One idea to Build your Business, one idea to Scale your life. Every Wednesday.

Welcome to Winformation Weekly. My 13 years’ experience of growing a business from £0-£100m, and the life that goes with it. All wrapped up, in one winning weekly email.

Simon Says

Winformation This Week…

We started our business Carrington West in a cold converted garage (photo below). I’m often asked what was THE moment, THE catalyst where the trajectory started to point towards where we are today, a £100m origination (2nd photo below). I discuss THAT decision in today’s Business Section.

Today’s Life Section is all about leadership. A fascinating live real case study I just can’t stop thinking about. It may surprise you to learn that there are two Aldis in Germany. I know, you probably have three Aldis within five miles of you. What I mean, is that there are actually two different versions of Aldi in Germany. Why did they become two different companies? The story about how, and what happened after is an unbelievable story about leadership.

Business

Changing THIS One Thing Transformed Our Business from Start Up to a £100m Company

We hit the 14-year mark as a business this month. I took a moment to dive into some old cloud folders on my laptop and found documents from the early days, back when we were just starting out. Among them was a folder titled “Goals.” Inside, I found my year 1 and year 2 goals. This is a story about thinking bigger. Year 1 goals were written in January 2011. I remember sitting in my brother’s converted garage with a slow laptop, putting it together. That garage was where my business partner James and I planted the seeds of our little recruitment company, Carrington West. It was our baby. Back then, the goals we set felt massive, almost out of reach. I won’t bore you with the full list of goals, but here are a few that really stood out.

Buy a car. I had handed back my company car on the last day of employment at the PLC recruitment company I worked for previously. At the time of writing my goals, I was walking to our new garage office. 40 mins there and 40 mins back across town. I hit this goal by buying a £250 N Reg Citroen Saxo which didn't have power steering.

Take the company to a total of 3 people. We achieved this by June of 2011 but by Christmas, we were back down to just 2 of us again. This felt like a huge blow. Salary of £15k - coming from a £80k salary whilst employed, I was being realistic about what I thought I would have to drop to, to make the business work. But my salary for year one was a little smaller. It came in at a nice, round zero pounds, and zero pence. In fact, we didn't get paid for the first 14 months of running the business. My savings that I started with ran out quickly, and I ended up living on a credit card, at its height it had £18k on it!

£2k in savings personally. Not achieved for the above reasons!

Move into a new office. Originally we told my brother we would be using his converted garage for 6 weeks, 14 months later we were still there and struggling to get the traction needed to pay rent elsewhere confidently.

So, the only real success for 2011 (goals wise) was the purchase of a 20-year-old car! Christmas 2011 was the worst I can ever remember. We had let our first ever employee go, a friend and new Dad, only days before Christmas. He quit in fact, realising his contribution hadn't been anywhere near good enough. He knew, like us, it was him or the business... which would have ended in the same result anyway.

What had we done starting this thing? What do we do now?

Despite seeming like big goals at the time, it was clear in the cold light of day I was thinking way too small. Small goals, and small, poor results. They were also all about me as a founder, and my outcomes, nothing to do with a bigger mission that would benefit many others.

Fresh approach. We needed a fresh approach. In January 2012, James and I came back from Christmas and discussed our “blood bath” first year. We had spent 12 months trying to build a recruitment company. A company like all the others.

What we really needed was to attract good people. If you want to attract good people, you need to be an attractive place to work. We had an ephinay. If we were going to create a great place to work, why not create THE best?

So, the “goals document” from year 2 reads very differently. “Create the UK’s Best Employer”. I think it's safe to say we were no longer “playing small” when it came to setting goals.

We were going to be the best employer in the UK (primary) which happened to be a recruitment company (secondary). We knew deep down we would never actually achieve this goal, but it gave us a north star to aim for.

Clarity. The clarity was unreal. Every decision we made from that point was so easy. “Is this the decision the UK’s Best Employer would make?”

We won the UK’s Best Recruitment Company to Work For a few times in a decade, which to be honest is where we thought we had topped out.

That was until a cold wet day in November 2022. A cold wet day that also happened to be my 40th birthday. We were invited to the Investors in People Awards. We were one of only 2,000 employers in the UK to achieve Platinum status in terms of how we treat our people.

There were many awards throughout the night. There was then a final one. The UK’s Platinum Employer of the Year. The very best of the very best in the UK. “and the winner is...Carrington West.” A full decade after committing this goal to paper in a free to use cold converted garage, we had achieved it. The award was simply ceremonial. The company that had been created on the journey to the very best in the country was the real reward. The team and culture we have built is everything.

Change THIS one thing

Why are we so relentlessly told that our goals need to be realistic? If you want to change your outcome, change this one thing. Change the size of your goal. Your planning, action and eventually results grow to match the size of the goal you have set. You just never know what’s on the other side of thinking bigger, far bigger.

Life

Brothers Feud: What a German Supermarket Can Teach Us About Leadership

Aldi was one company run by two brothers Karl and Theo Albrecht, until 1962, when Theo wanted Aldi to sell cigarettes. Karl did not. The disagreement ran so long and so deep, that they decided to split the company into two - with Theo managing Aldi Nord and Karl leading Aldi Sud. And that’s where the story gets crazy.

What happened next?

Theo ran his new company by making all the decisions, he was involved in everything, making sure it was run just the way he wanted. He would hire people and quickly fire them again if they weren't up to scratch. Theo was a "boss."

Karl ran his company very differently, he trusted his team to make decisions, he hired people then gave them time to learn, make mistakes and help his employees become trusted managers. Karl was a leader.

The results...

Take these 2 approaches in management, fast forward 60 years and the result is astounding.

Karl's Aldi now has 2,000 stores more than Theo's Aldi AND brings in 30 billion euros a year MORE.

And there’s the lesson. A company that fully trusts its employees will over time always outperform a company that doesn’t.

Until next week! 

Let’s win, together!