Cin Cin - What I took away from the Brighton Summit '15

As a first time entrepreneur, your head is constantly filled with self-doubt.  Is my idea any good?  Will it work?  Do I have the brains and brawn to deliver it?!  

 

This is particularly the case if, like me, you are planning to leave the warm and safe climes of a career in law to literally jump out of the pan and into the fire of being a restaurateur! 

 

So every now and then, you need a little inspiration, a little communal encouragement from like-minded souls, a little entrepreneurial hug!  It was this I went looking for at the Brighton Chamber Summit last week and thankfully, I left feeling refreshed, energised and ready to take on the food and drink world.

 

The Summit itself is a full day of sessions made up of presentations, panel discussions and interactive exercises to get the entrepreneurial brain going.  Kicking off with a session on Do What You Love, Love What You Do, Nikki Gatenby of Propellernet reminded us of the importance of dreams and aligning your business with what you love so it can deliver those dreams.  It might sound a little woolly but the point I took away was that I started this business to try to make a career out of something I love – food – but it’s easy to forget that when your head is buried in the day to day running of it.  

 

 

The most inspiring session for me was a panel discussion on Doing What’s Important To You lead by Ruth Anslow of social enterprise supermarket HiSbe, Gary Peters of BrightonandHoveJobs.com who takes a personal interest in getting young people into paid work, and Lee Evans of environmentally focused Organic Roofs.  Each of these speakers told of their personal journey of leaving a secure, well paid job that everybody expected was the job they ‘should do’ to forging a path towards the career that had been niggling away and calling them in their heart all along.  

 

There was no doubting their passion for choosing to do what was important to them but my question was, as an entrepreneur, how do you transfer that passion to the people you need to bring in to grow your idea into a viable business and infuse them with it to help push the business forward? The answers – “focus on the bits of the business you really enjoy and do those really well, others will follow” (Ruth), “hire the person, teach the skills” (Gary) and “keep an eye on your personal path as the basis for why you started the business in the first place” (Lee).  

 

It was the perfect entrepreneurial hug, and dare I say it, pat on the bum, I really needed.  Big thanks to the Chamber team and all the speakers.

 

By David Toscano, Cin Cin; Serving Prosecco and Italian antipasti at pop-ups, parties, events and weddings across the UK.