An idea and bravery is all you need

As an entrepreneur every day is different. For me, life has never seemed more exciting or filled with opportunity.

So although at the time it seemed at worst foolhardy and at best brave, my decision to trade an established, well-paid career in science for a junior software programmer’s position was the best I’ve ever made.

Certainly not because I became a ‘techie genius’. Indeed, the mere notion of writing software code made me break out in a cold sweat. Nevertheless it didn’t deter me from setting up a software business.

This ‘toe-in-the-water’ job actually led me to my two eSAY Group co-founders, Graham Stanley and Colin Yates, business partners who did excel in the field.

My strength was the drive and commercial wherewithal to go out and sell and generate interest. Selling and networking are the lifeblood of most businesses and luckily for me, both come quite naturally. 

I learnt early on to optimise the skills I had and recognise what others bring to the table.

I had a plan – but that’s all it was. But so what? There are over four million entrepreneurs in the UK and many have started with nothing more than a good idea.

Entrepreneurs such as Michael Dell, who started his computer company in his college dorm room or Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin started with no income and an equally negligible cost base. Ditto Branson and Sugar. All kept costs low while they learnt their recipe. 

A true entrepreneur must be a resourceful individual, someone capable of acquiring the assets they need to achieve their goals. So whether that’s capital or people or products or partners – they will think outside the box to achieve their ambition. 

Sure the business leaders we all know about have taken risks, and sure the law of averages says they can’t have always get it right. One MD I know routinely encourages failure, working on the well-tested formula (see - I can’t escape science completely) that for each loss there are 2 or 3 successes.

Entrepreneurs have the key quality to bounce back from the undoubted knocks they face. We quickly learnt that to grow a business is to embrace the friend that is risk. Early on, a client of ours told us that although he was keen to continue working with us he needed to know more about our ambition. The point was clear - if we were to deliver to his standards then we needed to grow too. Were we going to take on extra risk? You bet your life we were. To me it’s a no-brainer.

You have to know when to say ‘no’, though. Stick to what you know you’re good at. We know our recipe. We position ourselves as business growth specialists – challenging our clients to use technology to deliver short, medium and long-term sustainable business benefits.  That’s our big idea and we’re sticking with it.  What’s yours?

Dr Moneeb Awan, co-founder of eSay. To contact, email moneeb@esayltd.co.uk or visit www.esayltd.co.uk