I’ve never understood why businesses don’t expand. Sure, they’re complications and it usually means a lot more risk and work but if you enjoy what you do (and you should) why wouldn’t you want to double or treble that enjoyment – never mind the profit?
Bruce Lee once said: "Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one's potential."
I believe that the same is true for a business - a quality business will have the urge to develop what it's got, expand and become more than what it currently is. When it achieves this, it will set new goals. The driving force behind his has to be the entrepreneur and small businesses who don't expand never will fufill their potential. Wasted talent is the saddest thing in life, as Lorenzo (Robert DiNiro) says in A Bronx Tale - my favourite movie, you've probably not seen it, go and buy it now.
Last year, I learned that they’re different motivations for starting a business – some people start a business solely to support their passion or hobby, others to maintain a certain standard of living and others simply for the kick and to expand the business. It made sense that not everybody starts a business to grow it and it answered my question somewhat.
I definitely would categorize myself somewhere between the latter two stages (a ‘lifestyle’ entrepreneur and a ‘serial’ entrepreneur). At the moment, my business supports the lifestyle I lead; I can afford everything I want, within reason. Without my business, I would struggle, to say the least and would be forced to work treble the hours (at least) to maintain my current living standards.
Despite this, my sole objective is not simply to fund my lifestyle. I want to expand my business to new clubs, new cities and even new countries, even if it means working treble the hours. I recognise the potential that this business has and that, with the correct business model, it could be successfully rolled out nationally or franchised. I have my strategic, tactical and operational goggles on, all of the time – I want to look after what I’ve got, but I want to make what I’ve got increase, ten-fold and I know it wouldn’t be a difficult thing to do.
While it’s nice to be making weekly profits well in to the three-figure scale; knowing that by taking on a new club on the same scale as our current client would leave me with profits just a shade off £1000-a-week and that having ten clubs on the books would lead me into astronomical profits (for the sector we’re in at least) nearing the quarter of a million mark has got me thinking about expansion a lot recently. Which I guess is where the serial entrepreneur in me has been overtaking the lifestyle entrepreneur. I guess that’s probably because Serial is driving an Aston Martin and the Lifestyle a BMW... And the actual difference in my working week? After I’ve set up additional clubs (the real work for me), would be that I’d be working less mandatory hours, I’d be creating more jobs and I could empower and develop my staff; three of my founding objectives.
Anyway, there’s a process that I’ll need to go through before I’m happy to expand and make my billions. I want to make sure that our existing client is totally satisfied before I go off chasing other clients – for two reasons. Number one; if we were to lose this client, we’d be fucked in the short-term. Number two; a good testimonial from another nightclub will sooth any doubts in a new clients mind.
There’s a number three as well actually, everything has got to be spot on before I can start delegating responsibility to my staff. I want to hand over a faultless system, so that it remains faultless and I know the correction steps if my man fucks up. I have already picked my ‘captain’ for the club and informed him on my intentions. His responsibilities aren’t difficult, but they’re the foundations. Cashing up, ensuring that equipment is returned and replenishing supplies, that kind of thing. If he forgets to put the mints in, we lose money. If he gives the staff too much money, we lose money. If we run out of aftershave... You get the point.
Handing him responsibility will be a gradual process as I’m not 100% happy with the setup and neither are the club. Although minor, things I could change tomorrow, these are changes I’ll need to implement before I hand over my operational goggles. Regardless of this, I’ll never be handing over complete responsibility and I’ll still be around (though not as often) to ensure things are being done to the high standards I’ve managed to instil in my staff, which has led to a massive increase in profits since day one.
I’ll be looking at expansion in Aberdeen initially, although I’ll be moving home to Fife in just over a month’s time so they’re opportunities to be had there too. My connections in the nightclub industry are better in Fife too. I already have a man for the job in Fife, who I know can take care of things once shown how while I focus on Aberdeen – so it could be a matter of expanding across city-borders while still expanding in Aberdeen... Exciting stuff!
