Hello and welcome to the 126^th episode of the UK’s number 1 career podcast, and I’ve got a very special episode for you today. Joining me back on the show by popular demand is serial entrepreneur and author Michael Tefula, who discusses his book Graduate Entrepreneurship: How to Start Your Business After University. In the show today we discuss why university or just after is such a great time to start a business, and we also bust some of the key myths that might be holding you back from taking the plunge. We cover why it might cost you less than you think to start a business, why it’s not about having a great idea, but why you should instead focus on solving people’s problems. Finally, we delve into why graduate schemes will be so interested in any companies you do launch, and how to make the most of those transferrable skills in graduate interviews. No matter what companies you are applying to, and even if you’ve never thought of starting your own business, this is an episode you won’t want to miss. Now the only link you need to remember from today is www.graduatejobpodcast.com/entrepreneurship where you can find a full transcript, and links to everything which we discuss, that’s www.graduatejobpodcast.com/entrepreneurship.

MORE SPECIFICALLY IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT:

• Why you should think about starting your own business after university
• The myths that might be holding you back from becoming an entrepreneur
• Why it won’t cost you as much as you think to start your own company
• How companies WANT to hear about your ‘side hustle’ when you apply for a graduate job
• The one thing you MUST think about when you start a company,

SELECTED LINKS INCLUDE:

• The show notes for today at https://www.graduatejobpodcast.com/entrepreneurship
• Check out Michael’s book Graduate Entrepreneurship: How to Start Your Business After University https://amzn.to/3ub9ePG  
• Sign up to ‘How to Get a Graduate Job’ my proven step-by-step online course at https://howtogetagraduatejob.com/
• Don’t even think about applying for graduate jobs until you’ve read my free guide, ‘The 5 steps you must take before applying for graduate jobs’. Click here https://howtogetagraduatejob.com/5steps. It will completely change the way you apply for jobs!
• Would you like a free 30-minute video coaching call? Simply select a time that works here https://calendly.com/gradjob/ We can go over your CV, application, or anything that you are struggling with.

Transcript 126 – Graduate entrepreneurship, with Michael Tefula

Announcer: Welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast, your home for weekly information and inspiration to help you get the graduate job of your dreams.

James: Hello and welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast, with your host James Curran. The Graduate Job Podcast is your home for all things related to helping you on your journey to finding that amazing job. Each episode I bring together the best minds in the industry, speaking to leading authors, graduate recruiters and career coaches who bring decades of experience into a byte size show. Put simply, this is the show I wish I had when I graduated.

Hello and welcome to the 126^th episode of the UK’s number 1 career podcast, and I’ve got a very special episode for you today. Joining me back on the show by popular demand is serial entrepreneur and author Michael Tefula, who discusses his book Graduate Entrepreneurship: How to Start Your Business After University. In the show today we discuss why university or just after is such a great time to start a business, and we also bust some of the key myths that might be holding you back from taking the plunge. We cover why it might cost you less than you think to start a business, why it’s not about having a great idea, but why you should instead focus on solving people’s problems. Finally, we delve into why graduate schemes will be so interested in any companies you do launch, and how to make the most of those transferrable skills in graduate interviews. No matter what companies you are applying to, and even if you’ve never thought of starting your own business, this is an episode you won’t want to miss. Now the only link you need to remember from today is www.graduatejobpodcast.com/entrepreneurship where you can find a full transcript, and links to everything which we discuss, that’s www.graduatejobpodcast.com/entrepreneurship.

Before we start, a quick message from me. Have you got any interviews or assessment centres coming up? If you have then make sure you got in touch for some expert interview coaching specifically tailored to the company and the role you are applying for. Competition is more intense than ever before, and you can’t afford to leave anything to chance. You wouldn’t have a driving test without having lessons beforehand, so why would you want to go to an assessment centre without getting practice in first? You get one shot to impress, so get in touch at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/coaching and see how I can help. You will be glad you did, but be quick though, as I only have a limited number of slots and they are filling up quickly. That’s www.graduatejobpodcast.com/coaching. Right, with that said, let’s jump into my chat with Michael Tefula.

