James Caan: humble origins.

Being a small business owner is all about the passion and conviction to execute the business strategy and bring an idea to life, says JAMES CAAN. He has launched the James Caan Entrepreneurs’ Business Academy to pass on hard-won experience and practical guidance to entrepreneurs.

Dragons’ Den star James Caan is moving into the coaching and mentoring sector with the launch of his own business academy, specialising in entrepreneurialism The academy kicks off with a one-day introductory seminar ‘Total Business Mastery’ on Saturday 20 March 2010 at the Holiday Inn, Kensington Forum.

Caan is aiming his new venture for emerging entrepreneurs and existing owners of small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), interested in ‘modelling the very best’. Called the James Caan Entrepreneurs’ Business Academy, its purpose is to provide knowledge and pass on hard-won experience and practical guidance to entrepreneurs.

Make or break

Caan says he realises that 2010 will be a year of huge volatility, a year that will make or break some SMEs.

He tells ModernSelling.com: ‘You have to have the conviction and belief in what you are doing in order to be successful, and the business acumen to ensure you stay successful.’

Citing a recent Dunn & Bradstreet survey which discovered that 90% of SMEs fail because of business owners’ lack of all-round knowledge, Caan said: ‘The problem with being the boss is you have no-one guiding you.’
He adds: ‘Asking ‘businessman friends’ seems like defeat and you don’t want to admit you’re a novice. But everyone needs a helping hand. You may have heard the phrase “Businesses don’t fail, people do”.’

He continues: ‘5% of being an entrepreneur is about the idea and mindset, the rest is about taking action and accountability.’

Necessary tools

Caan’s EBA has been set up to equip business owners and the ‘enlightened entrepreneur’ with the necessary tools to succeed and be ahead of the competition. The course ensures that entrepreneurs’ capitalise on all that ‘sweat equity’ and ‘sunk cost’ by developing either a plan to increase then sell their business or take their business to a much higher level.

The James Caan Entrepreneurs’ Business Academy will allow business owners and entrepreneurs to:

• connect with James Caan and his millionaire team of entrepreneurs, mentors and business owners;.
• decide what their purpose and vision is for 2010 and for the next 3, 5, 7, 10 years;
• rediscover their business and passion for it;
• discover the secrets to maximise revenue, increasing profit and generating more ready cash;
• come up with the tools to launch another entrepreneurial venture or launch successful add-ons, spin-offs and sidebars that could blossom into major enterprises in their own right;
• discover how to get more done in less time, by continuous focused action and still have a lot of time for your family, friends and other passions;
• learn how to innovate and sustain business growth;
• maximise customer service impact and use it as a form of ‘mutual sales activity;
• hire the key staff that will add massive value to a business; and
• manage a team, even if you have no experience of doing so.

Private equity

Best-known for his role sitting on the panel of dragons in the popular BBC business entrepreneurs show, Caan is the founder and chief executive officer of UK-based private equity company Hamilton Bradshaw. His background is in the people business, having founded multinational recruitment company Alexander Mann and co-founded head-hunters Humana International.

EBA mentor Bev James with James Caan.

Today, Caan lives in London with his wife, Aisha Caan and two daughters Hanah and Jemma-Lia, the epitome of the successful entrepreneur turned philanthropist. Aside from his business interests and television appearances, he is a co-chair of the Ethnic Minority Task Force and also became chairman of The Big Issue magazine last December. He hopes to inject the magazine with some entrepreneurial expertise, particularly with a view to bringing it into the digital age and launching it in Pakistan.

Caan operates his own charity, the James Caan Foundation, which lends aid to the needy in the UK and Pakistan. His current and past schemes have focussed on helping disadvantaged children obtain a quality education.

From relatively humble origins, Caan was born into a household of three brothers and three sisters in Lahore, Pakistan. His father was Abdul Rashid Khan, a leather worker, who brought the family to the East End of London in 1962, when Caan was two. The family settled in a home just off Brick Lane, and Abdul started a business making leather jackets.

No qualifications

In his youth, Caan worked for his father, but he left school without qualifications at the age of 16, and left home shortly afterwards to pursue his ambitions of founding a business. He says his father took a while to offer his full support.

‘My father never understood why I didn’t join the family business. When I opened the 100th global office of my company he said it maybe was the right thing for me to do,’ he declares.

First job

Caan got his first job in the recruitment industry at the age of 18, when he joined Holborn-based Premier Personnel as a trainee interviewer. Within the year he moved to the larger City Centre Staff Bureau as a branch manager, before being headhunted by Alfred Marks, where he became manager of their Oxford Street branch. Finally, Caan settled down in the recruitment department of Reid Trevena, an incentive-driven financial services company.

In 1985, after several years investing in his wife’s chain of boutiques, Caan decided to found his own recruitment company, Alexander Mann. In 1992, he appointed Jonathan Wright to run the business and stepped back to develop other business interests. In 1999, he sold a minority stake in Alexander Mann Group for £25m. The business was then valued at £60m by Advent International. In 2002, he sold his majority stake for an unknown amount. At the time Alexander Mann was turning over £130m a year and operating across Australia, Europe, and Asia.

The big time

In 1993, Caan co-founded executive headhunting firm Humana International with Doug Bugie, eventually growing the business to over 147 offices in 30 countries, and launched the trade magazine Recruitment International, with David Head. In 1996, he set up business process outsourcing company Alexander Mann Solutions with Rosaleen Blair. Caan sold Humana International to CDI International in 1999, his stake in Recruitment International to co-founder and editor David Head in 2000, and Alexander Mann Solutions in 2002.

