In through the outfield

19 March 2012

Another great Inspiring Entrepreneurs with Mothers of Invention

Another fantastic event this evening with a range of inspiring women entrepreneurs and their stories.

The event was chaired with great warmth, energy and humour by Emma Jones who launched her first business at age 27, and successfully sold it two years later. In 2006 she launched Enterprise Nation as a website to help anyone start and grow a business from home. The company has since expanded to offer online services, publications, events and finance to small businesses across the UK. Emma is also co-founder of StartUp Britain, and currently acting as the campaign’s chief executive.

As co-founder of shopping website notonthehighstreet.com, Sophie Cornish has won many prestigious awards including the ECMOD Direct Commerce Award for the last three consecutive years and the Online Retail Award Prix D’or 2010. They now host over 2,500 businesses on notonthehighstreet selling 40,000 different products.

They came to the British Library Business & IP Centre early on to look at trends in Internet retailing. And worked hard on their business plan to the extent that they new their numbers inside out. Sohpie emphasised that creating a brand is the key challenge for any business.

Her tips were:

Own your mistakes
There is no silver bullet
Hard work is your unique selling point
Cash is king

From helping her parents prepare samosas for the English pub they ran, to setting up her own food business The Authentic Food Company in 1985, Kamal Basran indulged her passion for cooking authentic Indian food and opened a small business supplying local catering establishments with hand-made samosas and other Indian snack food.

Today, the company has over 240 employees and has a turnover of over £31 million. The company are supplying many of the UK’s top hotels, pub chains, restaurants and retail outlets with the range of quality international cuisine.

When Kamal started out in business, she was a full-time teacher, settled in a comfortable lifestyle, married with two children. While out shopping she saw some ready made samosas, but once home discovered they tasted horrible and threw them into the dustbin. This was the trigger for starting her own business. She had no idea how to start, but wonders in retrospect if this is perhaps the best way.

She began making 600 samosas a week, and grew the business to over a million meals a week.

Her tips were:

Number one priority was to organise her children.
Then, learn how to do everything yourself (nothing is too menial).
Finally, don’t listen to other people (especially your parents!)

Her reasons for success were:

Target your market
Grow gradually
People – 25 nationalities
Products – are the best quality
Customers – we love our customers

Rosie Wolfenden and Harriet Vine are the founders of Tatty Devine whose distinctive fashion designs have made them brand leaders. In 2011 they had a boom year, with a £1 million turnover and kick started 2012 with opening a Selfridges pop up shop which launched their new silver label. The two London Tatty Devine boutiques are located in Brick Lane and Covent Garden.

They are independently run and design every piece, 99% of the jewellery is made by hand in their workshops (based in London and Kent). Their custom-made jewellery has been worn by everyone from Claudia Schiffer to Jessie J.

They are very proud of producing their own book on How to Make Jewellery.

In the last two years they have started letting others in to their business, such as developing a new website, to enable them to concentrate on the jewellery.

Christina Richardson is founder of The Nurture Network the UK’s first on-demand marketing department for start-ups and entrepreneurial growth businesses. Christina has spent much of her career managing and growing FMCG brands worth in excess of £100 million.

Now she and her blue-chip trained team, work flexibly across multiple businesses – being their marketing expertise, part time or for specific projects – calling in creative specialists from their network as and when they are needed.

Her tips for new businesses:

You need to give yourself the strongest foundations you can. Be distinctly different by playing a different game.
Define your brand by being clear on your ‘onlyness’. Think about who your brand would be if it were a person.
Test your brand out with real people.
Have a vision, but with numbers. Know the future you want to create.

And for existing businesses:

Marketing is everything that touches your consumer.
Always think consumer first. Choose which group will be your most valuable customers. This will inform your marketing chooses.
Plan with the end in mind and be objectives driven.
Use everything you can do to spread your brand
Bootstrap and collaborate

The evening closed with a lively question and answer session followed by some serious networking until closing time.

7 March 201219 February 2013

Our Spring Festival has sprung

In January I blogged about our Spring Market competition for designers and makers. From the 80+ applicants, the 12 lucky winners got the chance to set up shop in the British Library Piazza last Thursday.

