Author Archives: entrepreneurialexchange

Speaker Video Highlights – Annual Conference 2013

Posted on by
Reply

From chairman Chris van der Kuyl’s welcome speech to Kevin Dorran, Tom Cross, Hermann Twickler, Mike Clare and Martin Gilbert, these short videos not only summarise the key messages they wanted to share, but also some valuable advice and a lot of humour.

First up, Chris van Der Kuyl goes from jokes about height – or lack of it – to talking about inspiration and what makes a successful entrepreneur. “Inspiration is the single word I wanted people to take away from today, both being inspired and giving inspiration to others.”

Kevin Dorran of Diet Chef talk about the importance of having a strong, reliable and experienced support network, no matter where you are on your entrepreneurial journey. A support network, says Kevin, is like a security blanket; you can always get advice and help no matter what’s happening around you. The economy might be tough but you still have to run a business, and a support network will help you do that. Listen in right to the end for Kevin’s Girls Aloud confession …

Tom Cross of Parkmead Group shared a message of investing in youth and planning for the next 10-15 years while confessing work is play for an entrepreneur like him.

Hermann Twickler of Pressurefab Group believes entrepreneurs need to be more pragmatic. “You need to think about what you have got and what is possible to make something with it. If you only think about what you don’t have, you will never achieve anything.”

Mike Clare, formerly of Dreams and now of Clarenco, revealed he spent his lunchtime taking advice from a fellow entrepreneur. “I need to listen to my staff,” he says, “And I’m not very good at that.”

Martin Gilbert of Aberdeen Asset Management said simply:”It’s how you cope with the difficult times rather than the good times that’s important. Good times are easy. Dealing with adversity and difficulty has been the story of Aberdeen.”

Video highlights – Conference 2013

Posted on by
Reply

It’s the video you’ve all been waiting for – highlights from this year’s Annual Conference at Gleneagles. Whether you were there and need another shot of inspiration, or whether you simply want to see some great entrepreneurs in action, this is definitely worth a watch.

Engaging Hearts and Minds – with John Maguire of The Phoenix Car Company

Posted on by
Reply

Wikipedia: Employee engagement, also called worker engagement, is a business management concept. An “engaged employee” is one who is fully involved in, and enthusiastic about their work and thus will act in a way that furthers their organization’s interests.

So, employee engagement is a business management concept. It’s also a hot topic. But how does it translate into the real world of business?

John Maguire, MD of The Phoenix Car Company (once rated as the Fastest Growing Privately Owned Company in Scotland) not only embraces it, he practices it.

Keeping his employees engaged and motivated has been central to the company’s success since it launched in 1993, at the former site of Chrysler in Linwood, next to Glasgow Airport. Since then, the company has progressively grown to include 18 dealerships spread across Paisley, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Grangemouth and Stirling.

“People are your greatest asset”. It’s been said many a time before but, speaking at a special event in Glasgow, John made the cliché real.

“I have heard this many times before,” said Graham Steed, “But John made the cliché real and demonstrated the impact that engaging your staff fully can have.

“Also, the focus on attention to detail, constant professionalism and getting it right first time, every time.”

Graham, SEO Business Intelligence Division
 BiP Solutions, said John’s Phoenix story was “inspirational”.

“John’s presentation style, experience and down to earth attitude made the time go very quickly. Hearing about his vision for his company and how quickly he made it happen was inspirational.

“John demonstrated that the best leaders understand what the pulse of their business is, and stay in touch with the key drivers of it regardless of what else may be going on. His personal role in hiring staff was also very interesting and underlined the importance he places on having the right people in the organisation.”

Mike McCloskey of Rainbow Delivery said he took away 3 key tips from John’s talk; the first being to invest in your people to make them winners. “I take that as much as ‘time is money’,” said Mike.

“You need to make people feel like they are part of a business doing something good. Why? It lifts my thinking out of the grunge and focuses my mind on helping my team do the same.

“From now on we’ll be placing more emphasis on our ethos/mission ‘Delivering Peace of Mind’ and more fun and engagement in the wider community.”

