Well, this week…

Doug Richard has said a thing to me about thirty times in the last few months and it’s gone over my head every single time.

We’re all going to overlook the fact that I’m apparently a little stupid (our Naked Business column is where we here at S4S make these confessions) and we’re going to focus on the fact that what Doug keeps saying is both profound and revolutionary.

A Startup is Not a Small Business

Now, I know you are going to say…Yes it is.

After all, a startup might only have one or two people working for it at the beginning. A business doesn’t get much smaller.

But that misses the point.

Every successful business created by an entrepreneur (as opposed to franchised from a bigger company) begins life as a startup. It is a stage of development.

Some successful startups choose to turn into small businesses and some decide to become global enterprises like Google.

Startups have to do several things, and they have to do them without incurring so much debt, or so many bad alliances, that they end up going out of business from the burdensome weight of it all.

Businesses in the startup stage must decide:

• What they are selling
• Who they are selling it to
• How to find those people
• How to explain what they have to those people
• What price they will charge those folks
• Where people will buy what they sell
• How they will receive what they sell
• How to deal with the competition
• What strategic relationships to build
• How to get bootstrap capital if required

Can you see that a successful small business, like the corner car mechanic or the little bakery near the tube station, has already made those choices?

Why is this such earth shattering news?

Because I have a degree in economics, have started many successful small businesses over the last two decades, and have read a few thousand books on business modeling, business development and startups.

I’ve never heard anyone make that specific distinction before and I’ve never read a book that made it clear that there is this laundry list of things that every young business has to do in order to become successful.

Furthermore, I’ve never heard anyone say that the advice one gives a “small business” may be yield absolute disaster if followed by a startup.

A young business may well need a credit line to ride out a cash flow problem caused by a seasonal drop in custom. If the corner grocer has been in business for a few years, and they know the ebb and flow of their commerce, a credit line may be the ideal facility to smooth things out if their summers and springs are chock full of tourist business but their winters and falls run a little light. It may even make sense to borrow some money to finance some growth.

Almost nothing is more toxic to a startup than liberal credit.

Because what a startup needs to do is get a product or service to some customers.  It needs to get them the cleanest, simplest, easiest to explain product it can just as quickly as possible.

If a startup owner has no money, he’ll make the decision to do this sooner than if he has a few hundred thousand pounds of someone else’s money to spend.

The financial burden of past mistakes, carrying interest no less, kills most companies built on borrowed money. Taking money from investors too early can be just as disastrous. The vast majority of investors, as Doug has pointed out, know nothing at all about running your business but they will be quite forceful with their advice.

Startups need to get their money from customers and money from anywhere else can be very problematical.

Which brings us back to School for Startups…

We teach people how to start businesses. Our Build Your Business Now Toolkit, our events, our bootcamps and our 1-year courses are designed to help people get through the startup process so they can decide if they are having a successful small business or a successful large one.

I know there are going to be people who read this and think “Wow, I’ve always known the difference between a startup and a small business”.

I bet most of those people own successful enterprises…

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1. The Naked Business: What We Get Right
2. The Naked Business: A Newbie Perspective
3. Naked Business: Building a Wall of Sound

Question: Who founded your business and what are their backgrounds?

Founder2be was co-founded by Oliver Bremer and Frank Haubenschild from Germany. Oliver has M.Sc. in Computer Science and has worked for Nokia until 2007 and for Strands until the end of 2010. He then quit his job specifically to focus on Founder2be. Frank studied Computer Science as well, and has been working as a Software Developer mostly in the automotive industry.

Question: Was there a specific event or experience that made them decide to launch Founder2Be? When did you first go live?

After 10 years in corporate life, Oliver came up with a great idea to start his own business. He doesn’t remember what the idea was now because it was never started as he failed to find a co-founder. Thinking that he cannot be the only person who wants to launch a start-up and fails to find a co-founder, he decided to focus on the co-founder finding problem instead, and as a result Founder2be was born. The official date of launching Founder2be is Januray 1st 2011. It was launched to the public one month later – in February 2011.

Question: How does the match making system work?

Very often Founder2be is compared to online dating. Users are able to search potential co-founders based on location (country or even city) or role (from advisers to developers). Moreover, users are offered a list of matching to them profiles which may assist in finding a right person. All registered users are able to send direct messages to each other.

Founder2be users are also able to share new ideas and search for existing ones. Usually ideas include short descriptions as well as information on what skills would be required to implement the project thus creating another matching opportunity.

