Herald/Sunday Herald Mentoring Series: Starting up a business these days can be a "nightmare" and many budding entrepreneurs are scared they may fail, but if they have ambition and a good product they will succeed.

Starting up a business these days can be a "nightmare" and many budding entrepreneurs are scared they may fail, but if they have ambition and a good product they will succeed.

That's the message Rita Rusk - known as Glasgow's first lady of hairdressing - pitched to an audience of about 70 people at the third of four business mentoring events organised by The Herald and Sunday Herald late last week.

She was offering advice on business start-ups along with Keith Anderson, chief executive of Boston Networks, which specialises in data communications and internet protocol technology; Iain Morgan, chief executive of Active Corporate, a fast-growing accountancy firm; and Douglas Anderson, the founder of Optos, which makes hi-tech medical equipment for diagnosing eye diseases.

Rusk, the managing director of Rita Rusk International, told potential entrepreneurs: "See what you want and go for it. A lot of people get scared and pull back (from starting a business).

"I've been there, seen it, done it."

Rusk knows what she is talking about. She came from a big family in a gritty Glasgow district and has lived above the shop. She established her first hairdressing salon 30 years ago and has not looked back.

In Scotland, Rusk owns salons in Glasgow and Hamilton and she also has a business in New York. Her Hamilton operation is a futuristic, hi-tech hair and beauty salon.

She has invested half-a-million pounds in the state-of-the-art "cyber salon'" which has been designed to suit the lifestyles of busy, high-powered professionals.

She also runs the Rita Rusk International School which trains hairdressers from around the world.

She admitted setting up a business could be "a nightmare" but said there were organisations like Scottish Enterprise which could offer help that were not around when she started in the 1970s.

She told the audience that new entrepreneurs must have a great deal of self-belief and a new product that is in demand.

"You must believe in your product," she stated. "If you do, you will definitely make it an original idea is hard to beat."

Rusk described a device called a wire that she herself had developed for the hairdressing industry as an example of a successful product. It works like a brush to create volume in hair but has spirals instead of bristles.

Rusk and the other members of the panel said it was important for business leaders to attract competent, trained staff who enjoyed their work and had a high level of morale. Without them, they stated, a start-up would fail even if it was well financed. This has been a constant theme of other mentoring events.

"It is critical that the passion remains after a business starts up," said Keith Anderson. "You can't lose that passion."

He said it was the duty of a chief executive to define a role for each employee and to ensure they were happy at work: "I want everyone to feel good about working for my company," he said. "You don't want people who come to work and just do a job."

Rusk commented: "There is nothing worse than working for a company where you have no future."

She trains all her staff and insists they set goals for themselves.

Douglas Anderson and Morgan, a former show-jumping champion, questioned the need for a small-to-medium-sized firm to have a "formalised" human resources unit to deal with staffing issues.

Rather than turn a problem over to an human resources manager, Morgan suggested it was better for a business owner or chief executive to sit down with an underperforming or troublesome employee to settle the matter between themselves.

Rita Rusk Rita Rusk International
Rita Rusk says she has neither wanted nor needed a mentor during her career as an award-winning hairdresser.

In fact, the internationally-renowned hairdresser, who also runs a hairdressing school and an events company, says she would rather go it alone - a very different style to many other entrepreneurs.

Rusk started her own business when she was 20, and started living above the shop. There she developed and honed her hairdressing skills until she burst onto the scene in 1976 at the Salon International exhibition in London, at which her innovative hairstyles made headlines.

She has developed special hairdressing tools for the trade and now has a chain of salons in Glasgow and Hamilton.

Rusk became the first woman to be named British Hairdresser of the Year, and was chosen as best hairdresser in the world by the French fashion magazine Metamorphose four times. Even the French Ministry of Culture likes her - they gave Rusk the title "the First Lady of Hairdressing".

Rusk has brought up hundreds of stylists through her glamorous salons, many of whom have gone on to open their own businesses.

Rusk says she spends a great deal of her time travelling, educating and sharing her inspirations with other hairdressers from the four corners of the world.

Because of the many requests for her teaching skills abroad, in 1990 she set up her own hairdressing school, "The School", which trains hairdressers from around the world.

She also set up Rusk Events, an events and catering company, which says it can cater dinners for four to four thousand. It organises everything from charity auctions to glitzy black-tie events.

But for herself, she has always had the drive and determination to succeed alone.

"I think it depends on the type of person you are," she said. "Some people would want someone there, others, like myself, would want to do it differently."

Rusk was asked to chair the Entrepreneurial Exchange in 1999 and is a member of the council of the Institute of Directors Scotland.

Douglas Anderson
Optos
Douglas Anderson has taken little advice on what to do with his career over the years.

The technology whiz says that he was warned time and time again against developing his most profitable invention, Optos, a patient-friendly machine for scanning the retina.

"Optos Plc now has 250 employees world-wide and is my most successful development," said Anderson.

"The fact I kept being told that it could not be done or that there was no market for it actually spurred me on."

He says that while he does not need to go it alone with projects, he is able to make up his own mind.

He said: "I am capable of taking advice I agree with, and also ignoring advice I don't agree with."

Anderson is the founder of four hi-tech start-up companies, two of which are currently operating in the medical technology arena.

He has been involved in raising more than £40m in private and institutional funding for a number of different ventures.

Anderson set up Crombie Anderson Associates in 1980, a multi-disciplinary design agency which offers services in technology product design, with a focus on healthcare.

He fought against established players to develop and market his Optos machine after his son suffered a spontaneous retinal detachment and Anderson was moved to invent a new machine to scan the retina.

He says that if the device had been around at the time of his son's case, it would have saved his eye.

Optos was set up in 1992 and is now listed on the London Stock Exchange.

And he says the worst offence he comes across is people being "exploited" by professional advice-givers, who only offer it for a fee.

He said that he once knew of an academic who had blown 70% of his entire budget on so-called expert advice from consultants, and subsequently ran out of money to develop the product, with just 30% left in the kitty.

"I would rather it was the other way around," he said.

Keith Anderson
Boston Networks
While Keith Anderson acts as a sounding board for three companies he mentors, he never found anyone to guide him through the early years of setting up a business.

As the chief executive of Boston Networks Ltd, he now manages a staff of more than 70, but takes a much more hands-off approach from the day-to-day management.

But in the early days when he was developing his data communication business, he was working all hours - but always very much on his own.

"When your business is doing fabulously, you don't need a mentor," he said. "It is when things are not so great you need someone to lift your spirits, urge you to keep ploughing on and say there's light at the end of the tunnel."

Anderson, who qualified as an accountant, then went into the communications business, says he never found anyone who was a good fit for him as a mentor - but wishes he had as it might have steered him a better course or helped when there were problems.

"It would have been great to have a mentor," he said. "I know from the experience of others that it works. Being at the top is a lonely place to be, especially in a small company of five when there is a challenge - a cash flow issue or a problem with a customer."

Anderson solved his problems on his own and has successfully started four businesses within the field of data communications, comprising network infrastructure design and build, wireless network systems, IP connected buildings and Boston Smarthome.

He also takes time to mentor three businesses, offering informal advice and support to smaller companies, meeting for lunch or coffee to act as someone to speak to and offer ideas.

But when it comes to business, he still likes to stand alone, although he uses members of the Entrepreneurial Exchange as a sounding board for his ideas.

"I am very much the kind of person who does things for themselves," he said. "I have structured the business now so that it is run by other people and gives me room for creative thought. It lets me go off and come up with ideas which I then pass on and they make it work. That model works very well for me."