This was all part of our Spring Festival week of events which ran from 1 to 5 March, as a five day celebration of fashion, design and creativity. Highlights included the Spring Market, ‘Make it, Sell it’ speed mentoring sessions, talks from Quentin Blake and Jamie Hewlett (Gorillaz), a pop-up exhibition, Vintage Knitting and a pecha-lecture with Neville Brody.

I have to admit I was a bit worried about the Spring Market as we have had some very mixed weather recently (it is cold and wet as I write this), so we were very fortunate to have a warm sunny day for the market. I popped down to have a look and say hello, and ended up buying some of the wonderful items on display.

The first stall I visited was Cole of London founded by Sarah Cole. Sarah designs colourful mugs that are a contemporary take on age old themes. Featuring figures from history and illustrations. Her mugs feature English monarchs, great writers and the wives of Henry VIII. She has used the Business & IP Centre to learn about copyright and research the ceramics market.

Next was SquidLondon, who I have mentioned before (SquidLondon brighten up a rainy autumn day). Rather than go for one of their best-selling line of colour changing umbrellas, I plumped for a ‘Miss Squidolette’ Shower Curtain which comes to colourful life each time the shower is turned on. It makes a great gift for anyone with young children who might be reluctant to ‘get wet’.

Next came Ruby Red Cosmetics founded by Martine Burford who is passionate about ethical cosmetics, and her skincare range contains no synthetic chemicals, fragrances or dyes, and has not been tested on animals. She makes all her products locally in London and they are beautifully packaged .

The idea for Ruby Red grew and grew during the 18 months sabbatical Mike and Martine took in 2005. We had given up our high flying jobs to travel around South East Asia and spent a lot of that time with the locals, discovering effective natural apothecary remedies for keeping skin looking healthy and glowing.

The happy ‘punters’ at the fair, seemed to be a mix of British Library staff (showing what good taste they have for innovative products), and visitors to the library who got a nice surprise on their way in to do their research.

All the stall holders I spoke to said they were getting a lot of interest, and sales, so I am hoping this might be first of many such events at the Library. Congratulations to Fran Taylor our Marketing Manager for Creative industries, for masterminding the Spring Festival.

We were also lucky to have Buzz Films present during the week and posting several excellent short clips onto Vimeo.

Fran_Taylor — Fran Taylor Marketing Manager for Creative Industries

22 February 2012

A refreshing cup of coffee half-way down the piste

Once again Springwise has come up with an innovative service, this time from Starbucks.

I’m off to the Alps in a few weeks time for a bit of ‘piste-bashing’, so this story caught my attention.

Starbucks have opened the world’s first ski-in ski-out coffee shop on the side of a mountain.

Today 10 February 2012, Squaw Valley is officially opening the world’s first ski-in/ski-out Starbucks location.

On the mountain at elevation 8,000 feet, Squaw Valley’s new mountaintop Starbucks boasts spectacular mountain views and the unique ability for guests to keep their skis or board on while they order their Starbucks® beverage of choice.

“We worked closely with the design team at Starbucks to create a one-of-a-kind experience that we know our guests will truly enjoy,” said Andy Wirth, Squaw Valley’s president and CEO. “Nowhere else in the world can skiers and riders enjoy a delicious Starbucks coffee without missing a beat on the slopes.”

Now, you can can me an old stick in the mud, but I think the idea of whizzing down the mountain with a cup of steaming Java in my hand is taking the idea of ‘coffee on the go’ a little bit too far.

21 February 2012

Blogging for fun and profit

Sorry for starting with such a cliché headline, but I am conducting a scientific blogging experiment, more of which later on.

This post (my 509th to be precise) is about why I blog, and why any start-up or small business should seriously consider blogging.

This evening I am giving a talk as part of our Web in Feb series of events. The title is Business Blog – Live, and I am looking forward to some lively debate about the whys and wherefores of blogging for business.

I have already posted up my slides on Slideshare and am happy to share some of my key points below:

Why do I blog?

By accident… the idea was to show a colleague how to blog
Because it works – 25% of traffic to the Business & IP Centre website – 200,000 hits in 4 years – comments and feedback
Because I enjoy it – writing about interest business ideas
It is easy… and free – well not quite, now I am paying $20 a year for an advert free WordPress
It is my memory of events and ideas – I want to be able to look back in a few years time
I believe it helps the reputation of the Centre… and hopefully mine too – only my readers can be the judge of that!

