I am never sure whether I qualify as an entrepreneur as I only sell myself, a few ideas and some skills rather than a concrete product or software. However I wanted to go to the Entrepreneur event in Aarhus on April 18th for many reasons, not least because the Chaos Pilots, the school for social entrepreneurs, would have a big presence. I have been trying to meet up with them for ages as I think they would be a good topic for the Absolutely Intercultural podcast and I have already interviewed one of their alumni, Signe Vorster of 100% for the Children.
It turned out to be a great event where I caught up with some old project partners, talked with several Chaos Pilots and heard about some great projects. The event is aimed at start-ups and this maybe explains why there was such an emphasis on personal psychology such as the value of breaking old habits and the amazing potential of the brain. I also learned about significant trends, that crowd-funding is thriving in Denmark and tips and tricks regarding online marketing.
Finally I came away with three free books which can’t be bad. One of them is a compendium of past Chaos Pilot projects as well as some background on how and why they operate which will make great background reading.
Some tips
The future will be about
- access rather than ownership and
- reputation will become more important than say, credit rating, so expect people and organisations to become much more helpful!
- Degree of self-control is the best predictor of a happy life.
- Customers are always online and this enables undreamt of levels of body-hacking (registering data in real time to enable healthy/wealthy nudges).
Online marketing:
- Every business in Denmark, by default, has a dedicated business Facebook page so it’s worth claiming it before someone else does!
- Most Smartphone users search for a local supplier
- Recommendation/ratings are a powerful way of getting customers (rather than social media presence)
- Student discounts work well
This article surprisingly (to me) names Denmark as one of the best places to set up in business but one thing I must concede is that I have had some great opportunities to meet up with other entrepreneurs and find out about their businesses in the past year thanks to the good work of the regional entrepreneur network. It’s been fun and enriching to find out what is going on in the local area.