The Business Behind Saving Lives | Episode 15 | Mark Cook – Sim And Skills

Intro
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I was complaining to the the rep of the company the medical equipment company
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that we were buying from she said well actually we’re weirdly you know going to be recruiting in this area quite soon
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and then there’s like what have it I ended up having to get in that job that she was talking about never really done
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sales before and never considered myself as a salesperson and probably spent most of that my time in that job convincing
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people that I wasn’t a salesperson which turns out to be quite a good sales tactic I used to say all the time yeah I just want an easy life and I said it
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just a couple of weeks ago to a friend of mine and she said what he’s talking about like that that’s not your personality at all you are constantly
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finding the most difficult way and challenging way to do something and then trying to do it differently again I
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started this business with the the mindset I’ll just drop ship every box you know I won’t ever touch a box it’s
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the modern way I’ll just build a website it’ll make sales I’ll use my connections it’ll be easy
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hi everyone you’re listening to the unrelenting product podcast and before we get into today’s episode I just
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wanted to let you know I started this podcast because over the years I’ve had hundreds of the most inspiring conversations of my life with small
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business owners and they really helped me grow and scale my own business and get my mindset right even when times
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were really tough I wanted to capture those conversations and make them available to other small business owners
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who are following in my footsteps and I’ve just got a small request if you enjoy this episode if you find it really
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inspiring if you find it helps you and your own business then please just like it and subscribe to our YouTube channel
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the more subscribers we get the more we can invest in making podcasts better so enjoy the episode hi everyone you’re
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watching unrelenting drive and today I’m super excited to be joined by Mark from Simmons skills Mark please tell the
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audience what you do that’s how I run a company called Simmons skills we sell medical training equipment that sounds super exciting
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um we’ll get into that later in the episode but um before we do that what would be really good is to just build a
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bit of context and understand how you got from really where you were in education to starting out in your career
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and how you built up your business sure um to my my path has been
Career Background
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um probably not typical I suppose well not many business owners have a typical difficult part um I studied music technology at
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University um and never expected to end up where I’ve ended up but I just followed what I
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enjoyed which was which was music and thought I might be in a band or run a studio or something like that
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um it wasn’t to be and I kind of finished my course or dropped out a
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university the first time round and uh needed to get a job and one of the
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jobs that I applied for was in the ambulance service driving non-emergency transport Vehicles so taking people to
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appointments and things like that um and I actually quite enjoyed it so I ended up working in the ambulance service for
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10 years okay um I I went through from the non-emergency to the emergency side and
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became an emergency medical technician okay and yeah it’s quite a it’s quite an
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interesting job um and and I loved it and thought I’d never do anything else um and then I hurt my back and realized
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that I needed to maybe rethink you know I was 20 when I joined and the
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retirement age that then was 68. okay and so I had to kind of a realization
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that I may not be able to do it until I’m 68 and not many people can to be honest there’s not many that manage more
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than 10 years because it’s a it’s a demanding job you have to lift people I mean psychologically must be pretty
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demanding right yeah I think it is um back then it did I didn’t think of it like that you know I was 20 years old
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thought I knew everything um but you must be turning up some pretty horrific scenes I’d imagine oh
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yeah I’ve seen stuff that that still haunts me to this day yeah um but
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it’s not it’s not the stuff that you would expect it’s not the kind of traumatic loads of blood car crashes
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it’s the the little things that that you know I won’t go into here but it’s it
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stuff affects you in ways that you don’t realize until years later yeah um how did it change you in terms of
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your character um I don’t really know because I was so I
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was so young I almost I almost said didn’t have a character but it’s kind of all I knew
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you know you’re like a blank slate yeah I joined at 20 kind of fell in today and just went with it but didn’t have the
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same sort of existential questions that I have now you know am I doing good in the world
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and yeah how am I affecting my kids and that sort of thing like when you’re 20 years old you just kind of live life in
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the moment I think that’s how I look at it now anyway um so yeah it’s it’s difficult but it’s
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given me a great perspective on everything that I’ve done since and what I do now it almost feels like it’s not
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you know that was a real job and what I do now is just sort of playing it’s I
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can’t yeah I can imagine it’s um so where did you go to university uh so uh
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first time around I went to De Montford University that’s where I was today because I’m Leicester Leicester okay yeah yeah
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um and yeah did it uh two years there um and yeah academically probably wasn’t
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the the best experience of my life but socially it definitely was um I met you know some of my best
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friends to this day I met my wife um so I wouldn’t change it at all um I
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learned a lot about the world but um not necessarily a lot about music technology I didn’t probably want to do that as a
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as a career that’s that’s what it taught me you kind of mentioned like the first time you went to University so was there
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a second time yeah so once I’d um once I’d hurt my back and kind of had that
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realization that I wanted to or needed to have a plan B I decided to go into
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training well I decided to again kind of fell into it so I was off sick in the
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ambulance service for a few weeks and came back on what they call light duties which is basically office work did you
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hurt your back on the job yeah lifting somebody badly and um yeah something
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went pop and I’d have a few weeks off and in the process of of recovery I did
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I came back and did some office work which involved uh training we were
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introducing a new defibrillator across the service and I got given the job of training all
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of the staff to use the defibrillator and something I’d never done before um and I had to put together a
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PowerPoint presentation which I you know never used PowerPoint for never had to um and uh yeah enjoyed it immensely and
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really enjoyed that kind of um spreading knowledge and helping people to understand things and decided
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then that’s the path I want to go down um so I never actually went back on full
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Road duties after that I ended up going into an education department which that was called commercial training
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which is basically the ambulance services way of teaching the public first aid and generating money as well
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you know using the ambulance brand to teach first day to teach nurses how to do CPR basic life support
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and they they I basically got the opportunity to start uh in that
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department with somebody else who was in a similar position to me yeah and we created this this business within the
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ambulance service um and yeah and did really really well sold lots of training
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I’m just learning something here so the NHS sells training to private
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individuals in private organizations yeah most most ambulance services will have a commercial training department
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all right okay and then we would also club together um and kind of bid for National contracts so we can back then we had
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um Aldi you know the supermarket we would go and do their first date training as part of this National agreement between the ambulance services
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so is that because the ambulance services don’t get enough funding from the NHS essentially see it’s one yeah
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one of the reasons but it’s also you know good for the ambulance services to teach the public you know it kind of
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saves them because people know how to deal with first aid incidents then it stops them calling ambulances unnecessarily and you know it’s it’s
