Am I an entrepreneur in disguise?

Entrepreneur

noun

A person who sets up a business, taking on financial risks in the hope of profit

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A big part of my first 5 months at Evelyn Partners has been focused on developing a winning customer strategy. It starts with identifying who your target client is, understanding their unmet needs and developing solutions to distinctively serve them.?

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At Evelyn Partners, we think we’re uniquely placed to help entrepreneurs as they scale their businesses. We’ve got market leading professional services to help them work through their corporate challenges - from things like how to structure employee share schemes right through to thinking through international expansion. And at the same time, we can help founders pre-emptively think through their personal financial needs thanks to our market leading Financial Planning and Investment Management capabilities. We also know which partners to bring in to help provide advice beyond our specific areas of expertise.?

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So having identified “entrepreneurs” as a priority target market for us, I had a brilliant week up in Scotland last week, meeting with entrepreneurs and those setting out to support them, such as Scottish Enterprise , Entrepreneurial Scotland , Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce and Edinburgh Futures Institute . Throughout my career I’ve spent a lot of time on the periphery of entrepreneurial ecosystems, be it in our work with Founders Factory when I was at easyJet , or working with a range of entrepreneurs focused on Net Zero whilst I was at British Gas . I thought I had a good grip of what was important to entrepreneurs, but spending time specifically looking to understand their unmet needs led to totally different conversations.?

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What really struck me during my conversations last week was the consistency with which I heard the following message:?

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“I make no time for anything other than trying to help grow the EBITDA or Enterprise Value of my business”

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I heard the exact same message again and again. Totally unprompted. And it came with an edge - I was in no doubt that if my meeting didn’t demonstrate an ability to help the entrepreneur grow their business, it would be being cut short.?

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Both the clarity of focus and the edge are real assets.?

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But they don't need to be the preserve of “entrepreneurs” - certainly not by traditional definitions of the term.?

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Another highlight of my trip to Scotland was dinner with my CFO, Andrew Baddeley (my love letter must have been well received!). Andrew asked me how I was getting on - always a dangerous question...

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And the answer was that I've loved my first 6 months or so at Evelyn Partners. I've a clear mandate, freedom to operate and pressure to deliver - the perfect blend to get the best out of me. Part of what creates this blend is our private equity ownership ( Permira and Warburg Pincus LLC ) and there really are material (positive) differences between PLC-land and my current experience. Again, totally unprompted, Andrew summed it up by articulating that our owners have precise focus on the things that will help grow the EBITDA and Enterprise Value of the business.?

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So as I reflect on my own role and mandate - I guess it helps me define what I think of as an entrepreneur: someone that is focused on aggressively scaling a business within which they have skin in the game.?

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When I look at how I spend my time, how I lead my team, am I using the filter of "will this help grow EBITDA or Enterprise Value?" Where the answer is no, I need to sharpen my edge and get back on track.