Jeremy Hall – Confessions of a serial entrepreneur

We’re on fire

It’s month end and I reflect on our month. I can safely say it has been our best month in over three years. Sales and profit have come in from all areas; we have found deals that just did not exist four weeks ago. Every now and then a salesperson has some luck and gets that big deal in. The technical term is “jam.” This month we have put the bread on the table and found that pot of jam.

 So why has it happened, how has it come about?

 I reduced the headcount in September with the associated cost savings taking place this month. In simple terms, we have to make £10,000 less gross profit per month to break even.

1. I used our white board again, putting the target on the wall for all to see. This board was updated daily, reporting all new prospects and sales. I wanted – visualized – seeing this board full of names and numbers
2. I proactively spoke to our customers, a basic and simple task I have not done for some time. ( I am talking here of spending quality time on the phone to these people) When you have a sales team, you forget, assume that they will do this job for you. It is not always the case
3. I hunted everywhere for every last scrap of business. It’s amazing what you will find when you open up the drains and look in the cupboards
4. Most importantly – the jam – I believed and visualized these deals coming in – and they did

 What have I learnt?

When I was 24 and I set up Wyse Leasing, I just went out there and found customers and made sales, I knew no different. As you get older and wiser and build a more complex business model, you create a world with numerous variables, excuses and analyze why things don’t happen. You interpret the negative news stories and surmise that is why your customers are not buying off you. Well the answer is much simpler than that. They are not buying off you because you are not selling to them.

 So what have I learnt – companies / people are still spending money, there are individuals that need your service / product. Just talk to them. The funny this is I knew it already, I have just forgotten its importance.

Discretionary spend

Thinking about Center Parcs, they must have had a tough ride over the last few years. (My personal thoughts here, I do not know their occupancy rates, and for the record, there were only two villas left when we booked so they were completely full.)

 Center Parcs for most people is a great weekend away in addition to a normal two week holiday. I do not know, but logic would have it, many people go for one weekend a year to Center Parcs as a special treat. The recession has hit the tourism industry hard, but people still want to get away, and a week at Center Parcs would probably cost more than a week on a beach in Europe. One would assume then that Center Parcs, being a discretionary spend, has been hit hard over the last few years.

 There are be a lot of companies in the business of discretionary spend, those nice to have luxuries that can wait or take second place to day to day and urgent expenditure. I see this effect with sales of our Who’s Who books, people I know in corporate events and training.

Center Parcs

We have just returned from a weekend away at Elvedon Forest in Suffolk, the Center Parcs village.

This is a company that is worthy of a diary entry. There are three key things I would note:

1. Service – what fantastic service from all the staff there. They smile, are keen to help, are very chatty and do everything to make you welcome and ensure your short stay is a memorable event
2. Quality – They look after the place, they maintain it to a high standard. The food is good quality, the lockers work, the badminton rackets are all new. The village has a quality feel to it
3. Investment – We have not been there for over five years. Since then, they have continually invested in the village adding many activities. They have not said we have a successful formula, let’s just rape and pillage the customers. They have invested time, money and effort into making the holiday experience one to remember.

 It is great to have a long weekend away. It is even better when you get away with a company that has got it right.

100 days just completed

27^th October is the 300th day of the year. As I completed my previous 100 day plan in July, I set out my objectives until the 27^th October. Not many of them were met.

 Having a 100 day plan is a great idea. It takes a lot of willpower to then keep up the pace for another 100 days with aggressive objectives to meet. The key to a successful 100 plan is to keep it simple and in the forefront of your mind. My previous 100 day plan centered around getting fit and losing weight. My specific objective was to not eat any junk food and absolutely no beer or wine. Mentally, I just had one goal, my target weight.

 In simple, terms, I have given myself multiple goals for the 100 days to the 27^th October.  That is why they were not achieved. All of them were measureable and possible to complete, but I did not review the list every day.

 I am to set a new goal to the end of the year. The importance is the word goal, not goals.

Spending £1/2m on your toilets

The other week I went to see Neil Gaydon, the CEO of Pace plc being interviewed with Rene Caroyl. Neil has successfully taken a loss making company on the bridge of collapse to a billion pound turnover company employing 1,200 people.

 He talked a lot about “company culture” and how Pace plc invested in their building infrastructure. Pace operate out of an old mill, a few hundred years old, a massive building desperately in need of renovation.