Feedback

“Key tips for me – start new staff who are energetic and motivated to work for the company and not just for money. Take time to hire the best staff. Don’t settle for staff that ‘will do’. Create a company culture that everyone believes in.”

“Tips for me – acting as an agent for the consumer. What to look for in new employees; energy, enthusiasm, intensity and excitement.”

“John’s enthusiasm was contagious. It helped me remember that it’s about more than delivering parcels (i.e. what our “job” is). I also liked John’s attitude to investing in his people to “turn them into winners”. It reaffirmed my decision to get more involved and John’s version of Open Door policy ties right in with that!”

The Importance of Successful Recruitment

Posted on by
Reply

“My business would be so much easier to run if I didn’t have to employ people!” Anon.

Every entrepreneur has to deal with people issues while growing a successful business. Your people are central to your success, and the culture of your business must reflect this so you can nurture your people.

But here’s the challenge; how do you retain your core values, while ensuring your business is full of the right people, in the right seats, with the right attitude and shared goals?

Former Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year Richard Dixon of Vets Now and Exchange board director Colette Grant, Grant Management, have both grown successful businesses with a fundamentally similar approach – a strong company culture and a focus on employee engagement. Their experiences proved educational for members at the Focus Dinner, particularly Callum Bastock.

“It’s important to start with recruitment and check suitability to company culture and values.

“Too often we have hired people that don’t fit in with our culture,” admitted Callum. “I remember Anne Rushforth saying to me years ago ‘you can’t run a marathon with a stone in your shoe, when its wrong move quickly and remove it’. However, all that happened was that new starts often didn’t last very long.

“By taking more time to test that candidates fit with our culture will save both money and time in the long run.”

Callum, of CCL Logistics, said his key tips from the evening were:

1. Culture is not a bolt-on, take it seriously from the top of the organisation down
2. Watch out for internal terrorists
3. Start with recruitment to check suitability to company culture and values

“When there’s a good culture, both customers and your own people notice it and benefit from it. For me a good culture means: externally – I want CCL to compete on service, this means the customer experience will be consistently better than our competitors.

“And internally – CCL will be recognised as a great employer. In today’s economy this has to be a Unique Selling Point.

“I’ll be implementing a recruitment policy with immediate effect.”

Feedback
“Tips I took from the evening – have few values and simplify – ensure to embed values in the questionnaire when recruiting new people.”

“My key tip was the importance of leadership in creating the correct values and culture.”

Company Turnaround – Transforming Your Business

Posted on by
Reply

Change is the only constant in business, so having a contingency plan for diversification and reorganisation in place in difficult times is essential. But it’s about so much more than having a plan, good communication and strong leadership skills are essential to ensure your business moves forward without sacrificing your original goals.

We asked Margaret Lang and Iain MacRitchie to share their experiences and pearls of wisdom at this Focus Dinner. If you read these brief biogs, you’ll see why;

Margaret launched Intelligent Office in January 2001, since when the company has experienced sustained growth, in spite of the economic downturn. Under Margaret’s leadership, Intelligent Office’s turnover has grown to in excess of £13m, whilst staff numbers have grown by 73% in the past five years and currently provides business process outsourcing services at 40 locations across the UK with more than 500 staff supporting their clients.
Serial entrepreneur Iain is focused on investing and leading situations which require rapid change, growth or development. His marketing and brand development expertise, first gained from a Strathclyde University education has led him into multiple corporate leadership roles, mostly within Private Equity backed businesses. Iain has completed 12 major engagements in the last 8 years, returning just over £500m with an average 6-fold increase in company profits. His latest was after leading the £75m buy in of Maxinutrition (Maximuscle), he helped double sales and profits in 3 years, resulting in the sale of the company to Glaxo for £162m in 2011.

What was interesting in their experience is the fact that the principles employed in “turnaround” are exactly the same as those required when transforming a business from good to great. Turnaround is simply the same as transformation, a desire to make your business better.

Imagination is essential. You need to be able to think about what a business, or your business, could be and identify small steps to start to take it there from where it is currently. It’s about thinking practically, and making sure these small steps are done quickly; walk to jog to run to sprint.

