[h=5]What does a robust business feel like?[/h] You’ve got to have a good business model. Personally, I’m sick and tired of everyone who wants to come up with a new social media website. It’s important for people here to recognise that business here is different to the US.
Zuckerberg is a one in a trillion. The problem is people don’t get on with starting a business in a conventional way now. They’re waiting for something magical to fly off. We need to instil that starting a business from scratch is the right thing to do – with your own money. You’ve got to get this culture out of your heads that banks are going to provide it. They need to see revenues, a business model, and other
collateral. Get over it; it’s not going to happen. Think of starting something small.
[h=5]How do you set
goals?[/h] You’ve got to focus on a weekly review of what you’re doing. Not everyone can be in a business where you buy a bottle for a pound and sell for two. But it’s great to have a weekly or daily wake-up call, even if it’s to clear £500 a week, or £1,000 a week. People get carried away with spreadsheets and business plans and forget the basic principles. I remember thinking to myself, I’m going out on Monday and I need to think about how much margin I’m making and what I’m doing. I know it doesn’t apply to every business in the world, like consultants, but you’ve got to keep on top of costs and overheads. Set simple
goals and don’t give up until you do it – and stop dreaming that someone is going to give you something to do it.
[h=5]Has there ever been a time when you’ve allowed fear to prevent you taking a course of action?[/h] I take it you mean in business. There’s fear and there's fear – like going to see Spurs and hoping they’d win a game. There is a fear in business that you’re going to gamble and risk and something’s going to go wrong. You’ve got to weigh up in your mind whether you’ve got the confidence to do what you’re going to do.
I can only talk about my experience. I’ve never been a consultant. I’ve always designed, innovated and made stuff. Fear is when you design a product and you don't have confidence in it and you have lots of ‘yes’ men and women saying it’s marvellous. You can’t make one or two of them. You’ve got to make 100,000.
You have to have the guts to go and spend that money. You have to have the confidence you might lose it. So, yeah, there’s fear there.
[h=5]In your experience, have you come up against a situation where the market isn’t there despite your hard work? What would you do?[/h] Cut and run. You can’t flog a dead horse. You’ve got to know when enough is enough. Respectfully, stop blaming economic climates and all that.
One of my best attributes was to say ‘we’re out’ when a product wasn’t working – not technically, but wasn’t selling.
[h=5]Have you cut and run too early?[/h] I cut and run far too early with Palm. Every single product we sold in the 1980s sold 100,000 in no time. There was one product that we made that was a derivative of an iPhone, which was a Palm Pilot. It was far too early. We made 100,000 of them, they didn’t sell, and I cut and run. The rest is history. Palm Pilot went on and sold 50 million of them. Apple came out with similar products…
[h=5]What drives you every day?[/h] That’s a good question. What gets you out of bed? Me personally,
I like a deal. I like to see an idea, a concept get off the ground. Once I’d made my first bunch of money, people ask ‘why didn’t you stop there?’. It’s because I enjoyed getting out there. People should be self-sufficient and get out there and apply what they’re good at. And when they find what they’re good at, stick with it.
You’ve got to
avoid just doing things that become fashionable – I’ve seen so many people start something that’s fashionable, from a fashion designer to a candy store. They all fail, because you have to become an expert in something. And it follows that you become an expert in something you’re interested in. If you don’t you’re going to fail.
[h=5]How important are entrepreneurs for setting out the vision for what the government can do for business?[/h] It’s very important, but the problem is, who determines whether you’re an entrepreneur or not? It’s the ones that stand up and say they’re an entrepreneur that I’m most wary of. And
don’t rely upon any government to help you. You’ll be in big trouble if you wait for them. The current business secretary has never even been in business.
[h=5]What’s the most difficult or most challenging deal you did?[/h] When you start,
the most difficult is the first one. It could be selling a bunch of car aerials out of the back of my car. I bought a second hand mini-van and some stock with the rest of the money I had. The stock I bought was something I understood, so I knew what I was doing.
When you make your first deal, mine was £4, that’s a great deal. When you sell a company to Bosch for £96m that’s exciting, but possibly not as exciting as the first deal you did. I remember walking out of BskyB with corporate lawyers for one single order of £120m. They were jumping up and down saying ‘I can’t believe what we’ve done’
but I felt it’s just what we do. They were shocked about me not jumping up and down.
