Business advice from 7 of the top CEOs in business today
 

The BBC has started asking Chief Executives to reveal the advice which would have helped them most when they started out in business. There are some very interesting responses -

"What is the advice you wish you'd had, when you started out?"

Margaret

The critical importance of good contacts...!
 

Thanks for sharing that great article, Margaret!

I'll just pick one of the many good ones in that article to comment on at the moment...

"Networking"...

Contacts are very important!

I think you can never have enough contacts... (Though I find, for what I do, other contacts who are also in business often turn out to be the most valuable... because that's one way you find new opportunities!)

I'll give a very quick example...

Recently, I organized a film screening. My business partner in this and I had a meeting with a guy who is the main guy in a company which controls many film rights in Australia. He spends a certain amount of his time jet-setting to film festivals around the world, doing deals as to what film rights his company will purchase.

Anyway... in meeting with him, I also met his wife. His wife is Chinese, and has a lot of business contacts in China.

Now, it turns out, another friend of mine needs contacts in China who are importing things from Australia. Guess what? That's right, his wife, it seems, has those contacts! (She is a businesswoman in her own right.)

So, I'm organizing a meeting between the two, as it could be mutually beneficial to both of them. We'll see how it goes. (And I could benefit down the line, too.) But, if I didn't know either of them, I wouldn't be able to potentially "help out" here... And if it works out, I know I'll benefit down the line as well... :)

Contacts are a kind of "resource"... Just like having finances is a kind of resource. With the right contacts, you find that doors will open, and opportunities leap out at you as well!

The most useful contacts I've found, in my experience, are those people doing "real" business... That is, people who are making actual real sales or earning actual real income from their business. So, if you have to "focus" your efforts, I'd focus on that group specifically... (In other words, people like Margaret!)

Thanks Margaret! :)

Best wishes,

Dien

Re: Business advice from 7 of the top CEOs in business today
 

The Telegraph newspaper has a section on retail businesses in the UK - and I found it fascinating that there is a prediction that a third of new UK start-ups will be pop-up shops. The high street trading environment used to be so stable that there were few, if any, opportunities to get a short-term lease, but the challenging trading conditions are obviously changing that.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/n...-up-shops.html

I wonder if that is creating a different kind of opportunity for owners of commercial property - malls, etc, start to suffer when there isn't enough footfall so filling empty spaces, even for a short time, makes sense.

Margaret

Re: Business advice from 7 of the top CEOs in business today
 

Hi Margaret,

Thanks - that was an interesting article!

I don't know much about "pop-ups"... But I do know that fitting out a retail store can be very expensive. From the retailer's point of view, starting out as a "pop-up" would seem to make a lot of sense... It's a way to "test" the market, without the full-blown expense of a full-blown retail store...!

It could also be a good way to "test" several locations less expensively... Then, once you get the results from several locations, you could set up a proper retail store in the location where you achieved the best sales...

There's a lot to be said for testing... :)

Best wishes,

Dien

AND pop ups can be ABSENTEE owned and scaled up.
 

Thanks Margaret and Dien, good stuff on the "pop-up" business model.

We are just about to release an update of our ABSENTEE CASH COW report, now part of a series of "Cash Cow Reports"

Steve DiMarco created his own little pop ups at golf courses with his nut warmer business which pulled in between 300 and 500 a week for about 3 hours of "work".

Somewhere buried in our archives are my experiences with Hickory Farms, a pop up business that appears overnight in malls across the country for the holiday season between Thanksgiving and New Years. They were a huge company at one point. Mall kiosks are examples of a pop up as is the Friday night Snow Cone guy here in Cuyahoga Falls.

Hot dog and street vendors, like Dave in Kent (more archive stuff), who operated food and ice cream trucks for a decade, are also of the pop up variety.

I think the UK experience mirrors our own here in USA, more and more mom and pop little "tents", some with a multi-million dollar company behind them, are popping up across the land, many run by retirees.

We have TWO huge jewelry companies here in Akron, almost right next to each other in Fairlawn, which operate retail stores and pop up businesses throughout North America.

Most can be ABSENTEE CASH COWS for the lazy Entrepreneur who just wants to fly low and collect the dough.

Gordon

Re: Business advice from 7 of the top CEOs in business today
 

Yes, we're getting more pop-ups and more stands in the centre of our shopping malls here in the UK.

One seasonal pop-up that's been here for quite a few years is Calendar Club. They appear every year in whichever shop is vacant and therefore available.

Their website says they "open over 300 temporary stores and mall units across the UK and Ireland between September and January every year."

And by the looks of the quick research I've just done, they're actually an American company who's spread abroad. Big business.

On a smaller scale, reminds me of someone who used to supply the retail shops I worked in with ice cream in the summer and logs in the winter. Not pop-up but similar idea.