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smaller scale but it’s a way for them to to generate income basically with using
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their expertise and you’d often get um you know there’s lots of paramedics who have teaching qualifications both
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for internal use but you know why not use that to generate income as well that was the thinking you know I’ve been out
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of it for a few years now so I don’t know how much they do now but we certainly really tried to to do a lot of
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a lot of training courses Mark that’s absolutely amazing what did you find working in the ambulance service really
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rewarding um yes and no like I said earlier it’s not one of
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those I didn’t have to question whether I was doing good work
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um but a lot of the work the ambulance services does is is wasted you know there’s you can we used to do four
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shifts in a row so you do two days two nights and then you’d have four days off and I would sometimes get to the end of
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that four shifts and think back and think did I really need to go to any of those people you know were they an
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emergency case and the vast majority just aren’t um and I think these days it’s even
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worse now with you know the people that struggle to get GP appointments and their primary care services that aren’t
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there for people and the social care services that aren’t there I think the ambulance service kind of picks up a lot of the slack
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um so I I don’t I used to miss it I don’t miss it so much now because it’s almost unrecognizable to what it was 10
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years ago I’d imagine it costs a lot more for an ambulance to do with something rather than GP to deal with it
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doesn’t it yeah it does um but you kind of once you’ve called 999 and you’ve made that decision it’s
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very difficult to then roll back I think they’re getting better at it and they triage a lot better than
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they used to um but we certainly used to go to a lot of things that we didn’t really need to be there for
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um so it’s just a state of the Health Service unfortunately yeah I saw um I saw an interesting
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article I think it might have been on BBC News the other day and it’s like since like your phone’s like they’ve got
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this like the power holding the power button does an emergency call or something now and um like apparently
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like um the emergency accidental calls have just gone up like 50 in the last year
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um so like a lot of the um emergency response centers are getting swamped with people accidentally calling in but
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then the article was interesting because it was like these emergency response centers or what are they called like the
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official term who answers a nine Uncle Emergency Operations Center okay that’s it yeah or Emergency Operations centers
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they’re like because people hang up straight away it takes them 20 minutes to investigate every single like person
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that just called and hung up to make sure that they they’re actually okay whereas if you apparently if you
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accidentally call the um 999 and then you stand on the line and say oh sorry
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um it saves them back all that time I think it was a software bug because it happened to my wife actually one we were
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in the office and our phone started alarming and yeah she unbeknownst her accidentally called the emergency
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services and they were calling her back to say what’s going on yeah well I mean it’s good that they go to that level
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because they do but it takes a lot of time and like say for a software but they they seem to know about it but they
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have to check them all so yeah definitely okay so you you went from the ambulance
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service so you went back to University oh yes I was in the middle of that so once um once I decided I was going to do
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this um commercial training job um as part of the job they funded me to
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go back to University and do a uh like a pgce postgraduate certificate of
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education so yeah teacher qualification yeah um in and specializing in in post-compulsory education so 16 plus so
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that was really useful to just to be able to get the the kind of educational background to
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firm up my knowledge with with teaching was that like a full-time qualification or did you do like as well as working I
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did it yeah I did it alongside work and it took two years part-time okay I think it was Central bedfordshire College
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and then and then what did you do after that qualification didn’t continue working in the ambulance service for a
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bit yes I was there for a couple more years um and then they
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did the UHS has a habit of restructuring constantly
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um and what they’ve done in my Ambulance Service that I worked for they’d actually brought in a director a
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commercial director uh he come from um Volkswagen and fantastic boss really really good
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had all this great knowledge of kind of the private sector which you know I
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never had from joining at 20 I only knew the NHS and how how bureaucratic it was and how it worked um and he came in and
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he was a breath of fresh air and and could kind of see that I had the the makings of of or the ability to to think
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in a kind of entrepreneurial way but I was a bit restrained within the NHS because it’s not designed for
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entrepreneurs um but he opened a lot of doors for me and gave me a lot of confidence to just
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you know get on with things and he would say you know ask for forgiveness rather than permission because you know just
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trust your gut because he knew I was right most of the time um but
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um so they did about a year I had under his leadership and really enjoyed it and
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then they restructured and a new person was in charge and we got put under a different department and they didn’t
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quite get what we were trying to achieve and it just kind of sucked the life out of it for me me so I was complaining
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that we were we were in the process of buying some equipment I was complaining to the the rep of the company uh the
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medical equipment company that we were buying from um about all this and she said well actually we’re weirdly you know going to
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be recruiting in this area quite soon and then there’s like what have it I ended up having to get in that job that
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she was talking about um so yeah can you say which firm you went to work yeah so it’s a company called lead all medical
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um they make uh the recession dolls that everybody does yeah that does CPR training on they were kind
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of the original inventors of that um so they had like a patent for it yes yeah yeah absolutely they were the first ones
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to make that and now they they make everything from that that’s kind of the Baseline product uh and they make kind
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of um all singing all dancing patient simulators so robot humans
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um across you know tens hundreds of thousands of pounds that all the doctors and nurses practice on and that’s so I
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spent five years learning how to sell those what’s the most advanced bit of
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like equipment that you just described like the robot training age what does it do so it’s called a Sim man okay that’s
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the brand name and it’s basically a robot human patient so you can stick
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needles in it and do CPR on it and you can give drugs to it and it will breathe
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and blink and sweat and seas and all the things that a patient would do okay
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that’s I mean does it have veins and stuff can you cut it open and operate inside it so there are some surgical
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simulators that do have yeah you can cut them open and do you know cardiac massage and or whatever that’s called
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you know there’s a technical term for it but yeah you you name the medical procedure there will be a simulator for
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it just because it’s so important not to practice on humans like we used to yeah
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well there’s a big money business and I I imagine like yeah it is you know they
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they seem quite expensive on the face of it um you know if you say a a mannequin was
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a hundred thousand pounds it sounds you know it’s a lot of money but if you’re then not making you know one error that
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causes a patient to die or several patients to die then it’s a space for itself for you
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know several times over because yeah the litigation involved in itself just
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saving that cost well the NHS spends billions a year doesn’t it absolutely yeah yeah I mean things like
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um maternity so if you have a a pregnant mother and there’s a problem with the
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baby and it comes down to clinical negligence you know 50 of the NHS litigation budget is spent on maternity
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cases and you have to look after that mother you know financially but you also have to look after that baby for the
