Inverness Caledonian Thistle Stadium opened it's doors to business players from across the region who were attending the Federation of Small Business event about Real Life Entrepreneurs. Hamish Fraser the Chairman of the Highlands and Islands Region of the FSB welcomed everyone to the event by outlining what a real life entrepreneur was - someone who starts a business. He outlined the FSB view that these people need as much recognition as those more famous business people we might think of when we visualise entrepreneurs.
Hamish then handed over the Mike Southton - the Beer Mat Entrepreneur - who gave an overview of his career and then got cracking interviewing local business people. The first of these was Adrian Gray of AJG Parcels. Adrian described how he had previously worked at a family owned courier business and after 6 months or so he could see things that could be done differently. After speaking with the owners to raise his concerns they decided that it was time for him to leave so he decided to set up on his own. Despite pressure to sign over his house he managed to start with very little funding and after much searching he found a friendly bank manager who got where he was coming from. AJG has gone from strength to strength as a result and grown by 25% every year apart from the last 3. Discussing the recession Adrian felt it had been good for his business. He had infact started when the last recession was taking place and the current climate had meant that he had sweated assets more and streamlined his business making him stronger for the future. When asked about the future of AJG Adrian felt that the business is at a plateau at present having seen a shift from deliveries moving away from businesses and to home addresses. He feels his business is in a good place and that his skills and people mean he can adapt if need to. Ont he subject of people Adrian felt that employing people was a significant part of the business describing his approach as "if you take care of the people the parcels take care of themselves". He reckoned that he had to take on 5 people to end up with 1 which was right for the business but that he now had a great team in place around him. His advice to anyone in business would be to invest as much back in the business as you can possibly afford early on to be able to reap the benefits later.
Catherine Bunn from Highland Campervans was the next interviewee. She was looking for a career that could be based from home given her plans for a family. Catherine and her husband spent a long time searching for their business and looked at a whole range of options and ideas. They wanted to look for something that was almost recession proof and they felt the holiday market was such an area. However, the lightbulb moment for Catherine came when she was sitting in a tent on Skye, in a fairly advanced state of pregnancy, waiting for her husband to complete a walk. At this moment she decided she would rather stay in more comfortable surroundings and they bought a campervan. From here the business idea came and Catherine duly set off to banks to try and secure funding to help her start. One bank manager asked her if anyone else in the area was doing what she planned, when she said no the bank manager advised that this fact clearly demonstrated it wasn't a good idea. What a contrast between lack of vision and seeing the gap in the market! Nevertheless Highland Campervans got underway and has been growing steadily ever since. Catherine is lucky to have a business mentor in a similar business who she describes as being invaluable to her. She has learned from their mistakes and adapted some of what they have done to suit her more. Catherine invests a great deal of time in her online marketing, doing much of it herself and using Google Analytics to measure the effectiveness of new things. Highland Campervans has also invested heavily in staff training with a clear ambition to provide as Catherine described it "the gold class service". This is now paying dividends despite being very expensive at the time as she is now receiving referrals from customers. Catherine was able to use some mortgage equity to help start her business from moving up from the South but funding has been difficult, as the bank manager episode already demonstrated. Catherine showed a good deal of tenacity when she found out that another business had received funding from HIE that she thought her business could benefit from and described herself as "hassling" HIE to get the same support. Highland Campervans has also received funding from Highland Opportunity and whilst she described the paperwork a burden she felt overall this was worth the effort. Highland Campervans now employ 9 people and look like they have a bright future ahead of them. Catherine described the support of fellow business people invaluable. She described how she covertly run ideas past people at FSB meetings to get some feedback on what they thought to them as well.
Next up to be interviewed by Mike was Jennifer Easton of Jaed. Jennifer had a different approach to starting her business again - she infact googled one day "How To Start Your Own Business" and found lots of articles and advice - having just done the same thing myself I can advise there are in fact 2,320,000,000 pages of information available! Jennifer also wanted to move back to the Caithness area and spoke to the Princes Trust for business advice. She had spotted a gap in the market in that many people shop online in Caithness due to the lack of shops but this meant it was hard to get something special. She realised that there was a gap for individual clothes made in situ. The Princes Trust gave her some startup funding and Business Gateway gave her a business loan to help with postcards and posters. The business grew so quickly that Jennifer moved into premises within 6 months. Jennifer currently employs someone part time but this looks set to grow. The business has a small retail shop at the front and the clothing business at the rear. Jennifer has also been quite clear about her charging upfront for advice given she often designs outfits herself too. Anyone coming to her pays effectively a consultancy fee which if they decide not to carry on with the design for any reason has meant Jennifers time and costs are covered - I wonder how many more mature consultants have learned this the hard way rather than getting this policy in at the beginning.
