Find Your Lightbulb

How to make millions from apparently impossible ideas

Mike Harris

• Publisher: Capstone
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781906465049
• eBook ISBN: 9781907293542
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Small Business
• Index: Business

Would you love to start your own business but feel daunted by the slim odds of success? Do you dream about making millions but simply don't know where to start? Find Your Lightbulb answers all these questions, helping you to harness your ability to make millions from nothing more than a simple idea. You don't need to be superhuman, you don't need to have funds in the bank - you don't even need to have an amazing idea in order to get started.

Serial entrepreneur Mike Harris shows you that all it takes is enthusiasm, commitment and a willingness to learn. And Mike should know - he's spent the past 20 years creating successful businesses from apparently impossible ideas - ideas which everyone told him would never work. With invaluable business advice and case studies from entrepreneurs and innovators on both sides of the Atlantic, this make-it-happen manual will help you fix the odds of success firmly in your favour.

1

Living the dream

’In each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone.’

John F. Kennedy, 35th US President

This book is for people who want to change their lives irrevocably by creating something valuable out of nothing more than a simple idea. There are many ways to make a living, but few are as satisfying as starting your own business and bringing something new into the world.

I’ve created three billion-pound businesses from scratch and been chairman of a fourth, which was sold for $10bn less than a decade after it started. I’m currently working on my fifth business creation and still enjoying every minute.

Have you ever dreamt that you might be able to do the same - make a million from unleashing your idea into the world? Or have you found excuses and listened to all those people who put you down?

Well, at the end of this chapter I’ll tell you exactly what to do to start living your dream. But first let me tell you the most important things I’ve learned about making ideas happen - things that I firmly believe will motivate you into taking those first few steps.

• Your own enthusiasm for an idea is what will bring it to life.

• Everyone struggles to take the first bold step, but once you have, you will stop dreaming and start living.

• You don’t need to be superhuman to make a great and successful entrepreneur.

• The expertise and genius of entrepreneurs is not in coming up with complex ideas - most of the time it’s down to simple ideas fantastically well implemented.

Enthusiasm conquers all

In May 2002, I found myself arriving by boat at Bill Gates’ residence. He was hosting the annual Microsoft dinner for the chief executives of its most important customers. Minutes later I was walking towards his magnificent 50,000 square foot mansion overlooking Lake Washington in Medina, near Seattle. I was full of excitement, mixed with nervous anticipation.

The Microsoft CEO summit is a serious event, with heavyweight presentations and panel discussions. Despite the networking necessities and obligatory small talk, I was actually really enjoying myself. I’d already had great fun with Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon), tormenting the technicians by trying to get a prototype of Bill’s new enthusiasm, the tablet PC, to work. It turned out the machine we were using was faulty. I had bumped into Warren Buffett, the second richest man in the world and something of a mentor to Bill. Warren asked me how long I’d been married. When I told him I thought it was about 30 years, he responded: ’You must have learned the secret of successful long-term relationships.’ When I said not really, he walked away chuckling and turning back towards me muttered, ’Low expectations, that’s the secret.’

Later I listened intently as Bill’s wife Melinda explained how he was in charge of the network of 40 PCs that ran all of the digital features of their home. It’s funny to imagine him doing what an IT administrator in a small company does, but equipping your house with 40 PCs definitely shows an enthusiasm for your own product.

I finally got to shake hands with Bill later that evening.

’Mike Harris, founder of Egg,’ I said. ’We’re an Internet bank, one of the first in the world and right now the biggest.’

’I know Egg,’ Bill replied. ’I gave the keynote at a conference where one of your guys spoke last month.’

I went on to tell Bill that Egg and Microsoft had been working together for a while on some new ideas, and how we seemed to share something of a common philosophy.

The following year Bill was on a platform in front of thousands of people with Egg CIO Tom Ilube. He was demonstrating an Internet banking application that Egg and Microsoft had co-developed to show how emerging technologies such as Vista (Microsoft’s then new operating system) could transform customers’ experience of using the Web. Bill introduced Egg as ’simply the best example of implementing these new technologies’.

So how did a company such as Egg, which was tiny in comparison to other banks and should have been well under Gates’ radar, get so much attention? And why was I able to claim Egg and Microsoft seemed to have something of a common philosophy? And what does all this tell you about making ideas happen?

It’s the same answer to all three questions: the ability to infect others with your own enthusiasm. Bill himself has said that sharing his enthusiasm is what he does best and he’s not alone in this fundamental belief.