Why you should blog

To build trust – ‘real’ people vs anonymous business – this is an increasing desire from customers
To build an audience – you can start before you business goes live – you might even attract some pre-launch orders
Increase SEO without the risk – Google loves blogs-hates cheaters so keep away from search engine optimisers with ‘magical’ properties
Drive traffic to your website – see Google above
Be seen as an expert in your field – requires insightful, quality content – but hopefully you will have this if you are starting a business
Reach a wider market – word of mouth referrals – one post might go viral

With passion… and patience – wait at least six months for the numbers to come through
For your audience – you do know your potential customers likes and needs… don’t you?
Mainly about things related to your business – don’t stray too far off base
Headings must be ‘Ronsealed’ –
Regularly – a minimum of once a week
Content must be engaging / surprising / controversial / intriguing
Length must be ‘just right’ – somewhere between Stephen Fry’s blessays and Euan Semple’s The Obvious.
Leveraging your other social media channels – Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, +Google
Using your web domain if possible – to maximise traffic to your website
Promote using contacts and ‘Blogroll’
Measure using built in tools or Google Analytics
Handling comments and spam – to moderate or tolerate comment trolls

Ah yes, back to my scientific experiment. I want to prove that even by picking a popular title for this blog post, it will still soar up the Google rankings the minute it is published. Time to find out!

25 January 201219 February 2013

The Key Trends for 2012 from Cate Trotter – Insider Trends

I have been covering sessions from founder and Head of Trends at Insider Trends Cate Trotter for a while now: Insider Trends – The Future of Online Marketing, The growing grey market in the UK and How to become a cutting-edge retailer.

As previously, Cate showed an impressive grasp of the trends that new and existing businesses need to know about, to keep ahead of the competitive curve.

Tonight’s topic proved even more popular than before, requiring a move to a larger room, and an overflow event last-night.

Here are my notes from the event:

Cate started the evening by identifying three headline trends for 2012 of Doom and Gloom, Ubiquitous Digital and Humanness.

Doom and Gloom (aka – the economic recession is killing business opportunities – or is it?)

If you only read the papers or watched TV you would think the end is nigh.
Unemployment is at a 17 year high in the UK, with over 1 million young people out of work.
The UK economy is predicted to grow by 0.2% in 2012 (i.e. no growth to speak of).
But…
Interest in entrepreneurship is at an all-time high, and barriers to entry are at an all-time low, thanks to technology and the internet, with the likes of Facebook, PayPal and on-demand printing.
Slowly we are shifting to become a nation of entrepreneurs.
There are plenty of opportunities for person-to-person (P2P) businesses thanks to the likes of Kickstarter and SellAnApp. Or how about MinuteBox which allows you sell your expertise by the minute.
Opportunities also exist in the off-line world too, such as ‘cheap and cheerful’ offices for start-ups like The Ugli Campus, or how about opening the first cafe for entrepreneurs.
Too many business websites use ‘me too’ branding with stock photography and unclear messages – Cate gave the example of BubbleWebs as one that ‘shows what it does on the tin’.

Ubiquitous digital (it really is everywhere now)

65% of adult internet users now use a social networking site of some kind.
By the summer of 2012 over 50% of Brits will be using a smartphone.
So:
Cate’s tip no.1 – Mark your location on Google Places to boost traffic to your website.
Cate’s tip no.2 – Make sure you website is mobile friendly using 11 Excellent Solutions for Making Your Website Mobile Friendly.
Need to think beyond using social media just for marketing and PR – add customer support roles (e.g. Hippo Munchies in India using twitter prompts from customers to re-fill their vending machines).
Companies will develop intelligent and selective strategies for social media channels. No more scatter-gun approach to digital marketing.
Digital data will give commercial insights. E.g Klout score to measure your online influence.
A/B test your website your website using Optimizely to maximise visitors.

Humanness (the importance of trust in a digital commercial world)

Ask yourself how is your digital strategy enhancing the lives of your customers?
More targeted communications and email lists – less scatter-gun.
Google is starting to highlight more human related content, so you need to have people talking about your business in social media.
Which means you have to do stuff that people think is worth talking about.
Results in a move away from novelty campaigns to real customer value. E.g. Zappos.com have a 24 hour staffed phone line, and up to a year to return products.

