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BUSINESS
Today, Karl has switched his energies from ticking
regulatory boxes tomakingmoney. “The beauty of it all
is that, with an online business, everything is possible.
You can do whatever you want and do it quickly. The
regulatory sidemight be a struggle, but the tech itself is a
breath of fresh air.”
KARL SAYS DO
“embrace social media. You can build
trust and valuable relationships very quickly.”
KARL SAYS DON’T
“take no for an answer. The FSA
turned us down three times, but we persisted. It was worth it.”
THE
ONLINE MARKETEER
Ravi Jay
If you thought that themarket stall was the last
bastion of offline commerce, you’d be wrong.
TwoMiddlesexMBA graduates are busily
signing up stallholders to their online platform,
mymzone.com
, helping them to sell wares online, and
getting nominated for national entrepreneurial awards in
the process.
Twenty-nine-year-old Ravi Jay is one half of the
pairing.: “I didn’t have any experience in runningmy
own business and I knew exactly wheremy capabilities
ended, so I educatedmyself,” he reflects. “I took on board
all the knowledge that I could get and carried out a lot of
competitor analysis. It certainly helped.”
Although it’s an intimidating document to put together,
“Youmight think your idea is great, but the reality is that itmight not
work for the people you’re targeting.”
another thing that aided Ravi in the early days was his
business plan. “A plan asks tough questions of your concept
and how you’re going tomakemoney, and it forces you to
answer those questions. But it’s nothing to be scared of, and
it’s not set in stone. It changes according to the business and
that’s OK.”
Unlike other companies that invest huge sums in SEO
(search engine optimisation) to get noticed, Ravi says he’s
not fearful of being lost in the online ocean. He and his
partner are keeping their marketing spend to aminimum.
“We could have Google ad words or other campaigns, but
we’re relying on organic traffic – ‘white hat marketing’. We
have a blog and that really works for us. We’re slowly going
up the rankings.”
RAVI SAYS DO
“think bigger. Whatever your business
idea, broaden it out, enlarge it and see the bigger picture.”
RAVI SAYS DON’T
“forget to survey your potential
customers. Youmight think your idea is great, but the reality
is that it might not work for the people you’re targeting.
Listen to themand adapt to their feedback.”
With thanks to theAssociationof Business Schools
(associationofbusinessschools.org), whichprovides business
andmanagement education for over 250,000 students ayear.
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