Why Women Make Brilliant Entrepreneurs
There still simply aren’t enough women in business. I find this incredible but it remains the reality in boardrooms up and down the land. In my experience women make extraordinarily good business people. I employ around 10,000 people, of whom a high proportion are female, and it’s clear to me that recruiting and retaining the...
Three Ways to Deal with Cock-ups
Dealing with cock-ups #101: Blame other people. It’s obvious: you know what you wanted, they didn’t execute it. This makes you feel morally superior, and also helps negotiate a better deal on your next print-run or whatever. Dealing with cock-ups #201: Blame yourself. After a little introspection, you work out that generally other people do...
What Sort of Business Are You Driving?
Is your business model fit for the race track or more at home dawdling on the A47, asks FEBE’s Mike Harris… According to research described in the book Firms of Endearment (Sisodia, Wolfe & Sheth), businesses with a purpose beyond money actually make more cash than businesses that focus solely on the bottom line. Just...
Four Reasons Why Entrepreneurs Hate Bureauracy
A recent PriceWaterhouseCoopers survey posed the following question: do you plan to start your own business in the next five years. In the US, more than 50% said yes. In Europe, fewer than 5% answered positively. America has an enterprise culture. Europe and the UK do not. In this country bureaucracy...
Why Facing Failure is Crucial
Staring failure in the eyes is something all entrepreneurs face. When the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, my business went through tumultuous change. Fifty per cent of my business was in tech recruitment and to give you a flavour, we had been billing IBM more than $1m a year; that swiftly shrank to $57k. Dealing with the fallout...