Inspirational brands talk about why they do what they do, not what they do, or how they do it – read Start with why by Simon Sinek or watch him speak at TED.
The need to stay human, once you grow beyond a single person business, think of your brand as a personality or celebrity.

2012 is all about being connected – individuals, networks and businesses
Use customer value to cut through the ubiquitous social media noise. Connections through honest communication is key.

Cate ended her talk by encouraging us to go away and start experimenting with some of the ideas covered. We now had 11 months lead on our competitors.

She really wants to hear from us how we a get on, so please get in touch with her at cate@insider-trends.com

17 January 2012

Spring Market competition for designers and makers

Fran Taylor our Marketing Manager for the Creative Industries has launched an exciting Spring Market competition.

The prize is a stall at our Spring Market to be held on 1 March on the British Library piazza.

The Market is part of our Spring Festival and will show off the work of 12 of the most innovative jewellery, fashion, home-ware and craft designers who have used the British Library.

If you have attended an event, used our Business & IP Centre, seen an exhibition or have a Reader Pass you are eligible to enter.

As well as the market stall, your work will be featured on the British Library website and promoted on our Twitter feed, Facebook and our blogs. As well as a British Library press release sent to major national and local publications.

We are looking for designers and makers who:

Produce fine art and photography, graphic art, jewellery, crafts, home-ware, fashion or other products.
Have been trading for at least six months in the UK.
Have a product range which has potential to make a fantastic visual display on a market stall.
Can sell the majority of products for around £30 or less (so that it is affordable for passing trade). Although it is fine to have a small range of high-end products to show the full range of your work.
Are able to attend the workshop for competition winners on Mon 13 Feb 10am – 12 midday at the British Library.
Have used the British Library e.g. for events, exhibitions, our collections and Business & IP Centre.

Spring Market competition entry details.

12 December 20112 July 2013

90 Tiny Tips to Build Your Personal Brand

In the past, Rasheed Ogunlaru (who presents our monthly Your Life, Your Business workshop), has talked about the importance of building your personal brand.

So this list of tips from Alissa Alvarez at Online MBA is welcome.

90 Tiny Tips to Build Your Personal Brand

Personal branding isn’t something you can just sit down and work on for a day and then forget about. Rather, personal branding is built in small pieces, as your day-to-day actions all add up to the brand that is you. That’s exactly why we’ve found so many small tips that can help you build your personal brand, taking things one tiny step at a time. Read on, and we’ll share 90 tips that can help you slowly but steadily build your personal brand.

Finding Your Niche

Personal branding is all about figuring out who you are and how you want to project your image. Use these tips to help identify what you’re really all about.

Consider what makes you different

1. When determining your niche, you should think about what makes you different from other brands out there.

2. Identify your primary product

3. Think about what you have to offer others, whether it’s a service, resource, or special ability.

4. Find out what your talents are

5. Consider what your talents are, what you’ve been recognized for and what you’re better at than most people.

6. Think about how others identify you

7. Take a look at your brand attributes and confirm that your brand matches what others would say about you.

8. Do something remarkable

9. Instead of playing it self and sticking to what you know, do something that’s worthy of taking notice.

10. Identify your core values

11. Share what really matters to you in order to identify what your core values are.

12. Be unique

13. Don’t feel like you need to copy another person’s brand. Be unique and stand out.

14. Think about your passions

15. Identify the things and ideas that you love, and identify your passions.

16. Ask colleagues and friends to sum up your professional image

17. Get a true reflection of what you’re all about by asking others to define you.

Creating A Message

Follow these tips to find out how you can share the personal branding message you have created.

1. Physically make a message

2. Write a paragraph and tag line that tells your story and emphasizes your speciality and talents.

3. Share your message

4. Once you have your message, be sure to actually share it with someone.

5. Be authentic

6. Don’t create a message that’s about someone else: be true to yourself.

7. Control your message

8. Don’t be too many different things to too many people. Stick to your primary message and focus on that.

9. Find your target audience

10. Consider who you really want to be talking to, and use your target audience to define what kind of presence you want to create for your brand.

11. Know your audience

12. Think about to whom you’re directing your personal brand, and communicate your messages appropriately.

13. Be yourself

14. Let your personality shine through and show the real authentic “you.”

15. Use the right vocabulary

16. Communicate with your audience using the right words from the industry so you can show your understanding of what’s going on.