’I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among men the greatest asset I possess.’

Charles Schwabb, US industrialist

’Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.’

Dale Carnegie, developer of famous courses on self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking and interpersonal skills

’People will only want to supply you, finance you and buy from you if you have confidence, faith and passion in your product and idea.’

Karen Bilimoria, founder and chief executive of Cobra Beer (from Sodowick and Watts, 2005)

’Enthusiasm is an unstoppable force and one of the essential ingredients of starting a business successfully.’

Dame Anita Roddick (from Sodowick and Watts, 2005)

Imagine what it must have been like to be around Bill Gates when he first created Microsoft. He started out with just an idea: to put a PC in every home and on every desk. It must have seemed impossible to everybody at the time, but Bill’s enthusiasm would have been infectious. His idea became Microsoft’s corporate mission for its first 25 years. It was an idea that was worth tens of billions of dollars to him personally but countless more to the global economy.

The ability to express your enthusiasm and instil it in others is the key to turning your big idea into a reality. The word enthusiasm derives from the Greek word entheos, which translates as ’the quality displayed by those possessed by a god’. You don’t have to believe in one deity, let alone multiple gods to understand what the Greeks meant. A man or a woman possessed by enthusiasm is a truly unstoppable force.

Imagine how Tim Berners-Lee feels now as he sees the World Wide Web sweep all before it in transforming the lives of billions of people. In 1989, the Web existed as merely an idea. It was only given life because of Tim’s enthusiasm for it.

’The dream behind the Web is of a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information. Its universality is essential: the fact that a hypertext link can point to anything, be it personal, local or global, be it draft or highly polished. There was a second part of the dream, too, dependent on the Web being so generally used that it became a realistic mirror (or in fact the primary embodiment) of the ways in which we work and play and socialize. That was that once the state of our interactions was online - we could then use computers to help us analyse it, make sense of what we are doing, where we individually fit in, and how we can better work together.’

Tim Berners-Lee

Tim’s powerful use of the word dream is a very common way in which entrepreneurs express their ambitions.

Do something

Write down a few sentences about your own dream, whatever it is. It doesn’t matter how you express it - nobody else will ever see what you write. Your dream might simply be the act of giving birth to a new idea or it might be the thought of creating your own company.

A good way to think about this is to consider how a journalist might write about your success story in ten years’ time. What did you achieve and how? What was the secret of your success?

I often get participants to do this exercise in my workshops. It’s a great way for people to be clear about what they want and what really matters to them. Achieving that clarity is extremely important as a source of focus when you are moving forward. It also gives them a taste of what success feels like - there’s no greater motivator than that!

First steps

People don’t get enthused by your idea, people get enthused by you - but only when they are convinced that you are prepared to live your dream. You must therefore prove to them that you are going to take the first step to make it happen, however tentative.

In 1988, I had taken the first step towards making a dream of my own into a reality. I was working as part of a team on a project for Midland Bank (now HSBC). We were creating something new and innovative: a new bank with a new brand. We called it Raincloud at that time but it was ultimately to be Firstdirect - the world’s first telephone bank, which would provide outstanding levels of service to its customers, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. By negating branches, recruiting and training only the best staff, and ensuring it was simply the most exciting place to work, we were determined to change the way people banked forever.

While it was easy for me to be enthusiastic about making this happen, it was also easy to be daunted by the prospect of turning it into a profitable business. I was immersed in deep thought about all this one Saturday while walking around the Cotswold town of Chipping Camden with my wife, Sue. She wasn’t entirely happy because I was, admittedly, less than exuberant company that day. I followed her into one of the antique shops and began sifting through some old maps when she thrust a wooden frame into my hands. It contained a piece of paper that read:

’Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.’

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

’There you are - there’s your answer’ she said. ’Stop making a fuss and get on with it.’

That frame has since occupied pride of place on the wall in my office. The words had instantly moved me, although I had no idea who Goethe was at the ...

Table of contents

• Praise
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 - Living the dream
• Chapter 2 - Star in your own soap opera
• Chapter 3 - Critics who count
• Chapter 4 - Making million-pound ideas
• Chapter 5 - Find funding
• Chapter 6 - Know your ends from your means
• Chapter 7 - Brand and reputation matters
• Chapter 8 - Creating a powerful culture
• Chapter 9 - Leadership and the edge of reason
• Chapter 10 - The smart risks principle
• Chapter 11 - Hot teams
• Chapter 12 - Powerful stuff: the principles in action
• Bibliography
• Index