Looe is a quaint small town, located on England’s southern Cornish coastline. Yes, it is pronounced the way you might fear to call it. And yes, while it might seem just a quiet, idyllic spot for tourists, there is a lot of commerce going on in the former smugglers’ coves.

My wife and I are camped down in the village, putting about 2,500 miles between me and my business mentoring clients in Jerusalem and its surrounds. And yet, I just cannot escape the subject of coaching.

For example, we set ourselves up in an airbnb and turned on the TV. Struggling with lousy reception, we hit upon the programme “Dragons’ Den”. Here, budding entrepreneurs pitch their start ups to investors. The anti-hero of this story has a very clever idea for monetizing public sports’ facilities.

However, when questioned about the distribution of profits to date, it became very evident that he was hiding something. It turned out that he had incurred a fine to the tax authorities, which he was seemingly reluctant to disclose.

And that was silly, to say the least. In reality, those investors were his market. And he had deceived them, when all he was required to was tell the truth openly. He had broken that relationship of trust with his market. They rejected him flat, despite his clear talents to build up a new business from scratch.

As I was checking in the newspaper for what to watch next, I hit upon an article about James Timpson. He has 1,925 sites in the UK. He reheels shoes, duplicates keys, prints pictures, and he makes a huge fortune in a depressed market.

What’s his skill? It would seem that he knows where his market is located. First, as he observes, these are not exactly services that will lose out to the internet. As for site placement, favourite choices are next to McDonalds. Failing that, they try to be as close to public toilets as possible. For good measure, the journalist accompanied Timpson to one of his most successful franchises…..a prefab structure in a car park of a large supermarket!

I also glanced at an article about Generation Z. These are people who are so determined to have everything, and immediately, that they actively look for apps that provide delivery services even at 3am in the morning.

This reminded me of a true story a couple of years back, when I was offering some pro bono advice to a friend of my son, both of whom had just finished three years military service in Israel. The friend wanted to set up a sandwich delivery service, at night, in Tel Aviv. I could not understand the concept. Surely, there were not enough people awake at those hours to justify any initial injection of resources?

The 21 year old entrepreneur was quick to explain himself. In my naiveté, I did not know that after taking certain drugs, people need to eat, immediately. In other words, his  business model was based on the growing abuse of young Israelis of their own bodies.

Sad, but clever thinking. It will be interesting to see if he goes on to emulate J Timpson. Meanwhile, Sitting in Looe has been very educational for me.