37 Winning Tips & Strategies of Self-Made Millionaire Entrepreneurs
by
Millionaire MBA
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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Copyright © Millionaire MBA 2010
First Published 2010 by ELW Publishing Bath, UK
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Contents
Tip #1 – If you’re not determined to see success through to the end – don’t even begin
Tip #2 – If you don’t believe in your product or service – don’t even begin
Tip #3 – When negotiating with others - always put yourself in their shoes
Tip #4 – You don’t necessarily have to have the best idea to succeed
Tip #5 – Look after your cash (Part 1)
Tip #6 – Look after your cash (Part 2)
Tip #9 – Business is cyclical. Work the highs and the lows for maximum return
Tip #12 – You can’t market research a market that doesn’t exist
Tip #13 – Risk is essential - but it must be calculated. Ultimately, only YOU can make a decision
Tip #14 – You must manage the downside of risk
Tip # 15 – To be successful you must first feel uncomfortable
Tip #16 – Get used to hearing the word NO!
Tip #17 – Language is power. Develop your language (Part 1)
Tip #18 – Language sells. Develop your language (Part 2)
Tip #19 – Become a master communicator
Tip #20 – Build a balanced team (Part 1)
Tip #21 – Build a balanced team (Part 2)
Tip #22 – Keep focused exclusively on your goal. Do not get distracted
Tip #23 – Set Goals and have a definite target
Tip #24 – Make a decision to eliminate stress (Part 1)
Tip #25 – Make a decision to eliminate stress (Part 2)
Tip #27 – Be precious with your time
Tip #28 – Don’t procrastinate – Take action
Tip #29 – Get out and network with key people
Tip #30 – Learn to listen and learn to ask the right questions
Tip #32 – Enjoy success when it comes – you have earned it
Tip #35 – Get the fundamentals right
Tip #36 - Know how you are going to make your million
Tip #37 – You can’t afford to choose the wrong opportunity
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Introduction
A few years back, 50 leading UK entrepreneurs and business owners were interviewed in their homes, offices and hotels. The purpose of the interviews was to find out exactly what made them successful, and how other aspiring entrepreneurs could replicate their business success.
Those digitally recorded audio interviews were turned into a 'timeless' business mentoring programme called Millionaire MBA. Millionaire MBA is regarded as one of the best programmes in the world to teach entrepreneurial thinking and the 'millionaire mindset'.
Millionaire MBA is a rich, deep mentoring programme which entrepreneurs listen to over 40 days. Literally tens of thousands of entrepreneurs (like you) around the world have benefited from this programme.
In this short book, you’ll find 37 winning tips and strategies taken from Millionaire MBA which you can apply in your business today.
To find out more about the full business mentoring programme please visit http://www.millionairemba.com/
Tip #1 – If you’re not determined to see success through to the end – don’t even begin
Mandy Haberman
Without bloody-minded determination and persistence you don’t achieve success. So you have to have that, if you’re going to be successful.
There are so many barriers to success – and I don’t know if it’s just something of this country, but there are so many.
You know, the banks don’t want to lend you money; you take ideas to companies – they don’t want to licence it because basically they want to see if it’s got legs and then they’ll pinch it anyway.
There are so many things where you just have to keep on banging your head against that brick wall until eventually the brick wall comes down.
And if you haven’t got that determination, you’re not going to get there because it never comes on a plate.
Tip #2 – If you don’t believe in your product or service – don’t even begin
Karan Bilimoria
What you’ve got to have, and what I had, is complete and utter faith in your idea, and that faith comes across as confidence, and that confidence generates trust from other people and belief from other people because you believe in your idea.
Tip #3 – When negotiating with others - always put yourself in their shoes
Sir Christopher Evans
It’s part of your streetwiseness, I think, whether you’re raising funds, investing in funds, doing deals, buying or selling a company or piece of technology, or working with a scientist or whatever.
You’re forever negotiating something. It’s a two-way thing, and you have to be crystal-clear about what this other person wants.
What I always do is transport myself into the other guy’s chair.
I always think, “What does he want? He’s going to meet me in a minute. Is he in awe of me, does he respect me, does he hate me, does he dislike me, am I everything that’s good or bad in this area as far as he’s concerned?”
I need to try to figure that out and put myself into his mind. Sometimes I know the person, so I know their personality; I know what they will think about the situation.
Sometimes I don’t know them at all, and, for all those reasons, you can then eventually sit in the chair as if you were them, thinking, “What would I want Chris Evans to be saying?”
And that’s how I try to plan it.
Tip #4 – You don’t necessarily have to have the best idea to succeed
Duncan Bannatyne
A lot of people think and a lot of people say, “You’ve got to have a great idea to start in business.” I think that’s rubbish.
The nursing homes wasn’t a great idea. Loads of people were doing it, and, as you said yourself, some people built one and operated one and stayed in that one.
A lot of people built one children’s day nursery or opened one and stayed in that one; that wasn’t a great idea.
The same with the health clubs: There’s loads of people who had one gym, one health club, and everybody knew the health club business was expanding.
These three businesses were businesses where it wasn’t a unique idea – it wasn’t my unique idea. There was nothing unique about my health club.
There isn’t a unique selling point. A lot of people start talking about that now; they say, “What’s your unique selling point to make your business successful?”