James Curran: A very warm welcome back to the show, Michael Tefula, who first appeared on the show nearly five years ago back in episode 11. Michael, welcome back to the Graduate Job Podcast.

Michael Tefula: Wonderful to be back, James. Thank you so much for having me back on the show. I can’t believe it’s been that long.

James: Time has flown by. So, listeners if you’ve not checked out episode 11 where Michael took us through procrastination and how to overcome it, which is a really useful topic, especially as we’re getting deep into application territory and you need all your focus and attention to make sure you’re putting in a good application, so definitely go back and listen to that one. Michael, it’s been a busy, busy five years for you. Do you want to fill us in on what you’ve been up to, apart from writing graduate entrepreneurship, which we’ll go through today?

Michael: Absolutely. It’s quite incredible, actually, looking back on the last five years and realizing it feels like it’s gone by pretty quickly, but actually, there was quite a lot of activity between back then and now. I guess when we last spoke, I was just coming off the second book that I’ve written, “Student Procrastination”. Shortly after that, I went off to write a third book, which was the “Graduate Entrepreneurship”, which we’ll touch on in the podcast. But, in the last couple of years, really, I’ve just been spending as much time learning more about entrepreneurship, learning how a business works, working within businesses, working for a range of funds during that timeline, and ultimately, I’ve landed off into a career as a venture capitalist, so someone who goes out to find amazing, incredible companies that are creating new products, mostly technology products that we can bring to market by providing the capital those companies need to grow and thrive. It’s been a great few years, but I’m sure lots more exciting things ahead and lots more to learn going ahead.

James: Definitely, and you’ve got a practical knowledge of entrepreneurship, having founded plenty of small businesses yourself, so you know what’s needed to get something off the ground, so you’re well-placed to offer advice to listeners today.

Michael: Absolutely, and it’s great. I think entrepreneurship is a great mind-set to have not just when you’re starting a company, but then actually also when you’re working within other organizations, and I’m sure we’ll be able to touch on some of these things later on, but I think one of the most interesting things I’ve come across is the fact that you can be entrepreneurially-minded without necessarily having to start a company, and there’s various skill sets, and processes, and ways of thinking that really help you be more entrepreneurial in everything that you do.

James: Let’s jump straight into it then. Why is university, or just after university a good time to start your own business?

Michael: One of the things I actually touch on in the book is this idea of having a bit of a graduate advantage. There’s been a bit of research around how well companies perform and how well they go on to do depending on the quality of the management teams and the quality of the firms that they have. Having a university degree can provide a number of benefits, one of which is network. The people that you meet at university, the contacts you make while going through university, all these things can actually come in handy when you go off to start a company and you’re looking to find the right contacts to help you develop your ideas further or potentially even to find prospects, some people that you can actually sell your services too.

Coming right out of university, you come out with a network, usually anyway, that can be quite valuable in helping you develop your idea. Also, actually, some pretty low-risk time to go out and try something different. You haven’t necessarily settled down, you haven’t bought a house, you might not have kids yet, for example, and you just have a bit more freedom to actually go out and explore something that might be a little bit different.

James: Yeah, and these things are going to get more difficult as you’ve got mortgages, and kids, and things like that down the line, so yeah definitely, it is a good time. I like this stat in the book about how businesses started by university graduates, on average, make 20% higher revenue than a business started by a high school dropout, so it just shows the difference that a university education does make when you start the business.

Michael: Absolutely. It’s not so much about having a degree, per se, but it’s about having the right contacts, the right networks, having a bit of knowledge from the education that you pursued, or having a bit more credibility when you go out to recruit people, or perhaps to network with organizations that you might be able to sell into if you’re starting a business-to-business company.

