What makes an entrepreneur? | Sahar Hashemi | TEDxYouth@Bath

I'm gonna take you on a little journey with me a journey of entrepreneurship but just before I do one question hands up those of you who like me consider yourselves entrepreneurs okay entrepreneurial okay for all of you that didn't actually put your hands up don't worry because the reason why I always ask this question is when I was your age if someone had asked me to put my hand up as to whether or not I was an entrepreneur I would have never put my hand up either I thought when I was growing up in a way the idea of an entrepreneur we just had Richard Branson and I would sort of compare myself to Richard Branson and think well there's no way I am like Richard Branson you know I thought you have to have a special chromosome to be an entrepreneur some sort of a magic dust or at least like Richard Branson you had to be a school dropout which I wasn't in anyway I'm so looking at him and now you guys on top of Richard Branson you've got the Dragons which are terrifying images of entrepreneurship and The Apprentice so clearly I thought I'm not at all the entrepreneurial type I didn't love business in kindergarten I didn't make my first million-selling sweets's school playground so basically I thought clearly I'm not at all the entrepreneur so I actually went off and I became the opposite of an entrepreneur I went off and became a lawyer and but very quickly I realized that actually I had chosen completely the wrong career for my personality because they're just about two things going for me my optimism and my enthusiasm and quickly I realized that just about the two qualities you don't need to be a good lawyer optimistic or enthusiastic so I was sort of wasted than what I was doing and just work felt like I was leaving myself behind to go to work work felt like incredibly boring really it was just it was I just did it for the paycheck I just went in everyday not being able to be me and I remember thinking why is this not fun and I was just asking my work colleague saying you know why are we having fun and remember they said fun a work they're not paying you to enjoy yourself and I just refuse to accept that because I thought you know what I'm going to be working the best years of my life most of my waking hours so how on earth could work not be fun how could I accept this so I ended up basically staying there because sometimes you really have a dream but it's scary to change because you're in a sort of comfort zone in a way and I ended up staying at the law firm sort of really hating it but thinking this is life this is working life until something happened which really snapped me out of it and sometimes you get shocks you get dreadful shocks that happen which snap you out of things what happened to me was I come from a close family of four my mum and dad my brother and I and in jail in 1993 my dad died very suddenly very unexpectedly and I remembered the shock was so big it was like my world had fallen apart and I just remember the very next morning I came back from hospital and I thought you know what actually this comfort zone is an illusion I've got to be true to myself and I've got to do something absolutely love doing because this is not it and I've got to do something where I could be me doing it so I basically took a big jump I took a big leap I left the law firm I had no idea what I was going to do but actually my motto in life is leap and the net will appear and I just really believe you've got to take the jump sometimes so I basically took this jump I went to visit my brother Bobby he was my only sibling so he was working in Nuuk at the time I went to visit him in New York a terrible jet lag thinking you know I'm just going to take some time be in New York have some change of air and I remember the very first morning I got up thinking with this terrible jet lag thinking let me go and get a cup of coffee and back then America was known for horrible coffee even we would make fun of American coffee and I remember just walking down Madison Avenue and I was sort of hit by the smell of fresh ground coffee beans and this is even before Starbucks had come to New York but I walked into this coffee bar that was all the smell of coffee why the coffee came from I said can I have a cappuccino please and they said would you like it with full fat milk skim milk semi skimmed milk soya milk and you know I sort of just couldn't believe it I'm always on some sort of diet so I couldn't believe I could get a skinny cappuccino and I just fell in love with it and I just didn't think anything of it and I go back to London and I was actually sitting with Bobby in a Thai restaurant with my mom we just got out for Thai meal and in the middle of this time meal I said to my brother how much I missed these coffee bars I just wish we had them in London I couldn't believe that I was stuck at home there was nowhere to stop my morning apart from making some instant coffee and I wish we had those amazing New York Stock offer bars so I could go and have a skinny latte every morning and as soon as I said this to my brother he got the light bulb you hear about he said I can't believe you've said this this is incredible you and I should be the ones to bring American star coffee bar to the UK this is like an amazing business idea and my reaction was hang on a minute Bobby you got me completely wrong I meant white Zin someone else open it and for me to go to it in a way I was the customers I couldn't quite understand why I had to provide a solution for my own problem in a way it's but anyway my brother was having none of it he said you know ma if you don't want to do it I'll pay you to do research for me and just because my brother was paying me basically the next day I got myself a one day to pass and I got on the circle line and that was the first day of my research I got off at every single of the stops on the circle line to see for myself what there was and I could see the crap quality of coffee everyone was getting and by the evening when I got back that was really the night what I thought you know what there's a real gap in the market and if we bring american-style coffee bars to the UK it's going to work but the thing is you know I didn't think a hundred percent I just thought about one percent this is going to work I wasn't a hundred percent sure so one side of my brain is this is this is amazing there's a gap in the market but this left left side of my brain is telling me Shirley's