In terms of a business snapshot, things are moving along very well... I’ve taken on a new female member of staff, we’ve increased our average takings based on a week-on-week comparison by around 80%, our fixed assets were increased last night thanks to suggestions from customers, staff and the club, I’ve increased the amount of fragrances from 2 to 3 for every toilet - with a view to expand to 4 later this week and 5 in the very near future. One of our guys even sold a half-empty bottle of Jean Paul Gautier “Le Male” for £25, a full bottle costs only £22.02!
The lesson to be learned from what I’ve written today is probably a very simple one, but one that should be at the back of any leaders mind ALL of the time... SWOT Analysis. It might be considered an ineffective tool by most and something you only do in Management school... But the essentials are there for pretty much everything you need to do for long-term planning:
Identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to your business, use conversion strategies to turn weaknesses into strengths and threats into opportunities – or at least plan to.
Match your opportunities with your strengths and see what you can come up with:
Now, I didn’t sit down and write this on a sheet of paper, drawing lines all over the place for the purpose of a consultancy report – it’s engraved into my head thanks to various business teachers/lecturers/tutors at St. Andrews High School and Aberdeen University – but it’s a simple, but very effective tool that can allow you to work on what you’re good at and perhaps allow you to foresee problems that if unidentified could kill your business. Never forget that. Sometimes the simple stuffs the most important.
Thanks to everyone for the emails and feedback. It’s appreciated - keep it up, email me at s.anderson.06@aberdeen.ac.uk. Although if you’ve got a blogger account PLEASE follow this blog, I feel like a total norman-no-friends on this!!
Bruce Lee once said: "Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one's potential."
I believe that the same is true for a business - a quality business will have the urge to develop what it's got, expand and become more than what it currently is. When it achieves this, it will set new goals. The driving force behind his has to be the entrepreneur and small businesses who don't expand never will fufill their potential. Wasted talent is the saddest thing in life, as Lorenzo (Robert DiNiro) says in A Bronx Tale - my favourite movie, you've probably not seen it, go and buy it now.
Last year, I learned that they’re different motivations for starting a business – some people start a business solely to support their passion or hobby, others to maintain a certain standard of living and others simply for the kick and to expand the business. It made sense that not everybody starts a business to grow it and it answered my question somewhat.
I definitely would categorize myself somewhere between the latter two stages (a ‘lifestyle’ entrepreneur and a ‘serial’ entrepreneur). At the moment, my business supports the lifestyle I lead; I can afford everything I want, within reason. Without my business, I would struggle, to say the least and would be forced to work treble the hours (at least) to maintain my current living standards.
Despite this, my sole objective is not simply to fund my lifestyle. I want to expand my business to new clubs, new cities and even new countries, even if it means working treble the hours. I recognise the potential that this business has and that, with the correct business model, it could be successfully rolled out nationally or franchised. I have my strategic, tactical and operational goggles on, all of the time – I want to look after what I’ve got, but I want to make what I’ve got increase, ten-fold and I know it wouldn’t be a difficult thing to do.
While it’s nice to be making weekly profits well in to the three-figure scale; knowing that by taking on a new club on the same scale as our current client would leave me with profits just a shade off £1000-a-week and that having ten clubs on the books would lead me into astronomical profits (for the sector we’re in at least) nearing the quarter of a million mark has got me thinking about expansion a lot recently. Which I guess is where the serial entrepreneur in me has been overtaking the lifestyle entrepreneur. I guess that’s probably because Serial is driving an Aston Martin and the Lifestyle a BMW... And the actual difference in my working week? After I’ve set up additional clubs (the real work for me), would be that I’d be working less mandatory hours, I’d be creating more jobs and I could empower and develop my staff; three of my founding objectives.
Anyway, there’s a process that I’ll need to go through before I’m happy to expand and make my billions. I want to make sure that our existing client is totally satisfied before I go off chasing other clients – for two reasons. Number one; if we were to lose this client, we’d be fucked in the short-term. Number two; a good testimonial from another nightclub will sooth any doubts in a new clients mind.