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whole of its life so it’s tens of millions usually in the typical case that’s that comes out so to spend 50 100
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000 on a on a patient simulator and train all of your people really well so those things don’t happen it you know it
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makes sense so Mark how long did you work at that firm for uh was there for five years okay
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um so I was the regional sales manager for the east of England um so I learned an awful lot about
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um sales really because I’d never really done sales for and never considered myself as a salesperson and probably
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spent most of that my time in that job convincing people that I wasn’t a salesperson
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which turns out to be quite a good sales tactic because people will believe you yeah I guess
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um what what was your sales tactical like how did you get in front of people
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um it wasn’t hard to get in front of people because we were the market leader um so that I I almost took for granted
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and see the certainly the difference now you know starting my own company where we are have started from nothing you
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know there’s no brand recognition there so I don’t have the benefit of that um but yeah I never used to struggle to
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to get into places it was more um the struggle was understanding the
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the customers because you’ve got such a huge portfolio of products and you might be seeing you know Pediatric Intensive
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Care One meeting and then going to maternity and then going to the emergency department and having to have
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conversations with all these people and understand what their problems were
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um that was that was the biggest learning curve I think so having that medical background you
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know open doors that it wouldn’t for other people you know it’s very very difficult to to con people into thinking you know
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about medicine yeah and you have you know in a 10-year career in the ambulance service I learned a lot of
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things that I completely take for granted just because it’s knowledge in my head
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um so for anyone who’s coming into sales and getting into Healthcare sales without medical background it’s really really hard I think
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yeah that’s um that’s really good like say I think a lot of success I’ve
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noticed in Industries created when you take people from one particular background
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given the whole new skill set that then lets them interact with people from their old life
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um that’s really good so you were there for five years what what do they do or do you want to go into like what kind of
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things do they do well what didn’t you like so much um something that that I’m really thinking
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about now and appreciated less at the time but it’s it’s culture company culture
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um you know they were there um slogan was helping save lives and they took it incredibly seriously
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sometimes too seriously it was my view then but now when I think
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about it I understand why they did that how they’re to be so explicit to actually trying to measure the impact of
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the company on how many lives that they’re saving and it’s the the target
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is millions now it must be that must be really hard to link
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together it is yeah it is hard but they have so there’s a sister charity yeah called learn of global Health where they
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do they can you know take the number of people that they’re training and they would focus on infant mortality so they
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would train so you train 50 midwives and then you can say well those three those midwives will probably save three babies
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in the course of a year and then multiply it that way so I would say they probably figured it out quite
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conservatively but but it was it was amazing to see the the level of impact
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that you can have and it certainly helped me daily to to be able to think well the work that I’m doing and the
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money that I’m making selling these things is actually having a positive impact somewhere else
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yeah I guess that’s probably one of the um biggest objections people have to selling like they’re like there’s in the
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back of their mind they think they’re inconveniencing someone by you know getting in front of them so I think if you like from a mindset point of view if
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you if you can directly link the number of products you sell to
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um to the number of lives that are saved then actually it’s probably easier like it’s probably a really good technique
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just get over that barrier to you know inconveniencing someone it can be
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um I’ll never forget my first day in that company where they told me this story and and I’d obviously done my
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research and knew that this this program existed but the um the guy that was the
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managing director of the UK company who was actually the grandson of the founder of the company it’s a Norwegian company
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um and this guy John was the the managing director and a member him saying to me do not use this story as a
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sales tool and I you know my jaw hit the table and I was like why why wouldn’t you
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um and I did a little bit but you’d be surprised how many people certainly within the NHS who are dealing you know
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with their own lives to save in front of them would almost say well you know can we look after these people here rather
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than worrying about those people over there because they’re they’re in their own crisis if you like
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um so it wasn’t something that we used all the time but it was just nice to know that you’re not just making money
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to so a shareholder can buy another house and upgrade the swimming pool or whatever it was yeah
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well no that’s that’s really good tonight um and you were there for about five years so you probably liked it liked
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working there quite a bit you’re probably growing to a good level uh yeah pretty much like every like the
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ambulance service thought I would be there forever you know I’m very much a All or Nothing kind of person you know
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while I’m there I’ll give it everything I’ve not got one foot out the door um and I left because of
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um what I think boils down to weak management you know one one person
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um who I I didn’t think really belonged in the company um and they thought I didn’t belong there and they won so yeah I ended up
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leaving there and joining a smaller company within the industry um and that was also you know really
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valuable tool yeah how small was the company um so they were probably you know fifth
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sixth down the pecking order you know very much much you know we’re talking probably 20 million turnover down to uh
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less than a million turnover uh back then it was 20
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I’m not sure what year it was now before just before kovic 2019 2018. and and
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just remember because the goal was you know get to a million turnover that magic number that’s in your people’s
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heads um so yeah that was a real and they were slightly different they weren’t a manufacturer they were a distributor so
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I got a whole new set of of skills uh to learn how to deal with suppliers and and
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deal with the different be a different type of customer so what was did he have the same role in that other company
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um no well sort of but because it’s smaller I was doing more stuff so my role was head of Business Development
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okay but was essentially sales but also marketing how come you ended up working
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with like the suppliers is that because you’d have you’d get queries from the customers that you had to then resolve
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with the supplier no no their business model was distribution so because they
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didn’t manufacture anything themselves they had they were representing one larger company within and then they took
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on several more while I was there um but you’re essentially got a group of five six suppliers
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and then you sell all of their products but you have to then deal with both ends of the relationship yeah so if like if a
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customer had a problem with the product you’d have to pick it up with the supplier essentially and yeah but you’d also have to negotiate buying the
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products from the suppliers okay so you know that yeah to get the best price and yeah because basically what we do now
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you know we’re a distributor yeah um and we represent you know to think about 15 different companies
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um in the UK and we help them to crack the UK Market that’s what they come to us for amazing okay and what was uh
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what was that smaller company that you went to work for called I called simulates simulates okay and and how
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long were you there for I was there for just under two years I I I always see
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the opportunity almost to to my detriment at the moment um and that’s only something I’m I’m