James: Let’s start by thinking about some of the myths because I’m sure some of the listeners, in the back of their mind, they’ve maybe been thinking about, “Maybe I’d like to start a business,” but there’s some things that might be holding them back. You talk in the book about the different myths that can hold people back, so let’s just explore those a little bit. The first one is that you need a great idea to start a business. Tell us why this might not be the case.

Michael: This is a really interesting one because I think a lot of people are intimidated by entrepreneurship because they think that they have to come up with the perfect idea from the get-go, but what’s really interesting is that if you look at any successful business, they all start off with a very simple proposition. I’ve got a very old example here. We all know Sir Richard Branson. He’s now going off into space and starting a space tourism company. But, when you think about the company he started, Virgin, right? It started off as a mail order business. This is a very, very old-school way of selling music through the post, right? Someone would send in a check or pay for something, and then get a piece of vinyl or a record back then that would be delivered by post. That was the focus of Virgin Records.

We can think about more contemporary companies like Facebook, or Google, or TikTok. All these companies start off with a very, very simple idea that eventually grows into something more meaningful and something more substantial. I think a lot of people get distracted by this idea of, “I need to find the perfect, perfect thing that can start,” when actually a lot of ideas start off very simply, and then you sort of build on from there.

Right now, we all use Google every day when we’re searching for things on the internet, but actually Google Maps came later on. That’s another aspect of Google. YouTube was acquired later on by Google. Google now also is actually working on self-driving cars and a bunch of other really interesting things, but the core of the business and the core original DNA of the business was very, very simple. I think we kind of have to put that idea aside of, “I have to find the perfect, perfect idea.” What you want to do is find a small thing that you can execute on really, really well, and build from there.

James: That’s great advice, and comparing web businesses 30 years down the line versus where they started off is not a good comparison piece to start with. They’d start with a small idea, and then you never know where it might grow and meander to in the different directions that you might take along the way.

Michael: Absolutely.

James: Another myth that people might have is entrepreneurs are born, not made. Do you think this is the case?

Michael: Actually, no. There’s certainly certain things that some people have innately, and they might be a little bit more comfortable taking more risks, for example, or they might be a little bit more extroverted, so they can go out there and be very salesy, and network, and meet new people. But, I think entrepreneurship is mostly a process, and any process that can be repeated on a regular basis is a process that can be improved. A lot of entrepreneurs were definitely not born. They were actually just people that had a small idea that grew into something a lot larger, and have had to learn along the way on how they can actually be better entrepreneurs.

In the industry that I operate in, in venture capital, we meet entrepreneurs very early on when they’re starting their companies. A lot of times, you can see those entrepreneurs are very passionate about what they’re building, but they’ve got some skill gaps in terms of how they can be better CEOs. The very best of them take that on, and actually they can practice specific skills around management, leadership, and they can start to develop those skills. As they grow their business, they can also grow along that business and become better CEOs. I definitely think entrepreneurship is something that you can learn because it’s a process, and the very best entrepreneurs are always learning.

James: That’s a really good point. One of the things that, maybe, entrepreneurs might see differently than an average Joe on the street is the idea of risk, which is another one of the myths that entrepreneurs love risk. Do you think you need to be a natural risk-taker to be setting up your own business?

Michael: Not necessarily at all. I think what’s very interesting about entrepreneurs and people who are very entrepreneurially-minded, they find ways of identifying risks, and to then go on to actually mitigate for those risks. That’s one element of it. The other element of it is that they are typically very confident in their abilities to overcome challenges, but they don’t necessarily see risks the same way that other people do. If you have someone starting a company, for example, in an industry or market that they’re not really familiar with, a really good entrepreneur will go out in a particular industry and speak to as many customers as possible because they see that as a way of filling a gap in their knowledge, which other people might necessarily consider to be very risky.

What’s very typical of really good entrepreneurs is they find ways of mitigating those risks such that they’re not as scary as they might be for other people, but they also actually have a lot of belief and self-confidence in themselves to go out and mitigate for these risks and find ways of overcoming some of these obstacles.

