Nick Suckley - Start. Scale. Sell.

First published in Great Britain by Practical Inspiration Publishing, 2020

Nick Suckley, 2020

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Contents

About the author

O ver a 20-year period, Nick has launched and sold four companies. His first company sold within 18 months and his latest sold for 12m.

Nick started his career in advertising, working for agencies like Redheads, McCann-Erickson and MediaCom as well as a stint at the Daily Express. In the mid-1990s he was one of the people who saw the early potential for the internet and its role as an advertising platform.

In 1998, with long-term business partner, Pete Robins, and Rick Sareen, he launched Media21, one of the UKs first digital media agencies, and sold it to Grey London at the height of the dot-com boom just 18 months after its formation. The dot-com crash that followed shortly after was tricky, to put it mildly, but he survived to tell the tale.

Nick was also a founding investor in digital creative hot shop, Glue London (which sold to Aegis Group in 2005 for 14m) and launched and incubated DataShaka, an analytics software business where he was instrumental in securing several rounds of venture capital funding from Seedcloud Ventures.

Agenda21, the multi-award-winning digital media consultancy he set up with Pete Robins and Rhys Williams, was sold to Be Heard Group Plc for 12m in 2015.

Nowadays, Nick is a much sought-after consultant for media and technology entrepreneurs and C-level executives, advising them on opportunistic corporate build strategies and how to avoid the costly mistakes frequently associated with rapid growth and a changing marketplace.

Preface: lessons learned

O ver the last 20 years Ive seen lots of companies facing the same issues and lots of companies making the same mistakes, falling into the same traps that can be growth limiting or even terminal. There are many common causes of failure in the early days and many things that can hold back business growth in more mature companies. And there is a definite lifecycle that companies grow through on their way to maturity.

There are many inspirational books by self-made people talking about their success, but very few books seem to offer practical help with starting or growing or selling a business.

Hopefully this book will deliver that. Ive grown and sold businesses a number of times and Ive got the battle scars to show for it. In my view, if you can remove common problems, youre more likely to be left with a successful business. Or at least a business that will be more successful than it would otherwise have been. Even if you only apply one or two of the lessons learned in this book (and I hope more than one or two are useful) then it will more than cover the price of the book.

Here are just some of the lessons that Ive learned along the way and now want to share with you:

Why you should build a Founders Mindset before you even start something Ive been doing for over 20 years ()

Why the six-month effect can ruin your planning far enough away for optimism to kick in but near enough to be dangerous ()

The importance of just getting up and doing it the most unsuccessful business never gets started ()

Why everyone needs an elevator pitch ()

Why getting the right management information will help you make the right decisions ()

My favourite lesson of all, my Golden Rule for making profits ()

Why the Power of Three will help you remain focused ()

And lastly, the important lesson of thinking about what happens after you sell your business this is the one that catches so many people out ().

Some of lessons in the book may seem obvious. But knowing the theory doesnt always mean putting that theory into practice is easy. Start. Scale. Sell offers bite-sized, no-nonsense and, most of all, practical lessons for even the most time-poor entrepreneur.

Ive made plenty of mistakes over the years so I hope what follows will give you a head start that youll benefit from the lessons Ive learned the hard way.

Nick Suckley
January 2020

Postscript 2020: A note on Covid-19

We were putting this book to bed just as the Covid-19 virus was taking hold and the UK was heading into lockdown. Who would have thought, even a month ago, that this virus would have such a rapid and deep impact on our economy?

It just goes to show that just like the recession of the early 1990s, the Dot Com crash of 2000 and the Credit Crunch of 2008, it is impossible to predict the nature of the next downturn.

Whatever downturn comes, some things never change poorly run companies with excessive debt will be exposed and will most likely fail. What you can do is ensure your business is in the best shape it can be to survive and come out the other side thriving.

Looking back over my book, the lessons in the Surviving Tough Times section are all the more relevant and I would not change any of them. In particular:

Lesson 6 I suspect many companies with excessive debt will fail during the lockdown. If they do survive they may struggle to capitalise on the rebound that is likely to happen at the end of this crisis.

Lesson 23 Having a war chest of 6 months is always a good idea. It could be the difference between failure or survival.

Lesson 38 The Golden Rule applies on the downside too. If your income is falling then your costs need to follow suit. That said, government support to furlough people means that redundancies are not inevitable. Resource, and more importantly skills and goodwill, will be retained in businesses to deal with the recovery.

Well-run and well-differentiated companies will be far better placed to weather the storm so make sure yours is one of them. I dont know what kind of country and economy we will be on the other side but I do know that getting the basics right will keep you in as strong a position as possible.

And dont forget that companies as diverse as Salesforce, Microsoft, Uber and AirBnB all launched during downturns. Societies change during a downturn and new opportunities can arise so now might be a good time to start something too!

Good luck!

Acknowledgements

T his book began with a conversation with Jonny Wilks, who was an ex-client of mine from Investec Bank. Our friendship started with us talking about starting businesses something Jonny was really keen to do. He urged me to write it all down so that he could buy and read it. Id never have thought that the things Id done would be worthy of consumption by others but as I was in my non-compete period from Agenda21 I was at a bit of a loose end.