Credibility

1. Use personal branding to establish yourself as a trusted professional in your industry with the help of these tips.

2. Be useful

3. In everything you do, take a moment to consider how you are being useful to others.
4. Live what you say

5. Have a trustworthy, transparent, and educated voice to build your credibility.

6. Be trustworthy

7. Be careful not to offer anything you can’t provide, and deliver on what you’ve promised.

8. Believe in your brand

9. Commit to and invest in the ideas that support your brand.

10. Create a portfolio of successes

11. Showcase your past work, get testimonials, and do whatever you can do show off how great you are.

12. Find and share great content

13. Create a buzz around your own personal brand by finding great content and sharing them with others.

14. Create a visual hook

15. Find a memorable visual hook that people will enjoy and remember you by.

16. Find out what other leaders are doing right

17. Find the experts and leaders in your profession, and see what they are doing to promote their brands.

18. Cultivate a personal style

19. Select clothing that represents you and makes you stand out from the crowd in an attractive way.

20. Be a leader

21. Lead by helping people, and use leadership to grow your influence.

22. Get featured in the media

23. Find opportunities to be featured in the media, possibly creating even more opportunities for exposure and credibility.

24. Show your confidence

25. Don’t be arrogant, but be sure to project confidence so that others will be comfortable with you.

26. Contribute to Q&A sections

27. LinkedIn, eHow, About.com, and lots of forums offer opportunities for sharing your expertise.

28. Be a speaker

29. Much more effective than just attending, speaking at events shares the opportunity for showcasing your expertise.

30. Be consistent

31. Make sure your resume, LinkedIn, and Facebook are all saying the same thing.

32. Win awards

33. First, do work that’s worthy of awards, and be sure to apply for awards in your field. This can bring lots of recognition and credibility to your personal brand.

34. Take a writing class

35. The way you write has a major impact on how you are perceived, so take a writing class to make sure you’re getting it right.

36. Stay on top of trends

37. Educate yourself and stay on top of newly emerging trends in your industry.

38. Back everything up with proof

39. Share objective proof to back up broad statements, using numbers, dates, statistics, and more.

40. Toot your own horn

41. Publicize awards, achievements, and anything else that’s remarkable so that people actually know about it.

Efficiency

1. Keep personal branding from taking over your life with these tips that will help you streamline your efforts.

2. Interact effectively

3. Give yourself a time window for interaction so that you don’t spend all day networking and using social media.

4. Determine where to invest your energy

5. Building a brand is a major undertaking, and there’s only so much you can do in a day. Think about where you really want to invest your energy in brand building.

6. Be brief

7. State your value quickly and in bite sized chunks, or you run the risk of droning on and becoming forgettable.

Online Presence

1. Maintain an online presence that reflects who you are with the help of these tips.

2. Own your domain

3. Register your name or unique URL to project a more professional image.

4. Have a great website

5. Your website is still like a virtual lobby, offering a jumping off point for your entire online presence.

6. Learn about SEO

7. Search engine optimization might sound a little scary and daunting, but in reality, it’s actually quite easy, as long as you’re creating quality content. Taking the time to do SEO right can make all the difference when making your brand stand out.

8. Keep your personal and company brand separate

9. Establish yourself as a person, rather than a company, so that you don’t limit the power of your personal brand. This is especially helpful if you may not be with the company forever.

10. Be a polite emailer

11. Check your grammar, etiquette, and writing skills so that you’re communicating like a professional.

12. Pay attention to your email address

13. Your email address offers a significant opportunity for building your brand, especially if you use your real name.

14. Do your best to lock down your name online

15. Whether you have a common name or an unusual one, put out as much quality content as you can, with your name one it, so that you can better control your online presence.

16. Find out where you are online

17. Do a Google search to check in on your online presence to see you you’re doing and if you need to make any changes.

18. Monitor your online brand

19. Carefully keep an eye on what is being said about you online, and make corrections as needed.

Networking

1. Get connected and establish your brand with others by following these tips.

2. Find relevant people

3. Seek out the recommendations of colleagues, check out Twitter, and more to find relevant people that you should be connecting with.