There is one more matching dimension on Founder2be. Global Alliance Program was launched to help co-founders meet each other and form start-ups within organizations that support start-ups in the real world such as business incubators, accelerators, student societies and other entrepreneurship organizations. The Global Alliance Program has partners on four continents now and looking forward to extending the network to more countries and also within the countries where we already have partners.

Question: Have you seen any new businesses formed since the site was launched?

Two companies have been established since Founder2be was launched. One of the companies is Ziliot and it connects B2B: service providers, manufacturers, suppliers, government agencies to enhance business productivity. Another company is still in stealth mode.

Question: Does it cost to become a member of your site?

It is free for everyone to join Founder2be. Yet we are planning to launch premium services in the future which will include exclusive features. Choosing premium account is going to be completely voluntary depending on users’ preferences.

Question: How do you facilitate relationships between potential founders?

Our users are rather independent when it comes to creating relationships. Feedback is very important to us therefore we are planning to conduct a survey in the nearest future on how potential co-founders contact each other, what works and what doesn’t. Another important thing what we are working on is to improve users’ profiles, making them more specific and allowing people tell more about their soft skills which is very important when creating relationships and finding a right co-founder.

Question: What questions do you ask of participants and why?

We ask participants to identify their occupation, location, skills, availability, previous projects, start-up and fund raising experience, ability to contribute seed funding and co-founder preferences in regards to skills and availability. Moreover, participants are encouraged to share their ideas and thus creating an opportunity to find someone not only with matching skills but with matching interest as well.

Question: Do you plan to do offline networking events in the future?

We definitely want to do offline networking events. Meeting people online is just the first step to finding a co-founder. You can match skills and experience yet chemistry between people is very important and meeting your potential co-founder in person is essential in order to establish trust. As a part of our offline networking events we plan to organize local meeting and “speed dating” for entrepreneurs as well encourage users in other locations to support this initiative.

Question: Where are you headquartered?

We are headquartered in Espoo, Finland right across the street of Nokia and Rovio headquarters. Working close to the companies which define Finland on global level is very inspirational. And who knows, maybe next success story will be made by co-founders who met through Founder2be!

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Chester Mojay-Sinclare

Chester Mojay-Sinclare is a university student who founded AliveandGiving.com,  a website that helps connect people to exactly the right charity.

What is AliveandGiving.com?  Is it a charity that helps people find charities? A charity that gives to charities and social enterprises? A social enterprise?

Why did you start it? It seems different from some of the other services that are out there that purport to do something similar

AliveandGiving.com began life as a student project at University College London when I entered my idea into a competition. I had spent my gap year travelling and working within the fundraising industry in both the UK and Australia. Over time, I started to reflect on ways in which issues within the charity industry could be tackled. I didn’t like the coercive and sometimes aggressive tactics used within the industry. My idea was to help charities communicate themselves to potential donors, in a transparent and effective way.

How do you collect information from charities about how funds given are spent?

Are you still in University?  Are you planning to make AliveandGiving your full time occupation?

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“O2 recently came on board as our big business supporter. I for one think that their superb business strap line, “we’re better, connected” reflects our beliefs about early stage businesses. Their financial backing will allow us to connect with a new generation of businesses through a major expansion of accelerated business training for entrepreneurs online.” — Doug Richard

Simon Devonshire, Head of Small Business Marketing at O2, is a guest on today’s blog.

Schools for Startups is an impressive initiative which will no doubt motivate and inspire entrepreneurs. Doug is an especially talented and thought provoking presenter and business coach. The content of his lectures is about helping businesses to grow which I believe is relevant to all businesses. Doug makes a phenomenal difference to the thinking and performance of small businesses and we’re proud to be on board to support the creation of additional online training programmes targeting entrepreneurs.

We know that access to good quality training can be difficult and expensive for new businesses who are just getting off the ground. That’s why it’s so great to see School for Startups filling the gap.  Enterprise creation is so important for the recovery of the UK economy, and small business sits at the heart of entrepreneurialism. Being able to access expert training and advice for free online at a time that suits them can only help young enterprises continue to flourish.

But it’s not all about O2 & School for Startups sharing our support and experiences. It’s a two-way relationship. We want to learn from entrepreneurs and help our business customers to grow their business. More small businesses do business with O2 than any other network. If we are to continue to be there to support them every step of the way, we need to make sure we understand the ongoing challenges they face in the ever changing modern business environment.

One thing O2 well understands is that entrepreneurs and small businesses absolutely rely on flexible communications technologies.

