From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Initially, there was no intention of doing anything with Deliciously Ella – it was a personal project, and that allowed it to grow as a community, and a space, that wasn't commercially focused. I think this gave it a level of authenticity that perhaps some brands struggle with and in retrospect it's been a really interesting approach, albeit an unusual one.
If you start with a solution, there's a risk you might construct something that no one finds useful, leading to immense frustration. But when you centre your efforts on the problem, it serves as the guiding North Star of your journey.
I define disruption as being where the incumbent players and incumbents somehow deny what their customers are saying or want differently. A disruptor comes in, sees a problem more clearly, and in some cases has more freedom to attack the problem.
You don't have to choose a business that's going to drown you, be a treadmill, or suck you underneath. You can start slow, make a bit of money and then double down. You don't have to risk it all at the beginning.
Are you the guy who wants to know what he gets at the end of the month? Or are you the guy who says I'll take my chances and will do very well or very badly. If you can make that distinction in your own mind, the rest is up to you. That's where entrepreneurship comes from; it means you can live with risk.
I think it's about usefulness! People talk of 'following your passion' but there are plenty of things people are passionate about that nobody will pay them money for, so you can't just tell someone to just follow their passion. The missing piece? usefulness… We say the magic formula is: Passion + Usefulness = Success.
If you don't spend a lot of money on something and it doesn't work out… is it really a 'failure'? Most entrepreneurs start a lot of different ventures. Some work better than others, but that's totally normal and expected.
The sacrifice is perhaps a decade- and it's a total sacrifice- you may not see your kids, you may miss an entire cycle of your lives, but you're doing it to provide for them in the future in a way you never could if you were an employee.
I think people need to understand that building a business is really, really difficult. That shouldn't put anyone off, but there's no easy road to riches.
You become an entrepreneur, not by intent, but by accident. Those for me are the true entrepreneurs- people that just start building, perhaps even without a plan, they just do it. Look at the most famous ones…. Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, they never went to shows or to training, they just got on with it.
I would not have believed anyone if they had told me that within eighteen months I would have lost 99 per cent of my $4 billion fortune and would be pursued almost to the brink of bankruptcy by seven major banks… I would have found it impossible to contemplate that I would be treated like a pariah in my home country, saddled with $1 billion in debts and hated as a man who had supposedly almost single-handedly brought down an economy. But that is exactly what happened…
Entrepreneurs that do it for greed of money fail. Entrepreneurship isn't about greed, it has nothing to do with that; what matters is personal freedom.