Seen.

Sparkle
This week one of us shared how, in the darkness of the last year, he'd noticed how amazing people keep sparkling.

Whilst much of our media wallows in the gloom we realised that we were also surrounded by stories of great inspiration. Driven people, achieving great things.

We wondered if this was because amazing people do well irrespective of the times.

Or maybe tough times bring out the amazing in some people.

Read.

Start
A recent survey found that one in five people in the UK say they want to start a business. For under 35s it increases to one in three.

A great testament to entrepreneurship; although we wondered how many of them will.

Our experience has been that there are always much better reasons not to start a business than to start one. Doing so is almost always an act of wilful defiance.

So if you're thinking of starting something new, maybe don't ask others who have if you should. Maybe, instead, ask them how they did it.

Learned.

Thanks
Our learn this week was inspired by a song.

Founders often find their attention is naturally drawn to what is wrong or broken in their business.

This is generally A Good Thing. There are icebergs out there, for any business. A founder's job is to see them.

But the song reminded one founder that it also important to pay attention to what is positive and working. They realised that their instinct to seek out the wrong and broken meant that this wasn't going to happen naturally. Only when they made a conscious choice to do so.

So they did.

And finally.
Customers are amazing teachers.

This week someone asked about sponsoring #founderhacks. We realised we'd never considered that possibility, and had no idea how to start the conversation.

It was only through a customer's request that realised we hadn't got the right metrics in place. So we fixed it and today we're a little bit better at being podcasters.

Could your customers teach you to be better at your business?

Don’t forget to check out the accompanying podcast version of #founderhacks for a tantalising live experience of team atomex!