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realizing fairly recently to be honest um I used to say all the time you know I
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just want an easy life um and I said it just a couple of weeks ago to a friend of mine and she said
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what he’s talking about like that that’s not your personality at all like you you are constantly finding the most
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difficult way and challenging way to do something and then trying to do it differently again
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um and when she said it just keeps on playing in my head over and over and she’s completely right that is that is
Starting a small business
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what I’ve done you know I I started this business with the the mindset I’ll just drop ship every box you know I won’t
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ever touch a box it’s the modern way I’ll just build a website it’ll make sales I’ll use my connections it’ll be
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easy um and that is how we started and now we ship 99 of the boxes that that go out we
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handle them ourselves and we’ve just had to open a warehouse to do that um yeah and that’s just because this you
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can’t it’s not scalable and you can’t the the quality of service that you get from other suppliers wasn’t what I was
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happy with so I said the only way that we can guarantee that we can get the quality is to do it ourselves
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you know I was watching the road to success podcast the other day and um and I think there’s a company called uh
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unimize they do car wrapping and one of the owners bav and um and the main guy
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they’re having conversation and they were trying to figure out a deep people that Dropship are they
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actually entrepreneurs um and I think the conclusion they came to was no because like Drop Shipping is
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just like a way of setting up a business without taking any risk um but then your the gains and Drop
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Shipping are always really really limited anyway um it depends on what you’re Drop Shipping so yeah in my industry it’s
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actually I think the best place to be if you’re as a distributor because the risk
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is relatively little because I can you know we’re fortunate now in that we have manufacturers come to us so I when I
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started I was very reliant on the relationships that I had and the people that I knew to be able to say started a
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new company yeah will you take a risk and let me represent you in the market and some of them you know they want
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there’s always two different types of company I find there’s ones that will just say yes to every distributor and
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they just want their as many products as they can out there and there’s others that are very picky and they only want to work with good people
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um and I have a a mix I would say and I now because I can choose I now gravitate
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towards the one that are a bit more choosy because we get exclusivity but they’re also a bit more Discerning so
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yeah What proportion of your stuff do you drop ship at the moment uh at one
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percent compared to 99 um I I guess that’s um
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but the mod there’s much better margins than just holding your own stock isn’t there um not necessarily it depends I would
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say it’s probably actually fixed you know the the it’s not usually uh if I buy 100 of this
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thing am I going to get the same you know better price than if I buy one of this thing that yeah that’s kind of rare
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in this industry I don’t know why um we might try and change that but I
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for me it was the level of service you know okay if you’re running an e-com and that was the other thing that changed
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for me is I just thought I’ll do e-commerce I learned during covid I learned how to build websites
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um and for when I was working for simulates I had they had to redesign the whole website so I kind of while I was working there learned how everything to
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do and then when I built my own I just did it all a second time but a bit better because I had more experience
28:37
um and I it interests me I enjoy I enjoy designing the website and thinking about the the kind of customer Journey Through
28:43
the website and all the little tweaks you can make to optimize web pages that that floats my boat
28:49
um but I thought at the beginning I’ll just be e-commerce you know just be a website
28:55
there’ll be no sales involved people will just click the button add to basket and then I just tell someone else to
29:01
send them the Box you know what could be easier um but it’s difficult you know when you
29:06
have an e-commerce customer the Amazon model has kind of I’m not going to say ruined it’s forced
29:13
everyone to up their game if you order something online and it hasn’t arrived the next day you’re wondering where is it
29:19
um and in my industry certainly during covid the lead times were six to eight weeks minimum okay so that’s very
29:26
unusual experience for somebody to order something online and then get an email to say it’s going to be with you in two months time
29:33
um so I had to kind of rethink that and rethink the messaging and make sure people weren’t caught off guard when
29:40
that happens and now you know all of our products you can see where they’re available in stock or not and and
29:46
actually we’ve moved now online customers are probably 10 I haven’t
29:52
looked at the numbers this month but probably 10 of our business is online 90 is is offline purchase orders from NHS
29:59
and universities who have a we have a better relationship with there’s more a consultative sale
30:05
and we can explain the lead times to them and they’re a bit more used to it and understanding
30:12
um so again a complete shift in what I thought this business was going to be so you just mentioned you built your own
30:19
website um like how did you do that was that in WordPress or like to use like Wix so this time around I use Shopify
30:26
um just because they’re the biggest um it was easy and I knew it would work out the box you know do you still use
30:33
Shopify yep still use Shopify um and you know we could probably switch to a different platform and make a few
30:39
more pounds on each sale but in the two and a half years I’ve been running it it’s never gone down if I need support
30:46
it’s always there and you know it’s a big company and they do their job really well so yeah I definitely recommend them
30:53
um but similarly you know I’ve used WordPress and and could build a WordPress site if I wanted to but then
30:59
you almost you know one of the things that that um I find
31:05
it sounds like a negative but I see it’s a positive is there’s so many choices you can make with a WordPress site you could do absolutely anything where
31:12
sometimes it’s nice to be a little bit constrained because you’re forced to just make a decision quickly and go with it um and I work on that these days with
31:19
so many suggestions to make what did the first six weeks of um you being like running your own business look like
31:25
oh wow first six weeks um scary that’s the that’s the honest truth
31:34
I remember my first sale did he save up money um before you left your old place or I had five grand
31:40
that’s I had five and a half when I started I was awful at saving it was yeah I had five grand and I I was
31:47
even I thinking about it on the way here like how did I actually decide there wasn’t a kind of you know
31:54
definite moment where I said I’m gonna do my own business even up until the day
31:59
it started I was still interviewing so I’d left simulates and in that period
32:04
between leaving and starting I interviewed for two positions that I quite fancied
32:11
um one was a global head of sales for a company within our industry and another one was a VR company who were just
32:18
trying to break into it um and quite like the idea of the challenge of both of them but I think
32:23
back to those interviews and I I interviewed badly
32:29
um which is not like me I’m usually quite good at interviews I like to think you know I’ve been off sort of offered a
32:34
few jobs over the years um and I think I did a deliberate I think I sabotaged myself because I knew
32:39
I really wanted to to do this business um but my I like to have a plan B always
32:46
so I think I was having that plan B there but I was almost dreading them offering me the job because I’d have to
32:52
make a decision then whereas if I kind of made them not want me then I’d
32:57
be forced into it and that’s what I’d always said all along is that I’ve quite fancy started my own business but something drastic will have to happen
33:04
um and covered was that that thing that made it happen okay yeah so
33:11
yeah that makes sense so you you started out
33:17
um I take you work at some kind of notice period finished that yeah they were really good because I was um
33:22
because I was going to be setting up as a distributor we kind of had an extended period okay and in the last month they
33:27
kind of said you know as long as you you’re doing what you’re doing for us you can set your website up and do what
33:33
you need to do for that um and I remember my first sale was actually so it was a so simulates
33:40
closed for the year on Christmas Eve so there was no more business to be done there they couldn’t process the order
33:46
and somebody phoned me on on Christmas Eve and said I need to place an order before the end of the year I need to be
33:52
invoiced and I knew that that couldn’t happen between it simulates so I took them over and and
33:58
my new company and I and I knew you know similes are still going to get the sale but just not until until January
34:04
um and that was my first one and um and that I think it was probably
34:11
that was probably the first one I did in that month I would say um I can’t be sure because I can’t
34:17
remember I’ve probably blanked it out but I remember I remember that fear of where is the next one
34:22
coming from because that that five grand would probably have lasted us two months
34:27
but there was a commission on that first sale no no so that was about five grand I had in my savings oh yeah okay that
34:34
was no no was it no that five grand would have lasted us six months that’s what I worked out if
34:39
we actually cut down everything yeah um plus my wife’s salary she was working in a nursery at the time
34:46
um we can let us I basically said I’ve got six months to make this business pay and if it doesn’t then I’ll I’ll get a
34:53
job yeah so I guess that was your plan F but yeah so I I so that yeah so I did that um and
35:01
I remember that first sale the rest is a bit of a blur um just because it feels so long ago now
35:07
even though it was only two and a half years ago you know what it took me six months just get my first customer yeah I was but you know sales weren’t my strong
35:14
point um but so you you managed to get something
35:19
right off the bat but that was kind of linked to your old place where you were so what was like the First Independent sale that you made
35:26
um I remember I’d have to go back and look at the look at the records but it was probably something on the website is
35:32
