I think it is Ken Blanchard who says “people never arrive in the same demotivated state as when they leave.” He blames the management, saying they deteriorate through poor leadership.

It happens at a time when 4 people return to the UKFast team, so out with the old, and in with the even older! The common theme being, “you don’t know what you have got until you haven’t got it anymore.” I am sure it is not the case for all of the people who leave UKFast. Businesses are always on the move. The direction and speed of all businesses differ. You have to find the one that suits you the most, the one that is going in the right direction and at the right speed and is full of like-minded people. You have to be realistic though, people join you for a certain duration, often mapped out as part of their career goals. Even the most motivated of people can leave if it is part of a wider career strategy.

So how do you keep staff?

Whether you are a seasoned entrepreneur, or one that is just starting out, I believe your business need an identity. You need Core Values. Now you can copy these from other businesses, yet a word of warning. It wont work. Many of our competitors have mysteriously adopted similar or identical core values and marketing initiatives, but unless they are genuine and come from within, you will not be able to live these values day in, day out. And when you attract people with similar values that you are professing to have, they will soon recognise a pretender and once you are found out, they leave. It also creates discord amongst your existing team who will voice cynicism, worse still you wont even know about this as it will be done behind closed doors.

You need to ask all your team for the words that they like to be associated with whilst at work. Words like Honest, Professional, Hard working, etc there are litterally hundreds of them to choose from. When we did this at UKFast we used a local PR agency with a good reputation to come in and do this. We felt it essential that we did not influence the process in any way. Mike Perls the managing director of Manchester’s MC2 helped us out in person and he decided to go through each department seperately.

The results were astounding. Mike quickly realised that every department chose the same 5 core values. He explained the rarity of such a discovery and professed “you may be on to something here!” This was back in 2003 / 2004. The prediction was right. Our core values were set, and although up to the time of the exercise we did not know what they were, ironically we were all living them. Is this an accident? I have to say yes, as I have had no formal training whatsoever to run a business and my steep leaning curve has come from getting stuck in and not being frightened of making mistakes. The irony of finding 6 departments within the business with identical values is probably down to our recruitment strategy. I think we simply employed people we felt we will all get on with. Our early strategy (although that’s a bit too posh a word for it) was people first, qualifications second. I look back with close to a decade of experience and on hindsight, it wasn’t such a bad HR strategy.

As an 11 year old business we still recruit on a very similar basis. I am not interested in CV’s or stories of someone being the best sales person in their last job. With the right attitude and values I believe I can turn anyone into an even better one. Qualifications can often be camouflage for some absolutely awful candidates.

This is why our training centre in Wales is so important to us; Castell Cidwm. If you can get through there and you are still smiling, you’ll fit in.

So how do you identify your own core values?

I’d recommend what we did at UKFast back in the early years and split up your business into teams, keep the departments together if you like and ask everyone to write down 10 values that they hold dear. I’d then encourage them to discuss them as a group and get them down to a maximum of 7. Once they have argued which ones they want. I’d make them re-do this until they come back with 4 or 5.

A business should not have too many values. It simply becomes to complicated to manage if it does. After all, you can only feel one emotion at a time. You cant feel happy and sad, frustrated and angry, bored and vexed. We are quite simple folk at the end of the day (especially us Welsh), so simplify the values as much as possible.

It is unlikely that you will get the same result we got back in 2003 and you definitely wont get the identical list of values we chose either. I have done this now with many businesses and I have never had the same result twice. What does this tell you? Never, Never copy someone else’s. By copying others, you do yourself and your business a disservice and furthermore you waste a great opportunity to unite a team.

Now that you have your core values in place and everyone is in agreement you need to invest in your staff. (Part 2)

hedge your desk

Greenest office in the UK! UKFast

The event I was kindly invited along to started with a training session racing around the Velodrome. I was fortunate to get some one to one training with one of the Olympic team. I was keen to pay attention as I quickly learned that a break in concentration could prove disastrous. The bikes have no breaks and if you stopped peddling for any reason you were in danger of being catapulted across the track; which was incredibly steep on the corners.

Being in a room with the North West’s finest entrepreneurs is an interesting place. There is a huge amount of testosterone pumping around everyones veins and the bravado was evident amongst the friendly competitors. But once on the track, it was head down and down to business. It was clear why these business people at the top of their game. They all take competing very seriously in whatever they do.

It is also immediately evident that there is little or no difference between the winning attitude of the highly motivated business people and the Olympians and although we all got beaten, roll back the clock a few years and give us some proper training and I reckon there’d have been a few contenders in the room. My attitude was such that I thought OK, I am going to give these guys a run for their money. I was absolutely convinced that I could win. Of course I got battered, but at least my attitude shone through and it made me compete to my highest possible standard.

After a lovely dinner where we ate the food the cyclists eat on a daily basis, we were treated to what in my opinion was the best part of the night. Rebecca Romero and Sarah Storey sat down and were interviewed. They talked of the Olympic challenges and the drive that got them to the highest point in their sport. Rebecca is an interesting phenomena as she has achieved one of the rarities of Gold medals in different disciplines. She started in rowing and then transferred to cycling. With in 6 months she was hitting the speeds expected from the Olympic cyclists.

Sarah a para olympian has won medals in every games since 1992. She talked openly about her challenges. Having only one hand there were people throughout her life that treated her differently. What was lovely top see is just how that motivated her and drove her even harder. She explained how she was inspired at the age of 6 years old watching the Olympics on a tiny TV and saying, that that is what she wanted to do.

Goal setting! You can’t beat it, or her in this case.

During the questions and answers it was interesting to hear their reactions and opinions.

When asked;

Silver medal, winner or loser? Both firmly stated without even a second to think… ‘Loser!”

What do you think of skiing and snowboarding that are adapting some of  their races and styles to introduce bigger sponsorship?

Again both passionately said, “what is more exciting than 2 people competing head to head? The sport does not need to reinvent itself and we do not want any more money. We simply just want to compete.”

It was blindingly obvious that the attitude that these 2 Olympians have is identical to that of the entrepreneurs in the audience. The belief that you require to get to the top of your game is identical whatever you want to achieve. Although the goals maybe very different, the hard work that is involved in reaching the top of any industry requires stamina and determination. When the vast majority give up, there a few people who kick into another level. These are the natural born winners, although actually I don’t think they are born, more socially conditioned. Something in each of these successful business people and athletes lives inspired them to want to go to these extraordinary lengths.

So what are you going to be if you never grow up? That’s the million dollar question…. quite literally! Choose, take aim and go get it. And don’t stop no matter who tells you you cant do it. Normally if someone tells you something cant be done, it is usually from talking from experience, their own experience. Do not let other people’s limiting beliefs limit your own.

And most of all, no silver medals. Aim high and win.

Why does one of the shortest words start the longest conversations?

On Friday one of the girls from our recruitment division MySort.co.uk came to me and asked “do you have 5 minutes to see a prospective new recruit for the sales department?”

I am always keen to get feedback and develop the business and where better than from an fresh pair of eyes. I followed Abbey into my wife’s office where Tom sat, looking relaxed, sitting back and at home. After talking with him for a few minutes, I asked him “do you have any questions for me?”

