It’s time to look at another entrepreneur…Simon Cowell

Simon Cowell is an interesting entrepreneur to analysis. Most entrepreneurial types hate the thought of working for someone else more than anything. Cowell on the other hand, has had made an art of climbing the business world in some of the biggest entertainment companies in the world.

After a particularly poor return from education, Simon set out to try and find work within the music business. Cowell wasn’t an unintelligent kid, he just got bored very easily and didn’t take well to authority figures.

With his wandering attention span and lack of patience for authority, you would think Cowell would have set up a company of his own and been done with it. He had well off parents to fall back on, so money wasn’t a huge worry. But Cowell showed a different mentality with his first steps into the industry, a similar trait he has shown all the way up to the point he is at now.

Cowell got a job at EMI in their post room, unglamorous sure, but a foot up the ladder nevertheless. The complacency of youth was still evident in the beginning and he left – to become an estate agent. Well he was young. He came back a few months later, having seen the error of his ways, and ended up in the International department, licensing songs to ads and foreign artists. This enabled him to hone a skill which has served him well to this day - the ability to read a market or trend and match a product to it.

The other thing he learned at EMI was to align himself with people that know more than he does – maybe his most crucial skill of all. Cowell has never been arrogant enough to know he can’t learn from someone else. He might not publicly admit it, but he knows a sure way to progress is to feed off the knowledge of others. That’s why he left EMI to set up a label with his older, more experienced boss. It just so happened that Cowell showed another important trait in the time after the pair set up E&S Music – he knew when to get out.

The new business wasn’t doing well, so he left and went elsewhere. That new place was Fanfare Records, which provided him with the chance to sign his first number one pop act and would also give him the chance to find another mentor – Pete Waterman. Waterman was a major music player at the time, so for a new kid on the block like Cowell, he was a source of great knowledge. Learning from Waterman was good for Cowell, he learnt a great deal about the business and had the added bonus of a few Stock, Aitken and Waterman produced hits to add to his CV.

Then it all went wrong. The label went under and he had to move back home to his parents. This is where we see the real test of an entrepreneur – how to deal with failure. Cowell passed the test with flying colours. He got a job as an A&R for BMG and climbed the ladder two steps at a time. Then came time to learn from another more experienced man than himself – Simon Fuller.

He learnt music from Waterman and TV and wider entertainment from Fuller. We all know about Cowell’s steps into TV. The X Factor – like it or loathe it, has made Cowell a fortune and also one of the most powerful men in music and entertainment. Now it just so happens that as Cowell’s business gets bigger and bigger,  he has aligned himself with a business magnate that can teach him even more – Sir Philip Green.

That is Cowell – clever, keeps even cleverer company, savvy, commercially aware and his own PR man.

Despite the stick others may give you, Simon – I salute you! What do you think of Simon Cowell? Lucky, opportunist, entertainment genius? Let us know your thoughts…