Bank managers ask you that, and I say, “Well, there isn’t one. We just work a little bit harder, we try a little bit harder, and we just give the public a little bit more value for money, and that’s it.”
Tip #5 – Look after your cash (Part 1)
Lord Harris
You’ve always got to rely on money back for a rainy day, and we do. If something went wrong… Like, we talked about our goal to open 50 stores.
Just imagine trade because of a war or something fell off a cliff tomorrow or interest rates went to 15 percent – I’m just using this as an example – and people didn’t buy as much carpet.
The first thing you do is rein back from your expansion programme and get your cash in order. I’ve never known anyone who’s gone broke who’s got cash.
Tip #6 – Look after your cash (Part 2)
Michael Smith
I could recite the mantra or the word that was drummed into me in the early days by everyone when they did hear we’re setting up a business – was just, “Cash flow is king and always make sure you’ve got cash in the business.”
It doesn’t matter whether you’re making profits or what the future orders are – the business doesn’t exist unless it has the cash. That’s what it breathes on.
Tip #7 – Great entrepreneurs are not always great managers – recognise that and get the right people in to manage your business
Angus Clacher
I think a lot of entrepreneurs micro-manage, tell people what they want them to do and then stand over them and show them how they want them to do it.
Being an entrepreneur is very different from being a manager, and an entrepreneur needs to put on a different hat and learn how to manage properly.
Entrepreneurs, because of their backgrounds in arrogance and self-belief and passion and all of these things, aren’t necessarily good managers of people.
I personally put my hands up to that many, many times and to this day struggle to do better at managing people.
Tip #8 – Failure is inevitable as an entrepreneur. Make sure you learn from it and turn it into a positive
Mark Marsland
You have to be able to take something positive from a failure. So, is there such a thing as the word “failure”? Failure sounds such a big drop, doesn’t it?
Not a failure – a setback, that’s all that it is. A failure is just a setback when things don’t work out the way you’re expecting them to.
What you must do when you hit a setback is take something from it. Something good always comes from a setback.
It’s not until you’re a little bit further down the road, looking back, that you can say, “God, yes, if that didn’t happen, this wouldn’t have happened; and if this wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have found out about this; and that wouldn’t have led to that.”
You’ve got to remember that sometimes the jigsaw piece doesn’t fit, but if you keep searching, you’ll find the piece that does. All that a setback is – all that a failure is – is the inability to find the right piece of the jigsaw.
All you’ve got to do is keep looking forward, find the right piece, slot it into place and get building that jigsaw again.
There is a theory that I do subscribe to – and I always say it to myself whenever I hit points of adversity – and that is that you can’t move forward looking back. And you really can’t.
Tip #9 – Business is cyclical. Work the highs and the lows for maximum return
Luke Johnson
As far as I’m concerned, you do need to have setbacks because they teach you to be humble. You probably learn more from the difficult times than the easy times.
You realise that most things go in cycles – that recessions follow booms, that nothing grows from the sky and that it’s important to keep things in perspective.
It’s extremely rare to come across businesses, particularly in a relatively small economy like ours, that consistently grow, year in, year out, and never put a foot wrong.
It is in the nature of things that if something can go wrong, it probably will.
Tip #10 – Business is about repeatable systems. What repeatable systems can you create in your business?
Duncan Bannatyne
Repeatable systems are very, very important. In the nursing home business it was fairly easy because you get the guidelines.
The first thing you do is you get the guidelines on how to run and what staffing requirements you need in a nursing home.
You read the guidelines, and it says in the guidelines that you require one qualified nurse for every 20 residents during the day and one for every 25 at night time.
So you would build in multiples of 20, 25. Nobody is going to build a 51-bedroom nursing home because that means you need three nurses at night time, so you build 50 bedrooms.
We went and looked at the opposition before we started building the first one, and people were living six in a bedroom.
And we knew the income, so we thought, “Well, we can actually build single bedrooms with en suite toilets with the same income and make a fantastic profit if we build them in the systematic way of 20, 40, 50 bedrooms.
And that’s what we’ve done.
The children’s nurseries are the same; you get the guidelines, exactly the same.
You need one member staff for every three children under the age of 2, and you have one member of staff for every four children between 2 and 3, and one for every eight children between 3 and 5.
And then each child must have x amount of floor space. So, people doing conversions end up with a room that’s big enough for 13 children or 15 children.
So, we built ours in multiples of 16, 12, whatever the staffing levels were. And again, it was efficient use of staff.
The health clubs are slightly different because nobody tells you what the guidelines are for staffing.
But you could work out that most people would join a health club within five or ten minutes’ drive, and so there is only a certain number of people you can get from that.
Between 3,000 and 5,000 members is about the most you can get into a health club because of that drive. So you build it big enough to hold that number of people and that’s it.
You just offer them a better service, keep the prices down, have value for money and you’ve filled it.
Tip #11 – You can never say for certain that your business will be successful. You can only say that YOU will make it successful
Julie Meyer
The answer is you don’t, and that comes back to the optimism, the confidence and the persistence. You absolutely don’t know that it’s going to be successful.
And there were moments, about this time, October of 1999, after we had launched in 17 cities – well, actually, even earlier than that.
I would say over the summer of ’99 when I was planning for that international launch.