 At a time when money was tight, they made the decision to renovate, their starting position being the toilets. £1/2m later, this renovation was completed and subsequently moved the renovation project into the reception, restaurant, and general working space of its employees. For Neil, this was a worthwhile investment, an investment into its people, culture and way it wants’ to be perceived by customers, suppliers and the market as a whole.

 At the interview, I raised my hand to ask a question, clearly not high enough as I did not get to speak. My question was how much does the fabric of the work place effect the culture and success of a business?

£1.00 per day

Leasing £1,000 of capital equipment over five years will cost £20.00 per month, that is £1.00 per day, or 50p in the morning and the same in the afternoon.

 Now £1,000 buys a fantastic desk, high spec chair and a few other bits to go with it. If you add in a new computer, at £1,000 over three years, that will add another £1.50 per day to the total. So for a grand total of £2.50 per day, each employee can have great working conditions.  Why not add in upgrading the whole office and amortise the cost by the number in the team, you may get up to £1,000 per year per employee. At an average salary of £20,000 per year, that is just 5% of their salary.

 Money well spent if you ask me, and it is all tax deductable!

What to do with that untidy member of staff?

I have to say that when you have a lot on your mind and things going on, the last thing you think about it keeping the office tidy. It’s times like these that you think “does it really matter if the office is untidy?” So what happens when you have a member of staff that has different values?

 I do think that untidiness is a state of mind, and one that cannot be easily changed. To matters worse, when you are the boss and have to have the same chat again and again with the same person, it does sound anal to talk about a clean desk policy. Lets drop into the equation a time when sales are down and times are tough. There you are, the boss, having a chat with someone about keeping their desk tidy when what you should be really focused on is where the next sale is to come from.

 These comments are not directed at anyone in particular. We have had to deal with this for 20 years plus. You need to set your stall out on day one with a new employee and make sure the culture is there already in a business of an organised workspace.

Genesis in receivership

20 years later, I arrive for a meeting at a computer leasing company, one of our three main competitors. Genesis had a great reputation, smart offices and a successful story to tell.

 Being a competitor, I was not shown their sales offices, just ushered into their boardroom. It was big, maybe best part of twenty chairs around a highly polished piano wood table and what looked like a rear wall projection system at the end.

 It lacked finesse, the chairs were not straight, there were no pictures on the walls. It was slightly untidy. It surprised me, as the investment in this room was greater than Mr. Big’s 20 years ago. All it needed was someone to finish it off and look after the room.

 Now the point of this is that Genesis went into receivership to get out of a lease on their building costing, I believe, circa £5,000 per month. So here we have the other side of the chat with regards to investing in infrastructure, This Company was trying so hard to send out the right image, it brought about their downfall.

 This is the fine line between cost and culture.

When Mr. Big was not so big

1987, Mr. Big was just a well off Joe Average, doing deals, making a living. I remember visiting their offices and being shown into the boardroom. There was a large table big enough for 16 people. You could see your reflection in the highly polished table that must have set them back many thousands. As I sat down in one of the new chairs, I looked around. The carpet was new, they had pictures on the walls and by every seat was a pad and pencil. There was one telephone on the cadenza and no heaps of files in the corner. Their secretary came in with the tea in a Wedgewood cup.

 Wow, what an experience, this company was going places. I am sure that customers would feel the same as me, a young spotty sales rep.

 I still think back to that day and the impact it had on me. Very few companies I have ever visited have had Wedgewood crockery and even less have bothered to put out a pad of paper and a pencil. Compared to Mr. Big’s wealth, it was a small investment.

My first day at ITR

July 1998, 9:30am, I handed over the bankers draft for a very large sum of money. The Sale and Purchase Agreement was signed and the previous owner of Information Technology Rentals Limited and I shook hands, the deal secured. We were now the owner of another leasing company, another office with a team of five people.

 Staff are always nervous when a company ownership changes hands and a new management team step in. As a buyer it is important to realize this and state your plans as a matter of urgency (where possible.) I knew that there would be no redundancies, we wanted to keep the team intact. However, even if we state that, these people do not know of us and rightfully will be sceptical.

 The offices looked in need of urgent renovation. The IT system was prehistoric, the carpet worn and the furniture falling apart.

 So how do you answer the opening question, “are you going to shut down the office?”

 Simple, “Our first job is to repaint the office, buy new carpets, install air-conditioning, replace the furniture and IT system.” They quickly got the point.

 Regardless, we had no choice, how could this team visit one of our other offices that were of a much higher standard? Most importantly, one day one at ITR, we implemented a change in culture.