Andrew Bernard (29 July 2015)

Andrew Bernard (known as Bernie) gave an excellent and vivid talk on “The Perils of Being Accidental Entrepreneur”.  At first, he talked about his school life which included three things: football, fashion and fighting. He said he wasted a lot of time, got an E and U at A-level, did some uninteresting jobs, eventually went to university, and realised that he had to make a change in his life when he got cured from cancer.  That was when he started Innovation Enterprise, which has helped tens of thousands of young people to realise their potential earlier than he did.

One of his themes was ABCD: Attitude, Belief, Confidence and Decisions. He made a change based on them and accidentally turned into an entrepreneur. I like the words he introduced in Attitude: “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% what you do about it”. It’s true that different reactions to things can lead you to a quite different life. It’s easy to spend too much time thinking about things and to be weaker and slower when making decisions.

Bernie also introduced his own version of PERILS for people running a business.  They are Passion, Enterprise, Responsibility, Innovation, Learning and Start. What I need a lot is Start!

Based on a report by Eric Lee