ENTREPRENEURS CONFERENCE

A few weeks back I attended the National Entrepreneurs Conference, an annual event I attend in Birmingham, organised by Entrepreneurs Circle. 

 

Every year it has a theme that is seen throughout the couple of days event and this year the theme was ‘PERSISTENCE’ and all the speakers and sessions have a link to the theme. 

 

This year the list of speakers was not made public until each session started, and it is fair to say some of them were a little controversial, some because of their past and some because of what they said. 

 

Aside from the invited speakers there was some good content again all focused around the headline of Persistence

Key Elements being

  • Each person’s income is determined primarily by their philosophy, not the economy.  
  • Great example as portrayed in the film ‘The Founder’ of Ray Kroc, a struggling salesman, who did not start McDonalds, but met Dick and Mac MacDonald in the store they ran, saw its huge potential and turned it into a fast-food empire of 16,000 restaurants. If you haven’t seen the film, it is well worth a watch and is apparently very accurate to the true story. In the film Ray Kroc, played by Michael Keaton, asks how he has built such an empire and his answer is ‘one word: persistence. Nothing in this world can take the place of good old persistence………..Persistence and determination alone are all powerful’ 
  • A lot of examples of work ON your business, rather than IN your business. 
  • The importance of spending 90 minutes a day on the stuff that really matters and makes the dial move on your business (this is also mentioned in a slightly different way in the 5am Club book. 
  • Working smarter always beats working harder. 
  • You waste years not being able to waste hours! 
  • Overcoming procrastination. 
  • Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most. 
  • Clarity of the problem leads to the appearance of the solution 
  • Turnover and profit are vanity measures. Cash is king and the importance of operating cashflows (this is something going back only 2 or 3 years that was never covered at this type of event, despite it being so important) 
  • Being able to read a balance sheet is important! (not one I needed to be told!)
  • As an entrepreneur, being able to establish what they called your TERMS, which stand for: 

TIME – how much time can/do you spend in the business 

ENJOYMENT – what enjoyment do you take from the business 

RESOURCES – what are you prepared to commit to the business 

MONEY – what do you need to make and what is your break even 

SANITY – what are you prepared to do to make it work and what are the measures that will help you sleep at night 

The idea being you set out what they are now, and what you want them to be in say 1 year and say 5 years and then work out an action plan towards it. 

There were nine external speakers with sessions at the event, as well as Dara O’Briain presenting the Entrepreneur Awards on the first night. 

A Varied Set of Speakers Included

Charlie Mullins – the founder of Pimlico Plumbers who then sold it and moved abroad. An interesting character who people seem to like or hate, but you cannot argue with the successful business he built and was ahead of his time when he set Pimlico Plumbers up. He looked at all the problems that people had with plumbers and came up with solutions to them in what was called the Pimlico Bible on how every plumber that works for them had to abide by in terms of dress, how they conducted themselves, timekeeping, how clean their vans were and how they dealt with their customers. He used some very successful advertising to get the name out there including numberplates on the vans showing BOILER or DRAIN etc. 

 

Richard Osman – presenter and author but actually was there to talk about his entrepreneurial journey at Endemol that many people might be unaware of. I really enjoyed listening to Richard and he was probably my favourite speaker. There is so much more to him than most people see on TV and through his successful books. For years he was one of the senior people at Endemol, the TV production company and the people behind many big TV shows around this world including Big Brother and Changing Rooms. He was a major part of the team that ultimately sold it for £3bn. He certainly has a very commercial brain. I understand he is also doing a High Performance Podcast soon so I will look out for that too. 

 

Darren Edwards – record breaking disabled adventurer. Very inspirational speaker who was climbing in North Wales when the ledge he stood on fell away, and he plunged over 100 feet. Lucky to survive, he broke his back in two places, severing his spinal cord. Darren was paralysed from the chest down, but found purpose with outdoor adventuring and some major ones too including the first wheelchair user to complete seven marathons on seven continents in seven days. 

 

Caroline Redman Lusher – the founder of Rock Choir, the world’s largest contemporary choir. Again someone with a very interesting story and a business that really had to adapt during Covid as choir singing is not really something that works very well over Teams!  

 

Andy Coulson – the disgraced former editor of the News of The World and strategist who went to jail relating to phone hacking. Whilst I understood why he was there and now he was a crisis podcast, I did find him rather smug if I am being honest and no different to the way he was back in his News of The World days, so to me anyway, I’m not sure he has changed in the way he portrays. 

 

Jake Humphrey and Damian Hughes – from the High Performance Podcast. I’ve seen these before and always a good session from them. This time it was material I had not heard before, which was good, and I will cover more of this in an article next month. 

 

A good couple of days and now to put some of this into practice. 

 

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