I recently attended an event with some great entrepreneurial speakers and lots of updates and lessons in the world of business. There was so much content that I split it into two parts with the first part last month and this month being part two. In this part I cover the keynote on the 8 characteristics of successful entrepreneurs, and general points from across the two days. A very interesting keynote which. looked at what they saw as the 8 characteristics of successful entrepreneurs, which were set out as:
8 Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurs
- Clarity – successful people get what they want out of life because they know what they want. You can achieve anything in five years if you a) know what it is you want, can visualise it and create a clear picture, and b) you have to work towards it every day.
- The Ability to Influence – the ability to move other people to do what you want them to do whether selling, marketing or managing. You have to be able to communicate your values.
- Drive / Desire – this can be either towards something or away from something. If you’re not prepared to pay the price, then arguably you are not in enough pain to change.
- Knowledge – If you think about every problem and obstacle standing between you and your goals, it has already been solved by someone else.
- 90 Minutes – Spending 90 minutes every day undertaking the work and thought that actually drives the business forward. The classic ‘working on your business’ and not ‘in it’
- Control the Controllables – most business owners work hard but do they think hard? The quote from Jim Rohn was used ‘As you think, so you become’. |if you can only do one thing all day long, which is the one that is the most important and makes the biggest impact.
- The ability to boil down your business into Inputs and Outputs. High performance is not about the outputs. It’s all about the inputs. All about doing the right things. The most profound observation in the field of success psychology is that you are the average of the five people you spend most of your time with.
- Have a Low Tolerance – we all get a lot more of what we tolerate.
A very interesting session and plenty of food for thought.
Tik Tok – Not Just for the Young!
There was also a session on TikTok, something that is of increasing use for some businesses. Some interesting and surprising stats including:
- There are 29.5 million UK monthly users
- The average usage is 90 minutes a day!!
- Whilst most people think that TikTok is for younger people, the breakdown of users between the age of 35 to 49 is 11%, which does not sound much, but that is 5.6 million users!
- The most surprising stat of all was that the total time spent on TikTok by users is the same as the total of time spent on the rest of the social media platforms added together!! Scary….
Tales from the Conference
In one of the sessions on marketing, there was a story that followed on from the previous years award ceremony. That award ceremony was hosted by Jimmy Carr who was hilarious and was great at interacting with all the nominees and winners and where we could he also made some great one-liners.
The best one related to a business who had used Facebook Ads very successfully for their business. When they were up for the award it was advised that they had spent the sum of £3k and obtained £119k of sales from that spend, quite a return!! At the awards they were clapped when it was announced that they were a finalist, only for the quick-witted Jimmy Carr, to say ‘No. No. Hang on. Don’t applaud that. If £3k gets you £119k of sales, then it begs the question, why didn’t they spend £6k and get quarter of a million!!’ At which point he smirked and said what an ‘******* idiot!!’
Well, the business took it in the humorous nature it was meant, but actually came back the following year and this time they spent £23k on Facebook Ads, but this time it resulted in £2.3m of revenue. So, who knew that Carr was a marketing guru!!