Spilling all the beans

I’m sat on a couch at The Beans Group head office, waiting to interview its founder, James Eder. I’ve been there only a matter of seconds and I’m already finding myself forced to adjust my expectations. The mental images evoked by the word ‘office’ certainly weren’t matching the scenes before my eyes. As Heart FM gently filled the room (that I later discovered to be referred to as the Beanstalk) employees scoured computer screens, tapped furiously or, as a few were doing, discussed what I could only deduce to be this week’s EastEnders. I can’t purport to be a regular when it comes to ‘office tours’, but this was certainly not what I envisaged.

The Beans Group is best known for studentbeans.com, the brainchild of the 29 year old James Eder. A business that actually sprung out a final year project during his time studying at Birmingham University, James, along with his brother, put their savings on the line and set off to made a success of it. Seven years on, studentsbeans.com is now a nationally recognized brand that receives 700,000 visitors to its website a month, a fact that swells Eder with pride. “I can’t write songs, I can’t sing,” he admits, “but if you’re walking down the street and you hear someone singing a song you’ve written, how awesome a feeling is that? We’ve created something that has made a difference, that last month just got over 700,000 visitors coming through to the site, and if you removed it from the world, in theory 700,000 people would notice it disappear. It’s really this excitement that keeps me personally going, and similarly for the team.”

The thought of building a customer base of 700,000 in seven years would make any budding entrepreneur baulk but Eder downplays his successes as he explains to me the company’s 25 year vision. Better known as the BHAG (pronounced bee-hag) – the Big Hairy Audacious Goal – is for The Beans Group to touch 100 million people everyday, a target that James feels keeps the company progressing in the right direction. He draws on the example of NASA engineers who, in getting a man on the moon, worked purposefully to achieve something that excited and inspired them. This in turn trickles down and defines the working environment as one in which work is done with real enthusiasm and enjoyment, two characteristics that are both seen in the atmosphere at The Beans Group.

Clearly well read in the business of business, Eder backs up his experience of start-ups with the words of Vue Cinemas founder Tim Richard: “it’s a combination of luck, wind and timing. You need to be in the certain place, but the wind needs to be blowing in the certain direction, and also at the right time. It’s not about luck, but when fortune meets opportunity, things come together”.

Eder certainly seems to know about fortune meeting opportunity. He recounts to me the occasion when internally they decided to contact Acorn, the company that powers Virgin Experience Days (similar to Red Letter Days), with a view to opening up a working relationship. Minutes later, having left the office, he’s standing on platform at Golders Green, the location of the Bean Group office, that James is the first to admit is not the centre of the world. Waiting for the tube, he gets chatting to the person next to him. Asking what he does for a living, the stranger turns and replies “You know Virgin Experience Days? We’re the company who organize those…” All this, as James points out, within the space of ten minutes. “You couldn’t make that up, I feel like I’m in The Truman Show sometimes.”

You get the sense that James is the kind of guy who makes his own luck

Whilst that story seems purely down to chance, you get the sense that James is the kind of guy who makes his own luck. He tells me about the dark early days of studentsbeans when, for the first four years, working 18 hour days was not unusual. In the face of abuse from shop owners in Sheffield or intimidation from competitors on the streets of Birmingham, James has repeatedly picked up his head and powered on.

In fairness, as admirable as James’ example of persistence and application is, it’s nothing unconventional. In every sphere of life, hard work, generally, results in reward. However, James has clearly meditated long on the science of business and his seven years being his own boss have given him an impressive ability to view business in a very stripped down form. When I finally ask him for some advice for budding entrepreneurs, his answer is far from conventional.

“Could you imagine if everyone goes out and randomly speaks to one new person every day? Just something random and stupid and small, that gets people talking. People do business with people. Who in your network who you’re close to but have never met yet could be that person who could help you in the future? Whether its getting a job or being business partners, you just never know. And that’s the point of the story about the platform in Golders Green.”

The point is simple, it’s more of a lesson in life than in business, but at its core sits something that’s key for anyone who wants to get on in the world of work. Moreover, it strikes me as something that would be particularly potent at Imperial, given our vast resources of intellectual capital and apparent lack of any sense of community. If only the candidates in the presidential election held such simple yet progressive ideas, we might yet see some real change for the better.