From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Today, entrepreneurship is fashionable, it's something you can develop in your character and strengthen. I'm not so sure… I believe that entrepreneurship is something you're born with, or not. I've met many highly intelligent, and incredibly bright people who have not been able to develop their ideas into sensible businesses. Entrepreneurship is not related to intelligence, it's something you have or don't have.
I lived the change. My company was a way of, as they say, 'scratching my own itch.' I wanted to be able to go on working myself, and I realised that a lot of other women would have had comparable aims and desires.
Here's the thing: if people really want to do something, all they need to do is meet someone who's built something from scratch to show them that it can be done by someone just like them.
I would love to say that we knew all the answers in advance, but the truth is that we discovered our product and opportunity, rather than planning for it.
My identity, and that of the company, were one-and-the-same, and that's not just inaccurate, it's unhealthy. You don't want to be on the yo-yo of your company's wins and fails. You can keep doing the right things daily and getting 1% better every day, independently of how the business is performing!
80% of self-made billionaires we studied made their mark in mature, competitive markets. They weren't all 'exactly' new products that came out – they were maybe a variation of a business model or existing product that pleased the customer in a different way.
How many times have we all heard someone say, 'I had a really good business idea, but then I found somebody else had already done it—so I gave up'? I'd say the opposite: fantastic! If someone's done it, is still in business, and it's working, that's proof you're onto a solid idea.
It is the difference between an investor asking, 'so, what's your product…' and 'so, what's your idea, and what steps can we take to turn that into a product.'
If people really want to do something, all they need to do is meet someone who's built something from scratch to show them that it can be done by someone just like them. That's how I started.
I saw something in the world that was done poorly and thought it could be done better. The difference between a miserable, crank grump and an entrepreneur? Both are unhappy- but the entrepreneur says they can make it better… that they can fix it… and they follow the spark.
Where decent jobs are scarce, women can achieve financial independence by becoming job creators rather than job seekers – providing, of course, that they have the right support and opportunities to do so.
For every example I could give you of regulations causing problems, I could give you two of regulations creating opportunities. I think this notion that regulation is causing problems is a real red herring.