“You clearly put a huge amount of effort into making this a great place to work, from your website you look like you really value people much more than other businesses I’ve come across since moving to the UK 7 years ago….. why?”

“This is indeed true,” I replied. “we sleep a third of our lives, we have a third to ourselves and we work the rest. As I do not want to waste a minute of my life I am focussed to ensuring that I enjoy every second whilst I am wide awake. This means the time at work is just as precious as the time I spend outside of work.

I therefore concentrate my efforts into making my work environment as stimulating as possible. To guarantee this I need to make sure everyone around me is stimulated and performing at their very best too, so a large part of my energy goes on ensuring the team is as focussed as me. The end result is that if you come to work here at UKFast or any of our companies, you are going to have fun. A BIG part of that is you are going to develop quickly.” I paused for thought and then asked him a question.

“Are you ready for such a journey?”

” YES PLEASE.” Tom said eagerly. “I can see that everyone here loves their job. You can feel the energy as soon as you walk through the door.”

I got up and shook his hand saying, “I am sure you are going to be very happy here.”

I left the office knowing that I have a very excited new recruit who is going to really enjoy his new job. Is that not stimulating enough to inspire me to be an entrepreneur? It amazes me that most business people just don’t get that people are the most important ingredient to a successful business. There is a saying, behind every successful businessman there is a great woman. Isn’t that the truth! But the same applies to businesses as a whole. Behind the scenes of every business are hundreds if not thousands of great people.

I see businesses starting to struggle as they get bigger. When businesses are small they have personality. The smaller group the bigger the personality. As the business grows the personality is watered down. The founders of the business usually get further from the coal face, middle management is put in place and then the whole thing collapses as it grows. To save the business from absolute failure and total melt down from over expanding, the businesses usually shrink back to the size of when they were more successful. This is one of the reasons so few businesses fail to get past the million pound turnover mark.

I like Richard Branson’s philosophy, something he said is, “business has to give people enriching rewarding lives or it’s simply not worth doing.”

And there you have it. Master that and you have the secret of a successful business, and as we are all stimulated by different things, what works for one business may not work for another and so the challenge begins.

But that is what gets me out of bed early every morning to improve the puzzle I started 11 years ago. I’ll let you know if I ever find the answer

Although I have not made massive changes, I find myself with a massive lifestyle change.

I was given advice by one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our lifetime. And in my opinion there is a BIG difference between an entrepreneur and someone who has a successful business. It is possible for anyone to make a success of a business venture. It is highly unlikely that that person will go on to have a string of successes. Someone with this skill, is an entrepreneur.

The advice I was given was to step back a little. Take a couple of days off a week to work elsewhere.

It is far too easy to get too stuck in to the operational issues that confront you every day of your life running a business. Especially as entrepreneurs have an “obsessive” gene. When I get stuck in, I like to get completely immersed. However, if I am honest, I have staff who are significantly more skilled than me in every area of the business.

This week we have had the most successful week of UKFast’s history but not just revenue, which these days appears to drive most businesses. The energy in the business, and the levels of passion and excitement simply went off the scale. Yet I cant have spent more than 8 hours in the business this week. On a normal working day (before my hols) I’d have done 8 hours by lunchtime. That’s not to say I have not been contributing. If anything I have achieved a great deal more. By stepping back, I have done all my paperwork, report reading and emails.

In fact, I have never been so busy. This week I have met more likeminded entrepreneurs than I have done all year. My diary is stacked full. I am not usually a fan of networking, and with my “say yes to everything” approach which I adopted recently I find I am not just cramming more in, I am enjoying events that previously I’d have shied away from. As a result of my minor change in attitude, I find myself joining a body of people who make up North West’s greatest entrepreneurs, and also joining the board of one of Manchester’s finest orchestras.

It is worth offering a word of caution. I am blessed with a great team of people working at UKFast and our other emerging businesses. I was given the advice by someone who understood me, and our business model. If you have major weaknesses in your business, or if your business relies on you to drive it forward, every minute of the day, it is not advisable stepping back too much too soon. Perhaps try it one department at a time.

If you are wanting to grow to the next level, ask people for help. You will be amazed at just how forthcoming great business people are. I only wish I’d asked sooner!

Stood in the Great House on the hill looking at a photo of Sam Branson and his friends, I turned around and Richard walked up to me arm outstretch and with a warm smile he bowed his head gently and welcomed me to his home. It is the greatest thing for me to meet such a distinguished businessman. I have many friends who have become incredibly successful. Most of them though are particularly hard with their staff and rule their businesses with an iron rod. Richard is someone who clearly breaks this mold and it is refreshing to see that he is a million miles away from the ludicrous business ethics they portray on The Apprentice.

It didn’t take him long to suss me out and pretty soon we were discussing sport. He is currently in training for the Virgin sponsored London Marathon. He had already heard I was a keen exerciser and immediately asked if I’d like to run with him. A couple of Richard’s guests arrived for drinks, they were staying on the nearby island. They owned and developed Vale and Beaver Creek in the US. (An amazing Ski Resort) During the conversation with Janet and Paul from Beaver Creek, one thing stuck out and it made an indelible mark in my brain that I think will be there forever.

Richard said, “well, if you say Yes! to everything, you are going to have a far more interesting life.”

In my 41 years on this planet nobody has ever give me such great advice or such a great directive. And it makes perfect sense. How many of us just potter through life and procrastinate. I have only been on the island less than a week, but I am 100% sure you will never see Sir Richard Branson procrastinating. He is a decisive character, who doesn’t stop for breath.

Before leaving for bed, I asked what time we should meet. He said “pop around to the house at 6.45am and just shout me if I am not up.”

I didn’t sleep a wink that night, excited at the prospect of continuing a great conversation with a fantastic philanthropist and entrepreneur.

We have since run for a number of hours together and I have had some solid business advice during my time following in his great footsteps. Advice that once you have heard it appears like complete common sense. However you could read a 100 books and find 50 different ways from a variety of experts which all contradict each other. So to hear it from someone you respect, immediately fills me with confidence. And actually now we have discussed it, I totally understand and I cannot wait to get back to UKFast and start implementing some of these great ideas.

Yesterday I ran with him a little later than before, and I reminded him of what he had said to me and what an impact it had.

I explained that you could have written an essay, yet in one short sentence he summed up just how simple you need to make it.

“If you say Yes! to everything, you are going to have a far more interesting life.”

What a great piece of advice and for anyone setting out as a young entrepreneur, in business, in school, wherever and whatever you are wanting to do, this is good advice. It is a simple strategy that I can promise you Branson lives by. He is a man with a large appetite for life and it grows bigger by the day, and I am sure his positive attitude towards just doing things straightaway, off the cuff without procrastinating has to have something to do with his enormous success.

I am very interested in how he portrays his feelings on this subject, as he decided to use the line as subject matter for a column he is doing for the New York Times. It is definately something to look out for.

Lawrence Jones UKFast

Dedicated Server Hosting, Manchester

But in real terms the journey started way before. And if Richard Branson has taught me anything, the brand experience is truly transferrable between Virgin businesses.

My first encounter of Virgin was Culture Cub. A great band in the 80’s. They wrote a song called Victims, which has truly the best piano introduction of any pop song.

