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My 14 years’ experience of growing a business from £0-£100m as well as the life that goes with it.

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Simon Says

Winformation This Week...

My cofounder and I once had a flight booked on a Friday night after work. We brought our cases to the office and planned to get a cab to the airport at 4pm. It got to 2pm and he decided to cancel and stay in the office. Not because he wasn’t looking forward to a weekend away, but because he was in total flow. He had spent the last few weeks building up a huge momentum and he wanted to rife that wave as long as he could. In today’s One Idea to Win in Life, we discuss momentum, how to build it and how to do everything to protect it once it arrives.

On Tuesday next week I’ve been asked to speak to a group of 60 sport degree students about business. There are some real golden lessons and golden truths in what I’m planning to say. So exclusively for you legends here at Winformation Weekly a few days early, In today’s One Idea to Win in Business, I go all in on 5 Lessons I Learned Building a £100M Business

One Idea to Win in Business

Something To Learn Fast

The Real-World MBA: 5 Unforeseen Lessons I Learned Building a £100m Business

My commitment to you is that I will never do a talk to a large group of people and not cut you in on the content. So, next Tuesday’s talk 5 Unforeseen Lessons I Learned Building a £100M Business, is summarised here. Textbooks away, this is real world experience. Let me know what resonated with you the most!

Lesson One: Play to win and stop apologising for it – One of the biggest changes when starting in business, from let’s say full time employment, is that your ecosystem around you turns from colleagues supporting you, a benefits package, annual leave and every other modern employee benefit, to essentially those you come into close proximity with wanting you to fail. You leave employment and truly enter the front line of capitalism.

Because of this, you have to play to win. And you can’t apologise for that. In recent years there is a stigma to saying that out loud. Those people don’t tend to last very long. You have to win to ensure your customers receive a better experience than your competition will offer them. You have to win to keep your great team employed. There is a nobility in wanting to win.

Lesson Two: Perseverance isn’t a long term thing, it’s a 12 hour thing – One of the most common questions that pops up is, “how do you keep going so hard for so long?” I’m 14 years in, but I’ve learned in that time that true grit isn’t endlessly working for years on end, it’s working until the end of the day. I see perseverance as effective daily management, not endless grit. Stack enough effective days on top of each other and it’s surprising how far you can climb.

I use my 5 DNNs. My 5 daily non-negotiables. 5 things no matter how big or small that I have intended to do that day. I make sure those 5 things are real needle movers, not insignificant tasks, or tasks someone else can do. Once they are done, I am confident I have had an effective day. Small actionable daily steps. One after the other. Weeks become months, months become years. That’s what I’ve learned perseverance actually is.

Lesson Three: Treat suppliers like clients – Whether you are a solopreneur, or have a team of 500, people are key. I learned over the years to treat everyone like your best client. That includes your team, but it also includes suppliers. There is this opinion that because you pay your suppliers to deliver something for you, you can speak to them more abruptly or demand unreasonable deadlines that you wouldn’t impose on others.

When times get tough, and they have in my 14 years. Suppliers, especially the smaller ones often have to choose which clients to keep and which ones they have to neglect or “dump”. Don’t be the one that gets neglected. Pay in full on time, treat them well and even invite the best ones to your festive socials. They are the petrol to your car. You need them onside.

Lesson Four: You don’t need to be an expert – I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not a finance expert, and when you hire one you don’t need to be. However, you do need to have the basic grasp of what they are doing for a couple of really solid reasons. One, you need to be able to understand the basic mechanism of the whole business. And two, it’s just simple respect for them that you are able to chip in with support and ideas where they may need them. When I set out I thought I’d really need to have in-depth knowledge of every aspect, but you don’t. This frees you up to really do what you do best.

Lesson Five: Hire before you need to – At first you are the only person (or one of a couple) in the business. Usually, the founder will be a generalist. Kind of ok at most of the functions. You naturally hire other generalists in that start up phase.

Second phase is generalists hiring experts. A finance expert, a marketing expert. The third phase and holy land, is those experts hiring other experts…and usually without your direct involvement. That’s the hiring pattern of most businesses, but the key is to hire before you need to. This usually takes an element of bravery.