Their advice was to create a business plan with practical milestones – not financial budgets, which should be separate – and to focus on what makes an impact. Seek short cuts to speed up the changes.

Three key tips;

• Believe you can – have courage in your beliefs and goals
• Think … PEOPLE
• You can change anything, given enough time

David Frame was at the Focus Dinner. He said it’s important to understand that transformation doesn’t need to take place as a result of heading for a cliff – it can be employed to a good business to try to make it great.

Good businesses easily suffer from becoming comfortable and start to lose the drive that got them to become good in the first place, and so to become great they need the same sort of approach as would be employed if it was heading for a cliff – a review of where it is and a clear plan to become better.

“People are so important to growth and transforming a business but I still struggle to make changes in this area,” said David, MD of Barum and Dewar. “I took away the importance of believing in yourself 100% – you won’t always be right but you will learn and make the next decision.

“And don’t be embarrassed to show passion…in business at least!”

Tamlin Roberts on Making the Web Work for You

Posted on by
Reply

The Internet is no longer a luxury enjoyed only by those companies that can afford to pay for a web site. It’s a basic business essential, fundamental to sales, marketing, branding, communication, recruitment … the list goes on.

From basic brochure-ware websites to multi-lingual e-commerce websites, and LinkedIn to Twitter, how you use the Internet is as important to your business as cash flow. Get it right and it can make your business a huge success; get it wrong and you could be throwing money down the drain.

Tamlin Roberts has spent the past 12 years growing Mercurytide, an online application and web development company. Working with companies such as GSPC, Montpeliers Edinburgh, Flow Hospitality Training, Faithful + Gould, Edinburgh Council, Redeem, O2, Prudential, Scottish Widows and Grant Management, and of course, the Entrepreneurial Exchange, his experience of how to make the web work for business is unrivalled.

He believes there are four key elements, and businesses should ideally use all four to maximise visibility of of a website.

• Technical connections – Tamlin says there are as many as 250 issues relating to a site’s architecture and construction that determine how successful it will be in meeting the search engines’ increasingly sophisticated criteria
• Great content – original material that is regularly updated. Blogs are good, as long as they are hosted on your domain and shared with lots of people
• Social media links – get those connections working with people and get them to ‘like’ your site
• Linked network – it’s vital to build ‘virtuous circle’ links with high-volume sites accessed routinely by the greatest number of people. For example, the BBC is the UK’s No1 site but to maintain a link with its site would require refreshing the link every day.

Chair for the evening, Alistair Balfour of The Company Creators, said:”Tamlin also included great tips, such as using a service called PR Web to push out press releases for £80 a time, and various techniques to gather information about visitors to your site.

“For example, try writing a short e-book about your business, products, technology or markets, then offer a free summary on your site but require visitors to register to access the other chapters.

“Tamlin’s talk provoked a flood of questions from members about their own website issues, and he was kept busy answering them well beyond the event’s official finishing time.”

Feedback
“Key tip for me – the quality of web copy is very important – we’ll look into getting a copywriter/journalist to work on our content as this is a weak point.”
“Key tip for me – amplify use of LinkedIn in my personal case.”
“Tip for me was to use Web and social media to better market our products and services.”

Pressurefab Group’s Hermann Twickler – Annual Conference 2013 – Highlights

Posted on by
1

With just as much enthusiasm as with his award-winning acceptance speech at the Annual Dinner, Hermann took to the stage at the Annual Conference.

He spoke of his passion and enthusiasm for entrepreneurship and shared his journey from beginning – as a child – until now.

A fascinating tale, but it was Hermann’s focus on how to fix the UK’s “broken economy” that proved the talking point.

The government and banks are looking to “us” to get the country out of recession, he said. “They need us to have the vision and to take the risks, to create the jobs and opportunities. “

But if they want us to do that, said Hermann, then they need to do something about payment terms. He called for the government to make it a legal requirement that companies pay suppliers in a timely manner.

“If the government really wants to improve business conditions they need to address payment terms, make it normal for businesses to pay each other in 30 or 45 days. Even make it illegal to ask for longer payment terms.

