YOUR BUSINESS SPRING 2019 - 32

Interview
associates, advisers or freelancers
too. You also need the working capital
to execute the plan. If you haven't
budgeted and costed it, you'll come
unstuck. It always takes longer
and costs more than you think, so
having working capital is vital.

You've said you always learn
from your mistakes. From
which mistake do you think
you've learned the most?

I handle financials a lot better too and am better
at planning and budgeting. And I have a greater
understanding of cash collections. In the past, if a
big company didn't pay me for 90 days, I accepted
it. Now I have much greater awareness of how it
can have a detrimental effect on your business.
I'm aware of the importance of getting the right
customer, the right piece of work that I can deliver
profitably and getting paid on time. Before I would
be so excited having won work that sometimes
I wasn't focused on the margin or the terms.

There isn't just one! Unfortunately I
don't think I go through a month, a
quarter or a year when I don't make
mistakes. But this means I've been
constantly learning for 35 years.
Business is very dynamic - it's
changing all the time. Sometimes
your mistakes are in the way
you manage people - when you
lose someone, you reflect on it
and what you might have done
differently. Or you lose a customer
and wonder how it happened and
what you can learn from that.
Last year in my
business we failed to
achieve budget and
I spent Christmas
going through the
budgeting process
to find out what
we did wrong. We
had to change the
formula because
we'd failed to create
a budget that took in
all the assumptions
- and this year we
hope to achieve
budget. My finance
director said it
was because of Brexit, but we knew
about that before the year started and
should have factored it in. You make
mistakes but that doesn't mean you're
failing. It's all part of the journey.

If you could go back in time, what advice
would you give to your younger self when
you were starting your first business?

Do you run your businesses
in the same way as when you
first started? If not, what
do you do differently?

What type of businesses do you think will
thrive in the next five years in the UK?

"I don't think
I go through
a month or
year when I
don't make
mistakes"

I hire better people than I used to. I'm
experienced in who to look for, how to
incentivise, how to remunerate and,
most importantly, how to manage
good people. I pay them in a different
way to maximise performance and
manage them differently too.

32

It's going to be harder than you think, take longer
than you think and will cost more than you think.
If anything can go wrong, it certainly will. I would
prepare him better, because for me it was walking
into the unknown. I made it up as I went along.

When starting a business, what
external help is worth paying for?

There are so many parts involved in running a
business that if you don't have the experience,
the chances of getting it wrong are very high.
The key is to find people who can advise and
mentor you. The more support and expertise
you can surround yourself with, the better.
I still have people advising me because the
market is very different today. Social media, for
example, is very new and I don't know a great
deal about it, so for me to embrace and use it
effectively I needed someone to coach me.

How do you think SMEs will fare in 2019?

The biggest challenge is the uncertainty - that's
terrible for business. Businesses are planning
on relocating and banks are looking to fill jobs
in Europe rather than in the UK. Even if Brexit
won't affect your business directly, if your clients
are affected then it will have a knock-on effect.
My advice is to look at diversifying your customer
base. So, if you supply to banks, for example, look
to supply to insurance companies or hedge funds
too. Look at what you provide and whether your
customer base will be affected, and then look to see
if there is a broader market you should be attacking.

Sadly, it's going to be e-commerce because that's
where the world is going. Knowledge-based
businesses will do well - the more specialised
and niche you are, the more value you provide.
More businesses are being replaced with apps.
What people can do on a smartphone is beyond
belief. Look at something basic like Uber and how
it has transformed the market, and that's an app.
TomTom used to be the go-to satnav but now you
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