Fish On Toast

A Sales Master Class - Gary May & Steve Mills

2009-10-28T20:58:00.000Z

This is an incredible opportunity that may not come round again. Gary and Steve are so well respected within their field that they've been asked to talk at the National Neuro-Lingiustic Programming (NLP) conference.
Why is sales important? It sounds like a silly question but here's what knowledge of selling helps you achieve: "make friends quickly and easily; increase your popularity; win people to your way of thinking; enable you to win new clients and customers; become a better speaker and a more entertaining conversationalist; and, arouse enthusiasm among your colleagues".

Role Programming

Stand and look worried...
Attendant asks: "Can I help you?"
You reply: "Well, I was down the road at your competitor's place. Their sales assistant didn't:
1. Listen to what I really wanted,
2. Show me the best stuff available
3. Offer me a competitive deal
So yes, you can help me. Thank you."

Stopping people from remembering

Just say:"It's as simple as that" at the end of your point and the majority of listeners will completely forget what you were talking about!
Another great lie that does the same thing "so you can see, it's not rocket science". Both of these work in print too!

Selling more

Be Determined -> more leads = more sales
Brain is Lazy
- Give people a question
- Give them examples of your preferred answers
- They will be lazy and in many cases will agree.

Powerful Words

"Believe">"think" – it's difficult to challenge a belief. Think implies insecurity.
"Superior" – the most effective words compare to everyone they are unilateral but, of course, unspecific and therefore not provable
"The" – makes everything after it more important and reduces the status of any competition.
"Because" – often the use of this word will be reason enough! The reason is not important, just that there is one. Remember the photocopier story.
"ly" – words like exceedingly, probably and sustainably give any opponent less grounds to argue and sometimes imply a long story of greatness.
"s" – words ending in s are more powerful by moving from future to present:
- Will transform -> transforms
- Will enable -> enables

Increasing your authority

TONE OF VOICE – going down at the end of a sentence is interpreted as a command in European culture. Up indicates a question and therefore uncertainty.
LOOKING THE PART – people attribute your importance and knowledge to your clothing, hair and manner.

Mind Reading

"I suppose you're wondering..." – will have many people supposing.
"I don't know if you have considered..."
"I know what you're thinking..."

Perceived Secret Knowledge

The authority of a statement is altered by its exclusivity
- "I shouldn't really be telling you this but..."
- "I've only got a couple of these left..."
- "Please don't tell anyone else about this"
Face to face contact is much stronger than information learnt over the phone
Published content on a reputable site is useful
Overheard knowledge is 2.8x as effective in persuasion
- "I've heard they're going to be dropping the price tomorrow"

Increasing the urgency to make a buying decision

Limited Time
Limited Numbers is not very effective
Limited Price for a short time is the most effective
Following the herd – "Everyone else is going"

Affiliation

Gary and Steve will offer a substantial sum of money for any work that you can line them up with. Check out their website: http://www.saqqaragroup.co.uk/

Goals for Success – Huston Spencer at NACUE

2009-05-05T22:55:00.001+01:00

This was probably the most inspiring talk of our NACUE Leaders Training Weekend. Huston Spencer got the audience, 100 of the most enterprising students in the UK, to start thinking "outside their heads". See if you can too – what I wrote on the day is in brackets.

First, write down two goals. One for the next year, one for the next 5 years.

"Build Fish on Toast to 100 active members next year."
"Run a business with £1,000,000 turnover by the time I am 27"

Second, write down in one sentence what you are going to change about your world (the bit of the world you can definitely influence in the short term).

"I'm going to change people's view of entrepreneurship at the University of Southampton for the better."

Now write down your target to make these goals and change happen.

"People who come to fish on toast because they "belong" to an amazing group of inspiring people."

What are your three greatest strengths?

Critical Thinking
Inspiring others through public speaking
Selling and Idea to myself and others

What are your three greatest weaknesses?

Arrogance
Not meeting enough new people
Late for everything

Make sure you set yourself

BHAG

Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals (it's pretty American but I like it.)

This is a brilliant quote by Max DePree:

"The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant."

Adaptive Management

Most managers only respond to technical challenges – these require knowledge and keep businesses running effectively.

