Features / If I Knew Then
If I Knew Then: Nick Hounsfield
The Wave is an ambitious project which will see a surfing lake powered by the latest wave-making technology come to the village of Easter Compton near Almondsbury.
There will be sensory gardens, healing gardens, activity areas, peaceful hideaways and kitchen gardens, as well as a natural swimming pool, cafe, changing facilities, education centre and surf shop. The Wave will also be home to a High Performance Surf Centre that will help bring on the UK’s future surfing stars.
Here is some business wisdom from The Wave co-founder, Nick Hounsfield:
Read Yvon Chouinard’s Let My People Go Surfing. It’s a great example of how to do business and treat people.
You can spend a lot of time talking to people in business who want to come on the ride but are not willing to share the risk or roll their sleeves up. Surround yourself with great people, passionate people.
Have a clear vision. Live, breathe and sleep it until every cell in your body knows what it needs to do. Share that vision so that others can help deliver it. Learn to delegate!
Have fun along the way so that you do not end up despising the very thing you are trying to create.
Nick Hounsfield taking part in the Bristol Half Marathon
What would you attempt today if you knew you could not fail? Try to do that thing.
In creating something successful, it is our obligation to pay back into society and the environment. Otherwise you are mugging the system and the planet.
Make sure you have a very understanding partner. I’m lucky there.
My personal high was getting planning approval for The Wave last year.
My personal low was not being able to afford to buy a coffee for an investor I was meeting.
The trigger point for me was the death of my father. It rocked my world to the core. From that came the desire to do something exceptional in his memory and to put something back into society.
My ultimate goals are to see the vision built and make a lot of people happy, all ages, backgrounds and abilities. Spend more time with my family and to hopefully sense that my old man was proud.
For more information about The Wave, visit www.thewave.com
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