| Top-Consultant Director Tony Restell reflects on what made him take the leap and co-found Top-Consultant.com back in 2000 and shares what other consultants can learn from his experiences |
| Are you an entrepreneur in waiting?
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| | By Tony Restell
Every year the
Christmas season brings
with it a period of
reflection during which
we all take stock of
where we’ve got to in
our careers. For many
this period of
reflection will sow the
seeds of a job hunt that
begins only days after
the festivities are
over. It’s no surprise
that January is one of
the most active job
hunting months of the
year, particularly in
the consulting
profession.
Yet for a smaller
band of us this period
will lead to an
altogether more radical
thought process. We look
at those above us in our
current organisation and
realise we don’t aspire
to ever filling their
shoes. Be it for reasons
of passion or reward,
the conclusion many of
us reach is that it’s
time we became our own
bosses.
In my case this all
happened around the time
of the dot-com boom – or
rather the meltdown of
the dot-com boom. This
was the era in which
unproven business
concepts were backed
with huge sums of money,
solely on the strength
of the management team
and their ability to
sell the idea. As we all
know, most of these
businesses crashed and
burned. Yet there
certainly were – and
still are – dot-com
opportunities there for
the taking.
I don’t know about | |
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| | inventors – and
most inventors are flops
anyway!
Whichever way you cut
it, it is much less
risky to try and operate
a business 5% better
than the existing
competition than it is
to try and invent a
completely new business
concept where the risks
and returns are totally
unquantifiable. Think of
most of the world’s most
successful businessmen
and you will realise
they flourished by doing
everyday things that
little bit better than
the competition or with
some novel twist that
gave them the edge.
Whether it’s being the
first to sell insurance
over the internet or
providing services on a
pay-as-you-go basis or
changing the rules in
the airline industry -
the vast majority of
business success stories
revolve around looking
at existing businesses
and figuring out how to
meet customer needs that
little bit better than
anyone else is currently
doing. So my first
mantra for would-be
entrepreneurs is,
therefore, always to
think of building a
business doing something
people are already
making money doing. How
to go about identifying
such opportunities is
just one of the things
we’ll be discussing at
the January
entrepreneurs’ seminar –
so that people leave
with concrete ideas of
the types of business
they could successfully | |
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| | create and run.
Think of some of the
successful businesses
founded by
ex-consultants and
accountants in recent
years and names like
lastminute.com, Cobra
beer and Innocent
Smoothies come to mind.
Again, all offering
things that consumers
have been buying for
years – just delivering
or packaging them up in
a novel and appealing
way.
That’s how it was
with the idea for
Top-Consultant.
Consultancies were
already spending a
fortune on newspaper
adverts and headhunter
fees, so it was clear
that being able to
generate a shortlist of
good consulting
candidates was something
we could charge a
respectable fee for. The
internet just became the
medium for doing this
more cheaply and in a
more responsive manner
than the existing
channels. Was it a huge
gamble to set up
Top-Consultant? With
hindsight, you could
probably say it was not.
And that’s really what
you’re looking for: a
market that already
exists and one that you
have just thought up a
neat way of serving
better.
But the second key
focal area for would-be
entrepreneurs is to
build a business model
that will appeal to
investors. This might be
so you can sell the
business and retire with | |
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| | a small fortune; or it
might be so that you can
generate the necessary
financing so that your
business can grow and
fulfil its true
potential. Either way,
there are things that
investors will look for
– and indeed focus on –
that are not at all
intuitive.
At Paul Collins’s
recent seminar on
selling a consulting
business, what was made
quite clear was that a
successful sale of a
business is much less
about what the business
has achieved to date and
far more about the
belief you can instil in
investors about what it
can achieve in the
future. Certainly when
it came to selling
Top-Consultant to DMGT /
Jobsite, there was
certainly a lot of focus
on what we had done to
secure the future
revenue streams of the
business, rather than
necessarily what we’d
achieved to date. For
those of you who missed
the Paul Collins event
and would like these
insights, we’ll have
video footage appearing
on the site shortly. For
those of you seriously
thinking about switching
from consulting to
running your own show,
we’d love to see you at
the January seminar
“Have you got what it
takes to become a
successful
entrepreneur?”
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| | you, but when I take
risks I like them to be
calculated risks. So
when I started thinking
about setting up for
myself, I was adamant I
would find a business
idea where the revenue
streams were already
proven – the internet
would just allow the
service to be delivered
in a slightly different
and more responsive way.
This was a totally
different mentality to
the one prevailing at
the time. Back then
investors and VCs were
looking for the next big
idea. Something never
done before and where
first-mover advantage
would create a killer
brand and unassailable
market position. To me,
this is a form of
gambling – which is fine
as an investor if you
have exposure to a dozen
such ventures. You only
need one to work to have
recouped your monies.
But as an entrepreneur
with limited funds,
inventing a business
concept from scratch
rather than fine-tuning
an already proven
concept creates an
unacceptable risk of
failure.
Most of us are not | |
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