So taking what was essentially still a cocktail party and thinking, “I’m going to build this international network!” – and I was working all alone. There was nobody else.
I didn’t even have a personal assistant, and for whatever reason, I didn’t even have a laptop at home. I kept on going to the Internet café.
And in my living room I just had these stacks of paper –Copenhagen, Stockholm, Munich – and it was just not what you would think because I’m pretty high tech, but that summer it was just helter-skelter.
I remember thinking a couple of times, “Where’s this all going to? What’s going to happen here?”
There was just something that kind of compelled me to go forward, and sure enough we launched in 17 cities.
On September 7, 1999, we were on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, and from there on the network effects just kicked in like I couldn’t have imagined it.
Right time, the hard work paid off, and it was that fall of ’99 for about another six, seven months that – if I’d waited probably even three, four months, it wouldn’t have had the same impact as launching first thing, right after the summer, 17 cities, and just allowing the network effects to take off.
So, the answer is that you don’t [know it will be successful], but I guess the more you do, and the bigger things you do, and the bigger risks that you take, you both deepen your ability to understand when you’re going a little bit too far.
You know, I didn’t launch in a 100 cities; I launched in 17. But you know, maybe next time I’d launch in more.
So you build a kind of neural network of saying, “This is my comfort zone. I’m still in it. I know where my comfort zone is. I know what I’m capable of, and I know what the risks are.”
And so there’s so many things that can come out of the clear blue sky and kill the business, but you start feeling, “If that happens, what’s the worst thing? If that happened, I’d deal with that.”
The other thing I’d say is just that there is no one way to succeed. It’s not as if there’s a magic door and so you’re building a business and if we get through that door…
There’s probably about 17 ways to succeed.
And with First Tuesday I think it was because, although I had a very clear vision of where I wanted to go, the end result when the business was ultimately sold was actually nowhere near where I wanted to go.
So it’s like bringing a child into the world and then they decide to become a doctor rather than a teacher, and you say, “Well, how did that happen because I wanted you to become a doctor?”
These things have a life of their own and, no matter how focused you are on a strategy, I think you have to realise that there’s this thing called opportunity that happens, and you have to go with it.
I could look back at First Tuesday and say, “Well, we should have kept the genie in the bottle, and we should have worked on what the franchise was and how we built the shakes and made the hamburgers and did the French fries before we rolled out into 17 cities, and some of the problems later would not have happened.”
But, you know, if I had done that, I would have missed the moment in time where the magic was there and so forth.
So we became network-centric rather than product-centric, but you can, with hindsight, look back and you say “could have, should have, would have,” but it was what it was.
I just think that you don’t know – you don’t know if it’s going to be successful. You make it happen, and you believe in your own ability to make it happen.
Tip #12 – You can’t market research a market that doesn’t exist
Simon Woodroffe
You can’t market research a market that doesn’t exist, and in this case, you could have done some market research on what the sushi market was, but I’d never really thought that the people who would come to us would be people who already knew sushi.
Yes, there’d be the kind of 10 percent that would say, “Thank God we can get a place in London where you can get sushi at a decent price.” But the much longer-term thing was to introduce new people to it.
And you know, I knew that the market was potentially there if you could entice them in by doing something that was sexy and interesting.
But if we’d gone out and done market research and said, “Would you like to come to a restaurant where you can eat raw fish off conveyor belts and have the drinks served by robots?” people would have said, “What are you dreaming about?”
You can’t market research a market that doesn’t exist. But if you’re first into a market that doesn’t exist, you are the established brand name, etc., etc.
Tip #13 – Risk is essential - but it must be calculated. Ultimately, only YOU can make a decision
Mandy Haberman
I see risk – now – as a challenge. And risk is stepping out where the opportunities are.
It has to be – making the decision to take that risk has to be backed up with a lot of intellectual process because, you know, you’ve got to look at the commercial viability of taking that risk.
Otherwise, you’d be completely foolhardy.
But, you know, the accountants will say to you, “Don’t take that risk.”
The lawyers and your legal team will sit you down and say, “You don’t want to go to court; it’s a huge risk and, you know, you’d have to be mad to do it.”
I guess I’m a bit mad. But it depends what you want to be. You know, if you want to be a winner and really stand out from the crowd, you have to do the dangerous thing.
If you want to be safe and secure, then you do what the accountants tell you and you do what, you know, the best advice that your legal team gives you.
And you’ll be a bit successful; you’ll be OK. But if you, in your judgement, you think that the risk is worth taking, you have to go for it.
I mean, in my case, there was also a sense of… I don’t think I could have lived with myself if we had settled with these infringes and just taken a piddly little royalty.
You know, I had worked for years on this project, and we were on the point of being hugely successful with it when this infringement occurred. I couldn’t turn the other cheek.
I couldn’t have lived with myself if I hadn’t have fought for what I’d created. I mean, you know, if you’re a mother, you fight for your children, for their survival, and it’s the same sort of thing.
And yes, right, you listen to the legal team and you have to make a decision that they will tell you the sort of percentage risk involved. If it had been 40-60 against us, then I wouldn’t have done it.
But 50 percent and above – either you sink into mediocrity or you win. And I had to do it, I had to, I wanted to win.
Tip #14 – You must manage the downside of risk
Tom Hunter
Most entrepreneurs, if they’re good, will limit the downside of the risk.