Entrepreneurial managers respond to adaptive challenges. They see that our REALITY is changing before others can. This is where timing comes in and it is what makes all the good stuff happen. Check out my earlier post where the legendry Bill Cain tells us how to make money in a recession.

This also requires you to recognise when your strengths may no longer be useful. And perhaps that your weaknesses are no longer so bad.

This is Humility and you'll need it if you're ever going to be successful in business. It's recognition of the virtues and talents that others possess – it's how to build an incredible team.

Humility vs Hubris

I couldn't have defined hubris and I doubt many others in the room could. Luckily, Huston was well ahead of us. Apologies if any of the following facts are dodgy, it's all from memory!

Hubris comes from the incredible history of the Greeks. In fact, Xerxes, Emperor of Persia was hubris personified. Following The Battle of Marathon – a devastating loss for Xerxes' father, he had returned to Greece with an army of obscene proportions. He gathered all of his finest engineers and tasked them with building a bridge across the Hellespont. That fact that they achieved it at all is incredible. Soon after it's completion, a huge storm destroyed their months and months of work. The bridge was shredded and the ships smashed.

Xerxes was outraged. He called all the engineers together again, this time to cut off their heads. Finally, he sent his priests out into the water where they whipped the seas for days as punishment!

This is Hubris:

"Arrogance so great, that NOTHING is beyond you."

To be an incredible entrepreneur, you need both Hubris and Humility in equal measure. If you don't, you have limited what you can achieve.

You need VISION, and the contacts and inspiration to make your vision a reality.

Youth is a virtue. Use it.

BE BOLD!

It's the big ideas that change the world. And remember, you're young – so if you get knocked down, just get up again.

I'm pretty sure those are lyrics from Tubthumping but I'll let him off. He's an awesome speaker and incredibly inspiring. I haven't done him justice!

Set yourself some goals. Get on it.

Big Fish.

5 Rules for Online Businesses – Kieran O’Neil

2009-05-05T21:38:00.001+01:00

ADVICE = Limited Life Experiences + Over Generalisation

So don't worry too much about it. Learn by doing.

Choice of Co-Founders

The most important decision you will ever make.
It's not necessarily the person you had the brilliant idea with who would be the best business partner.
Choose people with energy and drive.

Raising capital from giving away equity is the most expensive source of funding!

Check out venturehacks.com

Cashflow ≠ Sales

You can scale up faster than you can get access to today's earnings. I.e. If you are relying on ad revenue, income will lag your outgoings by at least a month!

Figure out your key business metrics

Then measure them OBSESSIVELY!
FOCUS!

Get onto the feedback loop as soon as possible

Constantly improve your website's service
Get a beta or alpha version out really early and ask for peoples opinions. It saves you developing a product people don't want.

What's Hot:

Freemium

What's Not:

Ad supported businesses.

Developers and Development agencies:

'Very good' developers can do things 10 times better than 'good' developers.

Development Agencies are great but you should always get some recommendations from friends.

Finally:

Read "Smart gets things done." By Joel Spolsky – The Concise Guide to Finding the Best Technical Talent

Make $1 million at Uni – Kieran O’Neil

2009-04-28T20:08:00.000+01:00

Famous for selling the business for $1 million dollars in his first year at Uni, Kieran shared his secrets at our Web Entrepreneurship Conference in March.

Kieran started Holylemon.com when he was still at secondary school. Originally, it was just somewhere to share funny animations with his friends. As a couple of years passed, he realised that he was getting a number of hits from people he didn't know, all over the world. He became interested in Keyword optimisation and challenged himself to increase the number of hits every week. Gradually he improved the website, making the content more appealing by offering funny videos to download. Ultimately, years before Youtube, he embedded videos!

Things continued to improve steadily from here – there were 40000 people coming to his website each month but the website overheads were getting ridiculous. One month, he received a huge bill that he simply couldn't pay. He had to go to his Dad and ask for the money or it was all over. His Dad agreed, only based on Kieran's assurance that next month, the site would be profitable.

That was it. In just a couple of weeks, he had to learn all the secrets of advertising online and apply them. Apparently he didn't get much school work done for a while! He experimented with different types of advertising, CPM – banner ads, and CPA – targeted adverts for the user base. Eventually he stumbled across a technique for daisy chaining high value ads to make reasonable money. By now, he was up to 150,000 hits per month.

