WorkConnexions

Guest Post By Mike Southon - This is my column that will feature in Saturday’s Financial Times, which can be found in the entrepreneurship pages of the Money section. You can also find my columns on the FT web site here: http://www.ft.com/mikesouthon

You can listen to my free and full length podcast interview with Asif here:
http://www.beermat.biz/all-podcasts.php

I am always asking people for column ideas. My editor’s suggestion was to write something optimistic to counter the negative and cynical commentary currently rolling around the press, some even generated, sadly, by successful entrepreneurs.

Last week I was ideally placed to generate an upbeat column as I was at the Entrepreneur Business School (EBS) Masters in Bali, organised by the XL Results Foundation and run by Roger Hamilton.

The XL Results Foundation is billed as ‘the world’s leading entrepreneur network’, being entirely focused on helping people start businesses with a social purpose. A regular EBS has three hundred delegates and is a whirlwind adventure of learning, personal breakthroughs, connections with the universe, spontaneous disco dancing and compulsory hugging. Almost everyone leaves happy, motivated with a renewed sense of purpose.

My job as a mentor is to add relevant and practical business advice to supplement the feel-good factor generated by the sessions. This was even more focused at last week’s course, the EBS Masters, where there were only eleven delegates and four mentors, including Bob Urichuck, one of the best sales experts in the world, serial entrepreneur and executive master coach Martin Jimmink, and Hamilton himself.

What is interesting about mentoring entrepreneurs for a week is that it also gives me time to reflect on my own businesses. In the current climate, when everyone is wondering what they should do, time to realign and recommit was the best personal investment I could make.

Delegates arrived from all over the world with a wide range of business ideas at different stages of development. Some, like Arabian Eye, a Dubai-based photo library, and IPS People, an Australian training company, had established businesses which they were looking to take to the next level. Others arrived with no written-down business plan, and only a very general idea of what they wanted to do.

Our work as Mentors was to drill deep into their value propositions, challenging them on exactly what their enterprise would provide and how they would deliver on their promises to their customers, their teams, their investors, themselves and finally to the universe, to make it a better place.

The Mentors gave the best advice we could, based on what was put in front of us at each particular moment, at times a process similar to trying to nail jelly to a wall. We tried to resist the urge to intervene directly, as the purpose of the workshop was to let the delegates come to the right conclusions on their own, and thus to be able to operate even without expert help immediately to hand.

One delegate was clearly struggling; his business plan was creating little attraction from the group, and did not seem to be progressing much during the week. Hamilton then weaved his magic for the next 15 minutes, employing all the resources in the room to reposition the business idea into something clearly viable. He even made a commitment to invest personally in the idea if the delegate were to take the recommended steps moving forward. The room was back to a high state of positivity, and the particular delegate had a clear road-map for success.

Everyone left the workshop full of optimism and felt they had received outstanding value for money from what is clearly not a cheap workshop, especially if you factor in the travel cost to Bali. I reflected with Hamilton on the events of the week, and we agreed one of the hardest aspects of mentoring is that some delegates will not, for whatever reason, use the simple tools and clear instructions they received, and be no further ahead in six months’ time.

Some people certainly use EBS just as an adrenaline rush to feel good about themselves, while others are much more cynical and dismiss the XL Results Foundation entirely, put off by the open displays of emotion and relentless optimism of their events.

But at EBS you will also see delegates who have been around the block a few times and have made some mistakes, but who can now put it all into perspective. They use the workshop not just to work out what they should do, but also who to do it with, when to do it, exactly how to do it, and, most importantly, why they should bother in the first place.

If they do these simple things well, they will be successful entrepreneurs. As both Barack Obama and Bob the Builder agree: “Yes we can”. No wonder they are optimistic.

XL Results Foundation: http://www.resultsfoundation.com

This e-zine is copyright © Mike Southon 2008. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced without permission.