Tip of the week: some great advice for small businesses from Emma Harrison

[tweetmeme] This isn’t a tip of the week per se. More a Tips of the Week picked up from a very inspiring Emma Harrison, one of the entrepreneurs that spoke at the IOD Annual Convention a few weeks ago and the Chairman of A4E.

Emma impressed me to no end. Not just because of her business success (which is impressive in itself) but her feet on the ground, tell it like it is, uplifting attitude that really raised the atmosphere at the IOD. This, when you consider it was held at the Albert Hall, is a talent in itself. Listen to her (and others) talk at the IOD event here.

Emma sat on an equally inspiring entrepreneur panel where they were asked to give their top tips to budding entrepreneurs. Emma’s resonated with me so much that I had to share them here. So here they are (with a few added extra’s from yours truly – in italics).

1. Have a vision, tell everyone about it and walk towards it every day. I love this. Visualise your vision, see and feel it as if it’s already happened, talk about it and don’t lose site of it, no matter how tough it gets.

2. Develop strong leadership and inspire, elevate, encourage all those around you. It’s so easy to forget about this when you’re hard at it. You’re only as good as your team.

3. Get an A4 pad, divide it into 4, every day pop the date at the top of a new page and in each box write 4 new things you’re going to do that will take your message to the world. Speak to four new people every day. Her business was built on the back of this. What a lovely idea for inspiring innovative marketing. We so often get stuck in the routine of doing the same old marketing activities that we forget there could be other ways of getting our messages heard.

4. Get a mentor, someone you admire and meet with them every couple of months. Yes, yes yes! I’ve had 5 mentors since starting Red Cube. They all play a different role and some I still see today. When times get tough they throw some light on situations and really help to keep me on the straight and narrow. There are funded mentors available to you through the likes of Business Link and Prevista if you don’t already know of anyone.

5. Love what you do. Enough said.
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