Many businesses these days launch and run for years in a ‘virtual office’. Owners, key employees and strategic partners spread across the UK. When customers call, they need to feel the coherence and cohesion of a traditional brick and mortar business even when one doesn’t exist.  Web hosting, e-commerce, cellular internet connectivity, broadband wireless, various forms of VOIP, small businesses now require the kinds of service and support that was available only to multinational corporations less than a decade ago.

Doug Richard’s pragmatic advice on launching ‘ultralight’ businesses with little or no outside funding is, we believe, founded on bedrock of a telecommunications company that provides a truly tremendous number of ‘just in time’ services for entrepreneurs.  O2 and School for Startups share a single vision for  entrepreneurs in the UK.  Speed, agility, flexibility, insight, value . . .  Like O2, School for Startups is determined to give them the tools they need.

We look forward to the opportunities that this partnership will bring for us to work more closely with startups and are committed to supporting Doug in championing entrepreneurs and new business in the UK.

– Simon Devonshire

We mention in passing . . . O2 has launched a ‘Joined Up’ communications service, which extends beyond its core mobile offering. The new services provide businesses with one single converged solution for their telecoms requirements spanning mobile, fixed line, data, broadband communications, equipment and professional consultancy.  It gives businesses of all sizes an opportunity to outsource their telecoms, ICT and consultancy needs to just one provider, reducing the amount of time spent handling and managing systems and communications services, which are not core to their business.  Find out more.

Related posts:

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2. Naked Business: A Startup & A Small Business are Two Different Things
3. Press Release-Doug Richard to Teach UK Entrepreneurs How to Start and Grow a Business at Newcastle University on February 3

While those under fifty often give starting a business serious consideration, many fifty and over think entrepreneurship just isn’t an option for them. No matter how much they may have wanted a business in their youth, somewhere around fifty they arbitrarily decide that they are far too old to have one.

• Some think that working to get paid more in their current job must be easier than starting a new enterprise.
• Some believe that finding a new job that pays more will be easier than starting a completely new business.
• Some consider it wise to have a job that offers retirement benefits, even if it doesn’t pay well and the projected retirement benefits will be insufficient to pay bills in years to come.
• Others simply have no idea how they would go about founding a new enterprise and think they are far too old to learn.

If you are over the age of fifty, and you are letting age alone stand in the way of starting your own enterprise, I suggest you reflect on the following.

• People are living longer than ever. Someone in good health who works hard to remain healthy, may expect to be fully functional into their eighties. Changes in medical technology may extend your lifespan even further. Spending almost half your life in idle retirement is a bit insane.
• Having a business, and the daily pressure to remain mentally acute and physically active, is good for you. Studies show that mental and physical exercise stave off most of the ill effects of old age. So allowing yourself to have a business may actually help you live longer.
• A good business provides value to your family as well as to you. If you increase the number of years you are productive, you may build resources that benefit people after you are gone.

Starting a business isn’t rocket science, and all other things being equal it is easier for those over fifty to create a successful enterprise than it is for the younger set. Older professionals have business, financial and personal life experience to draw on. They tend to be more pragmatic and better connected than their younger brothers and sisters. They also have fewer personal distractions since they rarely have infants and small children at home.

It’s Not All Roses

Older entrepreneurs do have some important issues that should address very directly before they start new enterprises.

• They should give the enterprises they plan to start serious thought before they invest significant time or money in them. Not all businesses are created equal. Some are just better than others. I have 20 questions I use to vet businesses I plan to start, because I know that businesses that pass my test make more money faster than those that don’t. Youngsters can work long hours at minimum wage to build an enterprise based on a bad business models. More mature business professionals should be smart enough not to.
• They need to frankly assess their health and their requirements for exercise and reasonable levels of stress. Whereas younger workers can afford to burn the candle at both ends, adults must make sure they do everything they need to do in order to remain fit. A healthy body and mind are always a good investment, and they are the single most important asset an older professional can give to their business.
• They need to be realistic about the financial life cycle of their business. Though I never tell people to start a business with a firm exit plan in mind, I do think older entrepreneurs need to give some thought, as they develop their enterprises, into how their businesses can run without them for periods of time and how they can monetize any equity or value they build in their firms when they decide to cash out.
• They must renew their personal and professional relationships. The most significant advantage that most mature entrepreneurs have over newcomers is the depth and breadth of their contacts. This is particularly true when multiple over-50 entrepreneurs find a way to collaborate. This opens up access to early sales and prompt financing on a very significant level.
• They should refrain from dumping their life savings into their business. They should avoid acquiring a great deal of debt to fund their business. Businesses are supposed to make money. If a business model is well considered, and it’s implementation strategic, it can almost always launch and become profitable with very little investment. Younger entrepreneurs can make the mistake of believing that financial success can be bought. More mature entrepreneurs must know better.

