If you haven't come across www.inafishbowl.com yet, take a vist to this business reality website where three entrepreneurs share their experiences of starting up in business.  It's an innovative idea and its different, creative, take on supporting new businesses followed through to a great live event where the Fishbowl businesses and experts met face-to-face.

I was on the expert panel and thoroughly enjoyed being part of an event that really brought the issues facing the Fishbowl businesses to life.  Host, Toby Reid, talked in his introduction about how he believes that the best way to encourage and support new businesses is to keep having the conversation around what makes a successful entrepreneur and this was a format that made that conversation work.

Starting off by sharing Fishbowl entrepreneurs' business dilemmas and seeking views from the experts, the dynamic of the event soon became really interesting as the audience joined in and the entrepreneurs started to seek advice from them as well as the experts.  The three-way debate was simulating and generated some great ideas - in fact some of the audience beat me to it a few times!

In discussion with the other experts afterwards, we did note that the Fishbowl businesses, like so many others, have challenges that always boil down to the same key issues around pricing, marketing, cash flow, resourcing, etc... the issues never change but the specific of how each business needs to handle these decisions are always different.  I'm looking forward to seeing how the Fishbowl businesses emerge from a period of critical decision-making and what shape they take next.

*** Take a look at the video of inafishbowlLIVE! ***