The final interviewee in the Real Life Enterpreneurs session was Andrew Malcolm who has a biomass heating business. He advised that currently Scotland produces 300,000 tonnes of wood pellets a year but 90% of these are exported. He would like to see this changed. He has also made a consultancy a key part of his business and advises on biomass projects. Andrew sees an opportunity with the current energy targets - the Government need to install 1 million boilers in the next 5 years to achieve their targets so Andrew looked at how best to position the business to take advantage of this. He felt working with heating engineers was key and by making it easy for them to advise this would generate sales. Andrew feels the Government will have to achieve the targets as failing to meet them will result in a huge fine by Brussels. He has made getting paid a key part of his business and one that surprisingly often gets overlooked. Andrew ensures that everyone is fully aware of the contracts and agreements and knows what the payment terms are. He also has three prices when looking at projects - his dream price, his regular price and the price at which he will walk away from the project - again great advice for any business.
Mike Southton took over the stage for the next 45 minutes or so giving us some facts, figures and things to think about entrepreneurs. He described Dragons Den as "the unprepared pitching to the unpleasant" which went down well with most of the audience. Research has shown that over half the population want to be an entrepreneur. FSB research has also shown there are several key issues that need addressing to help entrepreneurs as follows;
Key routes to finance
Improved cashflow
Adopt a new approach to regulation
Reduce and simplify business tax
Incentivise job creation
Open up export markets
Mike then gave us some tips on how to double sales immediately and by increasing our email response rate when looking for appointments to around 16%. You can find these tips and more on his website. Mike also gave some tips on how to get more out of networking and quoted Will Kintish who advises that the top tip to join in a group at an event is to ask "may I join you?" - fiendishly simple! He then gave us some other questions to get information from people like where are you based, what do you do, how do you do that and why. He also advised offering the people some information and a contact that might help them. This demonstrates that you have value because you know stuff and you know people (Mike's words not mine!).
There was plenty of discussion around the points above - one of my favourite came from Kate MacDonald at Capella IP who said she treats her customers to some chocolate when they pay - now who wouldn't be pleased about that!
Thanks to the Federation of Small Business for putting on such a great event. We enjoyed making new contacts on behalf of our members and reporting back on some useful tips and hints which we hope will help their businesses also.
Hamish then handed over the Mike Southton - the Beer Mat Entrepreneur - who gave an overview of his career and then got cracking interviewing local business people. The first of these was Adrian Gray of AJG Parcels. Adrian described how he had previously worked at a family owned courier business and after 6 months or so he could see things that could be done differently. After speaking with the owners to raise his concerns they decided that it was time for him to leave so he decided to set up on his own. Despite pressure to sign over his house he managed to start with very little funding and after much searching he found a friendly bank manager who got where he was coming from. AJG has gone from strength to strength as a result and grown by 25% every year apart from the last 3. Discussing the recession Adrian felt it had been good for his business. He had infact started when the last recession was taking place and the current climate had meant that he had sweated assets more and streamlined his business making him stronger for the future. When asked about the future of AJG Adrian felt that the business is at a plateau at present having seen a shift from deliveries moving away from businesses and to home addresses. He feels his business is in a good place and that his skills and people mean he can adapt if need to. Ont he subject of people Adrian felt that employing people was a significant part of the business describing his approach as "if you take care of the people the parcels take care of themselves". He reckoned that he had to take on 5 people to end up with 1 which was right for the business but that he now had a great team in place around him. His advice to anyone in business would be to invest as much back in the business as you can possibly afford early on to be able to reap the benefits later.
