Blog written by Penny Bartlett
Sahar Hashemi OBE – Entrepreneur is the new women’s movement
Take the leap, there’s always a safety net’, Sahar recommended to conference to help unlock our creativity.
A highly successful entrepreneur who founded ‘Coffee Republic’ and ‘Skinny Candy’, Sahar has written books based on her achievements.
Having trained as a solicitor she quickly discovered that the profession was not the fun that she had hoped for and through walking away from it she realized that she wanted to follow her own path although at the time she was unaware of her entrepreneurial skills.
Sahar explained the steep learning curves of an entrepreneur and the need for self-belief – if doubts arise then she recommended that we press the ‘delete’ button. Sahar emphasized that this was particularly important for Soroptimists in their work.
Sahar’ six habits for success are:
- THE IDEA – be your own customer -empathy is the ultimate
- MARKET RESEARCH – think like a novice
- IMPORTANCE OF BEING CLUELESS – questioning, learning
- NOTCHING UP NO’s
- MAKE IT HAPPEN – ‘bootstrapping’ (the detail)
- BE 100% YOURSELF- unlock your creativity
Anyone can do it, especially women, and it ties in well with the 3E’s.
HOW MUCH YOU DO IT = HOW WELL YOU DO IT
_________________________________________________________________________
Sahar Hashemi is founder of ‘Coffee Republic‘ and ‘Skinny Candy’, and author of “Anyone Can Do It – Building Coffee Republic from Our Kitchen Table” and “Switched On”. She was nominated by Director magazine as one of its Top 10 Original Thinkers in 2011, and was awarded an OBE in 2012 for services to the UK economy and to charity.