James: What about then, building on risk, is that commonly-referred to stat that 9 out of 10 new businesses fail? Do you think this should be reason to put people off?

Michael: That’s another sort of curious number there I always see, and people mention this a lot. It’s sort of this thing that’s very easy to remember and it’s a bit of a sound bite, “9 out of 10 businesses fail.” Actually, this conceals, or at least certainly reveal the nuance of some of these statistics. When I was looking at this actually and I was looking at a number of different studies. It turns out that, actually, about 1 in 6 companies fail within the first year, and then if you go over a long enough timeline, perhaps even five or six years or so, you have about 30% of the companies who are still operational. That sort of stat that 9 out of 10 companies fail, it doesn’t really take into account time. Are we looking at six months, are we looking at one year, are we looking at 10 years, we’re looking at 20 years? I think it’s just stats that put off a lot of people, when actually it’s not taking into account time.

But then also, actually, every business is in its own unique circumstance. There are certain things you can do to improve your prospects. I touched on one of those things. If you’re going into an industry that you don’t really know a lot about, it helps if you can speak to as many people in that industry as possible. There’s a bunch of other things you can do to actually mitigate and minimize your risks of failure.

James: One of the things we’ll touch upon later in the interview is just the skills that you’re going to learn as an entrepreneur, which are going to be valuable in the job search. You might fail. As you said, some businesses fail, but you’re going to still learn some amazing things, lots of skills that you just wouldn’t learn otherwise, and it’s going to be attractive to a recruiter further down the line. One final myth then, the myth of money. How true do you think it is that you need money to start a business?

Michael: Going back to the idea of every business is a little bit different and everybody has a very unique circumstance, I think sometimes there’s an impression that you need a whole heap of money to be able to launch something. But, in the industry that I work in, for example, in the venture capital, we’re investing in technology companies. There’s a lot of tools out there that you can use to actually build an idea very, very cheaply and very quickly to test if it works. For example, if you are building a new app, you don’t necessarily have to build the whole thing. You could simply put up a webpage with a small box asking for people’s email addresses and saying, “Hey, if you’re interested in using this app, sign up here, and I’ll let you know when it’s launched.” You can then build up an invitational list that can validate that there’s a need for what you’re building.

That’s one way of starting something and testing it out without spending a lot of money. But, of course, if we’re looking at traditional businesses, let’s say for example, if you wanted to open a cafe, or a restaurant, you don’t necessarily have to get 30, 40 grand to open something substantial. You could start with a food store, for example. You could start with going to a food festival and having a very small kiosk where you can actually test out some of your products with early customers. The principle behind the way of overcoming this myth that you need a lot of money is to actually start very small and look out ways in which you can actually test your idea without having to go out and spend a whole heap of money before you get started.

James: Definitely, and you mentioned tech there. You can go to GoDaddy, Bluehost, whatever you can sign up, get your own web domain for a couple of quid, and you can get it hosted for another couple of quid, and you’ve immediately got a shop front on the internet. A few pounds more, you can get some functionality to start selling things. It’s all very easy and cheap to do. For probably a well under 100£ investment, you could have a really snazzy website that would make people think that you maybe have more money than you actually do as a shop front to the world. These things don’t cost a lot of money or don’t need to cost a lot of money.

Michael: Absolutely.

James: Michael, let’s think then about putting ourselves in a position of a listener listening who wants to start their own business but doesn’t really know where to start. They’ve got a few ideas, but they’re not sure which one might be the best one to go with. What would you advise that they do, process-wise?