that so were you doing like SEO stuff on the website or how would you get people to the website so I was trying to Google
35:39
ads I would say was probably the biggest uh driver of website sales and still is I would think
35:45
um did you did you Outsource that at the beginning or did you just uh before to so I had to I did the the Google courses
35:52
that you can do um which are free that they just take time and so I did that and I I taught
35:57
myself as best as I could um but it I still don’t really understand it and I don’t think that
36:04
many people that are the the Google algorithm is a a law unto itself and then it changes
36:09
and there’s all you know I’ve dealt with enough PPC you know pay-per-click companies now
36:15
who claim to be on top of it who once you get their services you realize they’re really not
36:21
um and it’s a bit of a Minefield but I tried to learn it as best as I could and it it was it was working we were making
36:28
money um but that was also in the Bitcoin days and I was you know on the side I was trying to learn all I could about
36:34
Bitcoin and I I would say the first six months of of the business my salary was
36:40
paid for by Bitcoin investment rather than my own sales and then that you know
36:45
the bottom fell out of that as you know things do but um if it hadn’t been there then I probably would have struggled
36:51
yeah okay absolutely amazing so but you know what when I first started this business
36:56
I built my own website by built-in Wix and then eventually I had like a web
37:02
design agency then build it in WordPress but um I think yeah when you when you’re on
37:08
that shoe screen it really forces you to um re-forces you to be resourceful and learn a lot of things yourself but you
37:15
know what I kind of think starting a business with like not much money actually stood me in really good
37:21
stead for where I am now because like I see so many business owners where they
37:26
they get some sort of funding behind them or they they’ve got quite long savings or some sort of inheritance and
37:32
then they go out and they try and start that business and because they weren’t forced to do everything themselves
37:39
um then when they actually do start dealing with certain agencies and certain other professionals that they Outsource to that they’re not actually
37:44
in the best place to work out if they’re getting value for the money or if they’re talking to the right people say like and what’s worth paying for you
37:52
know I know my limitations on most things now and I will try and now it’s you know it’s different
37:58
that I’m so busy I pay I pay to get the time back so that’s there’s a different value placed on it but at the beginning
38:05
I was paying for results because I mean I know what I can get out of Google ads and I would set that Benchmark and then
38:12
I’d say to the professional agency and this happened the first agency I used they didn’t do as well as I did I was
38:18
like well how can that be you know how can you this be your job and you didn’t perform well as I did did they make any
38:24
excuses or no they just let me leave my contract okay and that kind of told me what I did to be told
38:30
um so it’s one of those things you need to know yeah you need to know enough to be able to to know what you need to pay
38:36
for yeah that makes a lot of sense I mean do you are you still heavily um invested
38:43
in Google pay-per-click these days do you still do a lot of it we do about two and a half Grand a month I would say
Marketing within a small business
38:50
um but you’re also like um well I guess that leads us on to the next part of the conversation anyway but then recently
38:56
your wife Nicola left her teaching job didn’t she and then started working with you alongside you yes so that Nicola was
39:03
the first uh employee that I brought into the business and her role was
39:09
marketing director because that was the bit that I was struggling to to do was marketing and and that’s
39:16
what I could see you know with certainly within our industry and probably in most Industries marketing is not done well
39:21
and you don’t have to be that good to be a lot better than everybody else so that’s what I saw as being our strength
39:28
I guess um so the marketing side of it is is that mainly to get encourage people to buy
39:35
more often from you so you’re meeting new people through pay-per-click then you’re trying to build that long-term
39:40
relationship with them so you get that repeat business it was just to let them know that we exist okay that was it um
39:46
because we were selling by that point so that was probably that was February I think in my second year sort of the
39:52
first year on my own and then in February of the second year I brought Nicola in and
39:58
um it was just trying to spread the name and spread the a bit of brand awareness that we were here and we by that point
40:04
we’d had quite a lot of um you know we were selling some well-known brands
40:09
but we were trying to the strategy would be the cheapest that was all we had our overheads are low we can be cheaper than
40:15
anybody um so that that was the strategy at the beginning um so yeah that’s that’s why why I ended
40:22
up investing in marketing first because I didn’t have the time to do it and was trying to set myself targets of you know
40:28
do one blog post a month and six months would go by and I’ve not done any um and that was good because that meant
40:34
I was busy selling but at the same time I knew that wasn’t sustainable
40:40
yeah I mean and in terms of um like AdWords I guess I’m kind of stuck on it
40:45
at the moment but um like why not just quadruple your AdWords budget for example is is it
40:51
because you hit a point of diminishing returns or um I I didn’t know I I nobody could prove
40:59
to me that it was worth it and I’m having the same the same problem now with the PPC company we use now as I
41:06
have to say to me show me something that is that demonstrates return on investment you know I pay you I pay
41:12
Google two and a half Grand where’s it going um and it seems to be a hard thing to
41:19
for people to demonstrate and I don’t really understand why because there’s a lot of analytics in there that can tell
41:24
you what where the money’s going um you can follow a customer’s Journey really can’t you through your website
41:30
apparently yeah and this is all the stuff that I need to get to grips with and we’re now going back you know we kind of um having a big change within
41:37
the company to to bring in more people and they’re just starting now so Nicola’s role which started as marketing
41:45
then went quickly change from marketing to actually managing the warehouse
41:51
um and I call it a warehouse but it was uh it was at the beginning one self storage unit which turned into four self
41:58
storage units um and it was only last week that we actually closed that and opened an actual Warehouse with offices above
42:06
um yeah to do it properly if you like yeah I mean I completely agree with that
42:11
approach like in terms of the the marketing because obviously we invest a lot in marketing as well and and you
42:17
know when I started out like I we built that website and then I start in I guess
42:22
like instead of like for me I couldn’t afford to get SEO like support at the
42:27
beginning side start learning all this stuff about SEO and this was you know our business is almost 10 years old now
42:34
so about nine years ago this is when I was doing all that black hat stuff so I had like I remember I had my laptop open
42:39
all night and there was just this bit of software on there that was like building like dodgy links and then
42:46
but then I’ve got another bit of software that I was just writing really bad articles by spinning words and and you know what
42:54
like probably when I was about a a year into my business like this has been like
42:59
early 2015. we started moving up the rankings in Google for like accountants in Northampton and um and like I mean
43:07
and I I checked it properly I’d use things like Moz or like Majestic SEO like and and we we started moving up
43:14
just with those really bad backlinks and really bad articles and then um and then that got us like our first
43:21
little batch of clients I mean we did some telling marketing at the beginning anyway but it got before Google got you
43:27
know was wise to all that stuff and then like obviously like started penalizing us for it but at that point we’d started
43:33
getting enough um work coming in that I could actually afford to get an SEO agency to go and do it properly and um
43:40
and it’s yeah so things that you do at the very beginning but yeah we we’ve done our whole share of Google
43:46
pay-per-click stuff and it’s it’s worked in the past for us but then we and you know I I but we don’t that’s interesting
43:54
right because like you’d like you you talk to a new customer who’d come in and
43:59
you’d say hey where’d you hear about us and they’d say oh we found you on Google and then like unless you want to really
44:05
dive into it you don’t know if they found you on the Google local listing you don’t know if they found you on the Google organic listing or if they saw
44:12
you in the pay-per-click section so when you get to what did you search exactly
44:17
yeah I was obsessed with it at the beginning just by you because I had nothing else to do yeah I was I was obsessed with it
44:23
um and I’ve not thought about it for probably 18 months and now I’m going to get back into it not quite in the same
44:29
way but try and go back and say well we’ve got a website that’s been running for two and a half years we need to now use all of that data that we’ve been
44:35
measuring and work out what’s the next step how do we how do we optimize that site where are we losing people
44:43
um things like abandoned shopping carts we get you know three or four of them a day now why why are they doing that
44:49
um whereas when you’re busy in it you don’t have time to think about that that was Google was my obsession until
44:55
about two years ago so I’d be like up till about two years ago like every day of my business pretty much I would just
45:02
search our ranking like for accountants in Northampton and then like eventually like about two years ago I just pulled
45:10
the plug on all of Ico all of our pay-per-click stuff because you you found us on LinkedIn really didn’t you
45:15
and I think so yeah originally and we changed our business model A Lot two years ago like you know before we were
45:21
more of a traditional accounting firm but then a lot of the stuff coming in through Google would be very price sensitive and they just wanted to create
45:27
for something so they could compare it to another quote and you know when we changed our business model to more like
45:32
financial management and business advisory we realized Google wasn’t going to guess the kind of clients that we
45:38
wanted to work with um although there’s clients which we met through Google who
45:44
turned into clients on our advisory elements but um the vast majority of clients that came
45:50
through Google they they weren’t appropriate for the advisory program that we had but we you know to to grow
45:56
the other kinds of marketing that we needed to grow to really build that credibility to get clients on it I realized I was going to have to get the
46:03
budget from somewhere and like you know turning Google off I mean it didn’t happen overnight but turning the SEO off
46:08
turning our pay-per-click off it was one of the hardest decisions I had to make in business yeah because you don’t know what
46:14
negative effect it’s going to have but actually most of it is just time you know if you’re if you’re doing a good job and you’re you know I’d remember how
46:21
I don’t remember exactly how I found you but I remember knowing that a video came
46:27
up one of your little clips that you do where you’re talking to camera and you were answering a question that I was
46:33
considering at that time and that if you’re doing the same thing in any business in any website if people
46:39
are thinking of that thing and you provide that answer then they’re gonna stick with you and like this just good
46:45
luck and timing and being in the right place at the right time but that’s that’s what we focus our content on is
46:51
or will do it as we build our strategy and film more stuff and do more stuff like this is what people are asking what
46:58
problems do they have how can we solve them and demonstrate that we’re the experts in that field most people aren’t
