Philip Bain - Start to Grow: An Entrepreneurs Guide from Business Idea to Early Success

It Starts with Inspiration

Dream or Do

When to stop Dreaming and start Doing

Idea Generators, Innovators and Entrepreneurs

Have you got the key to Business Success?

Your business must provide a solution to a problem

Start to Build Momentum

Just do it! Get Started!

Build a Virtual Team

Get the Cash!

Manage the Cash

Start to play the numbers game

Start by changing the mind-set

Make sure family comes first!

Take advice from the right people

Develop an entrepreneurs strategy

The five Ms of getting ready for growth

Develop great leadership in you and others

Growing your business by doing the right things

Go for exceptional people every time

Balance each other off

Develop a culture of creativity and innovation

The pressure of people when you hit a wall

Silence, loyalty and inner circles

Learn the art of subtlety

Dont let your priorities become confused

The fundamentals

Confronting the brutal facts when things get shaky

Think Different

The Customer Experience

Punching above your weight

PR Position yourself as subject matter expert

Invest in your brand!

Pragmatic marketing

Make money and then make meaning

How to make meaning

Kick-start

Understand sales function

Get a great sales person

Getting appointments

Dos and donts of getting appointments on the phone

The sales meeting

Get an edge

Closing the deal

Face financial reality

Watch the pennies

Power

Failure

Success

Remember to celebrate success

And finally.

So, why read this book? Simple. It is a book that will give you practical advice on how to start up and grow a business. And that advice is not based on theory, or academia, it is based on my own personal experience. I have been involved in six start-ups; the first two I was the sales guy, the next two I was the boss, and the final two I co-own with my business partner and friend James. Family businesses, partnerships, private enterprises, social enterprises, big corporatesI have been involved in them all. I have been there at the start-up stage, the growth stage but thankfully never at the decline stage, and I dont talk about that in this book because neither you nor I ever want to find ourselves in that position. That stage is largely irreversible and this book is about avoiding it!

This book is about reality how it is on the ground and when you read it, you will understand how to grow a business and what it takes to succeed. What is success? Success is about creating a sustainable, profitable business. Anything other than that is failure. Some people are fairly relaxed about failure, referring to it as part of the rich tapestry of life. They can fail if they wish, but in my view failure is not a good thing. Failure hurts. I know because I have been there many times. Achieving success is what this book is about and I draw a lot on the ShredBank experience. ShredBank, is the company that James, and I, have grown from nothing to one of the largest on-site shredding companies in Ireland and we have done so throughout the Great Recession. By 2015, we have managed to win twelve local and national awards, been awarded Investors in People Gold, and raised money for charities along the way. ShredBank has a significant profile in Northern Ireland, having appeared in the media over 350 times to date. Despite this it has not always been easy, there have been plenty of mistakes made, but we have learned from most of them and hopefully this book will help you avoid some of the pitfalls.

Start to Grow looks at how you can make your company a success no matter what is going on in this chaotic world. I understand you are busy but dont worry, you will have finished this from cover to cover within two hours(ish) and by then you will have a few nuggets to take back to your business that will make it the success you know it can be.

So here it is, a fair chunk of what I know about setting up and growing businesses.

Enjoy!

It was 20 January 1990, and I was looking out over the city from the penthouse suite of one of the most famous hotels in the world. Celebrating your thirteenth birthday in such opulent surroundings was the privilege of being the son of one of the company directors that owned this hotel at that time. As I lay in the Jacuzzi bath, taking a sip of something non-alcoholic that I had sneaked from the minibar, I decided, in that moment, that running a business was what I wanted to do with my life; if it gave you this type of lifestyle, then that was the career that I wanted. This was fun and would enable me to do things that others could only dream of.

For two years, I experienced going from one hotel to another, one penthouse suite to the next, as my father immersed himself, and my family, into this hotelier world. My father loved business but particularly relished the challenge of making deals. Business was never primarily about the money for my father. He was in it for the excitement of building and creating something great that others could be part of and enjoy. This was the man who was not only my father but someone who inspired me, the man who I looked up to. Needless to say, as a young boy in his teens, life was great.

However, things were about to change because around that time, we were in the middle of the recession of the early 1990s; the economy was contracting and interest rates more or less doubled overnight putting huge strain on businesses, but that was to be the least of our problems.

Within six months, I was in my bedroom struggling to load a game onto my 1980s computer (two hours in those days), when my mother entered the room. I remember it like it was yesterday. With a few words my world changed forever. My father was on a business trip to North America and he had rung to say he had been taken into hospital. He had been diagnosed with leukemia. Life as we knew it crashed down. My fathers battles had just begun. In the midst of being treated for his illness and dealing with great physical pain, the recession hit the hotelier world hard and his business collapsed too. This was what my father described as the lowest point in his life.

Within a few months, through much prayer he defied the medical world and found himself in remission. He had made it through; he was alive and he was well, but he was practically broke. He had a family that had to be financially supported and had to find a way to earn an income. Incredibly, the optimistic negotiator, the drive of the entrepreneur, rose to the surface again. He got up and went out in search of a new deal.

Doing deals is not easy. They can be complex and demanding, but for my father deal making was an art, a pleasure, something to be enjoyed and savoured, the beginning of an adventure, the promise of fun and the hope of something new and challenging. However, his finest deal, his masterpiece, was about to be put into action. As he strolled into the empty offices of what was once his great empire, he picked up the phone and rang one of the largest restaurant chains in the world. What he said, I dont know. How he pulled it off is a mystery, but I was soon to find out that Pizza Hut was coming to Northern Ireland! The phoenix had risen from the ashes in the form of bread, cheese and tomatoes.

The launch of the first Pizza Hut in Northern Ireland was in Carryduff, ironically where our business, ShredBank, is based today. I can still remember the huge smile on my fathers face on launch night. He was back. He had conquered the great challenges he had faced and he had found a way to make a success.