GCSE Business: Jo Malone - Thinking like an entrepreneur

Saimon:

I'm Saimon, I’m 15 years old and I am from East London.

Ihfaz:

I'm Ihfaz, I’m 17 and I'm also from East London.

We're here to meet someone who turned her creative gift into a global business.

Jo:

I'm Jo Malone. I'm an entrepreneur and the creative founder of two global fragrance brands.

So you probably already know an entrepreneur somewhere in your life.

But I'm going to teach you how to think like an entrepreneur.

Being an entrepreneur is not just about business. It gives you the ability to think differently and think creatively.

And that can be absolutely life changing.

Ihfaz:

Jo, how do I think like an entrepreneur?

Jo:

Well, I believe you're born an entrepreneur. You're born to create. And as we get older, we kind of lose touch,but we sometimes have to re learn it.

I love things that are really simple. I like things that come down to three steps, five steps and I visualise this toolbox to teach other people how to think like an entrepreneur.

You know, instead of hammers and saws and screwdrivers, it's things that you can use in your everyday life.

And within this toolbox, I have five P’s. So you need to create a product. And whether that's a physical productor a service or part of a business, but it's the product in which you're going to buildyour business and your brand.

What is the the place you're going to sell it? Where is it going to be sold? Is it online?

Is it a physical retail product? You're then looking at people. Who are the people that are going to help youbuild this?

So how do you build your team? How do you find great people?

You need to figure out: what is the price of this product?

How much does it cost to make? Because what it costs you to make, not just physically, but all your team and the price that you sell it at, the bit in between, of course, is called profit, which is why mathematics is so important.

Because without that piece there is no business, it just becomes a hobby.

And once you've got to that point, you've then looking at where do we promote it?

How do we tell the story? How do I get the story told a thousand times?

And so those five P’s, if you learn those five P’s, you are equipped to create something,create your own business.

I think it's really important that we now see: what is that entrepreneurialtool box Jo? Show me.

So this is the tapas bar, but normally in a tapas, you'd be eating.

The only thing you're going to do here don't eat anything.

You only smell.

It's all about the experience of smell and how we take experience and make it really different.

What I'm doing is I'm putting all the products in situ in the place that you would use them.

But I've made you think about the product in a different way and that when we go out in businessand we try and build, that is often what we have to do.

We take a product that's already there.

But how do I make the story different?

How do I make the consumer see the product differently?

Ihfaz:

So with reference to the toolbox, how does this relate to the five P’s?

Jo:

So the five P's are products. What we're seeing the physical bits of the tapas.

As for pricing, how much does it cost?

This cost pennies, by the way, and converts

94% of the time into a sale. So we know that it's a means of promoting and marketing and telling our story,but they're all things that you don't have to be a business person to learn.

Saimon:

Okay, but how will this toolbox help me?

Jo:

Well, Saimon, I think not only for business, but actually for life.

I think if you learn some of these disciplines and put them into your life, it will help you build a product.

Or maybe a friend of yours will say, you know what, Saimon, could you come and just help me?

I'm starting a brand, I don't know, X, Y and Z.

If you've got that toolbox mentally in you, you can go through those disciplines and just take them off and by the end of it, you would have had a really interesting conversation with someone and maybe, maybe you might have created yourself your own job.

So really what I'm saying is it's a way of thinking that can really equip you. It's almost like a language. Having that entrepreneurial toolbox will keep your mind thinking in an entrepreneurial way.

Ihfaz:

Today I learnt about the five P’s. One of the ones I found interesting was promotion, and we saw this by Jo presenting us with a bar experience.

Saimon:

Today I learnt how to be more creative as a business person.