Entrepreneur Insights
Welcome to Mark Wyn who is not Marc Winn only a very successful businessman in his own right but one of the Rockstar Mentors for the Rockstar Group. So I understand you’ve came from direct marketing, catalog marketing background… Yes, my background is obviously in the direct marketing environment. But still, all I’m really doing is applying the same principles, to test and learn processes that come from marketing to help new business design. That’s essentially all lean startup. Is that what you’re bringing in for the mentored clients? Is that what they’re coming to you for? I’m lucky because I’ve been through several phases of business and the reason why I do what I do now is I lived in an environment where I saw the downside of success. What I’m doing now is to help people build businesses in a way that actually suits them so they have businesses they enjoy and organize things around the individual. But yes, ultimately, the reason why I mentor is because I get all these fun bits that I used to enjoy about business and none of the bad bits that I didn’t. And that’s what leads you to success… Finding the right business idea for you Can you give me an example of that? You can get a brilliant idea but to be honest, ideas these days are pretty worthless. It’s the ability to execute the idea, that’s where the value is. From what I see, they currently need more than three companies to survive for one to survive the three year mark. I think the big reason for that is the entrepreneurs are wrong for the idea. Can you give me an example of that, what you’ve seen? They see a really great idea but the danger is they can get into the wrong type of business, like if you’re bad at managing staff or you got into the service business or something like that, no matter how good the idea is, you’re kind of setting yourself up to fail by appraising in the area where it doesn’t suit you. This applies to anyone and everyone.
If you’re trying to run a business from a structure point of view led by what’s best for the business in the short term, it’s not necessarily the way to get you out of bed for 10 years. So, I think there’s a huge disconnect between how business is set up and what entrepreneurs want out of businesses What do you tend to see in your coaching and in your broader experience, the kind of fundamental mistakes that you see startup entrepreneurs making? A fundamental mistake I see is that, there aren’t many entrepreneurs in this world that actually know why they’re opening a business, what it’s for. The 20-year shortcut is to really understand what life is going to be like after the business set up. So, it’s not the case for you that the entrepreneur starts with the idea but the entrepreneur in fact should start with themselves and what they want to get from the business in a much more defined way.How do you think this economics situation can affect entrepreneurs? I think that it’s affecting dozens of entrepreneurs now, it’s a really effective process and it’s a great way of motivate people and get people out when times are tough. What separates people in some ways from success and failure is the ability to keep going, keep learning and keep getting up. Are you still actively involved with any businesses that you’re running or you’re solely focused on your mentoring now? Actually for the time being, my strength isn’t executing. My strength is helping other people get the best out of themselves. It’s really the reason why I’ve gone down the mentoring road, I found out I’m more interested in the entrepreneur and running their business. I enjoy it more now that I don’t actually feel like I have to build a business. I’m just projecting a philosophy out there and that in itself is creating an industry. How was the process from the sale of the company to then starting up a new company, what was that like in terms of going from this big business right back down to basics of what is in effect a small business. What was that like? I think really they should put entrepreneurs, when they sell their companies, in some kind of clinic because you go from having a pretty large structured environment with lots to do, to having nothing to do. That particular process is actually a learning curve and quite a lot of entrepreneurs get stuck during that particular process. They end up actually not realizing why they were successful in the first place and I certainly made the same mistake. This magazine goes out to 12,000 of your perfect prospects, Marc Mark. They’re entrepreneurs, venture capitalist, wannabe entrepreneurs, that sort of thing. So, where can people find you online? Google me, Mark Marc Winn Winn. Who is your perfect person to coach? Who is your favorite type of person to coach? I like people with massive dreams and missions. So, people with seemingly impossible goals that are not really arrogant but you know they want to change the world in some way. So, big mission entrepreneurs are kind of the way. I can work with 10 people and have an impact on a billion? Why not?
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