But waiting until you need someone means your judgement on hiring the very best fit for the role and the company takes a backseat to just simply getting anyone because the work is building up. An empty seat is always better than the wrong hire!

One Idea to Win in Life

Something To Build Momentum

Building Momentum: My Real-Life System for Peak Performance

Motivation is overrated, momentum is everything. Once you build it, it’s hard to stop everything falling into place. As I said in the intro, I work with people prepared to cancel a holiday because they have found momentum. Like a surfer riding a wave that they know will crash at some point, you have to stand tall and let that wave carry you as far as it can whilst it’s there. If that means weekends away get moved, then that’s what the very top producers in the country do.

The good news is, momentum isn’t something you can catch, it doesn’t just turn up. It can be built, with intention. Here are the steps I’ve personally used to build it and maintain it.

Mind & body – to build true momentum that’s going to carry you for 2-4 weeks before you need a proper “I’ve had enough of all this” break, personally I need to feel good. I make sure I focus on 4 daily habits and track them on a habit app. I use Habitify but there are others out there. I call these my “Core 4”

They are – steps (12,500), water (3l), food tracking (using an app) and sleep (8 hours monitored with a device). I have 2 young kids by the way; this one is tough! 4 or 5 days of ticking these off every day, I’m back to really feeling my very best, ready to maintain this streak and tackle the month. I also don’t drink, at all.

Declutter – I declutter my email (with some help), my desktop (both computer and physical)…and randomly my fridge! For me a clean, tidy fridge full of healthy food with some meals prepped means I’m ready for a big month of momentum. I’m not reacting, I’m being proactive. Don’t ask me why, it’s something that’s really helped.

Calendar – I spend a good hour or two on my calendar. Again, these days I have help with this, but the majority of work on this is still all me. I ask myself what events or meetings can I ask someone else to do for me? What can I cancel altogether? The more space I can create, means the more time I have to work on things important to me, and not things that are important to other people. I need to know where I am, and what I’m doing at least 3-4 weeks in advance. Social events have to work very hard to stay in the diary when I’m intentionally building momentum. This all helps calm my brain.

Vision & goals – I reconnect with my vision and goals for the year. Where am I against where I said I would be. I then list a series of tasks that will push key goals forward. I then look at the list and prioritise what to work on and what to look at later. I also look at what delegation can be done with some of the tasks.

Scheduling like mad – I don’t work to do lists, I work to a schedule. So, I enter the tasks I have agreed to myself to work on into slots in my calendar. I put in “thinking” tasks or problem-solving tasks around 9:30-12 when my energy is personally higher. I put meetings with others in the afternoon where I can feed off the energy of others in the room.

Plan ahead but execute on the day – I’m always aware of what’s coming up, but to build true momentum I make sure I totally execute on the tasks today. We only truly have today. Tick enough days off where you smash the schedule and before you know it, you look down and realise you have climbed pretty high.

Planned, intentional rest – You can’t maintain momentum if you are totally wiped out. You need to create some white space in your calendar to simply do nothing. For me, with two young kids, I make sure I’m on the sofa and watching cartoons with them at 6pm. Phone away. Rest hasn’t always looked like this, but for now, time with family, at home is the perfect recharger.

So…

My focus isn’t on staying motivated, it’s on taking the steps to build momentum and then staying engaged in that momentum for as long as possible.

A decluttered life, a really well scheduled diary, less social distractions, rest, sleep, water, no alcohol…and the bravery to cancel big things once you have built huge momentum is what it takes. Follow these steps and it’s really hard NOT to build huge momentum that produces truly needle moving work and not just day to day “keeping up”.

Win or Wonder?

Ask Me a Question…

No matter where you are on this mad journey. Starting out, scaling up, or somewhere in the messy middle feel free to ask me anything.

Business, life or mindset, I read and reply to every question. The best ones will get featured in future editions of Winformation, with your permission of course!

To ask, just hit “reply”, type your question and send. That’s it. No forms. No fuss.

Until next week! 

Let’s win, together!