Charlie Mullins: Don't give up, entrepreneurs!
If you're feeling battered and bruised by the recession and exhausted by economic and political turmoil, take heart. Charlie Mullins has been there – and come out stronger for it.
Today's struggles
could be the what spurs you to succeed
Last month, we had the politics of the Budget; this month, business needs to rise to the challenge of rescuing the country from financial ruin by going for growth. Whatever the politicians say or do, it is only businesses that can provide the resources; pennies from heaven need to be earned here on earth.
The whole sorry economic state of the nation has got me thinking a lot lately and the more I hear people going on about how bad things are, the more it reminds me of exactly what the place was like when I started working for myself as a self-employed plumber, even before I set up Pimlico Plumbers.
It was the early seventies and businesses were only allowed to operate for three days a week. Thanks to the coal miners going on strike, power cuts were a fact of life, sugar was rationed, and even loo paper was in short supply! By 1976 we were so deep in the proverbial that we were begging the IMF to bail us out.
My point here is simple: I wasn't the only businessman to get through those rough times, in fact a whole generation of today's most successful entrepreneurs, Sugar, Dyson, Green and Rose (to name but a few) have their beginnings firmly rooted in the seventies.
So perhaps what we're experiencing in the economy now is less of a barrier to business success and more spur to the ingenuity and resourcefulness of a new generation of entrepreneurs.
In twenty or thirty years’ time it will be something they look back on as the test of their mettle that gave them the confidence to really succeed.
Picture: source