The Hindu Business Line : Anyone can do anything

Sahar Hashemi looked rather small-built and almost fragile as she stood behind the podium on the grand stage of the World Trade Centre convention centre in Dubai a couple of weeks ago. She was there to address a 2,000-strong audience of marketers, advertising and media professionals at the World Congress of the International Advertising Association (IAA).

Her topic was `Anyone can do it.'

Nothing appeals more to an audience than a compelling story told well. Sahar had a compelling story to tell, and she told it well.

In short, it was the story of a young girl in the UK who studied to be a lawyer and became one. Then, one day, after a trip to the US, she decided that the practice of law was not doing anything for her. She had seen a lovely coffee bar in the US and she sat down with her brother who was a banker and thought about opening a nice coffee bar in London. So the brother and sister left their respective professions and decided to answer the primal call of entrepreneurship.

The key point to note was that Sahar had no experience in opening or running a coffee bar. For that matter, she had no experience in starting and running anything. Sahar says that is precisely what is needed. A clueless mind that is thirsting for something new.

The other significant point to bear in mind was that she was thinking of opening a coffee bar in the UK, a country of tea drinkers. Out of 40 bankers she approached, only 20 gave them an appointment. Nineteen took the logical route. They spoke to her about her lack of experience, the lack of research or market surveys, the apparent lack of demand for coffee drinking and all the other hurdles which would make a rational banker see a big bad debt ahead of him, rather than a great entrepreneur.

The twentieth banker backed her. Coffee Republic was born. In a couple of years, a successful youthful, trendy chain of over a 100 coffee bars was functioning profitably. The company had even been listed. Then Sahar Hashemi sold out when the company was valued at around £50 million. She ended by saying that she flew to the US soon after the sale and on arriving at her destination, picked up a copy of The Financial Times, read the headlines about the sale of Coffee Republic and broke down crying and sobbing almost hysterically at the airport.

One could see a few misty eyes amongst the audience.

So what is the moral of the story, according to Sahar?

It is a very simple and very true set of learnings that are replicated a hundred times over. Yet, as they say, very often the best solutions to problems are the simplest ones. And yet again, we tend to overlook them, forget them or just ignore them.

I believe the story has a lot to teach us. Firstly, we must open our eyes and realise that there is a small and unique breed of people called entrepreneurs. A small tribe that is very different from most of the people we meet. They are not brighter, better qualified or more erudite that anyone else we know. Yet they are unique and must be respected for what they set out to do, and achieve.

We must learn not to judge them by the standards we set for the herd. That is the mistake that bankers make. Not that one can blame them. They think in a manner diametrically opposite to how the entrepreneur thinks. That is why bankers have generally scoffed at the Dhirubhai Ambanis and Narayana Murthys and Richard Bransons and Sahar Hashemis of our world. Bankers need lots of paper work and feasibility studies and market surveys and an optimal market environment to finance a project. And they still manage to ring up bad debts.

Marketers tend to behave like bankers very often. They want reams of research data and opinions from management consultants and trend analysts and endorsements from team members and bosses and juniors before they take decisions. They scoff at gut-feel and hunches. They are responsible for the fortunes of large companies and owe it to their stakeholders to consider all aspects before spending money. One could almost excuse them.

The flip side is they are so worried about cutting costs they never think of investing in things like an image or in building a brand. They are so stuck on consumer insights and what they could learn about what the consumer thinks she wants, they never ever create something new for the consumer.

If the consumer knew exactly what she wanted, life would be a very simple, straightforward and dull place. The point is, market research can at best point towards existing trends. Who then breaks through to new frontiers?

Did Jamshedjee Naserwanjee Tata conduct a market survey and decide the set of values he would enshrine in the Tata group? Did JRD Tata visit a trend analyst before starting an airline in India? Do you actually think the Walkman came out of market research? Which set of customers sat down at a focussed group discussion and told Sabeer Bhatia they wanted Hotmail? Did the customer cry out for the iPod? As Henry Ford often said after he put the Model-T on the roads, if he had gone by what the customer wanted, he would have had to give them a faster horse!

The point is that entrepreneurs anticipate customer demand. They have that unique gift to `un-learn' all they have been taught and create something truly new. And the world is waiting to duplicate and replicate it and put it into a set of academic learnings as a case study in retrospect. Remember, the most authoritative business reviews only catalogue success stories. They cannot script them.

Am I dumbing down research? Certainly not. I am only pleading with people to realise what entrepreneurs can contribute and try and identify them early in the day.

The advertising industry is at a stage where almost all the entrepreneurs who made this industry what is was, have opted out of the industry. They leave behind them an army of foot soldiers who see themselves as Generals. When these foot soldiers with delusions of grandeur interact with the marketing foot soldiers who have been produced off an assembly line you write out the prescription for the kind of mediocrity that abounds under the garb of conservatism.

And then one person with the characteristics of an entrepreneur rises. He is not afraid of heights, because he does not measure the depth of the fall. He has his sights fixed on the height of the skies above. And he flies.

If the industry cannot sprout wings, let it at least aspire to be the wind beneath them.

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