You know, there are very few entrepreneurs who bet their ranch each time. Rupert Murdoch used to do it; Richard Branson used to do it – but these are exceptions. These are not the rule.
I’ve only bet the ranch once, and I’ll never do it again. So I’m limiting the downside.
People might say, “Oh, that’s a huge risk.” It’s a calculated risk. I know my odds, and I’m willing to accept those odds. So, I don’t see it as risk. Yes, there is an element of risk, but the risk-reward ratio is in the right order.
On the Olympus deal, because we knew our business inside out, we knew every ratio, we knew every lever in that business and what made it successful.
We knew our key ratios; we knew Olympus’s key ratios – and we knew if we only did half as well in Olympus as we had in Sports Division, we would be OK.
So that’s about knowing your business. On top of that, there was naiveté. We didn’t really know what it was to take over a company that was seven times our size.
And that’s a good thing – because I’m sure if you knew before you did it, you perhaps wouldn’t have taken it on.
So there was the understanding of business completely, understanding the acquisition completely, understanding what you had to do, and a bit of naiveté thrown in to say, “Yes, of course we can do it.”
I did not, and not to this day, think of that as a risk. My downside was completely covered. Others saw it as a huge risk. I didn’t. And evidenced by betting everything that I’d earned so far, laying it all on the line.
Tip # 15 – To be successful you must first feel uncomfortable
Nigel Risner
My aim is to teach people to be comfortable being uncomfortable. In every area in our lives, when we wanted to do the big thing it was an uncomfortable experience which we had to overcome.
So, to use the analogy of your very first driving lesson: 99 percent of people learn in a manual car. And you look down and there are three pedals; you’ve got two feet.
It’s an uncomfortable experience, but you know if you go through the routine, because you’ve seen your parents do it and your friends, that if I can just get through that system, it then becomes comfortable.
And now anyone who drives around in a car, they don’t even know about the feet; they just do it.
The very first time we had sex, it was an uncomfortable experience, the very first time. We knew where things were supposed to go; they didn’t always go, but we knew it was about practising.
We knew it was about talking, communicating, and eventually we’d get there.
The very first time we were in school and someone asked for a volunteer, it’s very comfortable to sit back, but if you volunteer and they said yes, you’d have to go in front of the class.
They may ask you a question; up comes that uncomfortability, “I may not know the answer.”
So we have two issues here: There’s the comfortable level that we know, and then there’s the stretch level of pushing ourselves to the next height.
When we go out of our house and we turn to the left or the right, we kind of know the journey to the local newsagent.
But if someone said, “I want you to walk to Liverpool,” and you lived in London, well, where would you start?
So you may not want to go that far because that’s just too far out of your comfort zone. You might say, “Well, I’ll just walk five miles.”
A marathon runner doesn’t wake up one morning and say, “You know, I can run a 100 metres; I can run a marathon.” That’s too big – so outside their comfort zone.
And it would be not possible and not healthy.
So the question is, What is comfortable? Is the 100 metres? Well, if you only do a 100 metres, after a while that becomes monotonous and boring, and you don’t even get good exercise.
Could I stretch to 200-300 yards? But I’m coming out of my comfort zone, my body is not used to it, but I probably could do it. And once you’ve done it once or twice, you realise you can again move out your comfort zones.
Tip #16 – Get used to hearing the word NO!
Simon Woodroffe
Usually when you ask somebody something and they say no, that is just a stepping stone along the way.
I remember when we did – not a very good result, as it happens – but I remember thinking that the Millennium Dome was going to be very successful in the early days and thinking, “We definitely want to have a restaurant in there.”
And I approached them, and they said, “Absolutely not.” And I thought, “This would be a great showcase to have a YO! Sushi in there because they have so many visitors around the world and all that.”
I thought it would make lots of money. In fact, it had gone out to one of the big catering groups, and they’d taken the whole thing.
And I learnt that simply by persisting – I just never gave up. I just continually sent e-mails and found the next person and found another contact here…
And in the end they gave up because they thought that they might have missed the Beatles – you know, one of those type feelings.
Or they thought that they might get bad publicity because here is an entrepreneur who really wanted to be in it, and they were just giving it out to McDonald’s or whoever it was.
…It’s amazing what you can do through persistence because most people in this world, me included from time to time, don’t really know.
So if somebody comes at you, it’s like – if you like a girlfriend or a boyfriend, they come and they shower you with their love – there’s a bit of you that goes, “Maybe they’re right.”
Tip #17 – Language is power. Develop your language (Part 1)
Glenda Stone
Language is power. Language explains what’s in your mind. Language is a tool to align or disalign people, things.
One of the things that works very well for me are analogy stories. I try to be as black and white, as clear as possible about what I’m saying.
Even on a day-to-day level with staff, I leave little room for ambiguity, unless that is intentional, because with ambiguity you can’t control a situation because you’re dealing with people’s misunderstandings, unless, of course, that is what you’re intending.
For me, I find that the clearer you are, the more successful you can be in getting what you want. If you are not sure yourself, that will come through in your language and then people will not know exactly what it is that you’re after.
But for me, language is power, and you must choose it wisely because – again, it’s like when you meet someone.