aha what do you know about coffee bars this isn't going to work it's too good to be true just because you like drinking skinny lattes doesn't mean this is brilliant business idea but what I've learned in life is that whenever you want to do something these doubts and I'm sure you're growing up and the more you grow up the more you hear these doubts these doubts are always going to be there and you must never stop them so my solution is when you start doubting yourself when they start feeling insecure you basically press the delete button because if you don't press delete listening to that voice you think it's the voice of reason it's not it's the voice of fear and fear is a serious um game there's no point indulging in it so we didn't press Delete the next step was okay let's go and do some research because a lot of it is about doing homework making sure there's room for it making sure there's a market for it and the problem was well Bobby Knight we had no idea about this we were clueless about this business in a way I worked as a lawyer all my life my brother as a banker so we were entering this world we are completely clueless about food is about retail clue is about coffee clueless about catering but one low I've got in both my books I call the importance of being clueless so never worry about not knowing never worry about had not having expertise not knowing is actually good because you can teach yourself and you can teach yourself with the fresh information and basically once you start jumping in and that's what my brother told me don't worry about not knowing because you're about to go to the best business school in the world right bang in the middle of this so you will teach yourself as you go along never worry about that and being an outsider is a huge advantage so basically we were Outsiders we gave ourselves three months to learn all there was about coffee at this point we moved back to live a home with my mom which you can imagine is a bit of a comedown if you've like moved away then you move back in with your mom and your brother at a certain age but anyway we did that and we just gave ourselves three months to become experts I can tell you we just drank as many coffees as possible I once almost actually killed myself OD'ing on 26 espressos in the course of a morning because no one had told me you have to spit it out and not drink them so we did that then I said you know what let me go back to New York on a reconnaissance mission because when I was in New York I just had no idea that we wanted to copy this so I said well I'll go back to New York and I went back to New York I took some disposable cameras which is what we had and started taking a picture of this coffee bar which was the predecessor to Starbucks of every single little thing they do and of course as I'm doing this the managers getting quite pissed off so she noticed that I was taking a picture of every single thing so we can copy it and just she followed me onto the pavement and confiscated my cameras so I basically thought oh my god that's just you know I've got to come back home with that because of the best coffee bar with the manager finding out so I ended up doing something the entrepreneurs do that you all do in everyday life is just that entrepreneurs use it for business bootstrapping basically in order to come back to London with pictures of the coffee bar without the manager finding out my bootstrapping solution was I had a couple of cousins who lived in New York and me and my cousins pretended as if we were innocent New York tourists taking innocent tourist snapshots at each other you will see a picture of my cousin coming up lovely you hardly see my cousin there which is the point where you fully see how they display their pastries what everything looks like again another cousin showing the boss eating this is the first time I've seen employees wear t-shirts and baseball caps and this is another cousin so basically we took these clandestine pictures and this is the picture I drew on the back of the Virgin flight back from New York I've kept this because I genuinely believe there's no point having ideas in your head ideas are worthless you've got to make them happen stop putting them on paper if you're inspired after today start putting stuff on paper it starts happening and another thing for us we were coming up with a brand imagine coming up with a brand when you've got no idea about branding and we knew we had to be up there you know on the high street with those big players and we had no idea but you know that's the thing about entrepreneurship is just trial and error and sometimes you make a fool of yourself as I'm about to share with you a logo that we actually considered lovely you could imagine this would have been nice and out of date but you just think entrepreneurship is not a genius tendency it's about trial and error until you get things right then we work this business plan again the business plan wasn't the right name but we wrote it when the word business plan came up I have to tell you I was terrified I said to my brother Gina well let me to Business School not come back in two years I'll read by the business plan my brother said you know what actually all the business plan is is answering a few questions what is he going to do how are you going to do it how much is it going to cost you and who are you going to do it with and anyway in this plan we calculated we needed to raise 90 grand to open the first door just give you an idea we started calling random bank managers off the yellow pages basically we got rejections from 40 bank managers this is page goes on and on I'm just sharing with you the first page of the 40 bank managers we called we got introduced with 20 bank managers of the 20 we got interviews with the first 19 said to us there is no way we'll give you money to open a coffee bar we said why on earth not they said it's really obvious isn't it we were like what's obvious so like resolve it's obvious word nation the tea drinkers you know Brigitte is famous three drinking so what the hell you doing bringing coffee in in Asia tea drinkers but I done my homework and yes we were in nature tea drinkers but basically in the 80s we're drinking four times more tea than we were drinking two times more teas I'm seeing this is going the right way which is why us entrepreneurs called bank managers enemies of innovation this is just a quick facts I wrote to my brother about a certain bank manager which you'll see it's