Turning ideas into business seminar
Clair and Zamira attended an interesting and inspiring event last week on ‘How to take your business from micro to global’ by the Institute of Directors and Chartered Institute of Marketing at UWE. It was a set of three short presentations by three incredibly inspiring individuals from a new start up to a growing enterprise and an internationally recognised and award winning brand name.
The first speaker was a young Entrepreneur called Griff Holland. In 2009 Griff and his business partner launched Friska, a healthy fast food restaurant based in Bristol. Griff spoke a lot about the Friska brand and the strong culture that they want to evolve and develop. Griffs keys to success are “stick to your idea, don’t settle for anything else and work with great people!” Well, we know where we’ll be going for lunch next!
Next was well known entrepreneur Mark Mason. Mark founded Mubaloo in Bristol in 2008 and has grown the business rapidly. Mubaloo is now the UKs largest developer of mobile phone apps for smart phones and tablets with offices in the US, Finland and Germany. He had some very insightful things to say about the ins and outs of running a business – his top tips for success were:
- Always employ people better than yourself
- If you fail to plan, you plan to fail
- Lose the client, you lose the staff
- Get shareholders agreements set up as soon as possible
- Will it be fun, Will it make us famous and is it Profitable? If a project isn’t 2 out of the 3, then it’s not worth doing! Oh yes… and don’t work with mad people!
The third and final speaker was Miles Bullough, Head of Broadcast and Executive Producer at Aardman Animations. Miles is Responsible for the development, finance and production of Aardman’s television series and specials.
Miles spoke a lot about at what point in a company’s growth does creativity start to become diluted? He mentioned that Aardman make a conscious effort to encourage their staff in all departments to show off their creativity. They organise an internal exhibition every year for staff to show off any creative work they have produced in their own time.
Miles’ philosophy is to embrace madness, get rid of the blockers and never stop trying to push creativity!
Thank you very much to the University of the West of England, the Institute of Directors and the Chartered Institute of Marketing for a brilliant event.
10 November 2011