I went on to approach Virgin Records years later with a demo after recording a song called “Whenever the Leaves Fall” on a load of old recording equipment once owned by John Lennon. It was in a tiny recording studio, not much bigger than this cockpit.

I spent months trying to talk myself into an appointment at the old Virgin headquarters on Ladbrook Grove and Harrow road, London.

It was there I learnt the art of instant relationship building and the importance of getting to know the gate keeper. I’d ring back in different accents, and the receptionist would say, “is that you again Lawrence?”

I never gave in and one day after hearing the receptionist ask a colleague “is Danny in?” after I asked to speak with the head of A&R, after getting knocked back again, I rang back 10 minutes later and confidently said, “hi there, is Danny in yet?”

I was promptly put through. This technique and confidence has stood me in great stead for many years since. On this occasion I was quickly brought down to earth with a bump after a lady answered the phone.

I said, “hi is Danny there?” “Danny speaking” the lady replied. I was taken aback as I was expecting a man!

In true Virgin style she was lovely and said on the basis that I had got this far, she agreed to see me.
I remember the meeting well, and she liked the track. The disadvantage I had was that I did not have a readily formed band. She was in the process of signing The Railway Children, ironically my next door neighbours in Salford! What is the likelihood of that?

In my opinion they signed the wrong act, and the Railway Children never left the platform. They spent their advance on MGB roadsters and were dropped after never cutting it.

I went on to get an offer from a chap called Brian St.James Carr, a well known solicitor involved with The Sex Pistols, PIL (Public Image Limited) and Andrew Lloyd Webber. He heard my songs and got me involved with a chap called Lawrence Roman an incredibly gifted classical musician who did all of Lloyd Webbers musical arrangements.

He did the clever stuff in my opinion and made Webber look amazing, however I was young and I thought I’d get loads of opportunities like this and I turned it down.

I then made a decision to make it on my own in business first and pursue my music later. I knew I would either be incredibly poor or incredibly rich but it was highly unlikely to be the latter on the basis of how the industry works.

I had also developed some friends who worked in the arts, and I quickly learned that I was not someone who coveted the limelight. I’d have thrived off a publishing deal, but being a star was not a motivator for me.

To be successful in anything you have to devote yourself to it fully. 20 years later, I am still devoted to the cause and although hugely successful in certain elements of our business I am only on the first few rungs of a very long ladder.

And the music? Well one day! That is if I ever calm down my love for developing people. When I met Gail, I sold my recording studio and focussed on developing UKFast.

Not a bad gamble as it turns out. Especially when you consider the odds that were against us.

If you use the Jim Collins 3 circles principal to identify should we have set up UKFast as a hosting business, I’d have quickly identified that this was a daft venture to embark on. However it does demonstrate that passion and determination can on occasions replace common sense and logic.

1. can we be the best at it?
   Well truly honestly at the time, no way. We were competing with multimillion pound corporations. That being said, we have won 6 years out of 10 the ISPA’s Best Hosting Provider accolade, so it is funny how things turn out
2. are we passionate about it?
   Absolutely. After trying to host our own domain name thegallery.com we had appalling trouble with a business called Newnet. Peter Coates (who recently sold his business for £3m) and his son Gary had huge potential, however they were techy people and appallingly arrogant. My wife just reading this laughed and asked if that was tetchy or techy? They were so bad that when we moved, we simply left our equipment with them as we couldn’t face dealing with them further.
3. is it financially viable?
   Well, if I’d known the difficulties ahead, I would not have ventured down this road. We were self-funded, which is a posh way of saying we had no money; so everything had to work immediately. We had to work so hard around the clock, if we made one error, we were dead in the water. That was the simple truth of the matter. Not something you want over your shoulder, yet that being said, you wont get a bigger driver! If I didn’t sell, we didn’t eat.

Times are very different now. I have 2 wonderful kids and a wife, who is still my business partner, with the added responsibility of a working mum. We have been very lucky. We still have no debt (which is a posh way of saying, now we have money in the business) and we have had numerous offers from competitors to buy UKFast including one for in excess of £50m.

But it is not the money that motivates us, it is the journey that we are on, and I simply love every day and I live for the challenge.
So why Necker? Well, when I was turned down by Danny Van Endon at Virgin, I set a goal. Right, I thought, I will get there myself. One day I will do business with Branson and Virgin in some capacity. I will become successful on my own.

A few years later, I hired a Grand Piano to the Virgin company for a new artist at a place called the Boardwalk in Manchester. I remember the Fax Header, with all of Richard Branson’s businesses and locations. It was incredibly inspiring. It had Necker as one of the destination boxes to tick. It was then that I decided, “I’d like to go there and one day meet the man behind the company.”

Last year whilst staying at The Lodge another property owned by Virgin, I said to Gail, we need to find out who hosts this business and get them as a client. It transpired they are already a customer, and have been a happy one for a number of years. We also host UKTV which is owned by NTL part of the Virgin Group.

And 15 years on from that Fax and that initial goal, here I find myself, mid air on the way to paradise.

view from the main house, Necker Island.

Lawrence Jones

Bank managers, strategic advisors accountants, business consultants have all said to me at some point, all small businesses are about the “owner-operator” and take them away and they fail.

I have always hated this attitude and could never understand it. Until today and after sitting with fellow business people and for a change I was the MD of the biggest business there, I could see how they arrived at their theory.

We were discussing training. A subject I am passionate about and one I do not feel I am an expert at as I have so much more I want to learn. Nevertheless I have helped shape a training department at UKFast which seems to be pretty unique.

The general consensus from these owner operators was that you should outsource your training, do it once or twice a year at the most and do it externally.

This pretty much summed up peoples unanimous opinion.

When I explained my position, people were horrified. I explained that I agree with taking people away, and I am such a fan of this we bought a hotel in Wales to conduct intense training and team building programmes.

I seemed to strike a nerve and a few of the woman attacked my philosophy one saying “I wouldn’t want to work for your organisation if it were the last in the world” and another stated “you cant make people go up a mountain.”

I was amazed as Tony Fogett of a very successful web design business said  “none of may staff would ever do team building” as though it were an alien exercise. He laughed saying “we just go to the pub!”

I explained that this was a team building exercise too, the only difference was his involved alcohol and ours involved fresh air and adrenalin.

Ironically one of my team members who was a massive fan of our Snowdon trips (long before we bought the Castell Cidwm estate and Llyn Cwellyn) went to work for Code, Tony’s business. She had discussed with me coming back to UKFast however sadly this is against our company policy, she cited the team spirit as one of the best things about UKFast and one of the things she missed 

But the regular sessions in the pub obviously work for Tony as his business in my opinion is incredibly successful especially for the creative market place.

I realised though the vast difference in outlooks around the table seemed to be in direct relationship with the success of peoples businesses. 

The other business owners dismissed my theory as “inappropriate” as UKFast has over 100 employees. Even though our businesses were similar ages and Gail and I started UKFast with just the 2 of us and no staff!

The difference is simple and businesses who adopt this principal grow, businesses who don’t run the risk of failure when they grow.

‘If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” There is another great quotation from someone (I think Jim Collins of Stamford University) “people respect what you inpsect.”

