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I think it’s when you’re starting off something’s that’s from scratch.
The hardest thing to overcome is the lack of momentum.
So if something’s light and small, you, a table and a phone and an idea, that doesn’t
have much substance then what you then have to do, is to give
that idea some momentum and that just requires a
hell of a lot of hard work, because you’ve got to gather speed,
you’ve got to do absolutely everything, you’ve got to gather people round you, you
got to learn how to delegate. you got to do your market research, contact
your suppliers; all of that; and that won’t be done for you, you’ve
got to do it. So I think the hardest thing is rocking that
boulder out of the hollow that it’s living in from
side to side, side to side, until it comes out and hopefully at the top
of a mountain it starts to gather pace and you’ll be off.
In terms of growing pains i think it’s, finding great people to work with
to what I call ‘Delegrate’ too. You can’t do it all yourself.
I ran a business for a couple of years, two and a half years myself,
accompanied by a couple of fox terriers to keep me company and sane,
but I had a business partner, a chap called Herbie Dieal,
he wasn’t involved with the business at the get go because we didn’t have any revenue
line, but within two years it was clear that I was
missing tricks and I brought him in, and then of the back of that started to build
a really good management team around of with many of whom are with me today.
I think the challenges of growing any business are entirely dependent on how good the business
is. There’s no bad time to start a business,
whether you’re in a recession as you are now or whether the economy’s a little better.
It’s got to be a great business, the challenges then are externalising it.
So in my case, getting people to know about King of Shaves over and above our competitors.
In other people’s businesses it will be about overcoming lack of awareness
and I think the biggest challenge then is; that coupled with the lack of momentum early
doors and overcoming this lack of awareness; that’s
where the challenge is.
But, if the business is great, products are good, services beat other services,
then there’s no reason why the word of mouth and then the word of mouse
powered by new stuff like social media, can accelerate your business.
Your business has to be a great business to succeed; it can’t be an average business.
I think in terms of what social media is doing now
and what the internet did for me back in 93 to 95’
We were one of the first companies to embrace that particular space,
the world wide web as it was back then, we bought shave.com for $35,
we were first to do an ecommerce platform i.e. we sell product worldwide in 1999, we’ve
been on Twitter since 2007, Facebook since 2006.
The importance of social media and the internet is a) it connects you with the world
if it what your messages are world worthy and secondly its free.
And thats compelling from a start up challenge a disruptive business context.
At the moment you can use Twitter for free, you can use Facebook for free, you can use
YouTube for free and those are really quite game changing communication
platforms that any small business can use to its advantage.
Authenticity, honesty, you’ll do anything that you ask your guys to do or your girls
to do, just get on and make it happen mentality.
Not being afraid of hurdles and problems that are put in front of you.
And be able to transfer your enthusiasm for what you’re doing and why you doing it to
your team around you so they believe that when the competition
maybe quite big or the challenges might be quite hard.
That they can engage in, and develop the business alongside the leader.
The leaders only as good as the team around him.
I’m very much an axel with a group of people in a wheel spinning around me.
If you were hiring a university graduate, what attributes would you be looking for?
If I was hiring a university graduate, I mean a lot of entrepreneurs,
as you know drop out of university before they even become graduates
so I’m not too sure there is a graduate from a university,
no...no joke aside, clearly it would be hard work, an appetite to succeed, enthusiasm,
optimism, confidence, common sense, passion, persistence,
somebody who knows the difference between a 50% mark and a 100% margin
is and somebody who’s prepared to roll up their sleeves and get on with it.
And you know, believes that they can bring the X factor to my business,
that I need when I’m selling my business too my customers.