How I learnt reinvention is the key to true entrepreneurship...with black bananas!

Entrepreneurship has many forms and characteristics. The dictionary defines an entrepreneur as - ‘a person who sets up a business or businesses, taking on financial risks in the hope of profit.’

This is a simplified and general view, in my opinion and only a minuscule part of the story. Entrepreneurship is born or developed from within. It’s a gut feeling about something, taking a punt, baring a variety of risks, not just financial, but risks of reputation and self belief, the ability to continue working in spite of ubiquitous opinion. But also having an unshakeable ability to keep going with a single, strong mind, when all around there may be very little encouragement.

Passion plays a large part in the equation, when your business is something that lights you up, that passion becomes part of the drive. You will be far more likely to keep going, no matter the obstacles, pitfalls and barriers you may encounter along the journey if passion plays a key role.

In my view, one of the many benefits of being an entrepreneur is that the title is ever evolving. No matter how long you’ve been in business and how many lessons you’ve learnt, you will always continue to learn and edit and learn and edit. It’s during this process that you begin to sculpt yourself into another new and improved version of you.

Ive changed the focus or essence of many of my businesses during the process and there is a core reason for this. Sometimes frankly the initial idea, doesn’t work as planned, and that’s okay, the learning process is much improved by trial and error, so embrace the changes and updates as a rich and valuable part of a the journey.

But when this happens its paramount to realise that amongst the normal business goals, like building something that your passionate about or devising something that makes a difference or wanting to create impact, all businesses, no matter what their purpose agree on one thing, you must make money. Without a profit, whether it's for the business or for a charity, if the books aren’t balanced and you aren’t able to run effectively you don’t have a business. So drop the ego, look at the variables and make a harsh decision. Is this product, service, concept etc … working as a business or not? and if not how can we change it, modify it or improve it to make this business viable.

In my experience, this lesson was first learnt from black bananas!…

Let me explain…. I had a company selling catering lunches to corporate companies. It was very hard physical work that took immense energy. As the business unfolded I soon became very aware that no matter how many contracts I obtained and how many more staff I employed to grow the business, the profit verses energy output was an uncomfortable fit.

There were 9 of us all starting at 4am and working until 6pm, daily, making from scratch, packing and delivering sandwiches to businesses in the local area, but there was often a lot of waste. If it rained that day, people wouldn’t come out to buy, or maybe it was really sunny so everyone went to the pub at lunch and they didn’t buy. I soon felt?particularly demoralised at the end of the day when out of the 300+ sandwiches we had lovingly made that morning, 100+ came back unsold and went to waste.

We did start offering them to a local homeless shelter which lightened the blow some what, however I was quickly aware that the profit for that business was sitting in the bottom of the kitchen dustbin. It felt wrong, pointless and a total waste of energy and money.

Then one day, I noticed that we had a pile of black bananas that had begun to build up in a box in the kitchen. We also offered fruit with the sandwiches and the bananas were getting knocked about in the back of the van, so they had bruised slightly. But when there is just one small black mark on a banana, they don’t sell. So these bananas were being left as rejects, and the next day a new batch of bananas were being ordered to replace them.

I had literally 60+ bananas in a box, at the end of a week and there was nothing wrong with them apart from their unfortunate appearance. How could I use these bananas, so I didn’t have to throw them away. So I started making banana cake. Everyday these bananas came back as waste, and I turned them into beautiful delicious banana cakes, that we then sent back out to the businesses the next day. These cakes started selling well, and I mean really well, so well that we couldn’t keep up with demand. Then I thought, how about if I made a few other cake options maybe they would sell too. So I baked Victoria sponge cake and then chocolate cake and then cupcakes. Soon I was making so many cakes that I had to employ a full time baker to keep up with demand.

That got me thinking again, what if there were business opportunities in other places, not just these companies who’s spending habits were frankly hit and miss and totally impossible to quantify. So, I started to approach local cafes and offer them my hand made cakes, freshly made and delivered. And it was during this process that I realised something, there weren’t really any companies that were delivering fresh cakes, everything was offered frozen. I had accidentally stumbled upon a niche, which had evolved from solving a simple problem, and consequently I had created another business from it.

This was the seed that grew my first cake business. I began to bake and deliver cakes to cafes in a 30-40 mile radius inside London. It became so popular, in fact that I decided to sell the initial catering business and focus entirely on the wholesale cake business. I actually completely changed the direction of my business journey, on the back of one decision not to waste a few black bananas.

There is always another way, if you have the ability to see an opportunity in even the most dire of circumstances, that, is true entrepreneurship.

I work with new entrepreneurs to assist in structuring and finessing fine business plans, finding any pitfalls and helping them to harness the true power of their business. If you have been feeling like you could use a bit of help and assistance in brainstorming your business concept you might decide to hire a business mentor like me.

There is a reason that the top performers in all disciplines work with someone to help them achieve bigger and better things. A coach or mentor can be invaluable to?help you?make progress in a way that is quicker and more effective than you could achieve on your own.

Empower, inspire and live with passion!