How to be an entrepreneur
Our next speaker in our series ‘With The Team’ is Harriot Pleydell-Bouverie, the woman who famously turned down the Dragons.
For those who are unaware who the Dragon’s are, then they are a group of successful entrepreneurs who assess a business case ‘live’ on TV and agree to put up investment in exchange for a chunk of the business. This usually involves the Dragon’s seeking to grab as much equity as they can in an idea in exchange for what can appear to be a large sum of cash.
It takes guts to turn them down once they have fallen for your idea – and especially if you are the one asking for the cash.
But that is what Harriot did, showing total belief in her idea and having a clear belief in the value of the idea.
Harriot’s business – Mallow and Marsh went on to be hugely successful and was eventually purchased by the Serious Sweets Company. Today you’ll find the brand on sale via Sainsburys, Boots, Ocado and many other high street brands.
For me, the beauty of the decision to turn down the Dragons lay in two factors, which I have mentioned earlier.
- A clear vision for the business: what you stand for and against; where you are headed; and what you want to become. It’s the difference that you truly think you can deliver to a set of customers.
- Clear thinking around the value of that idea to customers, to shareholders, to others in the supply chain.
That is Proposition and Value coming together.
And getting this right – doing it with responsibility – is critical.
As the late, great Anita Roddick once said, ““Business is more powerful than politics, and it’s more powerful than religion. So it’s going to have to be the vigilante consumer.”
Because your brand is ultimately about your business idea. The rest will fall into place. Just as Phil Knight was famously ambivalent about the Nike swoosh when he started out, so Harriot was not particularly enamoured with the name of her business. “I actually didn’t like it when I launched,” she says. But it has stuck. Probably because she accidentally stumble on a great rhyming name, and also because the name came to embody a great idea.
It’s something we have done time and again for clients like Red Star, Rightmove, and Wolseley to name a few.
Watch out for Harriot’s event with us next month because she will be able to share first had how you define this value proposition, and more importantly how to stick to your principles and never give up a great idea cheaply.