“I would go so far as to say the British economy will thrive on this, or stagnate if we don’t do anything about it.”

And Hermann knows it will work – because he has done it himself.

In 2010 Hermann’s company was struggling. Money had dried up because of 90 day payment terms, and in some cases, longer.

So Hermann closed all the accounts that weren’t willing to pay in 30 days. He explained how important it was to pay him on time, how important it was that they have a strong supply chain to work with and how important it was that they have a supplier with a stable business.

Within a few months Pressurefab recovered well. Long-standing debt had been settled and he was being paid on time. So he started to pay his own suppliers in 28 days.

The result is that Pressurefab is now saving 15% on its purchasing strategy.

“I believe it was my breakthrough as an entrepreneur,” explained Hermann. “I had hit rock bottom, I couldn’t pay anyone, I couldn’t draw or transfer funds, my hands were tied behind my back by someone else blocking my business.

“This is real entrepreneurship by my standards, it’s not just about throwing capital at a business, it’s about finding a solution from within.

“Since then my business has grown to more than 100 employees and £10m turnover this year.”

Diet Chef’s Kevin Dorren, Annual Conference 2013 – Highlights

Posted on by
Reply

Diet Chef was born after a conversation between Kevin and a friend who said she wanted to be like a Hollywood celebrity with her own diet chef who would do all the shopping and cooking so she could just sit back and lose weight.

Originally a chef by training – and passionate about food – Kevin thought it was a brilliant idea and decided to create a diet chef that would be affordable for everyone.

Diet Chef was launched in 2008 and grew to £20m, profitable, this year without any help or funding. The company now has 100,000 customers in the UK and is No3 in the FastTrack 100 with CAGR of 229% over 3 yrs.

“We launched with £100 seed capital and no support from the bank, because there wasn’t any,” laughed Kevin.

From the get go, Kevin immersed himself in research so they could understand the consumer. Perception of diet food is that it tastes bad, so they employed a former Gleneagles Hotel chef as development chef. Customer service is really important. He spoke personally to customers to understand what the problems were.

And the team has become obsessive about sales and data. For example, Kevin knows that 50% of his website traffic comes form a mobile device, so he plans accordingly. He also planned the business so they don’t need to be in the office, they can even make sales in the pub. That’s the beauty of online and mobile.

“The devil is in the data” says Kevin.

“Understand what the customer needs and improve it all the time. We are never finished. We fixate about our product, I would say to any entrepreneur you should really love and understand your product

”And we are always looking at our competitors and working out ways to kill them.”

Kevin’s plan to expand into Europe wasn’t without its challenges. “I thought all you had to do was translate website, launch and off you go. Wrong!” he laughed.

“We were lucky, our timing was great, we were able to sell and scale business – then tv was our next big break. TV is a very trusted media, people understand it, it’s a great way to profile your business.”

Much of Kevin’s entrepreneurial learning was done in America with his first business, Orbital Software.

“Orbital was great fun, and really easy to raise money, it was my education in business,” he said. “I lived in the States for 3 years and was really immersed in the whole dot com model and understanding the can do attitude. Google’s Eric Schmidt invested in Orbital, which gave us great exposure and learning.

“But you still need failure, difficult times to help you build something of scale, something of substance.

“We had 3 founding rules at Diet Chef, and we’ve broken all of them. The first was not to raise money – but we had no choice.”

Kevin rounded off his talk with his favourite quote: “Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm”.

Parkmead’s Tom Cross at the Annual Conference – Highlights

Posted on by
1
Tom Cross, Annual Conference 2013

Tom Cross, Annual Conference 2013

Tom spoke passionately and honestly about growing a business in Scotland with an international perspective. He shared lessons learned the hard way from Dana Petroleum and before. Tom believes absolutely that businesses of all sizes experience the same challenges, and offered advice from his own experiences.

For example, Tom still believes he listed Dana too early, a mistake he learned from quickly.

“There’s a great mix of people in this room, some small businesses, some startups, just like mine – I’m involved in startup businesses right now,” said Tom. “I would advise you to think very carefully about going public. Advisors often push you in that direction but it’s not a panacea. I still regard going public so early with Dana as a mistake, I should have worked harder to find alternative funding.”