Michael: One of the first things to appreciate, and again, I guess entrepreneurship can be intimidating, right? We hear about entrepreneurs, we hear about CEOs, and you can’t quite come to grips with all the various things that you have to do as an entrepreneur. By the way, there’s a lot of things you have to do as an entrepreneur. You need to have a very generalized skill set to be able to do a bunch of different things. But, I guess one of the reasons I actually wrote this book was to make entrepreneurship less intimidating, and the way I do that in the book is by having three different parts or three different big things to think about. The first thing to think about is your mind-set, generally how you approach a challenge and generally how you approach hard things. The second thing I talk about is of skills, specifically tangible skills that you need to cultivate to become a good entrepreneur. The third thing I talk about is the process of entrepreneurship and how to be able to expand in this, given the question you’ve shared, James.

The process part is really about finding a way of identifying opportunities, finding a way of evaluating those opportunities, and then finding a way of executing on those opportunities. Would you start? Well, one of the best ways to start is not to come up with an idea, but to find a useful or at least to find a problem to solve in a useful way. There’s a great investor called Paul Graham who has a fantastic blog post about this, actually, and he talks about you don’t want to go out there coming up with business ideas when you’re trying to start a company. You want to find an interesting problem to solve, and there’s lots of different things you can do to try and encourage that sort of mind-set. One of the things is just basically be very observant about the things around you. Any problem that you come across, you can ask, “How can we solve this?” or any solution you come across, you might ask, “How can we change the status quo for this particular issue?”

One of the best things to do if you’re thinking of starting a business is to immediately start asking, “Okay, what interesting problems are there for me to solve, what is broken about the way things work, and what could we do to actually change things for the better?”

James: That’s a brilliant example, and if you look at a company like Uber where what was the problem? The problem is that taxi companies always lied to you about where the taxi was, you didn’t know how much it was going to cost, they said it was five minutes away when it was half an hour away, and it was a pain to get ahold of.

Michael: It was a problem for the taxi drivers as well, right? They had irregular income streams, irregular customers, some customers would run off without paying. There was a massive payments problem. It was a two-sided problem in that instance, and Uber came up with a fantastic solution to solve that particular problem.

James: Which is remarkably simple when you think about it, and I remember reading an interview with the UK managing director who launched Uber, and he said he couldn’t believe the incumbent firms like Addison Lee in London didn’t just start their own app and do the same thing. They launched a great product and it’s been well-liked by people. That solved problems on both sides, as you mentioned.

Michael: Again, just going back to the principle around starting small and starting with a very basic idea. I’m not sure if you read about the history of Uber, actually, but they started off as a premium limousine service that you would order on your mobile phone before they actually expanded out to have taxis and regular taxi drivers on the platform. They started with a very, very small market in the U.S., focusing specifically on a very premium experience, and it was only when that became successful and that started taking off that they actually went out and expanded their business to have other taxi drivers on the platform as well.

James: That’s a good point, and as we said earlier, once you start something, you never know which direction you might end up taking, so it’s all about just starting and putting your ideas out to the world and seeing what bites.

Michael: Absolutely, and it would be interesting to hear your perspective, James. When you started the Graduate Job Podcast, how did that emerge and how did that evolve?

James: It’s as you mentioned earlier about finding a problem. The problem I had was that I was helping with graduate recruitment, and it was a couple of things. One, I was surprised at the gap in knowledge that was expected from our expectations from a consulting company where we expected graduates to be, and the level of some of the graduates who were applying, so I saw there was a big knowledge gap, and then the other thing was as a sort of go-to person for family and friends for applications, and CVs, and cover letters and things. I found I was always telling people the same thing over and over again. I thought i was a good way to share some of this knowledge and to help educate people, and the podcast was born, really. It’s coming up to six years ago.

Michael: That’s amazing. That is amazing.

James: It’s been going a while, but helped by brilliant guests like yourself.

Michael: That’s a great show.

James: Oh, thank you. For me, it was a real passion project, launching the podcast. Thinking, though, about the business, or a business specifically, how important do you think passion is? Is it important to be — should you be passionate about what you do, or is it more important to be passionate about making money in something that you might not be as interested in?