Measuring training is imperative too. We test staff before and after their training sessions so we know how much they have learned, this enables us to measure the trainer’s performance.

We have a TV department, which films all our sessions. Each film is edited and placed in their personal dashboard where they can download them on to their company supplied ipods.

We include funny (not for public consumption) videos too of office parties, charity events and people tipping over in canoes at the training camp.

Two things are important to me. Alignment and engagement.

We start, believe it or not with engagement, hence the team building stuff where everyone gets to have fun, cry, break bread together and get what we call cyan coloured (UKFast) blood. The second is just as important and that is aligning everyone to the common message. Whatever department you are in at UKFast  you need to understand that excellence is the standard and nothing else is acceptable.

We were once described by a competitor who rang me up to complain about a member of my staff who had telephoned and emailed a customer of his, as a sales and marketing organisation. I think he meant it as a dig, however I was deeply complimented by this.

I have always felt we were weak in this area and therefore slow off the mark, however he and other competitors had begun to notice more activity in their sector from our team and from prospects talking about UKFast.

All this energy and passion came from training. The same training that enabled us to recruit 30 graduates in one day and have them up and running in less than 1 month.

I believe your best training is in house. You will already have champions in a variety of areas. Use the resources you have around you, have focus groups and share knowledge. You don’t have to spend huge sums of money with consultants. Often the best sessions are the simplest ones even impromptu.

A study from the writers of the book “the extra mile” cited training as the single biggest reason why people stay and leave organisations. Recognise this and act on it and I’ll see you out on the battlefield.

I always say, “well I’ll be leaving work at about 7pm this evening.” I hear this question 3 times a week.

I think it is important to know where you are going. Businesses need direction. I am a great believer in goals and raised a laugh at the How-Do convention recently when I admitted my wife and I have a “50 year plan.”

But why not? I work on the principal that you need to know where you are going. What is wrong with mapping out your life to when you are in your 90′s. You are far more likely to get to a desired location or destination if you have thought about it prior to setting out. One thing is for sure, I know we will be together as we are both integral to it.

What happens when you go shopping without a clear understanding of what you want to come home with. My wife’s wardrobe was littered with rubbish when I first met her. Shopping was haphazard and directionless and she probably felt this was part of the fun. Ask her now how much more fun shopping is, especially when she brings me along.

So when do you sell your business? You have to have made something worth selling first of all. This needs a plan in its own right. When we set up UKFast we were tiny. The smallest company in the fastest growing business environment and for years no one knew we existed.

But we had a plan, and we were sticking to it. And when the internet bubble burst and businesses were dropping out of the sky affected by the calamity we just carried on regardless. And still no one really knew who we were.

And over the years we have readdressed the plan, yet we still continue to stick to it. Even during the recession we felt it was more important to keep firmly on track than to falter.

And as the business got bigger so do our goals. Our latest 5 year plan includes a target and MAP to hit £100m turnover. Now as this plan unfolds people are begging to take note of us.

The problem with our initial plans were they were too small, and therefore so was the outcome. You get what you focus on so in my opinion you are better aiming higher. If you miss you still are probably better off than you would have been if you’d been conservative.

But on the journey of growing your business, when do you sell? UKFast is already worth far more than we anticipated in the first plan we wrote. So surely I’d be happy to sell?

For me it is not about the money.  It is about the game. I love work. I love people and I love competition. If I didn’t work at UKFast what would I do? I’d be bored sitting on a beach for more than 22 minutes. I don’t drink and I am consumed by learning.

For me, you sell when you stop learning or when you cannot learn at the speed you need to, to continue driving your business in a controlled fashion.  I am fortunate to work alongside my wife. When we have problems we are able to tackle them together.

We are on a weekend business trip and I am writing this, she is tackling a “too heavy for me” book on Balanced scorecard management, whilst we fly from Rome to Amsterdam for our next meeting.

If you have a business partner that is this close you are able to take on much more than if you do it alone.

What is most fun about UKFast is that we are having to learn at such a pace it is incredibly exciting. We take it so seriously that each year we review our goals together in the Maldives and have the final week of a 3 week break where we then strategise and plan for the future.

We have literally hit every goal we have set, and the crazy ones which take time all have a MAP (massive action plan) and we monitor their progress.

So when do you sell you business? In my opinion only when you are bored. But if you are bored, simply pick up a book and find another challenge. There is always something out there waiting to tax our hungry minds. After all isn’t that why we are in business in the first place?

Great question, and there is no right or wrong answer.

I explained that I have tried and failed many different things. The important thing in my opinion as an entrepreneur is to dust yourself off and have another go. Great entrepreneurs are resilient, they don’t know how to give up, they are prepared to push the boundaries and if they fail they do not see this as a negative emotion. In fact failure to a receptive mind means you are learning.

If you are going to try something new I think it should compliment what you are doing in other areas. Venturing into completely unknown territory carries more risk and therefore should warrant more research.

I enjoy new challenges, however I don’t see myself as a big risk taker. I have never had the luxury of huge sums of money to invest in new projects so the downside to most of my ventures is never a particularly alarming one.

We are currently venturing into the data centre arena, and although this now does involve millions of pounds of investment, it is a “related area” and therefore compliments what I already do elsewhere in the dedicated hosting industry.

It actually not only allows us to improve the quality of the service we currently receive, it also saves us millions of pounds each year of money which for the past decade has been growing some very happy businesses in Manchester and London.

I am not sure my current suppliers of data centre space will share my excitement. UKFast makes a very attractive anchor tenant however this sort of diversification is one I wholeheartedly recommend.

If you can provide a service where you are already paying considerable sums to a supplier and in our case competitor to boot, this should help you in your decision of where to diversify.

We once diversified in to the mobile phone arena specialising in Orange phones. We were good at it and we got about 20,000 customers in our first year trading. However it was so far removed from our hosting product. We were selling Oranges network when we had our own UKFast.

We got out of this industry after Orange put pressure on us to stop bulk text messaging to win business. Companies like Carphone Warehouse and other high street retailers were complaining that we had an unfair advantage. Our route to market was incredibly effective and hit our customer right at their heart. A simple text message encouraging them to use UKFast was all it took.

It worked famously until one day I received a phone call from my distributer saying that we had just inadvertently sent messages to the board of directors of Orange themselves during a board meeting. The message said, “upgrade your mobile phone with the latest Nokia on the Orange network, call UKFast now to find out more.”

Orange were fuming, mainly because they hadn’t thought of this themselves. They switched us off.

I could have targeted them and switched hundreds of thousands of Orange customers to other networks who our distributer put us in touch with, however this wasn’t our style.

We had invested huge sums of money and a great deal of time. We weren’t just the fastest growing supplier of Orange phones back in those days, we were the best. Each customer of ours also received confirmation text messages with Royal Mail special delivery tracking codes so they could know where their parcel was. Royal Mail even printed UKFast on the special delivery bags next to their name as we were shipping so many. They even sent us our own van each day.

Quitting whilst you are ahead is not quitting. Ironically Orange came back to us weeks later and asked me personally if I’d redesign their systems and manage their call centre. Someone had produced a report comparing all the dealers, distributers and Orange themselves. UKFast came out above everyone for the best customer satisfaction and retention rate.

