Successful Entrepreneurs Are Great Problem-Solvers: Laura Bennett

(Photo by leefotos)

Problems? Great! Let me help you.

If you are looking for “business ideas,” don’t look for some secret idea book. Instead, look around yourself for problems. Your problems, your friends’ problems, the world’s problems. Problems are business opportunities. Essentially, people pay to solve their problems, and that’s what business is all about.

Today’s guest for the Interview With Successful Entrepreneurs series is Laura Bennett, CEO of Embrace Pet Insurance. She had a friend with a problem – huge veterinary bill for her sick cat — and turned her life to solve the problem.

1. Tell us a bit about your business and why you started it.

Embrace Pet Insurance sells pet health insurance for the unexpected veterinary bills for cats and dogs. Our mission is to change the flighty image of pet insurance in the US. We have been selling policies since 2006 but my co-founder and I have been working on the concept since 2002 when we were at the Wharton Business School together working on our MBAs.

At the time, some friends of ours had a sick cat and after spending $5,000 on her, they’d looked into pet insurance and realized the offerings at the time were rather poor. As they were from the UK where pet insurance is a common insurance product, with many insured cats and dogs, they thought there might be a business opportunity there and four of us ended up putting a pet insurance entry in for the Wharton Business Plan Competition.

After a lot of hard work, we actually won it, and I realized I had a gem of an idea on my hands to pursue it after we graduated. My background is in insurance (I’m now the only full-time pet insurance actuary in the US) and I had wanted to get into an early stage company – I just hadn’t realized I was going to co-found one!

2. What were the three biggest challenges when you were starting off as a new entrepreneur?

There are so many challenges, it’s hard to know where to start. If I were to pick three though, here they are.

a. Not starting a business in my home town.

Before I went to Wharton, I lived in Toronto and had a lot of connections and a solid reputation in the life and health insurance business (I had 12 years of work experience.) Post-MBA (which was in Philadelphia), I ended up in Cleveland because of my husband’s job and pet insurance is property & casualty insurance, a whole other world from where I had come from. So I had to start from scratch and build up my reputation with potential partners, which takes a lot of effort and is very time consuming.

b. Finding a partner was incredibly challenging.

We had a product our potential partners knew nothing about, my co-founder and I were unknown to them (see point a), and we had never run an insurance brokerage before. Three strikes again us and we could not find an American insurance company to have the courage to take a leap of faith in us. In the end, we partnered with 2 Lloyd’s of London syndicates, who had dealt with pet insurance before in the UK, and were much more willing to take a risk on us.

c. Which brings me to my final challenge – living with other people’s timelines.

Even with Lloyd’s, it took us 2 years 3 months from our first introduction to Lloyd’s to selling our first policy, which was incredibly frustrating. It’s understandable from a Lloyd’s perspective as that’s how they work (they have given us trust but it had to be built) but from an entrepreneur’s perspective, it was agony.

3. And how did you work through these challenges?

Basically, it was good old fashioned networking, dogged persistence, and total belief in our idea. And of course, the ever necessary patience I never imagined I had.

I just got used to “warm calling” people with references from others who I knew and that’s how we eventually found our Lloyd’s partners (it started with a business acquaintance of mine from Toronto who moved to Philly who introduced me to a friend from his “buddy family” at his girls’ school and went from there – so random.) I also found great support from my Toronto connections and my long-time mentor stepped up as our first angel investor, giving us instant credibility with others we talked to. This really helped us raise our first funds and all of a sudden, we became a company with an interesting idea, rather than 2 people running around with a business plan.

4. What is the best part of being an entrepreneur for you?

It’s such a cliché but it comes down to being able to build something from nothing that solves people’s problems. There’s no feeling like it.

I also like that if I am going to work hard, I might as well do it for my own benefit since I put my all into whatever I do. And finally, I’m not sure I could work for anyone else now – I would be such a horrible employee. I have too many opinions about how things should be run, particularly around company culture, and I’d drive everyone crazy.

5. Any advice for people who dream to have their own business and yet find it hard to make the leap?

a. Get started.

If you are working on an idea for your own business, don’t wait for it to be perfect before you totally commit yourself to it. It never will be perfect; I can guarantee it. Even if you think it’s perfect (your salary replacement lined up, your prototype built, your business partners in pocket, etc.) it won’t turn out the way you think it will so just get going, learn from real experience, and adjust accordingly.

b. Surround yourself with supporters.

There will always be people who will tell you you aren’t going to succeed (maybe not directly, but it’s implied.) The founders of Google, Amazon, and Starbucks all heard it – being an entrepreneur is quite lonely so keep people around you who are going to provide you with the motivation to get up every day with the energy and drive to keep pushing forward when times are tough. There are more tough times as an entrepreneur than you can possibly imagine.

c. Learn to listen well.

So many people will tell you why your idea won’t work and it’s easy to dismiss them because from your perspective, they don’t really understand what you are trying to do. Underneath it all though, there could be some nuggets of truth to what they say, so you need to think about the criticisms carefully and make necessary adjustments or have an answer to why these things aren’t going to happen with your business. But do not ignore them – there is always something to be learnt.

My Takeaway
I really like her point of building “something from nothing that solves people’s problems”. This is just the essence of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs are the problems-solvers who care about people’s problems. We put our life and money into helping others in need.

Her saying “if I am going to work hard, I might as well do it for my own benefit” echoes with Tony Laurence’ words “If I have to work for an idiot, I may as well work for myself.” It’s about taking control of our own life.

I also like her advice of listening to criticisms. With open and wise mind, we can learn so much from everyone. We find business opportunities and even potential solutions by listening well.

If you like this article, you might enjoy my eBook on spiritual entrepreneurship. Click here for free, immediate download

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