Finally, the business was profitable. He managed to automate it, allow user generated content and found a moderator in America who happily selected a "featured video" every week for two years. Kieran outsourced the development and soon he only had to spend 1 hour a day on the business.

At this point, he felt that it was time to sell the company. He was off to Uni and knew he would have less and less time to spend on the site. Eventually he found a buyer through a fantastic referral and was offered $1 million dollars: an incredible amount that he simply couldn't refuse. The sale process was incredibly stressful and he was constantly worried about the deal falling through. However, near the end of his first ear at uni, the business was sold!

Wow. What a legend. And it doesn't stop there. Since then he's been involved with a couple more internet based start-ups; securing millions of venture capital along side his awesome £600,000 nest egg.

Check out PSU – PlayStation Universe

0.5 million readers a month
4 people in-house and 15 freelance writing articles for the site.

And Playfire, a new social network, and Kieran's own project

Used his substantial network of contacts to find £1 million of funding
Already has 110000 people signed up!

He also recommends the "Freemium" model:

First service is free
Premium sections are restricted to "Pro" users.

I really enjoyed hearing from him and I hope he comes back next year to update us on progress!

All the best,

Big Fish.

Tom Ilube’s Seven Insights

2009-03-13T00:35:00.001Z

Until recently Tom Ilube was Chief Information Officer of the world's largest pure online bank, Egg plc and a member of the Executive Committee.

In 2005 Tom left Egg plc to found Garlik, in partnership with Mike Harris, the Founding CEO of Egg plc and Professor Nigel Shadbolt of Southampton University.

Tom's technology career spans 20 years with a range of blue chip organisations including Goldman Sachs, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, The London Stock Exchange, Cap Gemini and British Airways. He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society and a Liveryman and Court Assistant of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists', the City's 100th Livery Company.

He has an MBA from Cass Business School and in 2005 the University of Wolverhampton awarded Tom the honorary degree of Doctor of Technology.

An excellent and engaging speaker, here are my notes:

The Past

Companies that he's been worked for or started:

Price Waterhouse Coopers
Goldman Sachs
Lost Wax
Egg.com
Garlik

Garlik

See: www.garlik.com
Symantic Web Technology
More than £10 Million in Venture Capital

Tom first explained a nearly universal truth about entrepreneurs. They always tell you all the positives with absolute certainty. As If they know them to be true!

And so, with absolute certainty, here are his seven fundamental insights into business...

1. How to Build a Team

Form – choose roles for everyone, recruit the best you can.
Storm – let it go wrong, maybe even encourage it to break down. Teams argue to start with however good your management skill.
Perform – knock them dead with your streamlined, calm and collected team.

2. When to Make a Decision

Gather 60 to 80% of the information.
Make your decision.
If it's wrong, will it kill the business? Only a very small number of decisions can (these ones might need a little more thought).
Take SMART risks to avoid wasting time or losing momentum.
Don't stick to your incorrect decisions. Admit it. Get over it. Fix it.

Alignment vs Agreement

Make sure everyone in your team is 'aligned' – they are all moving in the same direction.
Don't try to get everyone to agree, they probably never will.

DEFINE A SPECIFIC GOAL AND MOVE AS ONE UNSTOPPABLE FORCE TOWARDS IT!

3. Where's the Money?

Where should you find funding?

Family and Friends – you will probably never win here... whatever the outcome they're disappointed!
Venture Capitalists – can be sharks showing little emotion
Angel Investors – will want to be heavily involved – it can become annoying – they will always worry about their money – they will probably interfere.

Remember, when raising money from Venture Capitalists (VCs) , expect a 50:1 rejection rate and know that the timescale is likely to be 12 months.

Don't be hurt when you show them your baby but they just tell you it's ugly!

4. What is the Most Important Subject?

DRAMA!

Staff who you are leading will quickly pick up on your feelings as well as how you treat them. Always appear in good spirits, be careful of knee-jerk reactions.

5. Who Are You?

Myers-Briggs personality profile says Tom Ilube is:

INFJ

...A big ideas guy who creates energy from within himself, acts on his feeling and prefers planning to spontaneity.

Tom warns to be careful of offending people whose personalities work differently to yours. Just because you want some alone time, it doesn't mean they do too!

