Advice, tips and inspiration to help you perform at your best
We often celebrate entrepreneurs as lone visionaries who succeed through individual brilliance and determination. It's a compelling narrative, but it's misleading. The reality is that entrepreneurial success depends heavily on the ecosystem surrounding the founder. The network of resources, relationships, institutions, and support systems that enable ventures to thrive.
Following on from the Pip & Nut case study based in the UK market, here’s an entrepreneurial success story that originates in Ireland. Strong Roots
Leaving a family business is never easy. For Samuel Dennigan, it meant walking away from a third-generation fresh produce empire. It meant chasing a vision most people thought was foolish. Making frozen vegetables cool.
Following on from the Lucky Saint story, here’s another inspiring case study of an entrepreneur who created a successful UK supermarket brand - Pip & Nut.
What separates entrepreneurs who build thriving ventures from those who struggle? While there's no formula for entrepreneurial success, certain characteristics appear consistently.
Understanding these traits serves two purposes. It helps you assess your own readiness for entrepreneurship. It identifies where you need to develop.
We’re still (just about) in Dry January. So here’s an entrepreneurial case study of Lucky Saint. My favourite non-alcoholic beer.
The problem: Alcohol-free beer tasted terrible. The solution? Don't remove the alcohol. Never add it in the first place.
Following on from the Airbnb case study, here’s another example of how a business spotted and exploited an opportunity.
In my previous post, I talked about how to identify opportunities. Here’s an example of how Airbnb identified the opportunity, along with the lessons we can learn.
In my previous post, I explored the significant risks that come with entrepreneurship. Financial uncertainty, time demands, emotional stress, and more. While these risks are real, they're not unmanageable. Smart entrepreneurs don't eliminate risk entirely (that's impossible), but they do take concrete steps to reduce and manage it. Here's how.
In the previous post on entrepreneurship myths, we challenged common misconceptions about what it takes to build a successful business. Now let's examine a real-life story that destroys nearly every entrepreneurial stereotype. Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx, who turned $5,000 and an idea born from personal frustration into a billion-dollar empire. Without a business degree, fashion experience, or a single dollar of outside investment.
Popular culture has created a romanticised image of entrepreneurship. The visionary founder working from a garage, the dramatic pitch that changes everything, the overnight success story. These narratives make great movies, but they create damaging misconceptions about what entrepreneurship actually involves. Let's separate myth from reality.
Entrepreneurship might feel like a modern concept, complete with pitch decks and venture capital, but its roots stretch back to the earliest human civilisations. Understanding this history helps us see that entrepreneurial spirit: the drive to create, trade and innovate has always been part of human nature.
This is the first in a series of blog posts around the topic of Entrepreneurship. I’ve recently taken up a part-time position as an Associate Professor at Richmond American University London. One of the courses I teach is ‘An Introduction to Entrepreneurship.’ Over the next few weeks and months, I’ll be sharing a few edited highlights from my course. So…watch this space!
A few years ago, the concept of brand love or ‘lovemarks’ was very much in vogue. This was the idea that consumers could develop a relationship with a brand beyond simply being happy with their purchase. That they could feel such a strong, emotional connection with a brand that it’s akin to love. Advertising agency folk can be very persuasive. Brand managers lapped it up.
Marketers spend much of their time focused on Promotion, the communication dimension of their job. Often we take for granted the most important of the 4Ps - Product. You can create the best advertising campaign in the world, but you'll still fail if your product isn’t up to scratch.
Don’t neglect your Product Strategy. To help shape it, here are the four questions you need to ask yourself.
Looking Back
Growing up, I recall that every popular brand had a jingle that drilled its way into your head. ‘Try a Taste of Martini,’ ‘Just One Cornetto’, ‘Do the Shake and Vac.’
Decades later, I can still hum along. They worked, clearly, and they linger as fond memories. Everyone has their favourites. Yet the jingle has largely vanished from today’s advertising landscape. What happened, and could the jingle ever see a revival?