47:03
doing that no they’re not and also like yeah we’re talking about the new LinkedIn LinkedIn algorithm changes that
47:09
are coming in um oh yeah after I gave up being obsessed with our Google ranking I
47:15
became obsessed with the number of LinkedIn connections we had I’d like look at that every day it’s like hey that’s great and then I more recently
47:22
I’ve kind of got bored of that and now I’m right new obsession is our YouTube subscribers so I look at that like twice
47:27
a day I was like and like if the second we get a subscriber like the the girls in the marketing team know about it is
47:33
I’m like hey who’s just got a new subscriber but you’ve always got to have some like in business it can really be
47:40
hard to understand if you’re making progress all the time you can always look the finances but then a lot of the finances involve all the investment you
47:48
made in the growth so they don’t always tell you they don’t always have a linear picture of your progress but you’re
47:54
always trying to find Little Numbers you can hang on to um but what so what’s your obsession at
47:59
the moment um I’m a bit too busy to have obsessions at the moment my obsession is having a
48:05
holiday I think that’s um what we’re working towards um because it’s been yeah the last few
Growing your small business
48:10
weeks it’s been quite a transition so we’ve gone and it’s because it’s the end
48:16
of June and we and our financial year runs January so I’m thinking in halves and where we were a year ago 12 months
48:22
ago today it was just me and Nicola um and as of next week there’ll be eight
48:27
of us including me um so that’s my my whole world has
48:32
changed completely and my um whims and obsessions kind of have to take a back seat because I’ve now got
48:39
seven employees to to think about and make sure they’re happy every day and it’s my day is just phone calls now um
48:46
it’s very different to what it was before when I was just dealing with customers and doing every part of that
48:51
process um so yeah that’s been a real challenge so what does your team look like at the
48:57
moment what are the roles you’ve got in it um I’ll do it in order it’s probably the easiest thing so I so Nicola was first
49:04
that was marketing uh and then we had uh Steph come in and
49:09
she was um customer service to start with but because it’s a small business you kind
49:14
of have to wear many hats so it’s customer service it’s technical support
49:19
um and pretty much any job that I needed her to do but uh marketing stuff she was writing blog posts and anything that she
49:26
had expertise on we were we were using um and then we brought in
49:31
um a sales consultant uh called Marie and she was somebody that was worked for
49:38
a competitor in our industry um before so she was kind of ready to go and I could just let her get on with it
49:44
um but for me being a salesperson and and knowing how you need to have that funnel filled all the time that was my
49:50
next you know how do I commit less of myself to the sales process and so that was bringing her in
49:58
um was the way to do that and then we brought in another’s customer sales person service person Chloe who’s also
50:04
got quite a broad business administration background so she’s also taking over the finance side dealing
50:09
with the bills and invoices and the stuff that I was doing um and then now coming in we have uh
50:17
somebody in the warehouse who’s you know packing the boxes and looking after the
50:22
inventory and that sort of thing and then an operations director if they’re going to run that that office in that
50:28
warehouse and then a sales director as well because again I’m obsessed with that’s my obsession fill in the funnel
50:34
keeping more more sales coming through and paying for all these people that we’ve got now well yeah definitely I mean although
50:40
you’ve done amazingly well in the last two years just by yourself I mean as in you being the head of the company by
50:45
itself though yeah it’s been it’s a lot of people have been surprised when when
50:50
I tell them and I and it’s you kind of play a bit of the game when you’re one person or two people you kind of
50:57
have to make it sound bigger than it is and so I’ll have you know we’ve got a few phone
51:02
um if you phone our phone number you’ll then be asked what options you want to speak to the sales team do you want to speak about an order uh or do you want
51:09
to speak to finance or whatever it is they all come to my phone so you you kind of happen to think how
51:16
am I answering the phone in a way that doesn’t make it obvious it’s all just me um so yeah it’s um we’re kind of past
51:23
playing that game now I actually have departments to manage and that in itself is quite quite difficult because everybody’s used
51:30
to doing everything so now to say to them right you can’t do that anymore you have to pass that to that person because
51:35
of that’s the process um so that’s the kind of pain that we’re going through at the moment are you so
51:41
you’re trying to create some sort of hierarchy in the business where everyone doesn’t just report into you really yeah
51:47
I’m trying I’m trying to replace myself that that’s been I’ve gone from wanting
Burning out as a business owner
51:52
to start a business so that I don’t have to rely on anybody else to actually realizing that if ever if
51:59
everything relies on me there’s no slack um and I did in January this year I
52:05
burnt out completely I was absolutely exhausted uh to the point where I was just said to Nicolette just put the
52:10
business on eBay and get rid of it because I don’t know that it’s worth it um I I’m glad I didn’t do that but that
52:17
I was at that point where it’s just what why am I doing this it’s not making me happy anymore and that was the point where I decided
52:24
to to get more Partners in and I actually sold half the business or I’m in the process of selling half the
52:29
business to be able to bring in those people because I thought what is the point of earning you know and lots of
52:35
people have said to me you know you’re mad you know don’t get rid of half of it you need to own everything and you know
52:40
profit profit profit and I said well what’s the point if it’s making me unhappy um why but and plus I can’t grow it to
52:48
the size that it needs to grow to I spent a lot of time and took advice from people who just say keep it small just
52:53
pay for yourself you know pay for your wife you can have a comfortable life um but it was becoming harder to keep it
52:59
smaller than it would be to just let it grow organically the size of the business in terms of what I’ve noticed
53:05
over the years is and I’m not just talking about your business in general the size of the business is not
53:10
proportional to the work sorry the the amount of work is not directly linked to the size of the business like it’s the
53:17
fact that you’re wearing so many hats like you could have like three customers but if you’re doing a little bit of everything it’s just having to jump
53:24
between all those different jobs like that’s where I think the exhaustion comes in like um but for me I I
53:32
definitely understand that because like I’ve been through that in the past and then after a while like you know we we
53:38
decided to like have departments and teams and a structure where people report into each other because
53:44
at the end of the day we like our business it is based on to some level on common sense so like you know if
53:49
someone’s good at something and someone needs help with that thing they will go to that person and regardless of you
53:55
know the actual formal structure of our business but I think the way I look at it is we have our technical hierarchy and we have our
54:02
um our administrative hierarchy so like administrative hierarchy is if someone’s
54:08
going to have a doctor appointment doctor’s appointment they need to adjust their hours or if someone’s got to um take some holiday or some time off
54:14
there’s that’s the administrative hierarchy you know who signs that off I don’t want to be signing every little
54:20
thing like that off it doesn’t it’s just not efficient for me so we have a
54:25
structure there for that but um then our technical hierarchy is like you know we also split the business into different
54:31
like technical areas like a for an accounting firm it’s easy to do it on on tax and then like you know we have one
54:38
main person that’s responsible for that type of tax and then um they they utilize other people in the business to
54:44
help them get that tax all done so that’s kind of where I had that came up with that
54:49
um awareness of like you know the operational sorry the administration or in the technical side of it but um
54:56
yeah it’s you know for me we’ve just been on a bit of a journey for me to try and step back a bit like um so I think
55:03
in terms of marketing like you know I probably annoyed Ellie quite a lot yesterday because um I was uh I I was
55:11
just trying to change things around in terms of our posting and um it’s it is hard to step away from
55:18
jobs you’ve had in the past like the hardest thing in the world because it I have what I’ve learned from from working
55:25
with other people is that they don’t not everybody has the same standard or the same way of doing things and I’ve had to
55:32
I’ve had to accept that just because somebody does something differently doesn’t mean that it’s worse
55:38
no you’re right and often it’s the opposite because I don’t have the I haven’t it’s grown I mean we so the
55:45
growth that we’ve had in you from year one to year two we grew 600 percent and then this the six months just gone
55:52
we’ve grown another hundred percent amazing and so you can’t do things the same way that you did even six months
55:59
ago because you’re doing it twice as much now so um that’s been one of the things that’s been a real eye-opener for
56:04
me and I actually find it easier just to stay out of the meetings yeah just let the people who are doing that thing get
56:11
on with it and they’ll find the best way to do something and it’s very rare that I’ll actually say you know I’ve I’ve done that and we need
56:19
you know that’s not how to do it um I always have to let people fail on their own you know sometimes you can you
56:24
do you just have to learn the hard way like I did the first time around they’ll learn and they’ll remember it then the
56:30
next time yeah I think the thing that’s really screwing me up at the moment is just trying to understand the difference
56:35
between delegation and application so I mean I do understand the difference but
56:40
I mean delegation is when you transfer tasks to someone but you don’t transfer
56:45
the responsibility obviously they are accountable but abdication is just like hey you get on with it and then you
56:51
don’t care what happens um well yeah or you care what happens but you you know I I mean it happened
56:58
just today providing oversight right yeah you have to trust people to just to do
57:04
their job and I don’t I don’t want people to be coming to me and asking every single little thing and it’s
57:11
happening a lot now and and it will happen less over time because of just where we are and
57:16
bringing in new people they’ve got lots of questions and they don’t want to everyone’s very conscious that I started
57:22
the company from nothing and it’s my baby but I don’t want to be this overbearing person saying it’s my baby I
57:27
started it for nothing every day every day so it’s really tricky and there’s no blueprint for it you just have to
57:34
check yourself every every you know a bit of self-awareness um and I have a coach that I that I go
57:41
to who’s kind of been through that process of leading massive teams yeah and I can go to him and say you know
57:47
what’s your advice on this sort of thing or I’m going through this and and a very rarely tells me what to do he’ll tell
57:52
he’ll help me work out for myself what I need to do and sometimes you just need to reflect
Your team working remotely
57:59
I mean it I don’t know if it easier is the right word but your team’s kind of
58:04
spread out over the country isn’t it like it’s it’s less localized so it doesn’t completely remote and that’s again another
58:11
um does it make it easier to like Let Go a bit because if you literally aren’t there overhearing things seeing them
58:18
work I mean I don’t know any different so um obviously I’ve worked in in workplaces and