The first seven to eight seconds they’re not listening to you; they’re making up their mind about you. They’re looking at you. Following that, what words you choose, what you say, what you don’t say is ever so important.
In fact, one of my classic, practical strategies, for what it’s worth, is silence. Silence is a very, very effective power strategy.
Often, and again, I must say that we as women fall into that trap of perhaps trying to unify, bond, comfort, ease people a little too quickly. We fill silence with words, unnecessary words.
And that doesn’t work so well.
Tip #18 – Language sells. Develop your language (Part 2)
Debbie Burke
The way I communicate to our staff is how I want them to communicate to the clients and candidates. And we tend in this business to, or in this company, to use lots of adjectives.
We’ll basically start by, when we’re training people, taking them through the alphabet and start with A, for example: you know, “absolutely amazing,” “amiable,” – and by using all those super words all the time, it means that everybody becomes a good communicator.
That starts at the top.
Tip #19 – Become a master communicator
Sir Christopher Evans
I think I’m quite a good communicator in terms of understanding things and talking to people about things and talking about problems and issues and distilling stuff down.
I think I’m just quite clear, quite blunt, quite forthright, I think, in the way I say things. I don’t cleverly couch things, hoping they’ll pick up the message. I usually just say what the message is.
I mean, there are quiet entrepreneurs, aren’t there, but I think you’ve got to be able to talk to people, to get the most out of people or negotiate and win whatever you want to win.
And I think how you talk, you know, and whether you are charming or funny or witty or serious or whatever, or intelligent in the way you use your words, whatever, I just think that the communication is crucial for entrepreneurs.
Tip #20 – Build a balanced team (Part 1)
Lord Harris
What you’ve got to do with management is say to yourself… You’re building a team in a shop, and say there’s eight people in one of our shops. If you had eight great salesmen, the shop wouldn’t work.
You need a good manager, who’s either a good salesman or a good administrator. Now his number two is reverse to that: If he’s a good salesman, you have – the number two has got to be a good administrator.
If the manager is a good administrator, you need a good salesman as a number two. Two or three good salesmen that work together as a team and then your warehouse staff.
So it’s a team. I could put our eight best managers in one shop, and they’d be unsuccessful. It’s building the team with them; it’s about team building.
Tip #21 – Build a balanced team (Part 2)
Chris Rucker
One of the single most important things you can do is build up the right team around you. The right team around you makes the business. The wrong team around you absolutely destroys the business.
And I’m very, very lucky, I have a fantastic, fantastic management team who… it has taken time to build up. You know, we’ve got things wrong along the way, and it has taken time to get the team right.
And that’s probably me being inexperienced, bringing in people who haven’t been quite right, and then you know, each time you learn and you sort of… I think, taking time…
I think in the olden days I perhaps used to rush into employing people. And there was this chap who I used to talk to quite a lot, who always used to say to me, “Just give them the job, you know, and if it goes wrong, then find someone else to do it.”
And it was actually a really, really bad attitude. It was really the worst possible way of tackling things.
And I’ve since learnt that it’s really, really worth putting the time into recruiting the right people and nurturing the right people because if your team are the right team, you’ve – there’s nothing that can compete with that, really.
And, you know, we’re very lucky now. Today we have a fantastic, fantastic team. And that’s come from really putting the time in to finding the right person for the right job.
Tip #22 – Keep focused exclusively on your goal. Do not get distracted
Nick Wheeler
Focus is very important, and again, it’s something – it’s like becoming a nonexecutive director, or it’s like people are forever asking me if I’m interested in various opportunities to invest in other businesses.
And I’m just not because, you know, I want this business to be a great business, and I think you can’t concentrate on more than one thing at any one time, and I think that’s pretty fundamental.
Oh, this shirt business has come up for sale, and people say, “Why don’t you buy that business?” But I don’t want two different shirt brands.
I don’t want our buyers to be going out there and saying, “OK, we’ll have this for Charles Tyrwhitt and this for his other company.”
I want them to be 100 percent focused on buying for Charles Tyrwhitt and being their sole love in life basically. And I think that’s absolutely fundamental.
Tip #23 – Set Goals and have a definite target
Tim Etchells
Every business needs to have an annual target. It has a set of accounts, and obviously any business has got a target.
We have targets broken down into different events that we do. Those are broken down into weekly targets.
I make every senior director of my company – I’ve got sort of six of the senior management – every week they’ll do a weekly report for me about the meetings they’ve had, the key phone conversations they’d had, the meetings they’re going to have next week because I might know the people they’re going to.
And I feel they’re running their own little businesses, and why wouldn’t they want to report back to me and tell me what they’re doing?
And we have a very strict policy that they’re in by 5 o’clock on a Friday. They’re either biked to my home or posted to me.
I get them either Friday night, Saturday – I obviously take them home with me if I’m here – I read them over the weekend and then make a point during the course of Monday of going around the office and just sort of highlighting different things that I’ve picked up from their reports or whatever.
And it’s quite interesting because they play little games with me and will put little comments in there about little things to test me, to see whether I’ve read them. But it’s very important, that. And so you know, a weekly goal for them is important.
No, I think goals are very key. How else do you know whether you’re on track or not?
And fortunately for me, I started life as a salesman where I had clear sales target, it’s not a difficult discipline for me to follow through in the business.