Ready to Get Started?

If you are over fifty and want to give serious consideration to starting your own business, here are some steps you can take to get started.

Start by making a list of all the assets and experience you can bring to a business. It may seem strange to start with a list of what you have rather than what you want, but creating this list throws off the tunnel vision that having a job and raising a family give most of us. By the time you are remembering what you did for a living when you were twenty, and which courses you enjoyed in school, you are also remembering who you know and what you know, and that’s an important thing for you to do. Writing this information down is also important. What we remember and ponder is ephemeral. What we write down is concrete and easy to reference.

Make a list of the things you enjoy doing. Good businesses are based on passion. Enthusiasm and expertise are your most important sales tools because most people enjoy working with folks who care, deeply, about doing something right. Don’t think about what’s possible, what’s rational, what is wise or what is practical. Think about what activities you enjoy day to day, minute to minute. Make another list of things you don’t like doing. You may hate accounting, but it’s a part of running a business. The necessary parts of a business that you don’t want to do must be undertaken by others. You have to know what they are so you can shop for help.

Start writing down business ideas. By the time you’ve completed the previous two operations, which will take days or weeks, you’ll have ideas noodling around in your head for things you might like to do that make money. You’ll have come up with ways you can be of service to others, and you’ll have some notions of people who might be willing to help you. You’ll be aware that some of your business ideas are things that won’t take much time and will make money. You’ll also have some larger ideas, requiring more of an investment and providing more of an income. By the time you’ve got twenty or thirty ideas on paper, you’ll have some you like better than others. Those are the ones you can begin to explore. Exactly what would it take to get started with those businesses? Can you find customers? Do they want what you have to sell them? I mention in passing that our School for Startup’s “Start Here!” classes are designed to help people who want to know how to vet business ideas before investing time or money into them.

The process may seem strangely loose and intuitive, given that business is always characterized as such a cut and dried thing. But the truth is that starting a business is about equally art and science. There’s no point starting a business you will loathe running. The best outcome from that kind of thing will be that you go out of business quickly so you can get on with something that you enjoy more that pays just as well or better.

As a very happy entrepreneur over fifty, I encourage my peers to join the entrepreneur revolution required to keep the UK wealthy and prosperous well into the next century. Innovation, invention, insight and good implementation can build a good business at any age.

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1. Founder2Be: A Matchmaking Service for Entrepreneurs
2. UK Entrepreneurs Talk About School for Startups
3. Practical Q&A With Doug Richard: Mentoring, Recruiting & Seeing Opportunities

Those who know my preference for investing in startups understand that I do so because startups are the best way to make little numbers turn into big numbers fast. In under a decade Google went from a few guys in a dorm room to the backbone of worldwide internet commerce. That is my kind of business.

The Challenge That Faces Innovators & Inventors

Because I invest in startups, I often work with those who imagine the details of a better world. Often their business ideas are about far more than making figures on some ledger spiral up. In fact, I would call the best of them visionaries, philanthropists and idealists.

They are all about clean water, safe kids, new ways to socialize and entertain, new solutions for transportation, energy and food production. I admire these people, and I enjoy working with them. I enjoy seeing the world through their eyes.

But when it comes to business, I must say that having an objective that is not based on simply increasing profit as quickly as possible often slows or stalls a business’s financial success.

People with a “plan to change the world” often get rather stubborn about how they want things to happen. They frequently want to make people like their product, as they envision it, as they produce and distribute it, and as they price it.

That is a somewhat take it or leave it mentality, and the market punishes it brutally.

I can be helpful to these professionals, when I am helpful to them, by finding good ways for them to listen to, communicate with, and respond to the market more effectively. Implementing a few simple strategies that streamline these important communication operations does a new business a world of good. With the right data coming in, innovators and inventors can often figure out how to achieve their basic humanitarian or technological objectives while making a tidy profit.

If You Want a Successful Business . . .

If you are just starting your business, or you have a business that is struggling, think hard about your objectives.

Personal objectives like “increase my profits”, “support my children” and ” pay my bills” are easy to reach. Non-personal objectives like “I want to help people find jobs” or “I want to help people care for their children” also work.