Michael: What’s really interesting is that sometimes the passion comes afterwards. Passion’s a little bit like motivation in some ways in the sense that have you ever felt very hesitant to do something, but the moment you started to do it, all of a sudden, motivation came out of nowhere? Passion, in some ways, is like that, and I like to think about Steve Jobs in this instance. He’s been overused as an example. Apple, as a company, is overused as an example in entrepreneurship circles, so I do tire sometimes of using it a lot.

But, Steve Jobs, if you read his autobiography — rather, not an autobiography, a biography by, I think, Isaac Walton (Walter Isaacson), and he talks about how Steve Jobs initially just wanted to make money. He just wanted to make money, right? He wanted to find a way of making money, and he got into this personal computer business, and that started to take off, and he became very passionate about bringing amazing products to customers. But, if you read the biography, there’s a section in the early parts of the book where it’s quite clear that Steve Jobs wanted to find a way of making money. Actually, he was quite ruthless in the way that he operated commercially in terms of substantial financial returns for himself, and eventually his company and his shareholders.

But, sometimes the passion comes afterwards. Of course, some people were born with an innate passion for something. I’ve got a really good friend of mine who was born, and from a very, very young age, he wanted to be a pilot, and he just practiced, and practiced, and practiced, and now he’s a commercial pilot, and then I’ve got other friends who, actually, it took them a little bit longer to find out what they were good at, and interestingly enough, they actually became more passionate about a certain thing that they became good at after a very, very long time. In the book, I talk about there’s a fit theory of passion which talks about people who are looking for something they can just slot into, and they’ve got this innate passion for something, and they’re out there trying to discover it.

Then you’ve also got the developed theory of passion, which talks about you becoming good at something first before you can actually become super-excited about it and super-passionate about it. I would urge maybe some of the listeners to think about it is possible to have a specific thing that you might be passionate about, so maybe you want to start a business in the fashion industry, maybe you want to start a business in the music industry. That might be an innate passion that you have, but I would urge the listeners to also be a little bit more open-minded. Yeah, you might experiment with other things, and it might take a while before something takes off before you can actually, all of a sudden, become more interested in it.

But, I think the Steve Jobs story is quite interesting, and it’s definitely worth checking out the biography, and it’s quite telling to see that, early on, he was very motivated by money, and then this Apple thing took off and became an incredible company, and he became very, very passionate about being an entrepreneur, being a CEO, and building amazing products.

James: Michael mentioned books there, and you definitely do need to check out his book, “Graduate Entrepreneurship: How to Start Your Business After University”. You can find links to it in the show notes where there’ll also be a full transcript, which today will be at graduatejobpodcast.com/entrepreneurship. Speaking of books in it, the reading list is mightily impressive. You must have read hundreds of books to pull it together. Michael is an extremely well-read man.

Michael: It goes back to the passion thing, doesn’t it? Sometimes, if you’re really, really curious about something, you end up spending a lot of time on it, and oftentimes, it doesn’t feel like work. But, curiosity can be a very powerful motivator as well when you’re sort of working through challenging things.

James: Let’s maybe dive into the topic of skills. I recently had on the graduate recruitment manager for Capgemini a couple episodes ago talking about the graduates they’re looking for and how to apply for Capgemini. It’s interesting. One of the things he talks about was just how interested they are to find out about applicants’ side hustles. Whereas some listeners might think they need to sort of shy away from that, at Capgemini, they were really interested. They wanted to know if you’ve started a business, they want to know if you’ve still got a business because they see the benefit that you bring as a candidate having done these things, having started your business. They were happy that you — Dan Doherty, in the episode, talked about how the majority of people with side hustles, they want it to be permanent. They’re just happy for it to be sort of ticking around in the background. But, Capgemini, they really saw the benefit of what you could bring from starting a side hustle. In your experience, do you think having a side hustle is a good way for a listener to maybe get introduced to graduate entrepreneurship and starting a business?

