Judy Piatkus - founder of Piatkus Books

Judy Piatkus certainly practises what she preaches. As a successful entrepreneur and inspirational speaker, she is a woman at the forefront of future trends who understands the business of entrepreneurship from the inside out. Intimidating, you might think? Well, actually no. Intelligent, soft spoken and eloquent? Yes she is.

She started her second publishing company, Piatkus Books, in 1979 with the proceeds of her first successful company. Piatkus was not even 30 at the time. As an ambitious young woman forging ahead in what was at the time undeniably a businessman’s world, it was not plain sailing.

She recalls her first visit to the bank manager as an already tried and tested business woman: “I had worked out my cashflow and what I wanted to do. I knew it was all good because I had let my accountant run his eye over the figures. The bank manager looked at it and said that he was interested but that my husband would have to sign for it too. My response was to explain that it had nothing to do with him but it made no difference, so I went and found another bank.”

Piatkus’s eyes these days are very much locked on future horizons. As a sought-after speaker, she offers insight into future trends every entrepreneur needs to know about, as well as advice on operating businesses through difficult times. This forward thinking attitude gives Piatkus her informative position. 

Her website has masses of tips for entrepreneurs. She cites getting money in as the key to keeping a start-up solvent and advises appointing a designated person to make sure of this. Another piece of advice she obviously follows herself is to be aware of changes and trends taking place in particular marketplaces and this extends to remembering that all new directions need to be planned beforehand.

It is her own entrepreneurial journey that gives her such credibility - she invested £30K in Piatkus Books on day one and proceeded to build a brand and company which she sold 27 years later to Little Brown for £10.5m.

It was in 1991 that her own foray into personal development coincided with an increasing demand in the market place for books focussing on that and mind, body and spirit.

She began to explore other interests outside the world of publishing: “I started work on a phone line helping people and then I worked as a voluntary bereavement counsellor. It occured to me that I could do this better if I had some training. I loved it.”

Her training as a psychodynamic psychotherapist has, no doubt, helped her understanding of what makes people tick and has enabled her, in her subsequent career, to inspire fellow entrepreneurs to think differently and more creatively about their business.

She refuses to believe that the current economic environment needs to be an insurmountible obstacle for a budding entrepreneur, commenting: “It’s always been difficult for entrepreneurs to find all the money that they want. It is a fact that as their company grows, their ideas begin to grow and their horizons begin to grow.”

She goes on to explain on her website that 'all times of chaos bring opportunity', and that a key advantage is that startup costs have actually come down during this time - namely that most office services or facilities can be outsourced and that cheaper technology means creative individuals can afford to experiment more.

But it is publishing that continues to draw Piatkus, with the recent publication of an ebook for non-fiction writers on her website entitled How to Become a Successful Published Author. She believes that at least 50 per cent of people will have wanted to write a book at some point, so the ebook focuses on the all-important point of how to sell a book to a publisher.

 “For every book that we made an offer for, we also rejected hundreds of other projects that did not make the grade. Many were written by authors who were experts on their subjects. But they did not present their work to us professionally and so we had no choice but to turn it down,” she says

It would seem that the road to becoming a successful author and an entrepreneur may not be so very different. Piatkus says of entrepreneurs: “You need to be tenacious and persistent. It’s very demanding and challenging to develop your own company. You’ve got to be a problem solver and you’ve got to keep at it. And you’ve got to hang in there through the good times and the bad.”

Her love of what she does shines through her words.

She writes about this vital state of mind: “When you are spending your time doing what you enjoy, it doesn’t matter if you are making as much money as you did in the past. If you are one of those fortunate people who wakes up and looks forward to the day ahead, that can certainly be a great part of reward itself.”

Judy Piatkus will be speaking at the Entrepreneur Country Forum, In A World With No Money..., on 16 June 2010 at Savoy Place, London.  Register now to secure your place!

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