Emma Brown

To join the ranks of successful entrepreneurs; start running now.

Somebody stop me

I move fast, think fast and act fast. My staff know the only way to get me is to master the “walk and talk”. I speak at a speed that has people squinting at me to try to comprehend the words. If you need to take two moments to respond, you’ve lost me.

Coupled with moving at the speed of light, I’m also inflicted with a syndrome that demands things be done now at best, next at worst. When I have an idea, I want it executed now. When I email you, I want a response now. When I am hungry, I want to eat now.

It’s not enough that my poor assistant logs on to her email each morning to find 80 new messages from me, demanding that the tasks be completed in the next hour. I need those tasks done so quickly that I don’t even have the time to get up and go talk with her about them; no, I need instant gratification. I owe my life to the inventor of Skype. My poor assistant.

I have tried many things to change my frenetic pace. Meditation worked in short bursts – although I always found I had to be somewhere straight after. I even read (very quickly) In Praise of Slow, Carl Honore’s account of why the modern world should slow down.

But while I really do envy the strategists, people who can lock themselves in a room for hours on end and envision what their company will look like five years from now, I have decided that is just for executives.

The true entrepreneur just gets on with it, before getting bored and moving on to the next best thing. Now I don’t fight it. I don’t try and slow down.

It is the only way to build a company fast: to run, sleep less, try and fit in rehab for our BlackBerry addictions (that happens, you know), and book our diaries with endless tasks and meetings to achieve the elusive BRW Fast 100 status we crave.

What is more, it works.

But more later. Got to run, I’m late.

Emma Brown, at 27, has bought two businesses and sold one. She ran the recruitment company Staff It for eight years. Now she is Chief Chick of Business Chicks, Australia’s leading community for businesswomen. She’s on the board of Entrepreneurs Organisation Sydney, and lives in Sydney with her fellow entrepreneur partner.