The Beermat Entrepreneur: What You Really Need to Know to Turn a Good Idea into a Great Business [Paperback]

The Beermat Entrepreneur captures that Archimedes moment when the idea suddenly hits you--out of the blue, no warning--the great business idea that's going to make your fortune and change people's lives. It's a defining moment for the would-be entrepreneur and channelling the concept from random notes on a beermat, bus ticket or whatever writing material you managed to grab at the time into a profitable business is Mike Southon and Chris West's goal. With refreshing clarity they reinvent the start-up around an entrepreneurial team immersed in a well-conceived business package.

The Beermat Entrepreneur puts three elements at the heart of the start-up; an elevator pitch endorsing the business concept, an experienced mentor to advise, consult and guide and four cornerstone individuals from technical, delivery, finance and sales backgrounds to complete the entrepreneur's team. "Business has already ceased to be about spreadsheets and software, and has entered the world of personal judgement and emotions", Southon and West argue. The connections and intuition a mentor can bring will repay the start-up a thousand times over while the cornerstones' specialist knowledge will form the core of the management team and drive the business forward. Taking in leadership, management, recruitment, PR, sales, marketing and finance along the route from Seedling Enterprise to Mighty Oak, Southon and West cover every issue the potential entrepreneur needs to understand about the challenges ahead. The Beermat Entrepreneur is an opinionated, inspiring and practical companion for new business adventurers. --Iain Campbell

'What I really liked about this book was that it was easy to read. There are too many half-finished books by my bed that would have helped get me there years ago if I had just finished them.   Yet I read Beermat in just one sitting; I enjoyed the book and related to it. I came out liking the authors and wishing they hadn't retired so they could come and run one of my companies.'                           Simon Woodroffe, Founder of Yo Sushi! in Management Today

‘Mike and Chris understand with unusual clarity what drives a start-up.’Tim Smit, Founder, The Eden Project

‘Refreshing and very readable.’ Richard Donkin, Financial Times

‘This book, for me, says it all… It should become standard reading for all employees, managers and founders of start-up businesses.’ Professor Sir Christopher Evans OBE, Founder, Merlin Biosciences

‘Provocative, down-to-earth and witty, too – if you’re looking for an antidote to the smoke and mirrors of the dotcom era, this is it!’  Nayyer Hussain, Co-founder, McGeoch Techonolgy

 'The Beermat Entrepreneur is honest and practical, and it works.’  Steve Packard, original publisher of Trivial Pursuit and founder of whereonearth.com‘An embarrassingly accurate picture of entrepreneurs – I went round the office reading out sections, and people laughed out loud.’  Peter Hall, Founder, The Wadenhoe Consultancy

 ‘I recommend this book to any aspiring entrepreneur.’  Charles Dunstone, Founder, Carphone Warehouse

‘It’s all here!’ Phil Tee, Founder, RiverSoft PLC

'At times provocative but unpretentious, the author challenges the conventional wisdom of other business books on this subject. Passionate about his beliefs, the book is witty and amusing. For example, having discussed the pros and cons of various sources of finance, Southon asks: "Are there any other sources of cash?" and responds: "There's always organised crime, I suppose, but the debt collection methods are a bit radical."

This is a book not just for entrepreneurs. Based on the author's real life experiences at the sharp end and packed full of wisdom and wit, there is much in this book for managers of whatever ilk and their employees to learn and enjoy.'

Ian MacEacheran FCMI

"...you can only benefit from reading this book. You'll gain valuable advice and knowledge from people who have seen it, done it and bought the T-shirt."

Evening Standard

"The Beermat Entrepeneur has become a bestseller because it sets out the key stages of a business' growth clearly and describes exactly what needs to be done for it to flourish. Such plain speaking in business books is unfortunately rare."

EN, Manchester

 

"Among the many excellent qualities of the Beermat Entrepeneur is its thoroughly practical, no-nonsense, anecdote-free approach...jam packed with solid advice you seldom see in other books."

Training Journal

 

"...a modern thinking manual full of smart media concepts."  Word Magazine, June 2005

"I recommend this to any aspiring entrepreneur."  Charles Dunstone, Founder, Carphone Warehouse So, you're sitting in the pub with friends or colleagues and you have a brilliant idea.  This time it's really brilliant.  It's the foundation of a potentially very large and successful business. Do you just go home and leave the scrawled-on beermat in the pub?  Or is this it - time to really make it happen?  Problem is, you've no idea where to start.  Who do you need to talk to?  How do you find the cash to back the idea?  How many people do you need to work with to the idea off the ground?  And how on earth do you find them? Mike Southon has been there, and in The Beermat Entrepreneur he tells you exactly how to convert those jotted notes into a big and successful business.  Step-by-step, with no jargon, no complex theory and no visits to arrogant pinstriped venture capitalists who aren't really interested in just 'an idea.' The Beermat Entrepreneur is a practical guide to starting and building a business.  You begin with a bright idea, sketched out on a beer mat in the pub one evening.  You end with a major company employing hundreds of people and a bank balance to match. Available in book form or in audio book (CD or cassette), featuring the authors recorded live in front of an audience of businesspeople. 

"…you can only benefit from reading this book. You'll gain valuable advice and knowledge from people who have seen it, done it and bought the T-shirt."

The Evening Standard

You’ve got a bright idea. An idea that you think maybe, just maybe, could become a brilliant business. But what next?The Beermat Entrepreneur is the answer. It takes you through all the crucial stages between those first notes on a beermat and a business that is sound, lasting and profitable. It tells you what the other books don’t – the lessons that most people have to learn by bitter experience; the tricks that all entrepreneurs wish somebody had told them before they set out.

From testing your idea and finding a mentor, through selecting and motivating the right people and securing your first customer, to deciding when to ‘go for growth’ – this is the guide to turning good ideas into real businesses.

Containing the distilled wisdom of serially successful entrepreneur Mike Southon, The Beermat Entrepreneur is packed with advice and insight for any aspiring business person, either within an existing company or thinking of starting up on their own.

Mike Southon is a serially successful entrepreneur.  He co-founded The Instruction Set, an open systems consultancy in 1984, and sold the company five years later to what is now Cap Gemini Ernst & Young.  Mike has since been involved in seven start-up ventures, responsible for sales and marketing as well as helping to secure funding from venture capitalists.  Mike is very active as an independent consultant, and has been a keynote speaker at conferences all over the world for Microsoft, IBM, Novell, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and many others.  He has been a visiting lecturer at City Univeristy Business School since 1992. Chris West is a writer and journalist.  His China Quartet of mysteries is published in Asia, the USA, the UK and Europe.  He also works in PR and marketing, and is currently involved in his own start-up enterprise.