58:25
um every single one of them even the in the companies I enjoyed working for that
58:30
office in the main was miserable just people felt like they were forced
58:36
to be there it’s a sterile environment and it just I don’t think that was the
58:41
best way to get out of uh to get out of people you know the best performance but I because I was sales and Road based I
58:49
go to the office instant treat for me you know it’s nice I get to see people that I only speak to on the phone and get to have a chat yeah and then and
58:55
then you get that back from them you know they’re happy that you’re there because it’s a bit of a change so I
59:00
never wanted to just have well I never wanted to have an office full stop I fought against it for two years
59:07
you’ve got premises now which kind of are an office with an office exactly like every other
59:13
office in the country that they look the same um but you don’t make people turn up
59:18
there I guess not at the moment I mean the so the people that run the warehouse have to be there because the deliveries yeah have to come in and out
Culture within a small business
59:26
um and so that’s my next my next big project is the culture of the company
59:31
and the culture of that workplace and he and I won’t be there that often so how
59:36
do we make it in a way that I would want to be there every day because I never want to say to
59:41
people you’ve got to be there every day and make the mess you know make the best of it everything your culture up yet not
59:47
yet so it’s on we’re having a meeting at the first like big company meeting where
59:52
everybody goes there and that’s one of the things that we’re going to do on that day is discuss and work out what the company culture is
1:00:00
and I’m still you know we’ve talked about it a lot uh but I’m not I’m not too concerned
1:00:06
about we will write it down but I’m not too concerned about writing it down because I’ve been you see enough examples of
1:00:13
places where they write it down but they don’t actually do it and live it and I think and I hope that I’m
1:00:20
a good example and I’m actually living it and what I do and say is really what the company culture is and and we’re
1:00:26
small enough still that people will feed off that and and mirror that and as long
1:00:32
as I’m conscious of what I do and say I think we’ll be all right
1:00:37
yeah I mean we’ve had an interesting Journey with the culture of our business like initially we’d we came up with the
1:00:43
culture and it had like nine points nine points of culture and then we like added another three you know there’s our
1:00:49
12-point sculpture and I was and it was all documented it was on a website and I was like hang on can anyone remember this
1:00:55
and then um and then like last week me and Becky we just sat down and said okay
1:01:01
well those five things are essentially the same thing it’s leadership so then
1:01:07
we managed to get like you know our 12 points of culture down to seven which are now rememberable right and then um
1:01:13
now what we’ve got to do is really I’m come up with some stories that that
1:01:19
um that have happened in the business that um show showcase that culture we just got to document it we’ve got to adjust
1:01:24
our website for it I I am a believer in writing down that culture because it’s almost like a rule book like in my
1:01:30
opinion like you know people in the business they’ve got to they’ve got to
1:01:35
be able to go somewhere and just see that documented I think sometimes I’m not very good with rules so like because
1:01:42
I remember I remember and I take most of my guidance from lairdel from from having that that still it’s a feeling I
1:01:49
feel that culture even today I feel it and they had the five guiding stars I
1:01:54
could not tell you what they are I don’t know what they are but for me it’s a feeling and I and and that’s why I’m
1:02:00
hoping to recreate it is just you don’t have to be quite so prescriptive with behavior but you’ve got the right
Working in your small business with your wife
1:02:06
attitude how are you finding like working with your wife like um I know a
1:02:11
handful of businesses where husbands wives work together like what do you do to keep keep fit like you know leave it
1:02:17
at in the office once you um once you finish for the day
1:02:22
um to be honest she’s worse than me for wanting to talk about sometimes I just had not it’s eight o’clock I’m not
1:02:28
talking about it because it’s it’s work um but at the beginning it was tough
1:02:35
um but I it was kind of it was almost necessity so that she she was working in
1:02:40
a in a nursery for minimum wage and she’s a a teacher by profession and
1:02:46
background and she loved the work but it was so difficult and it was so
1:02:51
consuming she was up till 11 o’clock marking and doing work and
1:02:56
that’s why she left the school and went to the nursery because we thought well at least you could just go and do your hours but it’s an outdoor Nursery you’re
1:03:02
working in the winter you know it’s just it’s grueling work and I was looking at what I was doing and and got to the
1:03:09
point where I really needed help and I just said you know I I would rather you work with me the original originally we
1:03:17
started she was doing nine till three so as soon as the kids need to get picked up from school she’s off with them and
1:03:22
spending much more quality time with them um and it all worked you know quite well
1:03:27
but the challenge was that she didn’t feel she was coming into my business
1:03:33
that’s how it felt at the time and that’s how it was in reality I built this thing she was then becoming a part
1:03:39
of it but I was having to dictate what to do and now two years later it’s completely
1:03:46
changed you know she’s she’s established herself as you know she knows far more about marketing than I ever will because
1:03:52
she’s applied herself and trained herself and do you view her as a partner or an employee a partner absolutely a
1:04:00
partner and she is a has the equal shareholding that I have um and yeah at the beginning it was
1:04:06
Employee and and you’re coming into my business but that’s changed over time so
1:04:11
so she essentially she did something with the marketing turn your respect essentially and no no no as a partner
1:04:20
she’s always had my respect and I and I have always thought she’s brilliant that’s why I’m sorry yeah and that’s
1:04:27
probably another right way to phrase it on my behalf but professionally she she started having confidence in herself
1:04:33
that was the difference you know lots of people have this imposter syndrome
1:04:38
um and and she’s says that that’s what she felt like um whereas I don’t really suffer with
1:04:44
that thankfully um but it’s taken a while for her to actually see that
1:04:49
um you know and we especially comparing yourself to what you know the type of marketing that
1:04:55
other company global companies in our industry billion dollar companies what they’ll put out
1:05:00
anything’s not very good yeah you’re telling me like some of your competitors are stealing your descriptions and
1:05:06
stealing some of your content yeah it’s happened I mean I don’t I I I’m just flattered by it to be honest with you a
1:05:11
lot of them are trying to steal our we have a um when you talk about your signature solution in the apex program
1:05:17
we have a kind of process that we use um which is to basically provide
1:05:23
resources to customers to prove that we are the authority and we have a particular type of customer who would be
1:05:30
looking for a particular type of or group of products we put those in a product guide and then just by dint of
1:05:37
us providing that resource that sets us up to be able to sell those things to that customer
1:05:43
um and we get our competitors signing up for that fee and going through that funnel and it just I just laugh it you
1:05:49
know because they they don’t they don’t even try to copy us yeah because they can’t be bothered or they I don’t know
1:05:55
how I don’t know what the reason is but we’re not hiding our process you know we want people to know what we’re up to you
1:06:00
know what it’s like it’s barriers to entry really isn’t it they you you might have just been through so much pain to
1:06:07
generate one thing that competitors look at it as unachievable for them and yeah
1:06:12
maybe but we’ve also positioned ourselves that that we are a kind of One-Stop shop for that certainly that
1:06:18
particular type of customer everything that you would need to set up for that course we have it
1:06:24
um whereas the others aren’t aren’t doing that yeah you know I’ve got a couple of questions about that but
1:06:29
before we move on you mentioned an outdoor Nursery like what is I’ve never
1:06:35
heard of this all right so it’s um it’s not far away from here actually um I can’t remember the name of it now I
1:06:42
mean it’s quite a common Outdoors like yeah in cages no not in cages
1:06:47
um it’s it’s always Outdoors they think have you ever heard of forest schools yeah right my my daughter goes to Forest
1:06:52
yeah so they’ll often do sessions of forest school and they go out in the woods and they learn about nature and they start fires and stuff it’s
1:06:59
basically that but all day every day they just count side but and they will you know obviously if it’s snowing then
1:07:04
they’ll go undercover they’ve got like a 90 of the time they’re outside and it’s you know it’s proven to work in in
1:07:11
Scandinavia and and you’ll have to get Nicola on to it yeah I think I’ll talk about that a lot of follow-up questions
1:07:18
yes it’s really um growing in popularity over here because it’s quite beneficial
1:07:23
to the kids yep so at the moment you’ve mentioned that
1:07:30
actually a lot of a lot of your sales are based on like you know your expert knowledge of these products how are you
Sharing your expert knowledge
1:07:37
disseminating that expert knowledge amongst your team is have you got like an internal resource which they can
1:07:42
access to gain that no but that we’re gonna we’re planning to build one so this um new office and Warehouse that
1:07:49
we’ve moved into actually used to be radio station and it has a ready-made studio
1:07:55
um in there so we’re gonna kick that out as a clinical area and a training space and we’re going to do staff training but
1:08:02
we’re also going to do customer demos so if somebody says you know I want to buy a an IV arm for example
1:08:09
I don’t know which one to go for well we can look on the shelves we’ve got these three in stock uh give us 10 minutes all
1:08:15
the cameras are set up we just dial into a zoom call and we can show them that products you know there and then and
1:08:22
they can ask the questions they need to ask and that’s and then that can go on your website and it’s like Evergreen content yeah yeah it could be content
1:08:28
um it’s just solving that problem then that you know something that no other companies are doing yeah that’s that’s
1:08:34
really good it’s uh have you invested in all the cameras set up and everything not yet so that’s it’s on it’s on the
1:08:40
list um but it you know that’s what that’s what Covey taught me you know I used to work in a company where they would you
1:08:47
had as a salesperson you had to go and do 12 customer visits a week Come What May and that was the only thing they
1:08:53
measured was how many customer visits have you done they never asked about the quality of those visits and it used to
1:08:58
drive me mad um and I got to know the people at Kettering General incredibly well
1:09:04
because when I was a couple of visits short of a week I would go in there buy them coffee and you know that’s two more
1:09:09
people I’ve seen um and I used to play the game but it used to drive me off the wall because it was a complete nonsense you did not need
1:09:16
to do that set number and even when I’d ask how did you come up with that number no one could tell me it was just a
1:09:22
number that’s the wrong kpi really wasn’t it been plucked out of the air but it you know we’ve started doing that
1:09:27
on one year and then we’ve had a good year so we’ll just keep doing that I guess that’s how they come up with it but kovid was kind of the proof that you
1:09:35
I always said I could sell more being sat at home in my office than I can be been tapping the car for six hours a day
1:09:42
driving and not actually selling um and cover proved me right because you