Tip #24 – Make a decision to eliminate stress (Part 1)
Ivan Massow
I absolutely believe that once you’ve made a decision, the weight goes. Part of the problem with having an institutional investor is that you’re not able to make decisions.
The freedom to make decisions and just to, “Right, I’ve done it, I’ve said it, it’s done. Bang. We’re now moving on.” Whether that decision is right or wrong, it’s beautiful because you’ve – it’s parked; it’s disappeared.
And if you are wrong, you can make another decision to rectify it and another decision and another decision.
But, nonetheless, you have to be able to have that freedom to continue making decisions, which is why, to some degree, you have to be quite autocratic when you’re running a business.
Tip #25 – Make a decision to eliminate stress (Part 2)
Mark Marsland
Ultimately you make decisions that you would probably normally have shied away from, and the moment you’ve made those decisions you feel a whole lot better, and the stress lifts.
That’s the key point, I think.
The stress drives you into a corner where you have to make clinical, judgemental decisions about what you need to do and reaffirming your goals and where you want to be and how you’re going to get there: “If we do this and we do this, we get rid of this.”
And you move forward again; again, it’s cutting that cord. You can’t go forward looking back.
And sometimes you drag a lot of baggage with you that you should have let go of a long time before, whether they be people that the business is carrying or they be suppliers that are not meeting your demands, so you need to spend your money somewhere else where you can turn it over quicker.
Whatever they may be, it’s all about making decisions for the good of the business. And that means that certain things have to be sacrificed.
It may be a cut in lifestyle for a while; it may be cutting out staff; it maybe cutting certain suppliers, but, you know, you have to make the decisions.
Tip #26 – Get in the groove
Simon Woodroffe
When I’m not in the groove and I haven’t got my head in it, or there’s something worrying me at the back of my mind, or I can’t really concentrate on getting things done, I can waste an enormous amount of time just sitting around the office thinking that I should be there.
And when I’m in the groove, like today I’ve been in the groove, I’m getting lots and lots done – and in fact, I’ve knocked off two or three things that have been little ones that have been sitting there for weeks that I’ve just kept putting off, you know, and actually have been conscious but have been in denial about.
Sometimes I’m lazy or fearful of doing things, but I’m always aware that, at any time on my list of things to do, there’s one or two or three or four that I just keep putting off from day to day or week to week.
And I’m also aware that usually, when I deal with them and do them, they’re much, much easier than I’d imagined.
Tip #27 – Be precious with your time
Tom Hunter
I’m very organised, and I use my time very well. I’m very precious of my time, and I understand the value of the time. So I hopefully concentrate on the key things.
But I’m very decisive in the use of my time, and I don’t let people steal my time.
Tip #28 – Don’t procrastinate – Take action
Michael Smith
I try not to procrastinate, as I say. I think I’m probably a little bit to the extreme of not wasting time in that I have this very weird mindframe where, when I’m at work and working on stuff, I basically do nothing but work.
And perhaps I should take more breathers and relax a little bit more.
For the first few years, I never even had a lunch break and I’d grab a sandwich and eat at my desk. And, as I’ve got older, I’ve realised that’s not quite so healthy; it’s a balance thing.
Tip #29 – Get out and network with key people
Chris Hughes
I make it my business to know players within our industry, and we’ve just been appointed to run an arena, a big theatre at the Motor Show – and in our industry, the Motor Show is the biggest show in the country – and we’ve just been selected to run the biggest feature at the biggest show.
They rung us and asked us to pitch and encouraged us to win it and asked us to do it, and that’s coming through networking and reputation.
So when that’s happening, that’s quite nice, but that’s because you’ve built a relationship. Some people are very nice about you. So, yes, it’s important. I’ve kind of made it my job to do that.
Tip #30 – Learn to listen and learn to ask the right questions
Thomas Power
I mean, the killer skill of Gates, Sugar, Dell, these great guys I’ve worked with and for, is the quality of their questioning – their questioning and their memories.
The greatest thing I have learnt from entrepreneurs and serious billionaire entrepreneurs is the quality of their memory and the quality of their questioning is exceptional – absolutely exceptional.
Tip #31 – The more you do and see – the more connections your create – AND the more ideas you generate
Karan Bilimoria
People say to me, “This idea of the Cobra Beer, when did the idea come to you?” They expect me to say, “Actually, I was in my bath, and suddenly I had this flash of inspiration.”
It doesn’t work that way, always.
With me, the idea evolved – these visits to Indian restaurants – and I find I don’t like these gassy lagers, they’re making the experience uncomfortable, and visits to India regularly.
I used to work overtime at Ernst and Young and save up my overtime so that I could have long holidays in India to visit my family, go to India regularly.
And it was on one of those trips to India, I remember standing out on a wooden terrace in the mountains near Simla, in North India, overlooking a valley and forests, drinking some Indian beer, thinking, “One day I’m going to bring over my own Indian beer to the U.K.
One day I’m going to bring this less gassy, extra smooth beer across.”
So I can still remember that moment very, very clearly. I desperately wanted to do it; I didn’t know when I’d do it. I was still a student at the time. And of course, eventually I did it.
So you’ve got to dream, you’ve got to have that dream, and you’ve got to believe in that dream.
There were so many situations I’ll never forget: my first visit to the brewery that I’d been corresponding with after I’d done all my research, and I was ready to start producing the beer, and I went to meet them in India.