[h=5]If there were five businesses offering the same product, what quality would you look for in that product?[/h] Price is not everything for a start. It very much depends on the commodity or service in question. What matters is your
perception of whether they can deliver what they’re offering. You would tend to choose a product on what the company has done before. That’s what makes it hard for start-ups as you’re breaking into a market.
Make sure you’re ready and armed with a portfolio of questions. How you’re going to deliver it. How you’re going to go about it. Make the customer feel comfortable. Price is certainly not everything.
[h=5]Is there a point when you stop growing your business and decide you’ve got enough?[/h] It very much depends on you. I made my first couple of million quid in 1981 or whatever it was. Some people might say ‘that’s it’. But when you get that feeling of satisfaction you want to do more.
A footballer only has a short career. A business person can carry on and do more and more and more. It’s what you want in life – work-life balance, work-social-life balance.
[h=5]Are there essential qualities of entrepreneurs?[/h] My ethos really is you must be
honest, straightforward, don’t beat around the bush, tell it how it is. It might not be what people want to hear, but in the end they’ll respect it. Fly-by-nights are exactly what they are – they don’t last.Opportunists don’t last. You have to have morals and self-discipline and put your head on your pillow at night and think ‘I’m happy with myself’. And that’s important.
[h=5]I’ve got a small business. Sometimes people choose when they want to pay, despite terms and conditions. Where else can I go for help?[/h] You need to chase for your money. There’s no fast-track solution.
Or you need to employ somebody whose sole purpose in life is to chase the money. Or if they don’t pay the money, they’re not worth doing business with.
[h=5]What has been your rationale for taking risks?[/h]
Taking risks in things I understand. Once I amassed my wealth and needed to diversify from the core business and that wealth, that’s when I became a cautious person. You can lose things as quickly as you made them. Stick to what you know. Business is a risk. There’s no such thing as the Harvard Business School module where you open the book and by page five you’ve got a successful business. The world is not waiting for you out there. There are millions of people out there.
[h=5]How important is a good relationship to be good in business?[/h]
It’s important for a business man or woman to have a good stable home life. I think the two things are totally different. An unstable home life is not helpful. You need a clear head to go out and do your business. One of the things that gives you a clear head is a good, happy, home life.
If you don’t have that, concentrate on the business alone.
[h=5]Which laws would you like to change to improve business climate?[/h] The last thing you want is government interfering in business because they don’t know what they’re doing. What you want is for them to create a level playing field. Trade freely. No obstacles in the way. A start would be for politicians to stop electioneering and pointing the finger at banks not lending. Trust me, that is total electioneering. It’s a classic example of pointing at someone who got a bonus and then saying ‘here’s me trying to look after you’.
We need to create a culture of enterprise. In America they suffered. But now they’re talking themselves up again, which you’ve got to admire. They’re talking a load of rubbish, but they’re talking themselves up again.
Everyone talks about the banks not lending. When I was an advisor for government, there were allegations that this was going on and I carried out an investigation and found out two things – companies were not interested in expansion and taking risk. Then on the other side of the coin were the moaners who are complaining that the banks aren’t lending money – and they’re the ones that are skint.
We need to create a feel-good factor in the marketplace that you can do it. A starting point for that is: ‘Don’t read the Daily Mail’.
[h=5]I employ three and have sub-contractors. When do you stop nurturing people and say ‘you’re fired’?[/h] You mean you’ve invested in trying to get them to work well and it’s not working. In future – and I’m not sure they’re contractors or employees – contractors you can let go.
I always find it’s important people sign a contract of employment that says you can both say ‘no thanks’ after six months with no hard feelings. Within six months you should get to know whether that person has got the block or not.
[h=5]What’s next? What can we look forward to from Lord Sugar?[/h] Something always comes along.
If ever there’s a void in my business life I start to get bored. I’ve been fortunate enough in the past 40 years. September is the launch time for new products and you ask yourself that at the same time every year. Particularly in the electronics business, there was always something there. Something came along.
More recently, opportunities have come to me. YouView is a non-profit-making organisation. We’re going to be launching a television system that operates off of a set-top box and it connects to the internet. I got a call from the head honchos of this organisation and they said ‘we need you to come in to sort that out’. So that’s next.
