Met with my business buddy in Costa Coffee. Other people can look at your life and sum up what needs to be done and the outcome so easily. Focus on one project, buy competitors or merge them into an enlarged group and then sell in three years. (He is not even aware of my three year plan and diary!) The key difference is that his three year plan for me means making £3m and not £1m.
Stayed down in Bristol for the night in a Travelodge. It’s clean, it’s cheap and it’s a bed for the night. At £65 per night, the accommodation is half price compared to the hotel we normally stay in. I think to myself, the easiest way to make a million in three years is to save a million in three years.
Now I have not set any new year’s resolutions. Like 95% of the population, I do not keep to them. I have said though, I will get up at 6:00am a few days per week. The plan is to get through the admin prior to the start of the day. So far, I have not achieved this waking up at 7:30am every day. On a positive side, I do sleep well. However, getting up late is lazy and is a habit I urgently need to fix. I was once told it takes 28 days to form a habit – so all we have to do it get up early in January and the problem is fixed.
Just woken up with a worring thought. Even if I make £1m in three years, it is still less than the £500k per year I was earning.
A 15 hour day so far, and I have not even typed up the agenda for our year start meeting tomorrow. Meetings in London, order fulfillment, cash to juggle and suppliers to be paid.
My entry is today is about looking the part. With that in mind I visited a tailor that measures you up and then makes your suit. The owners of the company appear in a Who’s Who publication, and rightfully so. What a clever business. They do not have an expensive shop front location, just a west end office in a good location (they have other UK offices). The suits are not cheap, but I am lead to believe very good quality.
If you want to be highly successful, you have to look the part. You have to feel the part. To most people, Church’s shoes look no different to M&S shoes. They probably even feel the same to wear, but inside you do feel different.
My wardrobe is now empty. It is awaiting to be restocked, hopefully giving me that extra 1% success feeling.
The weekly plan created last Sunday has helped. The new day book is operational.
Planning for next week, in order of priority;
The weather has been improving so things are getting back to normal for UK PLC. Had a chat to the owner of the local Indian restaurant. First time ever no one turned up on Wednesday night. “That business is lost” he says; “no one will come back and have two meals in one night.”
Sales are up on the previous week, activity is improving, starting work at 6:30am.
I look back at the list and see that most of the objectives have been achieved. There is still not enough time in the week to complete what I need to though and note I have not been able to book the meetings or have the volume of sales calls. Our team is flat out with a long list of tasks to complete for this month. However, I have not spent enough time detailing my objectives for them. We have a great asset in our employees, and I need to harness their skills better.
Meeting held with the two owners of a company. The objective of the meeting was to see if they have any thoughts on selling their business. Summary is no. They have exactly the same idea as me and the same outlook on where the market is going.
These meetings are never a waste of time. Not only was it fun, but also interesting to get other peoples feedback on the market. You will always have to throw in a few bits of confidential information to get some back out. Well I say confidential, the information I gave them was not earth shattering.
I came out of the meeting thinking that everyone has problems in life to deal with. I have been in this wasteland for three years, feeling that I am not getting anywhere. This chap I met had found a £600,000 whole in his balance sheet and spent the last few years fixing that! Maybe entrepreneurs wasteland is not that bad after all.
Two things I used to always concentrate on – “Cash is king” and “urgency”.
I met yesterday with a person who had agreed last year to invest into Who’s Who. It was my job to complete the business plan and have a meeting to run through it. He has already agreed to invest in the business verbally, hence, I have put no urgency behind closing this off. Suffice to say, he wants to “relook at the proposal”. It’s irreverent what the reasons for the non investment / delay are, but for the record, it is completely my fault sending him some negative messages.
A very important message to myself, always remember the importance of urgency.
p.s. Just found out that my business partner did not make a mistake sending the incorrect amount of money to by bank account. It was the bank’s fault! It just shows that honesty pays.
The leasing industry has displaced maybe 20% of the people who worked in this sector over the past two years. But where have they gone?
I have been actively speaking to leasing people I know and quite a few are now “consultants”. Basically, the definition of someone who cannot find a job and are working giving advice. Respect where respect is due. At least they are doing something and are getting out there speaking to people. I wish them all the best of luck.
My business partner has just sent me £10,000 by mistake. I should have only received my share of this figure. Now a number of years ago, a bank we did business with sent £50,000 to his business account by accident as opposed to ours. It’s hard to believe and embarrassing to say but we did not pick this up for nine months. His view was that it was our mistake for not having adequate systems within the company. To be fair, he is 100% correct about our lousy systems, it should have been picked up.
So what do I do? I called him straight away. He will find out soon enough anyway and I will not embarrass myself by playing games or coming out with that line “Oh, I did not realise”.
In my business life, there are hundreds examples like this. Saying that, I am still waiting for him to call me back…
