Misadventures in Entrepreneuring

Gayle Mann, Lucy-Rose Walker

Description

The reality of entrepreneuring - and an honest, practical look at what it takes to survive and thrive along the way.

1.   
Powerful
stories from relatable role models that will help readers normalize and make
sense of their greatest frustrations and inspire them to go for what they
really want.

 2.   
Narrative
and anecdotes that provide cathartic “me too” moments for entrepreneurs from
Missouri to Mombasa and reassure them that they’re not alone.

3.   
Actionable
course corrections for the most common misadventures, enabling readers to get
themselves unstuck, even in what seems like the most impossible situations.

4.   
A
professional approach mixed with a good dose of humour to remind readers that
we’re all human and it’s ok to misadventure from time to time.

Never-ending gratitude

Why are we here?

Chapter 1: Misadventures in… entrepreneuring

Chapter 2: Misadventures in… using your compass

Chapter 3: Misadventures in… passion

Chapter 4: Misadventures in… sacrifice and guilt

Chapter 5: Misadventures in… finding balance

Chapter 6: Misadventures in… knowing who your champions are

Chapter 7: Misadventures in… getting stuck

Chapter 8: Misadventures in… overcoming obstacles

Chapter 9: Misadventures in… knowing when you’ve reached the end

What’s next?

Sujets

• Santé et bien-être
• Développement personnel
• développement personnel
• Entrepreneurship

Informations

• Publié par: Practical Inspiration Publishing
• Date de parution: 10 septembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781788601627
• Langue: English

Extrait

This is a must read: jam-packed with useful advice, grounded in actual, lived experience. Entrepreneurship is an adventure and involves misadventures along the way. This book helps you tackle misadventures head-on, develop practical solutions to any challenges that arise and learn how to embrace the uncertainty of not knowing what’s going to happen next. (That’s kind of the point of being an entrepreneur – to create a future that doesn’t exist yet.) I would recommend this to anyone keen to learn what it really takes to be a successful entrepreneur. It’s more attainable than you think.
Jenny Britton – Head of Executive Development, University of Edinburgh
Having read many business books I can say that this has been by far one of the most relatable entrepreneurial books that I’ve ever had the privilege of reading. It delightfully presents the realities of being an entrepreneur including all the ups, downs and everything in between whilst providing an upbeat and practical guide for navigating the often bumpy road of being an entrepreneur.
The book has left me with an even greater sense of optimism and excitement for the journey ahead as I seek to apply the powerful lessons from within this book.
Dan J. Gregory – Founder, Elevate Media
I read Misadventures in Entrepreneuring in a few days. It was refreshing to hear a new perspective among a ton of other books professing to show you “the right way” to run your own business. Packed with self-reflection exercises, tips on how to course-correct and excerpts from interviews with entrepreneurs we can actually relate to (rather than the 1% of entrepreneurs who can relate to Richard Branson and Mark Zuckerberg), I found the book a great tool for helping entrepreneurs make entrepreneuring work for them. Whether you are looking for a bit of inspiration when you are feeling a bit stuck, or for a way to achieve more balance in how you juggle the 5,000 priorities in your life, this book will have something useful for you to take away and try out.
Sonia Codreanu – PhD researcher, University College London
Misadventures in Entrepreneuring is a refreshingly honest and raw journey through the emotional ups and downs of setting up and running your own business, no matter what the size and ambition.
Dan Moore – Studio Output
I LOVED this book! It’s so refreshing to read an HONEST, BS and machismo-free first-hand account of what it’s actually like to set up, run and exit a business. Anyone who wants to know what it’s REALLY like running their own business should read this book.
Victoria Green – Victoria Green Ltd
Can I be totally honest? Truthfully I thought it was going to be very much like all the other entrepreneurial and start up books that have been written, but it’s not!!!! It’s about people, from different back grounds and in different careers (not all about how Deliveroo started on a shoe string and now a global multi-billion dollar company). It is about real people, real experiences, how they coped through difficult situations, their determination and drive and how you identify certain types of people which we can all relate too and how you genuinely care and want to help, rather than dictate on how we should run our businesses. It’s talking our language! I LOVE IT!
Zoe Whittaker – Zoe Whittaker Ltd

