The key to success in business is getting the balance right between your mission and how you are going to get there, entrepreneurs attending this year’s UK Black Business Show were told.
Emmanuel Eribo, co-founder of two shoe brands, LØCI and Butterfly Twists, said that often business leaders were obsessed by their long-term goals or too distracted by day-to-day challenges.
“The mission is always to get a man on the moon, whatever the actual business is,” he said. “I often see people either super-focused on that mission and forgetting about the rockets that are going to get you there, or super-focused on the rockets and forgetting about the mission.
“The challenging thing about being an entrepreneur, and starting a business, is you have to find the balance to deal with the daily rockets, but also to land on the moon. You need to have both those hats on, and switch between them.”
Eribo, who is CEO of LØCI, was talking last Saturday in London as part of a panel discussion on how to grow businesses, moderated by Times Enterprise Network.
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He was joined on stage by Kiemu Salmon, co-founder and chief executive of My Way Beauty, a one-stop beauty marketplace, Sanmi Adegoke, chief executive of the London developer Rehoboth Property International, and Claudine Reid, director of the social enterprise PJ’s Community Services, which provides care and support services to vulnerable adults and children.
Asked what advice they had about hiring key employees given the tight labour market conditions at present, Reid said: “When you are scaling you are concerned about skill. Sometimes you need to hire for attitude, particularly when your budget is not as big as you would like it to be. But when you do have that budget you want to be hiring for skill.”
Salmon, who employs ten people, said she still placed significant value on attitude. “I am definitely at the stage where attitude and values are really important. We are experimenting and changing so the people we hire have to be flexible and able to adapt to that environment,” she said.
The entrepreneurs also discussed how to best manage high-performing teams and when ideas from colleagues conflicted with their own.
Adegoke said: “See your business like a family. Everybody has different ideas. I have six siblings. My brothers have different ideas to my sisters. [For my team] whatever they have to say I will respect it. As the CEO the best thing to do is listen to what they have to say. I tell them I am not going to make a decision now; I will sleep on it and come back to you.”
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Reid said that as her business became more established, her relationship with her team changed. “I find my role has shifted to a talent manager and a relationship manager. I am less involved in the operation of the business,” she said.
“So when there are really good ideas my role now is to manage the risk of those ideas by asking questions. How do you see it operating? How much is it going to cost? Rather than telling my team it’s a poor idea.
“I subscribe to that way of working rather than my idea being the best idea, because it might not be. I’ve not hired robots. Being an entrepreneur, when you are talking about scaling your business, you have to have the mindset. For the sake of your ego, your brand, do you shut that idea down or incorporate it?”
Salmon acknowledged that not all entrepreneurs find co-dependence with their team easy. “It takes work to get to that mindset. To recognise your own ego, recognise where you might be fragile, defensive or unable to receive feedback, or unable to listen to other people’s ideas. I think it is important to consciously reflect on your own strengths and weaknesses.”
Eribo said he preferred to be clear with his team about what he expected. “I am very focused on what I want to do and how I want it done. If I have people who can help me achieve my mission that is great,” he said.
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“When people buy into the vision and they like the culture and they want to go on that journey, they have faith in you. Sometimes you don’t necessarily have time to sit down and explain everything. My team trust me. I make a lot of big decisions very quickly based on instinct, based on historical stuff, based on relationships and their trust in me is really important.”
The Times Enterprise Network is an official supporter of UK Black Business Week, which ran from October 25 and culminated in the UK Black Business Show on Saturday, October 30.