6. What's Your Purpose?

I am a...

Work out your conditions of satisfaction. Then set some SMART targets!

Make your own bold promise:

In 12 months time, I will be...

7. Leading a Start-up is about Commitment

It's about the creation of a company – that is what serial entrepreneurs crave.
There is no parallel in being an employee. It just doesn't compare.

Gems from the Q and A

"Bootstrapping" is great but you shouldn't let it hold you back!
Every chief executive feels uncertain about the big shoes their wearing once in a while.
- ALWAYS HAVE A DREAM OR AN ULTIMATE AMBITION
- But, if you can't cope with where you are now, you may as well forget it...
Brand names: What makes a great one?
- Does what it says on the tin? – obvious for customers but limiting
- An adaptable Umbrella? – 'garlik' might do anything!
- Look at the core ideals of the company -> generate LOADS of ideas...hundreds.
- Think about what people remember
- People don't need to like it, they should want to learn more about it.

'Innovation and the environment'

2009-03-12T22:19:00.001Z

This is a unique opportunity for students to meet many local business representatives and academics; talk to our exhibitors about careers issues; and increase your understanding at two very interesting seminars.

You are probably wondering how clever small businesses in the UK are responding to the current environmental and economic climate. This is your chance to find out.

There are two speakers: the first, The Rt hon. John Denham, Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, will be talking about 'The role of innovation in solving our environmental problems'. The second: Phillip Duddell, from The Olive Consultancy, is discussing 'Sustainable Business: Myth or Reality?'. There is also an exhibition where many University departments and Local Companies will be represented. This event is also a brilliant chance for you to learn about the career enhancement opportunities that joining your University's SIFE team offers. For full event details, you should check out the PDF invite that has been sent to hundreds of local companies in the past few weeks. There are only a limited number of seats available. To secure yours now, before they run out, go directly to the registration form.

Southampton Web Entrepreneurship Conference

2009-03-11T23:00:00.000Z

This is a one off opportunity to hear from some of Britain's most successful and exciting web based entrepreneurs.

Our speakers include:

Tom Ilube - of Garlik.com and ex-Chief Information Officer for Egg.com
Charles Cohen - CEO of Probability Plc and ex-CEO of beenz.com
Kieran O'Neil - founder of Playfire.com and HolyLemon.com
Tony Treacy - founder of Sustainable e-Business Development
Paul Fockler - founding member of Mendeley.com a Last.fm for research papers

When: Wednesday, March 11th 4pm to 8pm

Where: Staff Social Centre, The University of Southampton (please see the Directions page for more info)

The Southampton Web Entrepreneurship Conference is a mini-conference designed to bring together local businesses, various members of the University of Southampton, and many very interesting web entrepreneurs and online consultants.

If you would like to have dinner with everyone, please purchase a dinner ticket. The extra cost of the ticket helps us pay for your transport down to the restaurant. Due to the number of speakers we are looking to fit into the relatively short space of time, there will be limited opportunities for Q&A during the conference. Dinner should provide the perfect opportunity to meet everyone and have a chat.

This event has been organised by Fish on Toast, the University of Southampton's entrepreneurs' network.

The timetable of events:

Time Event Speaker / Details

16:00:00 Garlik.com Tom Ilube

17:00:00 Mendeley.com Paul Föckler

18:00:00 SEO W/S Tony Treacy

19:00:00 Holy Lemon Kieran O'Neil

20:00:00 Dinner The Olive Tree Restaurant

Make your first million in the Resession! – Bill Cain

2009-03-05T23:07:00.000Z

This week we have Bill Cain. Bill is a specialist in strategic business building and marketing in the SME sector. He also has years of experience in management and leadership development, in all sectors of industry, whatever the size of the organisation. Visit his website for more info: nextstep-entrepreneur.co.uk

Bill will be talking a little about his own entrepreneurial background and work within Southampton. He will also be outlining a few opportunities that he sees as arising from the current economic downturn.

These are my notes:

Stop Waiting, Start Selling.

If you want to get through to business directors:

Talk about their business' successes… then, ask if they've thought about the improvement you can offer.
Focus on Customers and Sales
Create management systems that free up your time
Entrepreneurs should not let themselves get tied up all the time
Check out Seth Godin's "Tribes"
Remember they are incredibly cost conscious at the moment. SELL THE SAVINGS.