Dana was listed in 1996 because the banks, said Tom, were a “non-starter”. He grew the business over 14 years from just £200k seed capital. By the end of 2010 the company was worth $3.1bn, it sat just outside of the FTSE100 with $600m t/o.

An incredible performance, especially considering the very small team, which was making $5m profit per employee.

Tom’s access to boards of directors and government officials across the world enabled him to see a bigger picture, he says it helped crystallise his determination to form a new type of oil company, one that was free from nonsense, one where he could just get on with it, simply find a lot of energy and supply it to people who need it.

The philosophy worked. Within 12 months of starting up Parkmead, they had their first production. It’s the thing he is most proud of with Parkmead and not surprisingly, when you consider the average in the industry is probably 5,6,7,8 even 9 years.

“All this makes the difference, you get cash coming in and you have choices,” explained Tom.

“We all share the same challenges, looking after customers and partners,” said Tom. “Another thing I have learned the hard way is to temper your enthusiasm. All of us are completely enthusiastic, we see an opportunity and want to push, push, push, grow, grow, grow and sometimes you have to reign back a bit.

“For every 20 opportunities we explore, we probably do one, it’s a very high filter rate. We are ruthless in terms of taking opportunities forward. But when we take on that one, we are ruthless again.

“You are never going to get everything right. If we get 7/10 or even 8/10 we will do well.

“I have an open door policy and have stuck by it in the 20 years I’ve been in business. I encourage people to come to me with their ideas, it doesn’t matter if it sounds crazy, drop me an email, tell me you’ve got an idea, I’ll always look at it and if I can’t do it, I’ll point you in the direction of someone who can help.”

“Entrepreneurs do this naturally guys. We’ve been building Parkmead over the last 18 months and it already has a value of £200m, but what has made that possible is all the goodwill coming back. Our very first deal was with Exxon Mobil, the biggest company in the world – not the biggest oil company – the biggest company.

“If you can do well with Exxon Mobil, as a tiddly little company in a 2up 2down in Aberdeen, that’s serious credentials. So try to make sure you help others.”

Tom is passionate about the future of Scotland. He speaks regularly to groups of young people and encourages them to think big, and give entrepreneurship a try.

“I absolutely believe Scotland has a unique formula, an ability for growing businesses. We are surrounded by excellence, we have great schools and universities, targeted at business. We have a very intelligent, experienced workforce, it’s not huge but quality makes up for quantity. People deal with people who are trustworthy.

“We have shown the way with fantastic world beating public companies, large and respected private companies, and great smaller companies working to become world leaders in their area in Scotland.

“I see Scottish companies operating all over the place, it fills me with pride and makes you want to do more.

“There is no doubt in my mind, and I say this to many young people, we have the potential and framework and mind set to build many more world class companies right here.”

Annual Conference 2013 – Martin Gilbert, Aberdeen Asset Management

Posted on by
Reply

Martin Gilbert, Aberdeen Asset Management

Martin Gilbert is a founder shareholder and Chief Executive of Aberdeen Asset Management PLC, the holding company of the fund management group that was established in 1983.

Martin is a director of a number of investment trusts, Chairman of FirstGroup PLC and a non-executive director of British Sky Broadcasting Group PLC. He is Adjunct Professor of Finance at Imperial College Business School and a member of the Scottish Government’s Financial Services Advisory Board, the EFAMA President’s Advisory Council and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland.

In December 2008, Martin was named European Personality of the Year at the Funds Europe Awards. In 2009, he was named Ernst & Young Overall Scotland Entrepreneur Of The Year. In 2011, he was named Scotland PLC CEO of the Year at the Business Insider/PWC Scotland PLC Awards.

Martin was educated in Aberdeen and has an MA in Accountancy and an LLB. He divides his time between Aberdeen, where the business has always been headquartered, and London, as well as overseeing the international operations of the Group.

Martin was inducted into the Entrepreneurial Exchange Hall of Fame in 2006.