The mess Orange are now in is indicative of their poor management and decision-making ability.  A decade on they still are not using the technologies that we brought to that industry. Shortly after we left, Oftel banned the use of direct text messages as a form of introductory communication as too many businesses jumped on our “banned” wagon: A shame really as they were exciting days. We would send out 20,000 text messages in a morning and sell 250 phones. The inbound phones went wild. If you were a visitor, staff member of a different division of UKFast or a prospective supplier, and were in our building when we pressed send, you were given a pad and pencil and told to answer the phone. Some of my funniest memories of this time include 2 bank managers caught up in the frenzy for a couple of hours locked in my office taking orders.

This was one example of diversification that was too far from our comfort zone, however I wouldn’t change this chapter for the world. We learnt everything we know now from this era.

Is there more to goal setting than meets the eye?

What if goal setting was a scientific art form? What if you could literally pinpoint your every move in the future and design the outcome of every turn years before you arrive there, long after the memory of even setting the goal.

Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it. Yet my wife and I have built a business on this very principal.

I am in Amsterdam at present and yesterday went to Anne Franks house to visit a very important place preserved in our history. The one thing I came away with is the memory of something written on the wall.

“I have a goal, to be free from this place and to dance again and to breathe the air.”

This may appear to be an innocuous quote in amongst much more profound remarks, however it is the word goal that strikes me as interesting.

In a world long ago that I care not to even remember let alone imagine being a part of where countless millions did not survive, there is one child who defied the laws of everything that was controlling the world at that time in war torn Europe.

She had a goal and she wrote it down and she not only survived years of German occupation against all the odds she then went on to influence millions of people with her writing, long after she died. You might argue that her goal never worked, as she died in Bergen-Belsen in March 1945, less than 2 months before the end of the war. However she died of typhus and not at the hands of the Germans. She also lived an amazing life and for the short time on this planet her goal kept her determined and focussed on surviving, which she did for a great deal longer than most in her situation. Her father who is the most remarkable man who lived till the ripe old age of 91, it was he who was responsible for inspiring his daughter and family. He was the only one of the 8 to survive the holocaust.

My job here is not to convince you of goal setting though, I already believe in it and we have thousands of examples of it working literally to the letter.

A great example of this manifested itself this morning when Gail and I went through our goals we set on the 7^th January earlier this year. (2009) Gail brought my attention to a goal which was written simply:

“Weekend Amsterdam + Rome”
As we were sat in Amsterdam in the lobby of The Grand Hotel reading this we were able to tick this one off, however when we wrote this goal what we had really meant to write was a weekend away in either Rome or Amsterdam.

What is the likelihood of hitting an obscure goal like this, 2 cities in different countries thousands of miles apart, different climates. Not the sort of trip you’d plan deliberately.

Even though we had written this goal down 9 months earlier and had also forgotten it, a very strange thing had happened.

On the Saturday morning we were flying to Rome. I was not over-enamoured by the idea of a weekend queuing and site seeing, however I arrived in Rome with an open mind. We arrived at the hotel by the Spanish Steps, however there was some sort of rally on and the place was crowded to say the least. That night Gail and I decided to take the plane to a much more chilled destination Amsterdam after a lovely dinner marred only by the chanting of a distant crowd in the square adjacent to the hotel. The plane and pilots were still in Rome for the night, so Gail called the pilot and arranged to meet them on the runway the next morning. So we hitched a lift with them on their way back to the UK.

It worked perfectly, we escaped the chaos of Rome had a few relaxed days in Amsterdam, hit a goal in to the bargain, to the letter.

So as my wise old Gran used to say, “Be careful what you wish for!

Yet there are those amongst us who feel the need to talk about their goals. What they are going to achieve and what they nearly did. I am talking of the ones that you have a sneaking suspicion are “all talk.” Yet, they keep talking and that is all they seem to do.

And on the journey because of their gregarious nature and confidence they have a tendency to land great jobs and rise through the food chain. Yet they never take the plunge themselves.

I know a few people who fall into this category. I dont need to name them as my aim is not to embarrass them. It is something that intrigues me however.

One person in particular on the out side, has all the skills necessary to run a business, yet for some strange reason cannot take the plunge. Even when offered all the cash necessary to set up a business in a sector where they previously have a very successful record, this person chose the easy option. A slightly higher salary and share options (Fake shares as I call them!) over a slightly lower basic, true  50% ownership and zero cash investment from themselves.

Why does some one take what at first seems the easy path, yet it is a path they have trodden before only to find it leads to redundancy and ends in tears. Once the business is established you are a very expensive luxury and extremely expendable.

After selling my first business to Granada TV once I had integrated the 2 businesses and I had trained all the staff I was no longer needed. I was quickly squeezed out. It was a lesson that meant I could never work for another organisation again.

So why do they never take the plunge. Personally I believe it is because they are not true level 5 leaders. What is a level 5 leader? It is a person who shows the correct set of skills and characteristics to lead a business of any type through all seasons.

Yet a level 5 leader is not the sort of person that traditionally gets the job of the MD or other directorships in the UK and US. We seem to employ the loudest, most confident, best communicators, yet ironically these are never the best choice. Yet they rise to the top becasue they are more pushy than their fellow colleagues.

Often these sort of people want to take the credit for all the good that happens, yet when there is a problem, they are quick to point the finger and blame anyone but themselves. A level 5 leader is more likely to apportion luck to their success and be relatively shy when it comes to public speaking or taking the credit.

I suppose it is also about  what makes people tick. Their “significance” as Tony Robbins puts it. The person I am referring to in this article is very happy to have the lifestyle, the clothes, watches all the trappings of a senior director, yet does not want the responsibility or real control of the whole business.

So if you are put off by becoming a businessman or woman because you are not as confident as others, this is not a bad thing. In fact you are in good company.

A great friend of mine, Dan Innes has finally set up and gone it alone after a decade of growing someone else’s business in London. His new business Innesco is already super successful as he has a long client list of those strong relationships he has spent years developing. Dan merely needed the confidence to make that final push.

I gave up ranting and pushing him, knowing he needed to find his own feet in his own time. Last year at his wedding in Bath I said to my wife, “there you go, he will be self employed with in a year from now.”

A great man like Dan simply needed a great woman at his side. When you have someone you love to this extent, being in business suddenly becomes easier. You have someone to work for, someone to build a future for.

If you are not destined for the madness of entrepreneurship however, do not let this stress you out. I do not think any the less of my friend who prefers to work for other people than himself. Definitely not. When the businessman sits at home worrying about the bank, the tax or the detail, the managing director or senior manager is still able to switch off!

One thing I can say though, for Dan embarking on this new journey, “It is a lot like the day when you set off and rowed across the atlantic. You had a goal and a purpose. To that end, you achieved what you set out to achieve. The same applies in business. Set your goals out clearly and stick to them. Revisit them regularly, take nothing for granted. Have fun on your journey and good luck to you sir.”

If you are considering being in business and going it alone, take a pen and paper. Draw a line down the centre. On one side write down all the reasons why you want to be in business, and on the other the reasons why you have not done so yet.

If you find yourself procrastinating  and looking for reasons not to, seek help, but never give up. It’s easy.

