materials

Like Amazon Book reviews

Recruitment and Refresh

PR

Create a buzz

Viral Marketing

What you say can go further than you think

Sales

Promoting a sale. Launching a product

Build rapport

Today’s fans are tomorrow’s buyers

Create a demand, teasers, new products etc

Offer discounts

Create a Social Media Strategy

What are you going to use social media for?

Think long term

Plan

Write 5 things you’d tweet today

Do you need a Social Media manager?

Interns

Assistance

Virtual Assistants

Outsourced Professionals

Dual identities – business and personal

Tools

www.tweetdeck.com

www.hootsuite.com

www.cotweet.com

Words of caution

Facebook owns your photos – and changes the privacy rules regularly

15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes at night

Friends don’t equal love

Beware of bots

Stefan Thomas – www.noredbraces.co.uk

Story of being an estate agent, made redundant

Pathological fear of public speaking

Top tips for real and social networking success

Don’t sell to your audience

Passion and confidence

Be aware of what you want to say – don’t make it up on the fly – you wouldn’t do that for a brochure or advert

When you get to a one to one – still don’t sell – treat it like a first date

People don’t go into online forums to be sold to – so don’t do it – build up a relationship first

Don’t use social media for selling

Social networking complements person to person networking, it complements it and keeps them warm.

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Inspiring Entrepreneurs: Mothers of Invention

Last week was a busy one for me with three events worth noting. The most memorable, for two reasons, was our Inspiring Entrepreneurs: Mothers of Invention evening.

One, because – sadly this is likely to be last of our Inspiring Entrepreneurs events for the foreseeable future, due to our funding running out. Secondly, because I got to show Natasha Kaplinsky around the Business & IP Centre. She got quite excited about our Success Stories, in particular the David versus Goliath saga of Mandy Haberman’s Any Way Up Cup.

Natasha had kindly agree to chair our session of four inspirational and pioneering female entrepreneurs.

Although businesses run by women contribute £130 billion a year to the UK economy, still only 15% are led by women. I am proud to say that 50% of the people we help in the Business & IP Centre are women, so we are doing our bit to help redress this inequality.

Mama-MioSian Sutherland the co-founder of Mama Mio skincare was our first speaker. Since starting five years ago Mama Mio is now distributed in 2500 stores and five spas in eight countries.

Their mission is very simple and straightforward – to be the most recommended skincare brand in the world.

Sian described the three key ingredients to competing – Business, Brand and  Product.

To her brand is the most important ingredient for long term business success. And that chimes with several of my recent blog posts on the subject of branding.

She explained how you need to gain brand loyalty using emotion, rather than price.

Sian’s vital ingredients for success:

  • ­        learn from the mistakes of others
  • ­        use the ‘why bother test’
  • ­        don’t follow trends or fads
  • ­        understand who your customer is
  • ­        know how to talk to your customers
  • ­        have a unique and own-able brand tone of voice
  • ­        deliver on every level to your customers
  • ­        make you customers feel special
  • ­        have a plan
  • ­        if it was easy, everyone would do it
  • ­        love what you do, and do what you love

Sara Murray is serial entrepreneur having founded the price comparison website, confused.com and more recently developed buddi, a miniaturised tracking device for vulnerable people..

She told us that success does not come overnight. It takes on average eight years for a business to become successful.

Buddi is Sara’s third business, and the initial idea was to give the product away and charge a rental. However this approach was rejected by her investors, so she went back with a revised plan which was accepted. So the lesson there, is be adaptable.

She said that luck favours the persistent, failure is good, and that you shouldn’t wait for the big idea to come along – just get on with it and see what happens.

Every product however good will eventually becomes obsolete, so you need to develop a range of products in order to have a successful business.

For funding, forget about the banks, use Angel investors, friends and family.

Vanessa Heywood created  Tiny Mites Music in 2004 to provide music and drama classes for pre-school children. By 2010, Tiny Mites Music was being performed in over 80 day-care nurseries and at holiday parks across the UK.

In November 2010, Vanessa was the recipient of the Stelios Award for Disabled Entrepreneurs.

She told her heart-rending story of having to bring up two small children on her own while trying to cope with MS.

Shazia Awan is the founder and Director of Peachy Pink.  a ladies shaping and anti-cellulite underwear brand launched in 2009. In late 2010, Shazia introduced Max Core, shaping and posture-control garments for men.

Every bank she went to for funding said the business would fail, so Peachy Pink started with life based on her savings and credit card.