Study

Caan himself is a great advocate of the benefit of others’ experience. At 40, he took a year out to study for the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School. So it seems, even the best need extra help sometimes. In July 2009, Caan was awarded an honorary doctorate (in Business Administration) from Leeds Metropolitan University and a further honorary degree from the University of East London last November.
 
‘The key ingredient in my success is my vision of investing in people,’ he says. ‘I am very proud that I have created several millionaires. In Dragons’ Den, the lesson I have learnt is that it is not always about an idea. Sometimes just as important is that the person you are backing has got the passion and conviction to execute their business strategy and bring an idea to life.’

Mentors

Returning to his latest project, Caan explains that EBA mentors will allow entrepreneurs and business owners to capitalise on their knowledge gains and learn from their mistakes so they can avoid them when growing their own business. They will provide business coaching, on-going guidance and mentoring that is way beyond the level of consultancy most business owners have come to expect.

On the subject of being a successful entrepreneur, he stresses that to be successful one must:

• be able to have the idea;
• recognise the right opportunity;
• take appropriate action;
• ensure follow through; and
• drive the project to completion.

If any of these pieces are missing then the picture is not complete and success may always be just out of reach. Caan’s mentors help to bring all the pieces together and create the right mindset.

‘Every course draws on real-life learnings from my experiences and lessons I learnt along the way,” Caan adds. ‘I wish I had had the opportunity to learn from others who had already made the mistakes I was about to make. I have no doubt it would have helped me achieve my success far sooner.’

The EBA ‘Total Business Mastery’ One-Day Launch Seminar is on Saturday 20 March 2010 at The Holiday Inn Kensington Forum. Call 0208 4399 493 (quoting ModernSelling.com) for more information. If an application is successful, entrepreneurs and business owners can network with other committed, like-minded and aspirational people in a private and supportive environment, guided by Caan and his team of ‘millionaire mentors’.

Meet the ‘millionaire mentors’

Bev James – The entrepreneur behind the Coaching Academy with 20 years’ experience transforming businesses in diverse sectors including coaching, training, recruitment and health & fitness. James is founder and managing director of The James Caan Entrepreneurs Business Academy and is also the MD of The Coaching Academy, the world’s largest coaching organisation, a multi-million pound business. She is a European Master Trainer for DISC personality profiling/strengths based assessment with vast experience in the people-element of business, recruiting high-performing teams, talent management and talent retention, particularly in challenging environments. Bev has coached many high-profile entrepreneurs to the success they enjoy today and has a thorough understanding of the mindset and issues affecting entrepreneurs and business owners.

Steve Clarke specialises in grassroots sales-and-marketing strategies: not a theorist or a guru, but a doer. He left school at 16 with no qualifications. At 18 he became engrossed in the power of personal development and goal setting. At 19 and determined to succeed, he found his niche in sales and shortly after was invited to become a director of his first company. Since then he has owned and operated highly successful businesses in the UK and USA, taking them from start up to stock market flotation.

The last UK business he helped grow from scratch to £30 million in revenues in just eight years, becoming one of the ‘Times Top 100’ fastest-growing and profitable SMEs in the country. In 2005 the company was sold and Steve ‘retired’ very rich at the age of 45.

Whilst ‘retirement’ at 45 was a goal Steve set in 2000, it wasn’t quite what he reckoned for and within months, he was getting the itch to get back into business again. So Steve quickly began working with entrepreneurs who wanted to achieve growth and success through improved sales and marketing. Clarke is also a business columnist and author of How To Thrive Not Just Survive, in which he shares his simple formula for business success. He has lectured at universities, and is often engaged as a keynote motivational speaker and is a mentor to The Princes Trust.

Emma Wimhurst – Wimhurst is a motivational speaker, author and business turnaround specialist. She is a successful entrepreneur – having founded Diva Cosmetics, broadcaster and regular media commentator. Following a ten-year career at Revlon, Wimhurst seized the opportunity to pursue her entrepreneurial future, after she spotted a gap in the market for colour cosmetics at the height of The Spice Girls fame in the late 1990s. The business rapidly became the leading supplier of own-label colour cosmetics to the majority of high-street chains including New Look, Monsoon, Accessorize, River Island, and George at Asda. She become a self-made millionaire as a result of seeing an opportunity and going for it.

Paul Avins is a trail-blazing millionaire Master Coach trainer who has generated in excess of £100 million-worth of new sales and profits for the businesses he coaches. He has also started, developed and sold a number of his own companies. He continues to produce major profit-making strategies through some of the toughest economic conditions in living memory. Avins has been building companies, businesses and teams for over 18 years across all aspects of their marketing, presentation skills, coaching and sales.

Jamie Constable qualified as an accountant with Touche Ross in 1988 and quickly realised the infinite opportunities within the distressed funding market and left to act as a consultant. Cutting his teeth in the world of turnarounds in the recession of the late eighties and early nineties, Jamie acted on behalf of management, restructuring and re-financing ailing businesses.

He kept working as a turnaround consultant, whilst building a strong reputation for success through often complex restructuring deals.

When he sensed the economy was recovering in the early 1990s, Jamie began building his own capital base. He invested in property, continued to buy and sell businesses. At this time Jamie also established an accountancy practice that today has over 1,000 clients, employs 38 top-level experts and is highly respected in the industry, winning several prestigious awards. In 2004, realising the market was changing again; Jamie formed RCapital with business partner Peter Ward. Their express mission is to be one of the few companies that truly focuses on and understands the turnaround and distressed business market.

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