Dear Entrepreneur. Danny Bailey
risk
Not always following traditional/conventional methods
What inspired you to start a business?
Reward – self-satisfaction and financial.
Self-satisfaction comes before financial quite simply because someone starting a business purely to make money will achieve less compared to someone who completely lives and breathes their venture. Those who completely love what they do will often make money as a by-product of their success.
Money doesn’t make you happy, it’s the people and achievements in life that does. And if you’re a true entrepreneur you will use money as a tool to invest in more ventures, ideas and passions that will yield you more knowledge and self-satisfaction.
I was always inspired by people who’d built up their own companies, in what they had achieved by creating great brands and services, and sometimes changing the way we do things for the better! All I read are entrepreneurs’ autobiographies.
I understood at a very young age what a margin was, and more importantly, how to make it. To this day it gives me a great buzz when a deal completes successfully. Of course, the bigger the better and you can then invest the profits into larger opportunities.
However, you have to take the rough with the smooth. It’s about calculating your financial and commercial risks, weighing up the pros and cons. As long as overall, most of the time your activity delivers positive results then your risk management is in balance.
Is it possible to start from scratch and do you have any tips?
Absolutely, and platforms such as Google, social media, directories, email marketing and your own site certainly provide opportunities to start and grow most businesses.
Here are some tips:
At the beginning DO NOT tie yourself into lengthily contracts
Everything is negotiable. Negotiate EVERYTHING!
Start to use Google AdWords. You can even set your own daily budget
Don’t waste money on marketing unless you comprehensively target your potential clients
Set your marketing spend as a % of gross margin
Track marketing spend against income to calculate which marketing channels produce an ROI
Get comprehensive insurance including legal cover – you never know what’s around the corner!
Accept your weaknesses and commission expert suppliers
Offer an unbelievable discount to your first customers for referring business
Is starting your second business any easier?
You can apply broad experiences to any business, but a bookkeeping and accountancy firm is very different to buying and selling consumer products!
Braant’s market share is concentrated in London and all potential clients are businesses as opposed to consumers, so our marketing needs to target them appropriately, via the most efficient channels. Additionally, CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) will be higher as the industry is more expensive to advertise and competition is a factor.
In short, it will be a challenge, but it wouldn’t be me unless I was pushing myself!
In its first year, Braant has met its ambitious target and with more aggressive advertising and more services introduced to compliment the core business, Braant is on track to become one of London’s best firms.
Bradley Mcloughlin
Founder, Braant and Trading4U
Chilango
Dear Entrepreneur,
Despite the recent recession our company sales have grown rapidly since our first restaurant opened on Upper Street in August 2007. I wish I could say that we had planned that type of growth and that the road has been easy. Neither is true, but we do believe our success to date has been a by-product of focusing on a few key things.
Define your brand, then seek to continually improve it
The Chilango brand and its future evolution is our most vital asset. We’ve evolved our brand a few times since inception, and will unleash the next batch of improvements in our new site. When starting out there’s a natural temptation to mimic the brand of a bigger player. Resist. You certainly don’t have to reinvent every aspect of your business, but if your total proposition isn’t unique then your success will be short-lived.
Our guiding light has been the feeling we want to create with every guest that walks through our doors. As we’ve grown and spoken with guests so has our thinking about what this feeling should be, and ultimately how the brand should reflect and support it.
We define our brand across Food, People and Place, and have a set of promises, or benefits, we aim to provide our guests within each area. The sum of these promises create our proposition: We like to think we brighten up people’s day.
The best people create the best companies, EVERYTHING else is secondary
People means crew, management, suppliers, creatives, investors…anyone that may have a part in or touch Chilango. Taking the time to find, attract, and reward highly competent, like-minded people means the trust runs high, while the need or want to look over shoulders runs low, and everyone can focus completely on the road ahead.
Our company vision has always been our best currency, whether it’s persuading a supplier to work with us sooner rather than later, or getting that highly experienced and talented person to forego the high salary and focus on the equity upside instead.
The best people will always weather the worst storms.
Ignore the naysayers
Quality and value are key words within our brand, and despite the recession we haven’t budged on either. Every time we’ve been able to pocket some additional margin through purchasing scale, we’ve chosen to share some of the profit back with the customer by upgrading our raw material supply as well. Despite the recessionary marketing tactics of other players, we’ve generally avoided discounting as we think it will only cheapen the Chilango brand.
Lots of people along the way have strongly advised us against such a strategy. We’ve certainly looked at ways to save money and cut costs, but cheapening the guest experience is by no means the right way to finance these savings. Ignore anyone who thinks otherwise.
Don’t get me wrong – the climb to get to where we are today has been a hell of a battle. Most of our new guests have never even had a burrito in their life, or could even accurately describe one. But we’ve stuck to our guns and can without doubt see the dividends ahead and the light shining at the tunnel’s end.
Eric Partaker
Co-Founder and Director, Chilango
Chokolit
Dear Entrepreneur,
When I started my business I set myself some principles that I stick to and that help to keep