Catherine Bunn from Highland Campervans was the next interviewee. She was looking for a career that could be based from home given her plans for a family. Catherine and her husband spent a long time searching for their business and looked at a whole range of options and ideas. They wanted to look for something that was almost recession proof and they felt the holiday market was such an area. However, the lightbulb moment for Catherine came when she was sitting in a tent on Skye, in a fairly advanced state of pregnancy, waiting for her husband to complete a walk. At this moment she decided she would rather stay in more comfortable surroundings and they bought a campervan. From here the business idea came and Catherine duly set off to banks to try and secure funding to help her start. One bank manager asked her if anyone else in the area was doing what she planned, when she said no the bank manager advised that this fact clearly demonstrated it wasn't a good idea. What a contrast between lack of vision and seeing the gap in the market! Nevertheless Highland Campervans got underway and has been growing steadily ever since. Catherine is lucky to have a business mentor in a similar business who she describes as being invaluable to her. She has learned from their mistakes and adapted some of what they have done to suit her more. Catherine invests a great deal of time in her online marketing, doing much of it herself and using Google Analytics to measure the effectiveness of new things. Highland Campervans has also invested heavily in staff training with a clear ambition to provide as Catherine described it "the gold class service". This is now paying dividends despite being very expensive at the time as she is now receiving referrals from customers. Catherine was able to use some mortgage equity to help start her business from moving up from the South but funding has been difficult, as the bank manager episode already demonstrated. Catherine showed a good deal of tenacity when she found out that another business had received funding from HIE that she thought her business could benefit from and described herself as "hassling" HIE to get the same support. Highland Campervans has also received funding from Highland Opportunity and whilst she described the paperwork a burden she felt overall this was worth the effort. Highland Campervans now employ 9 people and look like they have a bright future ahead of them. Catherine described the support of fellow business people invaluable. She described how she covertly run ideas past people at FSB meetings to get some feedback on what they thought to them as well.
Next up to be interviewed by Mike was Jennifer Easton of Jaed. Jennifer had a different approach to starting her business again - she infact googled one day "How To Start Your Own Business" and found lots of articles and advice - having just done the same thing myself I can advise there are in fact 2,320,000,000 pages of information available! Jennifer also wanted to move back to the Caithness area and spoke to the Princes Trust for business advice. She had spotted a gap in the market in that many people shop online in Caithness due to the lack of shops but this meant it was hard to get something special. She realised that there was a gap for individual clothes made in situ. The Princes Trust gave her some startup funding and Business Gateway gave her a business loan to help with postcards and posters. The business grew so quickly that Jennifer moved into premises within 6 months. Jennifer currently employs someone part time but this looks set to grow. The business has a small retail shop at the front and the clothing business at the rear. Jennifer has also been quite clear about her charging upfront for advice given she often designs outfits herself too. Anyone coming to her pays effectively a consultancy fee which if they decide not to carry on with the design for any reason has meant Jennifers time and costs are covered - I wonder how many more mature consultants have learned this the hard way rather than getting this policy in at the beginning.
The final interviewee in the Real Life Enterpreneurs session was Andrew Malcolm who has a biomass heating business. He advised that currently Scotland produces 300,000 tonnes of wood pellets a year but 90% of these are exported. He would like to see this changed. He has also made a consultancy a key part of his business and advises on biomass projects. Andrew sees an opportunity with the current energy targets - the Government need to install 1 million boilers in the next 5 years to achieve their targets so Andrew looked at how best to position the business to take advantage of this. He felt working with heating engineers was key and by making it easy for them to advise this would generate sales. Andrew feels the Government will have to achieve the targets as failing to meet them will result in a huge fine by Brussels. He has made getting paid a key part of his business and one that surprisingly often gets overlooked. Andrew ensures that everyone is fully aware of the contracts and agreements and knows what the payment terms are. He also has three prices when looking at projects - his dream price, his regular price and the price at which he will walk away from the project - again great advice for any business.
Mike Southton took over the stage for the next 45 minutes or so giving us some facts, figures and things to think about entrepreneurs. He described Dragons Den as "the unprepared pitching to the unpleasant" which went down well with most of the audience. Research has shown that over half the population want to be an entrepreneur. FSB research has also shown there are several key issues that need addressing to help entrepreneurs as follows;
Key routes to finance
Improved cashflow
Adopt a new approach to regulation
Reduce and simplify business tax
Incentivise job creation
Open up export markets
Mike then gave us some tips on how to double sales immediately and by increasing our email response rate when looking for appointments to around 16%. You can find these tips and more on his website. Mike also gave some tips on how to get more out of networking and quoted Will Kintish who advises that the top tip to join in a group at an event is to ask "may I join you?" - fiendishly simple! He then gave us some other questions to get information from people like where are you based, what do you do, how do you do that and why. He also advised offering the people some information and a contact that might help them. This demonstrates that you have value because you know stuff and you know people (Mike's words not mine!).
There was plenty of discussion around the points above - one of my favourite came from Kate MacDonald at Capella IP who said she treats her customers to some chocolate when they pay - now who wouldn't be pleased about that!
Thanks to the Federation of Small Business for putting on such a great event. We enjoyed making new contacts on behalf of our members and reporting back on some useful tips and hints which we hope will help their businesses also.
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