Objectives like “get rich quick from selling a super specialized widget that no one but me is smart enough to understand” is a non starter. “Become massively wealthy by making people buy this thing they repeatedly tell me they don’t want” also does not work well. The market does not like complex self-centric objectives.

Let’s look at Google again.

They had one simple objective. “Let’s make a database that lists all the websites on the internet.” All the other things they do now are things their customers asked them to do.

Simple objectives, simple strategies, simple success. That is what good startups are based on.

Are you starting a business? Do you have a business that’s struggling?

School for Startups delivers practical, pragmatic, instruction in how to launch and grow more successful enterprises. I hope you decide to attend one of our upcoming courses or online events.  We look forward to helping you succeed.

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What does your business do?

ThirdYearAbroad.com aims to inspire students to study languages at university and make the most of their year abroad. It’s such a fantastic and hugely valuable opportunity to speak a foreign language fluently, and yet it is very easy to be discouraged from going by the sheer amount of planning, organisation and self-sufficiency needed to make the year a success.

The year abroad is a complicated and often scary step which we try to make easier by providing students with ‘been there, done that’ case studies, city profiles, course reviews, language help, a discussion forum and advice for their worried parents. ThirdYearAbroad.com is a social networking platform where our users can share their worries, information, help and advice before, during and after their time away.

How did you decide to start it?

I studied Italian at university and spent a wonderful third year abroad in Florence, but I had endless difficulties in registering on my course, finding accommodation with local students and setting up a foreign bank account – especially as I didn’t know anyone else there to ask.

My home university hoped I would return completely fluent in fourth year, but they didn’t have the resources to help me until I was back, while my destination university grouped me en masse with all the other foreign students and left us to our own devices.

I didn’t know any students who had studied there and had no source of information to help me. I checked with friends and parents and discovered that this has been an ongoing problem over the years, so when I graduated I decided to set up the website that I needed while I was away.

What were your toughest challenges?

I’ve been really lucky and have had loads of help and startup advice from very generous people, but my business is solely based on the website so my most difficult and frustrating experience was being let down by my first developers after they’d completed 75% of the project. This meant I had to start again from scratch. I wasted a huge amount of time and money – crucial factors for a startup – but I learnt from my mistakes, treated the process as an expensive crash-course in web development and am very lucky that 3B Digital stepped in to save the day and have done such a fantastic job!

What sites do you recommend

• www.wexo.co.uk – I couldn’t have started up without the help of work experience students.
• www.ooh.com – I love learning new skills and this site offers every creative course worldwide I could possibly imagine, plus a few more!
• www.dailycandy.com – every day I receive one email with the details of something completely new, exciting and unique to do in London.
• www.springwise.com – the world’s most weird and wonderful new business ideas, all in one place.

Which entrepreneur do you admire most?

I worked for the founder of lastminute.com, Brent Hoberman, on his latest project mydeco.com, and was so impressed by the way he truly involves the entire team in decision-making and developing new ideas. If there are thirty creative brains in the room, why not use all of them every now and then, instead of always selecting a small team?! He was very inspiring.

Related posts:

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What does your business do?

Shopping Vouchers is an online retail lead generation business. We connect the retailer with the consumer using voucher codes, special offers and other sales enhancement techniques.

It’s great for the consumer because they get money off their purchase, and it’s great for the retailer because they attract new customers and increase revenue.

How did you decide to start it?

As individuals we’ve all been interested in business from an early age and using the Internet is a great way to start a business with very little upfront capital so it made perfect sense for us.

We noticed there was a gap in the market place and capitalised on the gap for a clean, easy to use money saving website where consumers come to save money and retailers can use to gain customers.

What were your toughest challenges?

The website relies quite heavily on search engine traffic and it took time and a lot of continuing effort to become established in the major search engines. We are receiving about 4,000 unique visitors a day at present and to get to this level was very hard, but we have an excellent team of developers always pushing us to the next level.

What advice do you offer to fellow entrepreneurs?

Cash is king. You should set out to be making money and be in profit from day one. To start an online business all you need is a computer and Internet connection so overheads are next to nothing. Having a good flow of cash from the start ensures projects run smoothly and can be done as well as possible without the need for major investment.

The main point for any business is just do it. If you have an idea then go for it. It’s hard starting you own business and it’s also high risk. But if you put your head down and work the rewards are worth it. A positive mental attitude definitely helps!

What sites do you recommend?

• Business Link is a very good resource for business in the UK.
• TechCrunch is very good for staying in the .com loop.

Which entrepreneurs do you admire most?

Probably Richard Branson, he’s got a great attitude to business and has lots of fun while he’s doing it. He doesn’t just stick to the safe option, he’ll go into any industry and innovate it.