There’s a number three as well actually, everything has got to be spot on before I can start delegating responsibility to my staff. I want to hand over a faultless system, so that it remains faultless and I know the correction steps if my man fucks up. I have already picked my ‘captain’ for the club and informed him on my intentions. His responsibilities aren’t difficult, but they’re the foundations. Cashing up, ensuring that equipment is returned and replenishing supplies, that kind of thing. If he forgets to put the mints in, we lose money. If he gives the staff too much money, we lose money. If we run out of aftershave... You get the point.
Handing him responsibility will be a gradual process as I’m not 100% happy with the setup and neither are the club. Although minor, things I could change tomorrow, these are changes I’ll need to implement before I hand over my operational goggles. Regardless of this, I’ll never be handing over complete responsibility and I’ll still be around (though not as often) to ensure things are being done to the high standards I’ve managed to instil in my staff, which has led to a massive increase in profits since day one.
I’ll be looking at expansion in Aberdeen initially, although I’ll be moving home to Fife in just over a month’s time so they’re opportunities to be had there too. My connections in the nightclub industry are better in Fife too. I already have a man for the job in Fife, who I know can take care of things once shown how while I focus on Aberdeen – so it could be a matter of expanding across city-borders while still expanding in Aberdeen... Exciting stuff!
In terms of a business snapshot, things are moving along very well... I’ve taken on a new female member of staff, we’ve increased our average takings based on a week-on-week comparison by around 80%, our fixed assets were increased last night thanks to suggestions from customers, staff and the club, I’ve increased the amount of fragrances from 2 to 3 for every toilet - with a view to expand to 4 later this week and 5 in the very near future. One of our guys even sold a half-empty bottle of Jean Paul Gautier “Le Male” for £25, a full bottle costs only £22.02!
The lesson to be learned from what I’ve written today is probably a very simple one, but one that should be at the back of any leaders mind ALL of the time... SWOT Analysis. It might be considered an ineffective tool by most and something you only do in Management school... But the essentials are there for pretty much everything you need to do for long-term planning:
Identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to your business, use conversion strategies to turn weaknesses into strengths and threats into opportunities – or at least plan to.
Match your opportunities with your strengths and see what you can come up with:
- I recognise that my strengths are my staff, so I’m empowering them with expansion.
- One of my personal strengths is setting up a business, which is essentially what I’m doing every time I expand, which I matched with the opportunity of so many clubs without restroom attendants.
- I recognised that one of our weaknesses was a lack of fragrances, once identified plans for buying more aftershaves were put into place. We’ve already increased from 2 to 3 and we’ll have 5 by the next time I write a blog.
- One of our long-term threats is competitors entering the market and challenging for the same clubs as we want (or are already in)... I linked that up with the opportunity to expand into so many vacant clubs, which was linked into my strength in starting up businesses. The threat remains, but it’s been identified and as we build up a relationship with our clients – the barriers to entry will rise, removing the threat and creating a strength.
Now, I didn’t sit down and write this on a sheet of paper, drawing lines all over the place for the purpose of a consultancy report – it’s engraved into my head thanks to various business teachers/lecturers/tutors at St. Andrews High School and Aberdeen University – but it’s a simple, but very effective tool that can allow you to work on what you’re good at and perhaps allow you to foresee problems that if unidentified could kill your business. Never forget that. Sometimes the simple stuffs the most important.
Thanks to everyone for the emails and feedback. It’s appreciated - keep it up, email me at s.anderson.06@aberdeen.ac.uk. Although if you’ve got a blogger account PLEASE follow this blog, I feel like a total norman-no-friends on this!!
PS: If you're wondering about the kid with the massive balloon at the top- balloons expand to their maximum capability, a bad bit of symbolism! "Expansion" in Google Images didn't bring up much!
0 comments:
Post a Comment