First published in Great Britain by Practical Inspiration Publishing, 2020
© Gayle Mann and Lucy-Rose Walker, 2020
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted.
ISBN 978-1-78860-163-4 (print)
978-1-78860-162-7 (epub)
978-1-78860-161-0 (mobi)
All rights reserved. This book, or any portion thereof, may not be reproduced without the express written permission of the authors.
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Never-ending gratitude
Why are we here?
Why Misadventures in Entrepreneuring is the antidote to most business books you might have picked up before and why it’s for you.
Chapter 1: Misadventures in… entrepreneuring
Trying to follow someone else’s road map and getting nowhere, and why it’s OK to feel like you’re winging it.
Chapter 2: Misadventures in… using your compass
So, you’re doing it your way – but who actually are you ?
Chapter 3: Misadventures in… passion
A cautionary tale about passion; is it good and bad, and can you ever have too much of it?
Chapter 4: Misadventures in… sacrifice and guilt
Are you searching for work/life balance or are you actually desperately seeking a world where you feel less guilty about how you spend your time?
Chapter 5: Misadventures in… finding balance
What happens when you’re torn between something you love, and something else you love?
Chapter 6: Misadventures in… knowing who your champions are
How to choose the people that will lift you up and how to spot the ones that won’t.
Chapter 7: Misadventures in… getting stuck
Recognizing when you are successfully jeopardizing your own progress by allowing unexpected changes to stop you in your tracks.
Chapter 8: Misadventures in… overcoming obstacles
DOMS, mental trips to the gym and other ways to get yourself unstuck quicker and dance jubilantly round obstacles.
Chapter 9: Misadventures in… knowing when you’ve reached the end
What about life after this chapter of entrepreneuring? Who tells you when to move on or how it will feel? And what on earth happens next?
What’s next?
Where we’re up to now and how we can still help!
NEVER-ENDING GRATITUDE
T o the entrepreneurs who wrote this story with us – Paul Adams, Dan J. Astin-Gregory, Mandy Bailey, Emma Baylin, Mel Bound, Gary Butterfield, Antonis Chatzis, Lex Deak, Gillian Dick, Nick Elston, Chris Goodfellow, Victoria Green, Kerry Harrison, Roz Hutchings, Luke Johnson, Matt Kandela, Chris Lamontagne, Jim Law, John Loveday, Julie McGann, Gary Maitles, Lynn Mann, Daniel Marcos, Dan Moore, Scott Newby, Emily Newstead, Yekemi Otaru, Kate Percy, Stephanie Robinson, Chris Rooney, Mike Rucker Ph.D., Leah Steele, Diane Teo, Paul Thomas, Ben Treleaven, Lauren Valler, Anna Ward, Lynn White – you were brave enough to speak out so that others could benefit.
To the courageous entrepreneurs that we have been through thick and thin with and who are etched on our hearts and will always be at the heart of everything we do.
To our families who have always supported us no matter what – Linda, Rob, Al, Jordan, Jim, Hannah, Laura, Elspeth, Mike, Ruari, Moira, Barbara, Marina, David, aunties, uncles, cousins, great aunties and uncles and a whole bunch of those second mums, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters and aunties and uncles that belong to other people but you just adopted us as your own.
To our friends who think we’re a bit mad but love what we do and the joy it brings us even if they don’t know what the f**k it actually is. We’ve laughed and cried with you and we could not do this without the catharsis that only friends can bring. You know who you all are.
To the many coaches, mentors and professionals who have guided and championed us throughout this whole adventure. So many but a few who were particularly special to us – Ken Barclay, Martin Darroch, Jo Grant, Alan McColm, Mark McFall, Brian McGuire, Danielle McLeod, the team at NatWest, Ram Ramakrishnan, Craig Reid, David Reynolds, Alison Rose, Paula Skinner, Laura Sutherland.
To the Entrepreneurial Spark team past and present – you are the most incredible bunch of Go Do’ers with whom we had the privilege to work alongside. In particular, Jeremy Ambrose, Mike Stephens, Joe Trodden, Ria Tucker and Fay Watkin, still walking the walk every day.
To the team at Practical Inspiration Publishing and especially Alison Jones. And to those that helped us actually commit words to paper – Ginny Carter for always encouraging us to be ourselves and Karen McArdle for whom I (Gayle) will always be grateful for telling me my writing was self-indulgent.
And finally, to Mika and Belle for your unconditional four-legged devotion…
We are grateful to every one of you.
WHY ARE WE HERE?
H ere’s the good news. Our first promise to you is that this isn’t going to be one of those, we started small, we grew huge, we exited and now we’re penning our memoirs about all the things we did right after the event to inspire you to do the same , type of books. If that’s what you are looking for, then there are plenty more out there to choose from. In fact, this book is quite the opposite.
Misadventures in Entrepreneuring is designed to be the antidote to most business books you might have picked up before. This is not a glamorized or romanticized version of the truth about entrepreneuring; it’s an identifiable collection of stories told by entirely ordinary seeming, but highly relatable people and how they do amazing things. These aren’t aspirational stories being told from our millionaire mansions or our private islands. Not yet anyway. This aspirational story is coming to you from a spare bedroom home office on the banks of a canal, in Glasgow, and you don’t get much more optimistic than that.
What’s compelled us to be so honest about our experience, and as it turns out, the experience of thousands of other entrepreneurs we’ve met, is that for many reasons most entrepreneurs are afraid to fully open up about what it’s like to be an entrepreneur. And we don’t mean how to run a business, but the truth about how it feels to walk a day in your shoes and what you’ll unexpectedly discover along the way. Truth – we’ve unexpectedly learned more in the last eight years than either of us did in the years before being part of our start-up. Like, a shedload more. And not just about business: mostly about ourselves, being entrepreneurs and being human.
No one te