4. Join industry associations

5. Meet up with people who can help you build your brand and career by joining industry associations.

6. Be generous with your time

7. Take time to do charitable work and go beyond the call of duty.

8. Say yes more often

9. Accept more invitations and go to more events, finding opportunities and taking advantage of ways to explore and experience.

10. Have business cards

11. Even if you don’t have a job, create business cards with your contact information to share with others who want to contact and remember you.

12. Do your research

13. Before any networking event, be sure to know who is going and what will be discussed so that you’re well prepared.

14. Be accessible

15. Let people know you’re out there, and that they can reach you on a regular basis.

16. Don’t miss out on events

17. Attend conferences, seminars, and other events to get out there and shake hands and meet other relevant people.

18. Ask for testimonials

19. Ask other people to recommend you for your expertise, and then be sure to publish what they’ve said about you.

20. Be an active alumni

21. Make the most of where you went to school by joining the alumni association and taking advantage of networking events.

22. Show support for others

23. Be passionate about helping other people when they need it.

24. Learn how to introduce yourself

25. Be ready to communicate who you are with others, concisely sharing the answer to “Tell me about yourself.”

26. Get connected with passionate people

27. Find other people who live passionately, and get together with them regularly for inspiration.

28. Take guest blogging opportunities

29. Extend your reach beyond your immediate network by taking opportunities to guest blog and share your expertise.

30. Promote others rather than yourself

31. Instead of spending all your time promoting yourself, take the time to point out what others are doing really well.

Job Hunting

1. These personal branding tips are especially relevant for job hunters.

2. Work for free

3. Your experience is worth its weight in gold, so when it comes to getting a job, any past experience can really pay off, even work you’ve done for free.

4. Create a value statement

5. Highlight your values and strengths to get the attention of a hiring manager.

6. Put your resume online

7. Add social features, photos, and more to your photo by putting it online.

8. Quantify your results

9. Prove your value by showing quantified outcomes.

Social Media

1. Follow these tips for great ideas in building your personal brand through social media.

2. Carefully consider which tools you want to use

3. If you can’t effectively use a social media tool, there’s little point to having it at all. A poorly managed social media presence can be worse than not having one in the first place.

4. Listen up and stay in the loop

5. Don’t be one sided: be sure to listen and respond to what others are saying.

6. Fill out your profile completely

7. Fill out all of the information fields to promote everything important about yourself.

8. Go out and find new followers

9. New followers will find you, but you can build your presence much faster by seeking them out yourself.

10. Listen first

11. See what others are saying on social networks, and even set up Google Alerts to listen in on how social networks are working before you get started with them.

12. Engage and interact

13. Participate in the back and forth of social media, engaging with others and interacting with content.

14. Create multiple streams

15. Be ubiquitous, creating an online presence on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and more, as many as you can reasonably maintain on a regular basis.

16. Be adaptable

17. Social media is constantly changing, so always be ready to adapt to new developments with a consistent approach.

18. Don’t forget videos

19. Video projects can pay off in a big way and offer a great way to really showcase your brand.

20. Manage and optimize your social media systems

21. When creating your social media accounts, set them up so that they can be automatically updated, pushing to your blog, home page, and more.

22. Stay interesting

23. Don’t just set up social media and walk away: keep things interesting by writing, sharing videos, photos, and more.

24. Curate content like it’s fine art

25. Think carefully about how you share links, news, and resources, curating your content like a museum director might select works for an exhibit.

26. Use the same profile photo

27. Make your online presence easily recognizable by using the same profile photo everywhere.

28. Use a consistent name, too

29. Build recognition by using the same name in everything you do online, preferably one that is close to your actual name or profession.

30. Schedule regular posts

31. Stay on top of your online presence with scheduled tweets and blog posts, so you always have something new to share.

32. Think before you Tweet

33. Be careful not to write anything that’s embarrassing or offensive, or anything you wouldn’t get away with in any other professional setting.

34. Keep everything PG

35. Be careful not to post anything you wouldn’t want your grandma (or potential employers) to see.

36. Point to your social media presence elsewhere

37. Promote your social media presence everywhere, on your website, blog, and even email.

38. Bring offline relationships online

39. Ask your “real life” friends if they are on Twitter or Facebook.

40. Blog your voice on the web

41. Blogging is a great way to find natural traffic without too much marketing effort.

42. Don’t give away too much personal information

43. Be careful not to over-share information or be inflammatory when building your brand.

44. Make some accounts private

45. If you feel the need to share things online that aren’t professionally appropriate, be sure to make those accounts private.

