The entrepreneurial mind

For me, being an entrepreneur brings together my great loves: meeting new people, generating ideas and facilitating growth

I have been involved in many ventures and my passion for new projects started while I was still at university. As a child, I never had a lemonade stand outside my house or any very early age money making schemes but I always knew I wanted to be successful.

I love making new connections, getting to know people, and learning what drives them. I’ve worked with some really talented people to get their ideas off the ground and taken a shareholding in return for joining the team part-time ­ that’s relatively unusual but an effective way of working with dynamic people to achieve great results.

I like helping people find their strengths and then putting them together with the right people to realise their ambitions. I’m passionate about new age media and the internet’s ability to bring like-minded people together and I think we’re only just discovering how effective this will be for business in the future. Making those connections is one of the key factors that drives me forward.

The official definition of an entrepreneur is a person who organises, operates, and assumes the risks for a business venture. When I or someone I meet, has a big idea that really inspires me, what really drives me is the desire to make it happen. To turn an idea into reality.

In my view, everyone has strengths, but not everyone is aware of their potential. I try to surround myself with positive, supportive people who I can bounce ideas off. When I get involved in a business venture, my role is generally as facilitator rather than leader. Being a facilitator allows me to bring out the best in people rather than dictate their definite roles and tasks.

When I’m networking I see the potential connections between everyone I come across and I help make these connections happen. I think it is important to remember to help other people along the way as well. I do believe that what goes around comes around and that it’s important to not let other people down.

I think the best way to focus a business idea is to draw it all out on a piece of blank paper. This helps to add clarity to your idea and you can add to it as your business vision grows. If you can, find someone you think has done something similar and ask to pick their brains. Generally people are proud of their achievements and like to share their knowledge. I also think it is vital to be able to see the difference between someone’s general opinion and their view based on experience. The experience and advice a mentor can give you is incredibly valuable as they have been there and done that and come out the other end.

It is important for me to remain balanced with work and life outside of work. In a dotcom era it seems many live and breathe their work which is often to the detriment of the project. I try to get a proper night’s sleep and keep fit otherwise my energy and creativity often suffers. In saying that, I’m not afraid to play with several ideas at once and I’ve found moving them all along simultaneously is beneficial as they seem to fuel each other.

My latest venture, IdeaVolcano.com, combines my passion for generating with ideas with this desire to be a facilitator for new exciting business ideas. The non-profit making site has been designed to provide a home for spare business ideas that can be developed by anyone that finds them interesting.

This encompasses my entrepreneurial mindset and love of unifying people with the same dream. It’s a place where entrepreneurs with real business-building spirit searching for that once in a lifetime idea, can get together with creative types who have so many killer ideas they don’t know what to do with them.

They can then go on to achieve something amazing. For me that’s what being an entrepreneur is all about.

Oli Barrett is the founder of the national ‘Make Your Mark with a Tenner’ campaign and director of Connected Capital, an innovation company