There was a semicircle of the management of the brewery sitting, and I was sitting on my own, and you had the company secretary, the chief accountant, the general manager, head of marketing, head brewer, managing director – they were all there.
And I remember all of them laughing in my face, individually and collectively, saying, “You don’t stand a chance. All our competitors have tried.
The biggest Indian beer brand is already there and has been there for eight years. What chance do you stand? And what makes you think you can do this?”
And I remember just sitting there, being totally confident in what I was going to do, regardless of the fact that all of them didn’t believe it was possible.
Tip #32 – Enjoy success when it comes – you have earned it
Stuart Wheeler
The moment when it had undoubtedly paid off in quite a big way was when the company was floated on the Stock Exchange in June 2000 because then a value was put on our shares, and a lot more money than I’d ever had was put in the bank.
So in one sense that was a defining moment.
Also, when we first started making quite significant sums – nothing like the million you were talking about – but having made ₤10 or ₤20,000 a year, when we suddenly started making about ₤100,000 a year, which is an amount which seemed to me then astonishingly large, considering I’d been very close to having to close the business down because it wasn’t really viable in the very early stages.
Tip #33 – Develop your brand
Mandy Haberman
I think it’s something which I’ve learnt quite recently, in fact, and that is that brand is the king, that you cannot rely on things which can go out of your or your company’s control, so that as an inventor you think, “Right, my income relies on intellectual property rights,” but intellectual property rights can be very volatile.
You can’t necessarily control what happens with intellectual property rights, and to base a business on that is asking for trouble.
Brand is more important. Dyson’s had all of his court cases and most of them he’s won, but Dyson is Dyson. The brand is the brand.
If he was to lose a patent along the way, it wouldn’t mean anything to somebody buying a vacuum cleaner. They go for brand, and that I think is hugely important.
Tip #34 – Leverage leverage!
Sir Christopher Evans
I’ve always done that, leverage in terms of… I use other people’s money. I use my own money. I use people’s equity money, people who take a stake in something at full risk alongside me.
We use banks. We use debt finance, and we structure things. We’ve lots of different parties, different stake holders.
I have different individuals with their names and reputations tagged onto mine involved in a project, and all those things are brought to bear to maximise the chances of this thing succeeding, whatever it is, and then we will use leverage all the way along the line, even when it turns really ugly at some point.
For example, you’ve got a group of people wanting to buy or invest in the company or do something horrible that I don’t like; then I’ll then use whatever power or resources that I’ve got to fight that, which may be a hell of a lot more stronger than any other individual could in my team or group bring to the party, and so…
This is the determination thing again. If I want to succeed and there’s things that are getting in the way, then there’s almost nothing I won’t do or try to stop that happening or to make something happen.
Tip #35 – Get the fundamentals right
Luke Johnson
You’ve got to know that you need to generate a profit to be able to fund growth. And running businesses that are loss-making is not much fun and not worth doing.
You have to understand things like financial gearing so that you can borrow suitably to take advantage in this current climate of low interest rates; I think that’s very important.
I think it’s important, also, to find an idea or a business that can be scaled. I don’t think many of us are interested in very small, niche businesses that will always remain small and niche.
Some people are, someone in the craft trade, but as far as I’m concerned, I want an operation that can be replicated or expanded, and I like things that can potentially grow quite large.
So I don’t like business models that are very self-limiting.
You’re totally dependent on the people who work for you, so you have to be able to try and motivate them, and you have to be able to find them and work with them, and that’s easier said than done.
They are very important; they’re not the only factor. You require the right premises, the right technology, the right margins. A lot of people, for example, are very ignorant about margins.
They go into business where the margin’s too low, either at the gross or the net level, and the business doesn’t make economic sense.
You need to make a sensible return for all concerned – be it lender, investors, proprietor, whoever it may be.
Most businesses that I’ve ever been involved with are repeat purchase businesses, and they’re not one-off, big capital items. So it’s about making sure your customer walks away with a good feeling, and it’s not a rip-off.
I prefer personally consumer businesses, where you’ve got thousands of customers; you’re not heavily dependent on one or two people or one or two companies.
So, for example, I’d be very unlikely, again, to go into the business of supplying the car manufacturers because you’ve probably got fewer than 10 customers, and you’re probably heavily dependent on one or two of them.
And if the key executive within that customer changes, they may have another pet supplier, your rival. You lose 25 percent of your business overnight, and you’re out of business.
Tip #36 - Know how you are going to make your million
Stephen Streater
There’s another way of looking at it that, if you want to make ₤1 million, you can sell ₤1 million worth of something to one person, or you can sell ₤1 worth of something to a million people.
It’s just worth thinking about how you’re going to have your happy customers.
At Eidos we did it by selling games, where we have millions of customers and we just get a little bit from each one. We did look at some of the big contracts, but they were always a lot of effort.
People are always very fussy, and then they change the goalposts and things like that, so I think it’s easier to sell small things to lots of people.
And the other advantage, of course, that if you only sell 100,000 of them, you’ve still got a business, whereas if you have a one in ten chance of selling ₤1 million, you’ve got a 90 percent chance of making nothing.
And that’s not such a good situation to be in. And then, of course, you can improve continually your products. I think the key is really to have it, really wanting it enough; then you’ll work it out.