The great thing about starting your own business is that no one can tell you how to market your products.

Peachy PinkPeach Pink was launched with fifty women walking down Oxford Street just wearing their underwear. This generated a great deal of press coverage for free.

Now Shazia has launched a search for the peachiest bottom in the UK

Last year she launched Max Core for men, a posture control clothing, purely from demand from customers. Her initial product line sold out within a week.

She feels that unique selling points are key for new products, for use in marketing and promotional activities.

Success comes from a great product, innovation and PR.

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Green Metropolis – a million books to read again and again

greenMetropolisThanks once again to Smarta.com for this inspiring business start-up story, this time featuring books (a subject close to my heart).

They have interviewed Barry Crow the founder of Green Metropolis about  how he came to develop the site using his redundancy pay.

What’s your background and how did you come up with the idea for the site? I’m originally from Newcastle and worked for British Airways as an IT developer. I moved to London for my job and went from a 4 bedroom house to a one bedroom flat. I’m an avid reader and had loads of paperbacks. If people have space, their books go under the bed or on the shelf. I had no space and had to de-clutter everything. So I started giving them away to charity shops. 

I went through pretty much the same process; I would buy a new book every month, read it and then drop it off in a charity shop.  But I could never find books there I wanted to buy. If I had just finished a James Patterson, then I would want to read another one. But if the charity shop didn’t have it I would have to go to Waterstones and buy a new one.

After a while I just thought: this is crazy; there must be a better way to do this. That was the beginnings of the idea but I didn’t look at it properly until I lost my job.

…
How many people use the site?

We have about 100,000 members.

We started with 1,000 books in stock which were mostly mine, and a few of my friends. We have about a million second-hand books in stock now. Some members still buy books brand new, because they have to have it, but within a week they’ve read it and will post it on the site

…
What sets you aside from sites like Amazon or even eBay?

Our site is more like a book club; it’s a community doing it to benefit each other. It’s for people who want to share their books with each other and at the same time raise money for a good cause. It adds to the whole feel-good factor of the site.

When you join us, you get an online account and every time you sell, you can either have the money refunded to you or use it buy new books.

Everyone should benefit, whether buying or selling, and ideally, we want our sellers to have enough credit from sales to buy their next one on the site without ever needing to use a credit card.

What’s been the biggest challenge?

I think probably promoting the site. I have no experience with the marketing side of things. My background is computers and IT, so I didn’t have a problem with the technical side of the site. But I suppose I naively thought after 6 months that once we had a great website, people would naturally come to it.

Like I said, we’ve never advertised it, and it’s been a very slow process. I started off and it was just me and I massively underestimated the time it takes to do everything.

Where do you see the site in five years time?

I would like GreenMetropolis.com to be the main ethical alternative to Amazon for second hand and charity books. For myself, I would like to work a little less, so that I can read a little more.

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Join our Facebook tagathon and win a Squid London umbrella

This week we are celebrating some of the wonderful products made by our success stories, who we have helped in the Business & IP Centre. Each day there will be a chance to enter our competition to win one of their innovative products on our Facebook fan page.

We have made it easy to enter.  Just keep an eye on the Facebook fan page,  and at some point during the day we will post a photo of the ‘Business & IP Centre product of the day.’

When the photo of the item appears, tag it with your name, and at the end of the day we will randomly select a lucky winner who will be sent that item in the post.

We are kicking off with one of my favourites, an umbrella from Squid London which changes colour in the rain.

Squid_London

Are you fed up by the rainy days?

Imagine you are walking down the street, it starts to rain and your ordinary black umbrella interacts and changes colour in the rain, creating a walking piece of art – called a ‘wearable piece of art’ by Time Out New York. The inspiration came from Jackson Pollock who dripped and splashed paint onto white canvases creating a spectacle of colours.

Emma-Jayne Parkes and Viviane Jaeger are the co-founders of SquidLondon, an innovative product design brand based in London. The Squidders won several awards including the Deutsch Bank runners up, the Creative Enterprise Winner and People’s Choice NACUE and the Smarta 2010 award.

Currently SquidLondon stocks its Squidarellas in 8 major cities including London, New York Paris and Tokyo and work with significant artshops including Tate Museums, MoMA New York, the Saatchi Gallery and ArtBasel. The Squidarella has generated some excitement and publicity at BBC Radio, BBC Television and was voted in to the top 5 products in Instyle US.

The Squidders brighten up the wet and gloomy days. A simple idea, a fun gift – who does not have an umbrella? Come squidding along!