1:09:48
know and it but it took that because the NHS wasn’t set up before to accept online video calls as a matter of
1:09:54
routine and they are now but it seems to me almost every other
1:09:59
company in our industry has gone back to that selling in person be out on the road all day
1:10:06
um and going back to the old model how they used to do it and we’ve gone the other way we we do 99 of it is online
1:10:11
most people can make a buying decision without having to actually see the product
1:10:17
um and when they do you know we send we either send it to them and do a video call alongside them so we haven’t got to
1:10:23
go anywhere or we will go and visit them you know if there’s if there’s a need to but we know that when we go out we’re
1:10:29
walking away with a sale because otherwise we’re just wasting time wasting money so who are your customers at the moment
1:10:35
what kind of people um so we deal with universities it’s probably the biggest one is that the
1:10:41
medical schools yes medical schools nursing schools um physiotherapy schools you know
1:10:46
there’s a whole load of people that we’re going to see paramedic schools obviously um further education colleges we deal
1:10:53
with a lot um and then NHS trusts they’re probably the three biggest types of customer that we have but we
1:11:00
also have a lot of you know small independent training companies one-man bands who are just buying CPR mannequins
1:11:05
or lungs or whatever they might need um there there are kind of website customers and they’re the ones that
1:11:11
expect that that next day service that I was talking about because they you know they’ve got a training course on Friday so they order it on Tuesday yeah you
1:11:18
need to be quick for them okay yeah and I I guess um
1:11:24
in terms of like um you mentioned you were supporting some kind of training as
1:11:29
well in the past like you you mentioned T levels I remember um what what are T levels at the moment so two levels
1:11:36
essentially is a replacement for the B Tech okay and it’s a new qualification
1:11:42
um and for me it’s perfect it’s they are where the hospitals and universities were 20 years ago setting up what we
1:11:49
call simulation centers so you have basically a mock Ward and you’ll have a
1:11:54
hospital bed you might have some screens with some um one-way mirrors on so that you can have the facilitator behind and
1:12:00
the student and there’s a there’s a barrier um you’ll have a hospital bed you’ll have a mannequin you’ll have various
1:12:07
task Trainers for IV catheterization um but these guys are kind of 16 to 18
1:12:13
year olds so it’s basic it’s taking pulses it’s taking blood pressures it’s talking to to patients it’s one of the
1:12:20
things that we’re we’re building at the moment or or kind of repurposing thing is a an AI patient simulator
1:12:27
so you’re talking to a screen or in a VR headset to an avatar and you have a
1:12:33
conversation with the Avatar and it uses artificial intelligence and speech recognition to have a conversation back
1:12:40
with you in real time wow okay so that’s you know just getting these students used to
1:12:46
asking you know what’s your name why are you here today you know all the social
1:12:51
information they need or the background medical history all that stuff
1:12:56
can be done with AI and VR really easily and is is the value you’re adding that
1:13:03
situation really like the fact that you understand the qualifications so you can be you can give them the equipment list
1:13:10
yeah so so um it’s a quite a new a new qualification and they yeah they come up
1:13:17
with an equipment list and the big the first number one problem they we had to solve was how do we match the training
1:13:23
products that we provide with the curriculum so we produce this product guide which
1:13:29
did all of that so if you need to teach um I don’t know um hand washing then we have a hand
1:13:37
hygiene trainer kit which uses UV light and special liquid that put on your
1:13:42
hands and shows you how well you’re using your hands and it actually is one of the most popular things we said it’s not like disclosing tablets when you’re
1:13:48
teaching yeah how to brush your teeth exactly exactly that but for your hands and it’s one of the most popular
1:13:53
products that we have and it’s one of the most popular things to teach because you know when we go out and do
1:13:59
um if we do trade shows or we go and visit customers we take one of those and the students will queue up just to see
1:14:06
how well they wash their hands which you know it sounds really basic but it’s it’s fun and if you can inject some fun
1:14:11
into it they’ll remember it you know and you know every time they wash their hands they’re going to be thinking of that and they’ll do it properly
1:14:18
okay amazing yeah how many different curriculums are there in the tea levels that you’re dealing with at the moment it’s one curriculum but it is massive
1:14:25
okay number of of different points that we have to meet so um you know I’m
1:14:31
actually not the expert on that particular thing but we have this guide that we built and that’s that’s what
1:14:37
people get from us is that they can we can just say buy this list of things and
1:14:42
then you’ll be able to teach this list of things um which we thought was solving the it solves part of the problem what we’ve
1:14:49
learned from selling this list of things to probably 80 plus customers now 80
1:14:55
colleges is that actually the next question is how do you do that you know
1:15:00
how do you take that mannequin that you’ve spent twenty thousand pounds on and use it not once a year to do an
1:15:06
assessment but every single day to teach every little part of that curriculum so
1:15:12
that’s what we do next is we’re gonna you’re putting the teacher notes we’re going to create a faculty development
1:15:18
program to give these teachers the ability to implement simulation into
1:15:24
their everyday teaching okay if you don’t mind me saying that doesn’t sound like the job of the supplier
1:15:31
though of the equipment like I thought that’d be isn’t there like a Prof like an official body that would just
1:15:37
regulate that course yeah there is um and they are trying to do that but they
1:15:43
have we met with them we had this exact conversation um they have two people for the whole
1:15:48
country okay and yes we’re only eight people but what I’ve suggested to them is that we could build a course that is
1:15:55
a mixture of online and uh you know face-to-face be it can be remote it can
1:16:02
be video call or we could send people out if we want to obviously that’d be more expensive
1:16:07
um but we can make it scalable and that’s you know that’s the difference between having uh what’s essentially a charity
1:16:13
that runs qualifications they don’t have that same entrepreneurial angle on
1:16:18
things they don’t see the opportunity that we see with you know we could sell this to 200 colleges and solve a massive
1:16:24
problem and at the same time we could you know they’re going to come back to us if they if they do our Factory
1:16:29
development program even if they put all their equipment from somebody else they’re going to remember where they’d like that knowledge and then hopefully
1:16:35
next time they’re going to buy some equipment they come to us and that’s that’s how it works we just keep going
1:16:40
because as soon as we solve that problem another one will present itself undoubtedly and then we work to solve
1:16:45
that problem so you’re using your knowledge of of your products combined
1:16:51
with Nicholas teaching background to emerging that yeah okay that makes that
1:16:57
makes terrible skills yeah especially teaching you know doing my teaching degree was was really really beneficial
1:17:02
to me in sales and I didn’t realize it at the time but it’s only looking back and certainly that ability to to reflect
1:17:10
on your own performance and I think it’s reflection on action reflection in action yeah those things that I do every single
1:17:17
day now um that’s doing that teaching qualification taught me how to do that and that’s all you do when you’re
1:17:22
selling something is you’re teaching somebody that how does your product solve their problem it’s a teaching moment
1:17:27
Mark you said something interesting idea which well you said many interesting things but in specifically you’re
1:17:32
talking about you got to a point in January where you kind of burnt out and it’s because you’re wearing all these
What stopped your from selling your small business
1:17:37
hats and and you’re getting exhausted doing everything but what made you stay in the game what stopped you put in the
1:17:44
business on eBay as you mentioned um it was it was seeing a different future
1:17:53
um so I I it was at that point in January where I made the decision that I I needed to have more Partners I
1:18:00
need to have more people to help me to get the business where I wanted to get to and it had been a
1:18:06
sticking point we’d had the conversations previously and I had been uncomfortable with giving up
1:18:12
a lot of the business um but it was at that point when I was at my lowest and I had to
1:18:19
it was really actually quite simple it seemed you know I thought about it for so long but what it boiled down to is
1:18:24
who do I want to spend my time with um because I thought you know I could just employ people I could employ more
1:18:30
managers and create these departments but you’d always have that relationship that professional
1:18:36
relationship and these guys that are coming in and being my partners I’ve known them
1:18:42
professionally so I know they’re brilliant in their jobs but also they’ve been there for me personally over the
1:18:47
last 10 years um and they’re the people that I want to spend my time with they’re the people I want to speak to every day and they’re
1:18:53
the people that I can actually go on holiday and say can you look after my business for a week or two
1:18:59
and trust them to do that and know everything will be fine um and that that it was as simple as
1:19:05
that at the end of the day that’s amazing and I think really the last thing I really want to know is if
1:19:11
you could go back to yourself like you know two years ago or someone else starting in a business what advice would
What advice would you give someone else starting a business
1:19:16
you give them um I don’t know what advice I would give
1:19:24
myself probably don’t be don’t ever be too reliant on
1:19:29
one person or one supplier or One customer
1:19:35
um because that way you get yeah you get stuck so I you know that one person I
1:19:41
was riding was me you know I can’t build it all on my own I needed to to replace
1:19:46
myself and that’s what I’m in the process of doing but I also had you know when I was starting I had one supplier
1:19:51
my former employer and it was great for them because they were still benefiting
1:19:57
from having me doing all the sales for them but then when I started to get bigger and they started to see me as a
1:20:03
threat that relationship really changed and they did everything they could to make it difficult for me
1:20:08
um to the point now where I don’t deal with them at all anymore um so to go from having one supplier and
1:20:13
having 100 Reliance on them to having zero it took a while took about 18 months but I learned a lesson there and
1:20:20
now when we have other suppliers who are saying you know do more business with us um it I can see it because they might
1:20:27
want to have a bit more control over us whereas we try to spread ourselves a little bit a little bit wider just so
1:20:33
that we’re not over really wrong I mean I could lose a supplier tomorrow and pick up another one and it wouldn’t really matter
1:20:39
so that that’s probably the biggest thing don’t be too reliant on on One Source for your for your income or your
1:20:48
or your happiness right amazing so people watching this podcast um if they want to get in touch with you
1:20:53
where’s the best place uh the best place is our website simmonskills.co.uk
1:20:59
um but I’m also on LinkedIn and you can normally find me there just don’t try and sell me anything because I’m
1:21:04
basically so I’ve already done that here no we’ll be sure to include that in the comments well thank you so much for
1:21:10
being on the podcast it’s been amazing um hearing your story so everyone you’ve
1:21:15
been listening to the unrelenting Drive podcast I’ll see you at the next episode