Michael: Yeah, it’s great to hear that some recruiters in some companies are very open-minded about this. I think anything that can cultivate an entrepreneurial mind-set can be a very, very powerful way of up-skilling yourself and making yourself more useful to other people. What is career success? Career success is having someone who’s very useful to other people, right? I think side hustles, maybe we can find another name for it at some point, but it’s a way of cultivating key entrepreneurial skills, because if you’re doing something on the side, whether it’s a podcast, whether it’s a newsletter, whether it’s a YouTube channel, whether it’s a food business, you’re thinking about strategy, how would you create an advantage for yourself? You’re thinking about branding. How would you make something that’s memorable and easy to remember and easy to associate with? You’re thinking about sales. How would you convince people to part with their money so they can get value out of what you’re producing? You think about marketing. How do you attract and retain customers? All these skills are actually very, very important, regardless of what career you pursue.

In fact, if you look at some of the top businesses in the world, the FTSE 100 companies or look at any successful company and you look at their senior team, a lot of people in the senior team will have some entrepreneurial experience, or certainly at least they’ll have one of the skills I’ve just spoken about and they’ll have a huge depth of experience in that particular category, whether it’s strategy, whether it’s marketing, whether it’s sales, whether it’s branding, or whether it’s finance. These are all key skills that can be cultivated with a side hustle and through entrepreneurship as well.

James: Completely, and if you were to start a business after university, spend a couple years on it, and then decide you want to get a graduate job, then you’re going to have a couple of years of such brilliant experience. You’re going to have so many answers to competency questions coming out your ears: difficulties you’ve been through, things you’ve learned, marketing skills, sales skills, communication skills. It’s going to really make you stand head and shoulders above other applicants who are maybe just applying straight out of university who haven’t got that.

Michael: Absolutely, and it could take off, and it could turn into an incredible company, right? I was just reading about the founder of Gymshark. He started it as a side hustle, and fortunately for him, it just took off amazingly well, and now it’s a billion-dollar business. That started as a side hustle and grew into something incredibly successful. But, of course, entrepreneurship is very hard, and starting something new can be challenging, but as you were saying, James, actually, even if the company doesn’t work out, there’s a lot you can learn from something that hasn’t been as successful. In fact, sometimes we actually learn more from things that don’t work out than from things that actually take off and become incredibly successful.

I think it’s worthwhile thinking about starting something, even if it’s small, even if it doesn’t make a lot of money. It can be a really, really powerful way of putting into practice those key skills that can help you throughout your career: strategy, marketing, sales, branding, finance. These are things that you want to cultivate, regardless of what industry or career that you’re going into.

James: Definitely, and with time running away from us, that is probably a great point for us to finish the main part of the interview on before we move onto the weekly staple questions. Let me put you on the spot, Michael. We talked about books earlier. What one book would you recommend that listeners should read?

Michael: That’s a really good question. I tend to read a lot, and I’m always recommending books depending on where people are in their particular circumstance. I think the Steve Jobs biography is probably a pretty good book to read. I think I’d highly recommend that just so people can see how the entrepreneurial process evolves over time. I think that would probably be a great biography to read. It’s a fun read as well. It’s quite fun to read that story. It’s quite an easy read.

James: Definitely, and I will link to that in the show notes, so good recommendation there. Next question, Michael. What one website or internet resource would you point listeners towards?

Michael: I think, for someone who’s just coming out of university and perhaps thinking about what to do next, you probably want to read from lots of different places. You want to read various websites that can really help you have a good understanding of the world commercially. I’m probably going to be quite boring and encourage readers to read a substantial newspaper, so maybe the Financial Times. Fairly boring, but I think it gives you a sense of where the world is going from an economic perspective, and sometimes from a political perspective as well. Maybe perhaps a bit boring, but I think it’s good to have some commercial awareness, and the FT is quite good for that.

James: Definitely, and if you’re used to just reading the Metro or the free Evening Standard, their standard of journalism is much improved in the FT, so get yourself a cheap student subscription and you won’t regret it.