28 November 2011

Boost your business growth with the 2011 Leadership and Management Grant

Many thanks to Alasdair Inglis from our partners Grow, the small business marketing experts, for passing on this information:

2011 Leadership and Management Grant

Although specialist business advice is usually beyond the reach of most SMEs, the new LMAS £1,000 match-funded grant provides ambitious, fast-growing businesses with a great opportunity to access Grow’s Business Growth Programme

The key eligibility criteria for the government grant are:

You are an existing business with growth potential
You have a minimum of two people working in the business (ie yourself and one other)
The grant is match-funded, so you pay £2,000 and receive a £1,000 reimbursement from the government.

24 November 2011

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson – A monster of a book about a monster of a man

Many thanks to Debbie Epstein for giving me this amazing book as a present.

Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson is the only authorised story of the life and death of one of the most influential figures of the last 50 years, who died on 5 October this year, aged 56, from pancreatic cancer.

The book is something of a monster at 627 pages, and chronicles Steve Jobs‘ life from his childhood, through the creation and early days of Apple computers, his battles with Microsoft, his sacking and 12 year later return to the company he founded. Isaacson managed to interview Jobs himself over forty times, and tracked down more than a hundred friends, family, colleagues, competitors and adversaries.

I found it a compelling read, and managed to complete it in less than a week. It is perhaps the most honest and revealing authorised biography ever written of an industry leader. Isaacson uncovers both the amazing stories behind the revolutionary products Apple produced. However, he also reveals something of a monster of a man.

Jobs was a sensitive person, perhaps more so due to being adopted at birth, who spent several months wandering across India in his youth looking for spiritual enlightenment and followed Buddhism for the rest of his life. But he could also be the most manipulative and down-right nasty person it is possible to imagine. So much so, that his early colleagues referred to his ability to distort reality to his own ends (Reality distortion field even has its own Wikipedia entry).

Having been something of a computer nerd as a teenager in the mid-1970s I first came across his creations in the form of an Apple II computer. As you can see it was some way from the sleek and sexy design of the more recent iMacs. So reading the story of how Jobs and Steve Wozniak developed these machines made for riveting reading.

Although he made many mistakes along the way, as well as many enemies, and a trail of broken colleagues, his vision and passion resulted in products which have truly revolutionised the computer industry, and made Apple the most valuable company in the world.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Steve Jobs was that he never felt the need to conduct market research (something we recommend all our clients in the Business & IP Centre should do). Instead he worked on creating ‘insanely great’ products people would discover they didn’t know they needed until they saw them.

24 October 2011

Global Entrepreneurship Week 2011 is on its way

We have had some excellent events during Global Entrepreneurship Weeks over the past few years (Global Entrepreneurship Week 2010).

And it looks like this year will be just as good. It will run from 14 to 18 November, and includes Speed mentoring sessions and Question Time for Entrepreneurs.

Speed mentoring

Each day we’ll be running informal half-day networking sessions. The Centre will be full of business experts and successful entrepreneurs who you can talk with informally and get advice.

The themes for this year are:

Monday – Absolute Beginners

Tuesday – IP & Innovation

Wednesday – Women in Business

Thursday – Marketing Maestros

Friday – Make It, Sell It!

The speed mentoring sessions run from 10.00am – 13.00pm and 14.00pm – 17.00pm and are free.

Inspiring Entrepreneurs: Question Time for Entrepreneurs

Photos: Tim Campbell, Lara Morgan and Vernon W. Hill II

Our special evening event will give you the opportunity to question some of the most successful and influential people in British business today. Speakers include Emma Bridgewater, Lara Morgan, Vernon W. Hill II and former Apprentice winner Tim Campbell. A networking reception will follow the event.

Business Startup Show

Join us on stand 412 at the Business Startup Show in Earls Court on Thursday 17 and Friday 18 November! Along with our partners, Business Plan Services, Trademark Direct and Grow, members of the Business & IP Centre team will be on hand to explain how we can help kick-start your business.

Find out more about Global Entrepreneurship Week.