Tip #37 – You can’t afford to choose the wrong opportunity
Tom Hunter
Well, first of all, you’ve got to be able to spot the opportunity because I’ve known people who have worked as hard as me, who were smarter than me, who put in more hours than me, but they chose the wrong opportunity, and, therefore, never made as much money.
Therefore, you’ve got to be clever enough to spot the correct opportunity.
Entrepreneurs see an opportunity every day of the week, but I say, “What is the correct one?” because there is a big opportunity cost.
If you choose this, it means you can’t do that. Therefore, is this the right one? Being able to work that out is key. Then once you have spotted the right opportunity, then, yes, determination, focus, build a team.
But I guess the key thing is the opportunity.
Millionaire MBA Featured Entrepreneurs
Simon Woodroffe
After a career in the 'Rock and Roll' business, Simon Woodroffe set-up YO! Sushi when he had turned 40, using borrowings from the government loan guarantee scheme and his life savings of £150,000.
His company, providing sushi on conveyor belts and drinks served by robots, has become a phenomenal success, with Simon being offered £1m for it immediately after its launch.
Simon took his initial YO! Sushi restaurant and built it into a unique 'brand', which has the ability to work with just about anything.
Already included under the umbrella of YO! are YO! Sushi, Yotels and many more to come.
Ivan Massow
Ivan Massow started his financial services company from a squat in Kentish Town, London, which he renamed to give himself a more credible sounding postal address.
With pure drive and determination and a true sense of knowing himself and what he wanted, Ivan has developed Massow Financial Services into a leader in the niche gay market.
Now moving beyond the core of his original market, Massow is offering financial services for 'survivors' of transplants, major surgery, cancer and mental health issues.
Duncan Bannatyne
After being kicked out of the Navy and living broke in Jersey, Duncan Bannatyne said to his wife, "let's go back to England to make a million". That he did, many times over.
Originally buying an ice cream van for £450 for a quick turn-around profit, Duncan decided he would build an ice cream business, which is exactly what he did.
Tired of counting cash every night, he decided to branch out into building nursing homes. He went on to build Quality Care Homes, a UK listed chain of care homes.
Duncan's success did not stop there as he later launched his own chain of children's day care nurseries and his most recent venture, a chain of 40 fitness centers (Bannatyne Fitness).
Duncan is now famous as a dragon on Dragons' Den.
Julie Meyer
Many people will be aware of First Tuesday as one of the hottest names in the early internet days, providing networking events for investors and entrepreneurs alike.
Julie Meyer was the entrepreneur behind this. Starting the company from her living room with no PC, she launched First Tuesday in the summer of 1999 in 17 European cities.
It is Julie's belief in 'win win' that made First Tuesday the success it is. She later sold First Tuesday and has since started her own Venture Capital company Ariadne Capital.
Lena Björck
Lena Björck started Inn or Out catering with a loan from the Prince's Trust. Believing that 100% is not enough, but 200% is needed, she has a passion for her business like a mother's love for her child.
Knowing next to nothing about the catering business, Lena worked for free for a week in a 5 star hotel in Austria.
A week well spent, when later she won a contract to cater for the American Ambassador and decided to fly chefs over from Austria to cook for the event.
Little did they know that they would be working and sleeping in Lena's flat, sharing only one cooker and sleeping on mattresses on the floor.
Lena would never let such a little thing as not having a kitchen stop her from providing world class food for over 3,000 people that day. Where there's a will, there's a way.
Lord Bilimoria
Karan Bilimoria turned his back on a career as a Chartered Accountant to follow his dream of bringing 'less gassy, extra smooth' Indian beer to the UK.
Facing obstacles at every turn and with no-one believing in him or his idea, plus being £20,000 in debt, Karan achieved the seemingly impossible and is now building up Cobra beer to be the world's leader in Indian beer.
Glenda Stone
Aurora was founded by an Australian entrepreneur, Glenda Stone.
Having co-founded a number of business women’s networks in Australia, Glenda launched the Aurora Women's Network (formerly the Busygirl Network) on International Women’s Day (8 March 2000) and grew membership to over 2,500 in the first 6 months.
Having secured significant industry support, the Aurora forums attract Europe's largest monthly gathering of corporate and entrepreneurial women.
In 2002, Glenda was awarded the `European Woman of Achievement for Entrepreneurialism'.
Mark Marsland
Mark Marsland came up with the idea for Castaway Tackle after selling some of his fishing gear at a local car boot sale.
Recognising that there was a massive demand for second hand fishing tackle, and with the help of a loan from the Prince's Trust, Mark started Castaway Tackle which brings the consumer shopping experience of the leading electrical retailers to the world of angling.
Mark has formidable self-belief which has carried him from his early days of working as a labourer, a factory worker and hypnotist, to the success that he enjoys today.
Chris Hughes
Having worked for many years in the events business, and being very close to starting his own company several times before, Chris Hughes finally made the break and started Brand Events after raising £250,000 from investors.
After making it to the 'end of the runway' at the end of year 1, Brand Events has certainly taken off.
Hosting many of the leading events held at Earls Court and Olympia, plus owning 'Chemistry', the massively successful network dating company, Chris Hughes and Brand events are most definitely flying.
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