"Age is not barrier if your ideas can stand up for themselves"

Starting a Company

Find the Customers THEN find the business
Legislation is excellent for making money fast if you can move fast. Look out for changes
Have conviction in your investments
Ask questions of everybody you meet. If they are in business mode, you should be selling.
- Use the internet for marketing if you can. Check out Twitter, Linked in and Facebook.
- Always ask questions when networking. "Have you thought about trying to save a bit of money in the current"
If you leave a team together too long, new ideas may stop flowing. Mix it up. Break the pecking order, keep it fresh.
Don't get comfortable, business can go stale
Don't worry about "bootstrapping" to start but..
Big ideas need big funding but be prepared to take a small percentage of the massive pie.

Doing Business in the Recession

Loads of organisations going out of business
- Expensive kit available very cheap! Just because they are failing doesn't mean you would.
- Markets are opening up for strong, lean companies
Your first leverage (borrowing) should come from close by
- Beg
- Borrow
- Steal
Generate ~20 ideas on around the same topic.
- Gives you a basket to pick from.
- Many will not work. It's not a problem though - you will have all the angles.

Doing an MBA Once You're Already Successful

The people you meet are inspiring
The ideas and concepts seem a little old hat.

Once You are Running

Once you've built a customer base, ask them what they want. Find it. Sell it to them.
The most effective sales pitch is a referral.

Conclusion

Set yourself a target
Look at what you've got. Most people don't use their skills properly. So you're already better than them
In this economic climate…everyone is worried about starting -> COMPETITION IS LOW!

Secrets I Wish I’d Known Before I Started… – Dr Tony Raven

2009-02-23T22:00:00.000Z

Tony Raven has twenty years experience in starting up companies and financing them, as well as, extensive international, commercial, and regulatory experience, particularly in North America and Japan.

In 1985 Tony was instrumental in the formation of Summit Technology, the Boston MA based market leader in laser refractive surgery, which was acquired by Nestle Alcon in 2000 for $893m.

In 1987 he was a co-founder of Sagentia Group plc, a London Stock Exchange listed technical and management consultancy. In 1991 he founded Diomed Inc, the pioneer and world leader in therapeutic medical diode lasers which, after six years as a listed US company, was acquired by Angiodynamics Inc in April 2008. He is currently Director of Research & Innovation Services at Southampton University, Southampton Innovations, Southampton Asset Management and Nanotecture plc.

Tony will be telling us the secrets that he wished he'd known when he started, instead of having to discover them the hard way. The talk will include information on how to be a successful entrepreneur but also how to manage things such as family and personal life, through to raising finance, building a team and surviving the inevitable company crises.

Tony will also be giving us his reasons for why now, despite the economy, is a particularly good time to become an entrepreneur.

These are my Big Fish notes from the session:

Enthusiasm

Focus
Sell the idea to yourself – if you can't do that then you've no hope of selling it to others!
Tell people. You don't need to give away intellectual property to get some incredible feedback. Without this you will waste weeks on an idea that doesn't have legs. When you go out searching for investment, you will already have the answers to difficult questions.

Networking

Talk to everyone with an ounce of intelligence. Join networking groups, entrepreneurs' networks and tennis clubs… whatever it takes.
Pitch to everyone, be interesting, make friends and take business cards. People would rather do business with someone they already know.
Ask them difficult questions, they will ask them back!

Get a Great Team

Learn to delegate…then follow it up!
Where possible, don't overlap peoples work – it will cause argument.
Remember that you probably won't get the roles correct first time.

Product to Market

Make sure your product is ready for market. If it isn't you'll get shredded in the shark infested water of Venture Capital.
CASH IS KING - -> get paid for what you do! Start as you mean to go on.

Who is Big Fish?

2009-01-01T20:00:00.000Z

My name is James Cornelius Pipe and I am 'the technical officer' for Fish on Toast - The University of Southampton Entrepreneurs' Network.

Fish on Toast is, quite literally, the most inspiring club that you can join at uni. We will teach you the secrets for success in business. It doesn't matter if you want to start a career or start your own company, Fish on Toast is for you. Check out the 2008/9 President, Tony Kissack, with an introduction:

For more information, check out our Website!