It is a difficult answer and to define one event as anyone in business will know it is a fast paced journey of peaks and troughs and no 2 days are alike. The most difficult challenge I face and continue to face is the pace I am required to develop.

10 years ago the skill set I had to set up a small business was very different to the one I now have running a multimillion pound organisation. That in itself presents challenges year after year.

I know if I’d walked into a business the size of UKFast 10 years ago, I could not have managed it. Yet I dont feel I have changed that much. However it is very easy to under estimate the experience you gain from being on hand day to day.

If I take a snap shot of me a decade ago and me now, along with the aging process on the outside, the inside is very different too. Eight years ago I was interviewed on Granada News by Lucy Meacock. Last night at the National Business Awards in the Hilton Hotel in Manchester Lucy Meacock was the presenter. We had a chat afterwards and she remembered Gail and I, however she could not believe how much we had changed over the years. It made me think, she is right, I just assume I am the same person. I often describe myself as a man with “no qualifications” and this may be true, however I now have experience, and that is priceless.

Jim Collins describes “great businesses” in Good To Great as having leaders who grow from  within. It makes perfect sense now. Experience out ranks qualifications.

So why then do some businesses grow faster than others? Is it safe to say people are gaining experience at different speeds. I think the answer is obvious. This then explains why businesses evolve at  different speeds. It is relative to the amount of learning and experience the entrepreneurs with in the business encounter.

One of the responsibilities Gail and I have at UKFast is to continue to learn and every year we regroup. We go off to the Maldives for a 3 week holiday. 2 weeks of family fun and 1 week of intense preparation for the year ahead. We write huge lists which fill books and we review the lists from previous years. And we tick off our accomplishments and those we miss we carry forward. Imagine a graph that is steadily rising. This upward curve represents everything we do in our lives. It is easy to peak and trough in life, so we then draw a horizontal line at the highest point we are at at present. This line now becomes the platform for continued growth. Anything below this line is considered an area of dissatisfaction, there is only one way to grow.

So if that means, if I had done 6 hours a week of exercise in 2008 and if we consider being in good shape important to maintaining our growth, I would set a goal to increase that to 7 or 8 hours.

We apply this principal to everything we do.

To be truly successful you have to be disciplined. On that journey to achieve whatever you set out in the early days, you will be tempted to ease off, take your eye off the ball, but I have never met a successful person who was not incredibly disciplined.

Take Lucy Meacock for example. She was employed to present the awards at the ceremony last night. Her schedule of responsibilities from her employers that night would involve arriving early for a rehearsal, and being ready to perform between the hours of 8 and 10 o’clock. During those hours she is on show. She will be required to perform her duties at the highest level. For that she will have received her fee and her rider.

Yet she is the consummate professional. Once the show had finished she took the trouble for the next 2 hours to walk around the entire room greeting and thanking everyone for coming. This is a discipline which not only made her successful but keeps her at this elevated level.

I will give you an example of a fallen star. Do you remember Victoria Wood? The comedian. In a previous life before hosting dedicated servers I had a small business that Granada aquired from me called MDC (The Music Design Company). I organised events. I was lucky enough to win the contract for a charity fund raiser, Christies for Cancer. I chose the venue, The Palace Hotel, Manchester (a place I later got married in).

I wanted Steve Coogan ( a then rising star) however Angela Rodden the MD insisted we went for Victoria Wood. Between her and my PA I was out voted. What a big mistake. Steve Coogan was a mega star by the time the event happened. They both commanded the same fee. £17,000 for the hour.

I should have known when I saw Victoria Woods rider. Her list of particulars was ridiculous. I had put on events for mega pop stars with smaller requirements.

We provided everything to the letter. The flowers (a particular length) were ready in her dressing room, the particular alcohol, the flesh coloured microphone that she taped to her forehead, the Steinway grand piano and the spot light that resembled a bomber tracking light from World War II, we did everything. 

I went to her dressing room and introduced myself. My God, what a rude woman! I politely explained that Angela (who had chosen her) was a massive fan, and would it be possible for her to have a photograph with her at some point before the end of the evening. It was a flat “no” “you have employed me to do a stage show, and that is what I am here to do!” or words to that effect.

We got the last laugh though, when she was doing her stand up, the sound engineers tripped over a wire and switched off the spot light mid act, which was being operated by Jonathan Bowers who is now UKFast’s communication director.

But this sort of attitude explains why Victoria Wood is no-longer on our screens. It is a great lesson, whatever your profession, always be professional. I have a rule that I only do business with people I admire or have the greatest respect for. If somebody’s standards slip in any way, ethically or performance wise , I will not want to do business with them. I have been known to turf suppliers out if they have not stuck to an agreement, either verbal or written. If you agree something, stick to it. Honour it at all costs.

I had a supplier who  cost me a great deal of embarrassment and stress not so long ago. When I confronted their acting MD on the matter, I was told to read the terms and conditions. He said “I think you will find we are doing everything we are contracted to do.”

Two weeks ago, I wrote a cheque for almost £3,000,000. That supplier who has had a monopoly in Manchester on the service he supplied is about to find he has a very passionate competitor in his midst. At a time when they are planning expansion, they are about to loose their biggest customer and find out they have an exodus of existing clients who we already have undertakings with that they are coming on board with our new venture.

Lack of professionalism isn’t a one off. People who are unprofessional are consistently unprofessional, day in day out. And, if you want to be successful, in whatever profession, stay alert and learn from everything that goes on around you. Be disciplined and be a great person. Follow these simple practices and you cant go far wrong. 

I’ll see you at the top! Or on that great journey.

Lawrence Jones @ UKFast

It is a good ice breaker and for those of us assessing the candidates, it starts to give you a snap shot of what is to come.

A young lady stood up, and I don’t have her name to hand and she described her momentous achievement as creating a small shop on ebay and selling a variety of things.

When she sat down, I immediately asked, “so why are you here?” At first I think she might of felt that I was criticising her at least I hope she realises that I was singling her out because she was clearly different.

Out of the 40 to 50 soon to be leaving education, she truly had done something momentous. She has taken a small amount of cash, purchased something, found a route to market, built a shop however rudimentary and started marketing a business. This woman, because in my eyes, she is no longer a young lady she is a business woman.

Now that I write this blog, I realise that I need to follow up  her progress and make sure she is given encouragement. So often entrepreneurs are discouraged from school, university throughout careers. Usually by people who wanted to do things themselves yet, they never followed through.

If you fall in to any of these categories, it is never too late. My parents left their jobs in their 40′s and bought a run down hotel. Some in the family described it as a midlife crisis. Even I, the eternal optimist questioned their sanity of selling a beautiful family home and giving up great careers to become owners of a semi-dilapidated hotel.

20 years on, how wrong was I and what a hotel. They now have the hotels on either side and it sleeps 100 people. It has an awesome reputation and a massive returning customer base.

Ironically the kick that triggered my father was doing my first years accounts. After tax, it transpired I had earned more than my mother who had been teaching for 20 years.

Last year a young lady came to be interviewed for the job of PA. As soon as I read her psychometric test results, I knew that she would make an excellent personal assistant. However I also realised that  she had the perfect profile of a fledgling business person.