On a personal note Ross Williams, our business partner who is a serial internet entrepreneur, has been a real inspiration and shown us the ropes.

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What does your business do?

Azam Marketing www.azam.net is a full-services online marketing and design agency which unleashes the potential of the internet to grow our clients’ businesses.

A pioneer in the digital arena, our specialists have 102 combined years of experience in affiliate, display, email and search marketing. We also carry out website design and development, online business consulting, and corporate training.

Over the last 13 years we have developed over 70 niche websites and our mailing lists have now grown to over 5.7 million opt-in subscribers in the UK. We utilise these and our other means to generate millions of pounds a month in sales for companies large and small.

How did you decide to start it?

I have always been in business in some way, shape or form since I was nine years old. When I was a kid, I would work in my father’s Cash & Carry in Yorkshire after school and on the weekends, and at different stages in my life I have had businesses doing copywriting, selling computer games offline, selling books online, and providing IT support.

Due to some unscrupulous people, I was flat broke in 1997. One day, when I couldn’t even afford chicken and chips for £1.99, I told myself I have to sort my life out.

I have been glued to computers since my teenage years, being a programmer in the 1980s, and, when I investigated what the internet had to offer and realised it’s potential, I started spending 100 hours a week on the PC to build my digital marketing and design business.

What were your toughest challenges?

One of the first challenges was developing an internet business when I couldn’t afford to get online! So I enrolled on a course at my local college and that gave me access to their computer centre. I would be the first one there at 9:30am each morning and the last one out at 9pm every night. It was a challenge trying to code websites when the teenagers around me would be swearing and fighting all the time and flicking paper at each other past my nose!

The hardest part in the early years was surviving when I was not making any money. I lived off Tesco baked beans for years! It took me six months to generate my first sale online, which I think was an Eastenders book, and I made 68p profit. And then, when I’d grown the business, the dot.com crash happened in which my clients and advertisers collapsed like nine pins. It was like a kick in the stomach and the business had to go back to square one. But, by the grace of God, I survived all those difficult times and, today, 13 years later we’re in a healthy position and growing faster than ever. We tripled in size last year.

What sites do you recommend?

• www.bbc.co.uk/news – keeps me updated on what’s happening in the UK and around the world
• www.affiliates4u.com – I’ve spent squillions of hours on this online marketing portal in the last decade
• www.notmoresocks.com – gives me ideas on what to buy as gifts, otherwise I end up getting everyone chocolates
• www.freecashback.co.uk – cashback and voucher code portal from Azam enables people to save money at 2000 UK retailers

Which entrepreneurs do you admire most?

I’ll mention one who is well known and another who is not.

• Bill Gates is a personal hero of mine, because he proves the geek can inherit the earth! He had the conviction to take a leave of absence from Harvard to create Microsoft, had the vision to see the money would be on the software rather than the hardware side, and developed a formidable global company. There are a lot of people who have achieved nothing in life who mock Bill Gates, but I have the highest of respect for somebody who works his way to the very top and then gives away billions of dollars to the needy.
• On a personal level, I have had the honour of working with Senthil Kumar, the MD of V A C Media, for the last four years. In a very short space of time he has built an internet company with 70 staff which is the leading provider of loyalty shopping portals in the world. His work ethic is inspirational and I can only think of four or five days in all the years I have know him when he has perhaps not worked at least 12 hours. But what means the most to me is that, despite all his success, he remains a thoroughly nice bloke.

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S4S NEW Website

Blogs, News, Nationwide Events, Live & On-Demand Video Content, Featured Entrepreneurs & Entrepreneur’s Networking Forum!

We are excited to welcome you to our smashing new website! If you hadn’t noticed we have been busy making important changes to our website, ensuring that we are constantly providing you with the most up-to-date information, articles, news and online resource that we can. All of us at S4S hope you enjoy the new features on the website – do stay tuned as there is much more to come in the not too distant future!

So, What’s NEW?

The S4S website is packed with brand new content and features, including:

• NEW: Online Entrepreneur Community
• NEW: Live & On-Demand Video Material – S4Stv
• Annual Events Calendar
• Doug Richard Blogs
• NEW: Featured Entrepreneurs
• BOOK Doug - Inspirational Speaker

But most importantly, we hope it gives you many ways to tell us just what else we can do to make S4S better. Our Forum, the Comment links on our blog pages, links to our email and mailing addresses . . .

We look forward to hearing from you often in the months and years to come.

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