It's been over a year since I set up www.BusinessLoans.ie and left the security of employment. There has been a lot to learn along the way. So I'm writing this blog post to give my insights on making the most of the resources that are out there to keep you on track on your entrepreneurial journey. This story can be split between startups and more established SMEs.
Startups
If you are starting out you can try the New Frontiers program to get you from business idea to successful startup. It's run in three phases and you get experts to help you validate your idea. You engage in workshops, one-to-one mentoring, financial support & co-working space. However, this doesn't suit everyone and places are limited. Some of the best startups have come from patient people who have stayed in their day job and validated their idea to a point where they can comfortably step in to their business. Or how about this, if your employer might be open to letting you take a sabbatical from work for 6 months you can try it out? Entrepreneurship can be a lonely place and it doesn't suit everyone. Also the failure rate is high. It's easy to get feedback from well-wishers but the proof is in the pudding. How many purchase orders can you get in your hand? So the key is to validate, validate & validate!
So what's available if you stay in your day job? What mentorship and guidance is there for you? Your Local Enterprise Office is a great place to start. They offer financial & other supports whether you're at business idea stage, a startup or an established business. There is so much they offer that's a blog post in itself for another day. We are also now in to Local Enterprise Week 2020 from 2nd to 6th of March so there are a multitude of extra events on so make hay while the sun shines and get stuck in!
I also wanted to say failure is not final. Recently I heard Seán Fay tell of his journey. He failed and failed at startups. He failed 5 times. But he kept going. Deterrents of dyslexia, being an immigrant and time constraints of caring for his daughter didn't deter him. With the help of guidance and support from his Local Enterprise Office; then going directly to Oracle to challenge them that they had startup programs all over Europe but none in Ireland, where their head office is; and getting them on board too. He then grew the business and got more supports from Enterprise Ireland. It became a seed investor and a backer of Fay's business, The Context Factory. It's gone from startup to a FTSE250 through determination coupled with supports & guidance.
On another note, "talk's good, but if you don't take action, it doesn't matter how slick your strategy is" says Tina Keogh MD of Warner’s Gin Distillery. So be ready to fail and learn but at the same time get your best foot forward with the supports and guidance around you. Digital Dun Laoghaire have made an excellent resources list you will find here.
SMEs
Where do you go for support if you are an established business owner? I have been lucky as early on in my business journey I got speaking with PJ Timmins of The Alternative Board (or TAB for short). I learned that as a business gets bigger and bigger you need to be able to draw on specialised business advice. As Timmins puts it, "running a business is never easy, but looking for the right advice and support is a big challenge." You can draw on advice from "the same group of seasoned business leaders sitting on your advisory board on a monthly basis. They will listen to the challenges and opportunities in front of you and give you independent real-world advice. These are seasoned business leaders who understand the issues. In turn, you will contribute to solving their challenges and opportunities."
Aside from a monthly board meeting you also have a one-to-one private session with your TAB facilitator, a seasoned business professional themself. In my case my mentor is PJ Timmins and there are a host of local facilitators with a range of experience across different sectors country-wide that can be paired with you. The one-to-one helps to keep you on track with TAB's Business Builders Blueprint. It's a proven strategic business planning process focused on delivering a business owner’s vision of leading a successful business while also living a rich fulfilling life. Basically I log in to online resources at home or sometimes with my mentor and work on goals, strategy and most importantly I reflect regularly. I'm held accountable for sticking with the plan.
Another really good thing is the power of the collective minds of TAB members. You can leverage the minds of everyone around you which I did to good effect recently. I was introduced to another member who is a very experienced banker and we are currently working on a project that will add an ongoing additional revenue stream to my business. You can get introductions from networking generally but TAB is selective about who becomes a member, so I've found you can really open up a high quality network that you just can't match compared with some of the networking events I've been to; for example scrolling through business networking listings on Eventbrite and Meetup. So sure, you can do lots of networking free and that can be good. TAB does have an outlay but when you have a bigger company you're probably used to spending money on consultants. I'd have to say TAB gives you a lot more for a fraction of what a non-executive director or someone similar would cost. The average TAB member stays on 4 years while they only have a month-to-month membership obligation so that tells a lot.
Half the reason I'm writing this blog post is that a TAB member who inspires me is Brody Sweeney of Camile Thai Kitchen and he's been in the news recently for drone food deliveries with Bobby Healy's Manna Drone Delivery ;and I'm so impressed. He's a businessman who's been to the brink and come a long way. If you have time, read this article. I had heard in the past that Sweeney was on the forefront of restaurant ordering technology and running a slick operation that's helped Camile expand so quickly but I can nearly guarantee you a lot of his strategy, advice & confidence to execute has been helped along by TAB. I'm certainly wishing them the best of luck, but I'm sure they won't need it as they're sure to have planned it so well!
If you're a budding startup or established business owner interested in talking about business finance or anything in this blog post, call us 7 days on 01 55 636 55, email hello@businessloans.ie or web chat via the box on the bottom right of this page.