Her test also identified that she would benefit from traveling and it sensed that she was in a bit of a dilemma. I confronted her on this matter and sure enough she was torn between “going travelling” with her boyfriend and starting a job.

I suggested that she should be decisive and as her profile suggested a job working for someone else may just drive her bananas.She just needed a little motivation.

Last week I got a telephone call asking for an appointment to meet with her and her now fiancee. They were back from their holiday, and they had formed a solid business idea and they were putting a plan together. They wanted my advice. I was honoured to meet with her and excited to be a small part in giving her the confidence for her to choose the correct direction of her life.

After a a couple of hours, it turned out, she and her fiancee are about to become UKFast clients and it is looking likely that we will designing and hosting their software to run their new business idea.
If you have a dream, dont lie in bed and procrastinate, or talk about your venture to your pals for years and years. Get a pen and paper and start writing lists, start goal setting. Start organising what you need for your new future. And OK, if it fails, guess what, you pick yourself up, brush yourself down, remember the lessons of the failure and start again. You keep doing this until you get it right.

If a baby is struggling to learn how to walk, do we give up on the baby? Does the baby give up? Never! They keep standing up and falling down until they perfect the art.

Yet as adults this is drummed out of us. We become fearful of what our peers think. A great entrepreneur is born out of simply not caring what those around them think. This in my opinion is why so many dysfunctional kids succeed where clever folk fail. A dysfunctional child is reminded all through their life how much of a failure they are. So it becomes easier to go it alone than be reminded of this throughout a professional career.

My fathers favourite line which stuck with me was “son, you will not even be able to hold down a bin mans job” it was said so much I believed him. So when the time came I did not dare attempt to get a job. Instead I became self employed by default.

All the big entrepreneurs that I know tell a similar story.

Ignore teachers, parents and your peers. Get out and have a go! What is the worst that can happen. Especially whilst you are young and in a recession. In a climate like today’s there isn’t a more perfect time to cut your teeth.

Good luck!

So why a sport sponsorship deal?

It was not an easy decision spending millions of pounds of a hard earned marketing budget in one go, with the recession still firmly gripping society however I felt it important to take the opportunity and be decisive. Its a 3 year deal and when an opportunity as large as this comes up, in my opinion you grab it with both hands.

It is also important to look beyond the economic downturn. The credit crunch will not last forever and it is important to stand by what you believe in. For those fans who go to all the home games, you will know that UKFast gets a mention every time Charlie Hodgson scores. A few seasons back, he injured himself and although we were offered a replacement player, we stuck with Charlie. He came back, stronger, fitter and in my opinion is one of the greatest fly-halves in today’s tough game.

So when McAfee wavered, I made sure we had a window where we were able to negotiate without interruption.

I have had a few chats with Brian Kennedy, and he is grateful for the support and for the fact that there are others in the Manchester and Northwest business community who understand and believe in what the Sharks are doing.

It is the work the Sharks do team building in schools and with kids which sealed it for us. It is so easy to disengage and get transfixed on your financial goals and loose site of what is really important. Gail and I put as much emphasis on hitting personal goals as we do the financial ones, and this had been born from a discussion a decade ago, when First Software were on the shirts “one day, we’ll be main sponsors.”

10 years on, the Sharks, UKFast partnership is more than a logo on a shirt. It gives us an opportunity to say thank you to Manchester and the surrounding community. It is the fun part of being an entrepreneur which enables us to do something as exiting as this.

Just cant wait for the season to start now!

Mid recession, with no clear understanding of how long is the tunnel or how dark it might get, I am drawn back to the hypnotic clouds.

There are some things in life you can’t predict or influence, “weather” you want to or not. But do these unpredictable elements stop you from going about your normal business or day to day lives. Of course not. Only in extreme cases, but even these are “blips” and they cannot halt progress.

I am reminded of Earl Nightingale and his anology of the ship. He describes the damage caused by a ship in a harbor cut loose without a captain, crew, charts or destination. He then describes the same vessel, but this time with a captain, a crew a destination and therefore a purpose. The vessel will reach it’s destination every time. It will seldom be on the exact course, the currents and wind will do their best to divert them. However their collective purpose is stronger than the outside elements.

Just like the plane overhead. It’s destination firmly programmed in to the captain’s head and the onboard computers. The elements are constantly changing, but the clear path is set.

I set a path a few years ago, and every day I tread closer towards my goal. Some days slower than others I might add, but I carry on unperturbed. One of my intentions was to continue learning in order to keep myself interested and able to manage our rapidly growing responsibilities. And even though I am forced to change my location as the rain starts to spit, my vision is not spoiled by the change of scenes.

Far from it in this case. One of my goals is to surround myself with successful people so I can learn from them. I think my wife took this too literally and booked us into a place called The Lodge. Sir Richard Branson’s private Ski Chalet in Verbier Switzerland.

Although Richard isn’t here this week it is a real eye opener to meet some of his team and to see how real everything he has created is. And to realise  just how achievable it is to set and follow similar goals.

So we take a couple of hours a day on the slopes carving our future strategies in our heads before cataloguing, discussing, arguing, debating our future in these sumptuous surroundings.

I realise  that not everyone can afford to take time out in such lavish style. However you do need to take time out! However you do it, it can be in a garden shed as long as you get uninterrupted time to yourself. The important thing is you have the time to reflect and think about where you have come from, what you have learned, and where you want to get to and what you might encounter on the journey ahead.

Planning and knowing your outcome in the reverse order are the two most important factors that separate the Bransons from the Brainless.

“So where do I go and how do I do it?”

Personally I always head for the mountains. At home in Wales, we have been lucky enough to find ourselves a house and lake in the Snowdonia National Park. It is a place where mobile phones aren’t banned, they simply wont work!

Before the Lakehouse , I’d put on a rucksack, pack it full of beer, squeeze in a tent and enough provisions and off I’d go. My first weekend away with Gail who is now my wife, was in a serious thunderstorm where we camped at the top lake on Snowdon.

It rained so hard that breakfast turned to soup and we had to pitch the tent on a steep slope to stop it from filling with water.

But I’d set myself a goal years earlier, I’d find the perfect partner when I was still poor and she would be resilient, determined and kind.

I got more than I bargained for. She indeed became my partner in every sense, wife and business. Yes she had all the traits, and my friends who know me would laugh saying, she needs to be resilient and determined to put up with me!

So what do I mean when I say I got more than I bargained for? Well, I’d set the goal to find Gail whilst I was still poor. A fundamental flaw in goal setting.

“You have to be careful what you wish for” my Gran always used to say. She must have been on a Tony Robbins course!

What I should have set was to simply find the perfect woman. As a result, I remained “poor” and unsuccessful until I met her.

This is not superstition. This is simple programming of your brain. Whatever you ask for you get, whatever you focus on you will feel. This is how seriously I take goal setting now.

To give you an example of a goal I set as a child, “one day I will have a house in the mountains by a lake.”  I also set a burning desire to have a home that was big enough for everyone in my family to enjoy.

Gail found the perfect place amazingly less than 2 miles from the summit of snowdon, with an estate that has a 250 acre lake and the properties combined are big enough to sleep 28 people.