just all you know sort of this the life of entrepreneurs we're not perfect this is the picture of the bank manager and basically the next one was making it happen you know you've got to actually do it and that was a nightmare ever you know when you're an entrepreneur it's an obstacle course everyone's against you and we were looking for cups no one had these cups at that time all they were had was polystyrene cups the cup suppliers thought we were crazy they were like I don't know what you're going on about we've never had cups like this we ended up bootstrapping we did we ordered blank cups of America we had two parties five bottles of wine some pasta got all our friends and they stuck the stickers on the cups the same thing with the muffin suppliers there were like blueberry muffins fat-free muffins sorry the only muffins we've ever baked or yellow the only thing they've got in them are raisins so we ended up making them often at home delivering them ourselves getting mold delivering them ourselves but and we ended up nicking our first employees from Preta male this is all bootstrapping stuff that all entrepreneurs do and basically we open the doors to the first door this is the first door just to show you entrepreneurship is not necessarily about original or new ideas it was a copy the benches came later so it was a complete copy of what we see in New York and basically this was the first coffee bar was kind to open in the UK just to give you an idea it was a disaster when I say disaster at break-even sales were 700 pounds and every single day we were making 200 pounds of sales a day and when I say 200 pounds to sell today I'm discounting my mom who's coming and drinking as many cappuccinos as humanly possible so without my mom's excessive coffee consumption we're making much less this is just you know telling people what we're about educating people the bad coffee and one by one sort of you know we converted one customer at a time sales started creeping towards breakeven Starbucks came it was absolutely terrifying time but at this stage we were big brand and when we got to 2001 basically Bobby and I both sold our shares because we thought that's what you do when your company is successful huge mistake I remember when I sold my shares instead of celebrating I taken my mom we'd gone to celebrate um to America and instead of celebrating I was so upset that apparently according to my mom in the British Airways lounge I started reading the store in the Financial Times the story of us leaving and instead of kind of celebrating I was crying so hysterically people must have been thinking what could be quite so sad the FT that this girl is bullying her eyes out but that for me is entrepreneurship out of budem I started writing my book I always visualized this is my visualization of a book I wrote this book and this book was almost my anti Richard Branson book saying do you know what actually if we did it then anyone can do it and this myth we have that entrepreneurship is a special chromosome is rubbish don't listen to the Dragons then it's not a personality trait entrepreneurship everyone's got it you don't need skills or expertise you become an entrepreneur it's a process it's something you don't need to be an entrepreneur before you start no-one is determined in advance if they're an entrepreneur you become one when you start and when you start basically there are five steps to entrepreneurship and my brother taught me these steps and I want to show you these steps because going going through every step from A to B you turn into an entrepreneur step one the idea make sure it's something you love the beauty about entrepreneurship is you don't have to live someone else's life you find something you love and I guarantee what you love doing you will be good at and vice versa what you hate doing you'll be crap so you might as well stick to what you love doing and what you love doing activates the entrepreneur within you because all of us have an entrepreneur within we just need to bring it out so make sure you find the store within you and do it and jump that is the idea that's going to bring out all these wonderful qualities about yourself you never knew you even had had I stay the lawyer I would have thought I was a pretty mediocre lawyer I would have never known I have all this creativity within me and that's the journey for you number two do your market research lazy people can't become entrepreneurs you have to be thorough you have to know your market back-to-front so you have to do your homework there is no substitute for hard work that's why it's not about genius agencies it's about hard work do your business plan you've got to be organized it's just it's a really easy thing it's just a couple of questions and just but you have to organize raising money people are going to say no to you we got 14 O's guess what Howard Schultz of Starbucks got 275 knows JK Rowling 12 people said her manuscript for Harry Potter was rubbish so you've got to have stick ability in entrepreneurship you've got to make it happen because making it happen is about doing doing bring self belief I never had self belief when I started I had one percent but self belief doesn't grow on trees self belief comes when you start doing when you're committed when you go on journey that's how you gain yourself belief and my last point don't give up entrepreneurship is difficult it's not a fairy tale everyone's against you everyone tells you your ideas rubbish it won't work the critics come out but it is an absolutely incredible journey if you learn to stick with it it is a journey where you find things about yourself you never knew you had every single one of you has a star within you and entrepreneurship is an amazing journey where you find that star within you and all I can tell you is in my life it is something as well that's where you combine what you do and who you are so work doesn't become the opposite of life work and life are the same thing and I can tell you it's a difficult journey but it's a wonderful journey and I in my life have absolutely never met unhappy entrepreneur that's my story thank you very much

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 356,749

Keywords: Career/Life Development, Business, Marketing/Branding, Economics, TEDxTalks, ted x, English, tedx talk, tedx, ted talks, United Kingdom, ted, ted talk, tedx talks

Id: r8nHptyS234

Length: 18min 43sec (1123 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 12 2014