Michael: Absolutely, and even if you just flick through the headlines and then Google the story elsewhere, there’ll be another publication that covers that particular story. What I used to do sometimes, I would just flick through the headlines and find the story on another sort of free website to read from.

James: I like that tip. That is a good one. Final question today, Michael. What is one tip that you’d recommend that listeners can implement today to help them on their job search?

Michael: I think learning how to really think about what you’re hoping to achieve after university, really thinking through what you want to achieve in life really. Maybe this is a very fuzzy tip, but I would say take some time to think about what you want to achieve in life. Fairly cheesy, but I think shortly after university, it’s a very transitional moment. It’s a pivotal moment in your life, so I think it helps to just think about, from a big picture perspective, what would you like to achieve? Of course, plans change, and especially now that we have COVID, the world has sort of evolved in a very unexpected way. But, if I was to give one tip, I would say try and think about where you want to be in maybe three years, perhaps, and work your way backwards from that in terms of what you need to do. If it’s a particular industry you want to work in, look for ways that you can accelerate your journey by putting in a lot of work now, and hopefully in three years’ time, you can get there. By the way, if any of the listeners are interested in venture capital, I’m very easily accessible on LinkedIn and Twitter and I’m always happy to answer questions about that and provide some guidance on how you can tackle your entry into the venture capital industry.

James: Brilliant. That was going to be my next question, what’s the best way that people can get in touch with you? You’ve still got your website, or is it just mainly Twitter and LinkedIn?

Michael: Yeah, I’ve got a website michaeltefula.com. Very easy to reach on Twitter. My DMs are always open. My Twitter is michaeltefula. I’m also easily accessible on LinkedIn. I pretty much accept all LinkedIn connections, and I try to get back to people as quickly as I can as well.

James: Excellent, and I’ll have to say, Michael is a really insightful person to follow on Twitter. He’s always posting interesting articles. Especially if you’re interested in the world of venture capital, there’s lots of really interesting articles that Michael posts, so make sure you do check him out on Twitter, and all the links to everything that we discussed today will be in the show notes at graduatejobpodcast.com/entrepreneurship. Michael, thank you so much for appearing on the Graduate Job Podcast, and hope to get you back next year with your new book.

Michael: Thank you so much for having me, James. It’s been a blast, and I look forward to doing another one.

James: Many thanks again to the brilliant Michael Tefula for coming back on the show and sharing his insights, he’s a superstar. Of course, this podcast as you can tell by the name is dedicated to helping you find your dream graduate job, but… a graduate job and working for someone else isn’t going to be right for everyone, and in that case, starting your own business could be the way to go. And as we said during the episode, it doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing affair, you can start small and see how it goes, start a little passion project on the side like I did with this podcast and see where it ends up. The skills you will develop on the way will impress recruiters no matter what type of companies you decide to apply to, and you never know you might even end up with the next big thing on your hands.

Don’t forget no matter where you are on your job search I am here and able to help, whether it is one-off one-on-one coaching to get prepped for an assessment centre, practice mock group exercises, through to my flagship Howtogetagraduatejob.com online course, I have something for you. Getting a graduate job is so much easier if you aren’t struggling by yourself, I’ve helped coach hundreds of people to get the graduate job of their dreams, and I’ll be able to do the same for you, so check out graduatejobpodcast.com/entrepreneurship where you can find links to my coaching, the online course and how you can book on upcoming mock group exercises. Don’t be a stranger and make sure you do get in touch. And also, a final request from me if you’ve enjoyed the show today, please can you like and leave me a review wherever you downloaded it. It helps to keep me high in the rankings and for people to find the show, and I’ll be forever grateful. So that is everything for this week. Join me in 2 weeks on Sunday when I have the brilliant Bruce Tulgan on the show. It’s a goodie. I hope you enjoyed the show today, but more importantly, I hope you use it, and apply it. See you in 2 weeks!