#4: Start-up mentoring

When starting your own business it’s important to have the right attitude and mindset which can be enhanced through finding the right mentor.

Start-up Attitude and Mindset

I have repeatedly seen with other people that if you have the right attitude and mindset to make the adjustment, and you also have a business idea that makes sense, then normally it’s a case not of whether you are going to be successful but how long it is going to take. If people have ticked both those boxes and then applied themselves the right way, with 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration, they eventually make their own luck and things start happening for them; the big question is how long it will take, and can you fund yourself for that period of time.

Business Mentoring

I have seen a direct correlation between people who employ some kind of mentor and people who don’t, in terms of their success as they go down this route. People who have a mentor from day one seem to find it easier generally to get going than people who don’t. It can be different things for different people depending on you, the business you are going into, the business skills you have and so on. It could be somebody you already know, where there is a significant level of mutual trust and respect, where you can open up to this person in confidence and where they can be that wise head or wise old owl whom you can use as an impartial sounding board. This person could be found in your social network or in your existing business network, such as LinkedIn.

This is exactly why David Mellor Mentoring exists to help start-ups maintain the right attitude and mindset. Find out more.

#3: Perseverance, Tenacity and Determination

Perseverance, tenacity and determination are essential qualities if you’re considering starting up your own business.

I thought I’d share a couple of stories with you. You can find more like these in From Crew to Captain but they give you the gist of just how important it is to persevere when starting up your own business.

I am a big fan of golf, and I remember hearing a story which concerns Gary Player. Gary Player was at his peak the same time as Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. They were the big three at the time and they won many of the main trophies between them. Gary won one particular tournament and in the post tournament interview with the media one of the journalists was brave enough to say to him “do you think lady luck was on your side today?”. The answer, reportedly, was: “It is a really funny thing but the more I practice the luckier I get”. I generally believe it is true – the more you work at something, the luckier you get and things break for you, so perseverance and tenacity are really important.

Pablo Casals was arguably the greatest concert cellist the world had ever seen and I remember hearing him being interviewed in the 1970’s. He was asked: “you are in your 80’s and you are acknowledged as the world’s greatest concert cellist, but rumour has it you still practice for 8 hours a day; why do you put yourself through this?”. His answer: “I keep getting better”. What an unbelievable attitude from somebody in their 80’s who has not got to prove anything to anyone. I see people out there, day in day out, who have that kind of drive. People who have that level of determination, provided they have an idea that makes sense, are going to make things happen.

There are more stories and personal testimonies in From Crew to Captain .

#2: The Adjustment Process Part Two: Replacing the Infrastructure

The second big change I remember was all of a sudden the infrastructure I had taken for granted was not there anymore. The two things that hurt me most were firstly research and secondly legal.

Because of the nature of my former job I was heavily dependent on research; Deutsche Bank had more research than you could ever imagine, and so if I wanted information on a country, a company, an industry, or a peer group, somebody somewhere would have it and I would just go and get it. All of sudden now I had two choices: either do it myself or pay someone else to do it, and that hurts! The other, as I said, was legal. Again because of the job I used to review rafts of legal documentation; now all of a sudden I had to trust my paralegal skills or pay a lawyer to do it for me, and that hurts even more because lawyers are not cheap!

So you have to figure out how you plug all those gaps in your infrastructure that you have been so dependent on in your career so far. Nowhere is this more painful for somebody like me than in the world of IT. There is a well-known oxymoron – the IT help desk – which is up there with “military intelligence”, “customer service”, and “business ethics”. All of a sudden if you have a situation where your printer won’t listen to your computer, or it decides that today is the day it prints in Egyptian for fun, or it won’t print in a straight line, or your computer just hangs there and does nothing, who are you going to phone? If reliable IT is going to be important to you in your new role, then you may want to consider some form of maintenance agreement with a local service provider. It can get quite fraught if you need to print something off to take to a client or a prospect and you can’t do it!

#1: The Adjustment Process Part One: Working from home

The first thing I would like to share with you is the adjustment process, which I remember I went through back in 2001. It is quite a huge change, moving from working from a big institution to working for yourself, even if it is to be yourself plus others. One key part of the adjustment is linked to whether you engineered your own departure or it was engineered for you. Depending on what is happening to you at this moment in time some of these adjustments might strike a chord with you.

I am not going to dwell on these as they are now fading memories for me; they have been eclipsed by other more exciting events. The first one is the whole issue of working from home, which is where most people start – they don’t usually go out and rent an office, studio or workshop. I was used to working from home because of the nature of the job in my later years at Deutsche Bank; I was out of the country three weeks out of four and was conditioned to working from home before and after trips, particularly as
I am not very good at getting off the redeye flight and performing effectively. I am pretty much a wimp and I can’t cope with sleep deprivation; by lunchtime it’s like I have been hit by a truck!

But I am much better going home, getting a couple of hours sleep, getting back in the right time zone, doing a bit of work and then on day two getting back into the swing of it rather than going into the office and being a superhero; it just does not work for me.

As Clint Eastwood would say before he shot people: “a man has got to know his limitations” and I knew what mine were!

So I was used to working from home and I was quite disciplined; I did not lapse into watching daytime TV unless it was golf (my Achilles heel), and then I could get the siren call of the TV. But there is a huge difference between doing it for the odd day here and there and it becoming a way of life.

As I said, not many people go out on day one and decide that they need an office, a studio a workshop, or whatever it may be; they start from home and figure out “what is what” so there is quite a significant transition from being in a buzzy office environment where you have noise, chatter, gossip and everything else going on, to being in a more tranquil setting at home.
When I started my wife was (and still is) a school teacher and my kids were at secondary school, and they all went out together in the morning at 7:30; the earliest back was around 5:30 in the evening. During that time the only interruption, (we live at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac) was the postman who used to pitch up at around 11 o’clock. I felt like an old man on neighbourhood watch, as, if he had not appeared by 11:30 I would peer through the curtains thinking “has he fallen off his bike?” and wondering whether he was alright. I needed to get out more!

It dawns on you, particularly if you are a gregarious animal and you like social interaction, that the only person who can do something about it is you; you can’t sit at home fretting about it.

At the same time you notice that the phone does not ring as much, you don’t get as many text messages or emails and the only post you get is either bills or junk!

So we need to find some ways for you to fill your time constructively and at the same time get you out of the house – research and networking will be big parts of this.