Coincidence? No, I don’t think so. I remember not being able to afford the fee at the Snowdon car park, plus I have too many cases of other goals for this to be coincidence.

It is worth noting that every super successful entrepreneur that I know follows the same key principals. Be very descriptive about what it is you intend on achieving, be bold and don’t hold back.

So instead of trying to switch off from your business at the weekend, get in your car or on a plane. Get a note book and pen and take some time out to pat yourself on the back for all that you have achieved and focus on Stage II.

Your business journey consists of many rungs on a very tall ladder. You determine how high you go. You can get off at any time if you get vertigo like Nixon of MoneySuperMarket.com, or you can keep climbing new ladders. Or in Bransons case, when you run out of ladders to climb on this earth, go Galactic. All I can say in his wake, is “Go Branson!”

And to fellow aspiring entrepreneurs like myself, never stop learning, never stop pushing, and certainly never stop trying.

Nothing should distract you from the path you set and don’t be hypnotised by events surrounding the economy. Your purpose will outlive any economic downturn.

I blogged a few weeks back after Rob Williams from Dolphin Music  died on the mountains where we are now.It is humbling to be reminded that life is so short. So get up, stop procrastinating.

All you need is pen, paper and you have a purpose.

The two entrepreneurs who interviewed me had both received venture capital funding to help grow their business. For those who are not familiar with the process it is a little like putting your business on steroids. Although the short term gains are noticeable as the injection of cash excites the company members and gives the previous owners more muscle power, the injection of cash comes at a price. There is a new board that is assembled to help guide the rooky MD’s through this new unchartered territory, if there is any sign of someone being out of ones depth, they quickly step in to “help you protect your business.” As you now are a minority share holder or stake holder, you have to sit on the side lines. You will have read such headlines as “such and such stepped down from the board to go travelling” or “to realise their full potential in another area”, or “to follow a life long dream.” These are all polite ways for entrepreneurs to save face in the open market as their noses are publicly put out of joint.

I was very excited to learn that the two entrepreneurs who interviewed me were Dylan Thwaite of Latitude Search Marketing and Simon Nixon of MoneySuperMarket.com

I was excited mainly as I viewed these chaps as bigger and better entrepreneurs than me.

I quickly learned during the interview process that I was not going to win! Both these two incredibly successful entrepreneurs failed to understand why I spent so much time growing people and why I put people so high up on my agenda when discussing my strategy for the future and competitive edge. In fact I probably attributed nearly every successful part of UKFast to the team in some way shape or form. It clearly irritated them which fascinated me. So I turned the question on them, keen to learn what they had done that was so amazing, they talked about corporate strategy and their own leadership skills. They view my lack of “exit strategy” as a weakness in my entrepreneurial gene makeup.

For a nano second I even dared to question my resolve and the way we run the business before openly breaking into a smile from one ear to the other. They were clearly not getting me and thinking “how has this Welsh country bumpkin managed to get this far? And what is he doing here?”

Behind my grin I was thinking “what an earth is the point, if you can’t share the journey with those around you who help get you there?”

They were both right of course. There were formidable entrepreneurs littered around the foyer as we socialised and told each other of our experiences.

It was in the foyer of EY in their Leeds office that 2 young men gravitated towards me. Jason Tavaria and Rob Williams of a business called Dolphin Music. The three of us probably looked a little uncomfortable amongst a room of massive personalities all of whom were trying to make an impression. Even Simon, the biggest of the entrepreneurs there showed his need to stand out in a crowd. Either that or he doesn’t read memos as he turned up in a casual outfit whilst everyone else was suited and booted regardless of their industry.

The 2 young men I met, like me, didn’t win the Entrepreneur of the Year award but in my opinion are true entrepreneurs in every sense. As long standing school friends, they travelled to Liverpool University together and it was there that they started Dolphin Music.

Without VC financial backing these boys built a business in the music equipment sector using the internet as their route to market and they literally revolutionised their very antiquated industry. 100 year plus businesses like Forsyths Brothers were just flattened in their wake.

They had had a similar day and I remember Rob saying he felt “a little violated” by the whole experience.

Ironically companies who win such awards usually have to sacrifice part of the entrepreneurship for the outside investment. Even the best entrepreneurs struggle to build businesses of these sizes without external help. For the privilege of attaining such an accolade I am sure they’d be the first to admit their management style and teams have to change.

I had just finished “people power” yesterday’s blog and I received an email from my Marketing Director Paul Harris. Paul used to work for Dolphin so he and I both have a great deal of respect for what these boys have achieved.

The email hit me quite hard, as I am sitting here in the solitary peace and quiet of the Maldives. The destination is deliberately chosen, as I was fortunate to survive a skiing accident 8 years ago in the French resort Alpe D’Huez. My wife and I always spend time as far away from snow as humanly possible at this time of year.

Rob Williams one of the founder members of Dolphin Music had lost his life in a tragic skiing accident in Verbier. Skiing in a “white-out,” the rescue helicopters were powerless to help as they were unable to fly in such conditions. He died after it took seven hours to reach him, even though he had been located using twitter and his mobile phone with in minutes.

This is a tribute to Rob and his business partner who I am confident will take the business forward in his honour to new heights and ensure his work and memory lives on. He died like many entrepreneurs, pushing the boundaries. A trait that is an essential ingredient that helped him become a successful businessman.

I often worry that I trivialise my own accident when talking to people about my experience. It is a nervous protective cover that holds the most life changing momentous event from reducing a grown man to his knees and quite often to tears.

My heart goes out to Robs family and Jason at Dolphin and all their colleagues. It is said that entrepreneurs are a dying breed. It is therefore a doubly sad day to loose such a great guy and such a great entrepreneur.

Typically technology-savvy, the teenager you thought was simply chatting over MSN or adding to an already buckling Bebo account may well be using the internet to far greater effect. Astoundingly, in 2007, 43 per cent of teenagers used the internet to make money online.

“Big deal,” you might exclaim. “Anybody can sell on eBay!”

But bear in mind that 22 per cent of those teenagers actually set up an online business. And over four fifths of these young tycoons do it from their parents’ homes. No overheads, no rent, no leaving the house – just pure profit. It beats a paper round, that’s for sure.

As a youngster, back in the dark ages, I would have killed for a platform like the internet from which to do business. I made my extra cash as a very young entrepreneur setting up unofficial tuck shops. Then as I grew older my stock became more and more varied. I sold anything I could get my hands on; sunglasses at one point, T-shirts the next.

My teenage self was daring, bold and unaffected by the rules of business; something which I have taken into my adult career. The beauty of the young mind is that it is completely unhindered by boundaries. Teenagers “think outside of the box” simply because they’re not aware “the box” exists. However, the platform I was able to work from and products I could offer at such a tender age were restrictive. The internet changes everything.

Unfettered are the youth of today. They can source pens from China for 5p a bushel and distribute from a website where they never need disclose their age or identity. They have a technical know-how which probably exceeds many of their adult counterparts. And they have the luxury of time.

Encouraging Britain’s young business minds, especially in the current economical climate, is something companies and educational institutions alike should be embarking upon. We need to take the brightest sparks, cultivate the freshest ideas and look to the next generation of entrepreneurs for inspiration.