Chris

Like many before me I started my business career fairly early on. Academically I was not the brightest in the class and soon realised if I was going to make it, I’d need to walk “a path less followed”. My very first business had one function and that was to provide me with pocket money!Every week I was given a few things to do round the home… in the autumn I’d rake the fallen leaves from the garden and in the summer I’d wash my parents car. As any 14 year old I was less than happy about spending my Saturday afternoons “slaving away”, until I got my first lesson in Business.One Autumn Saturday I was (not so merrily) raking the leaves from my Mum and Dad's garden when Joe (my Scottish next door neighbor) stuck his head over the fence and asked “How much are you getting paid to do that?”, to which I replied, “Well I get my pocket money, and that’s it”. After some very bad negotiation (from my side of the fence) Joe had recruited me to rake his garden as soon as I’d finished ours. After about a week the people next door to Joe had me on the same deal and so it went on and on! Within about 10 days I’d managed to get about 10 customers, all from the best marketing strategy there is: Referral.Over the months, my mini-empire had diversified into shifting snow, cutting hedges and lawns, washing cars… even once painting a fence (very exciting because it was easier than raking leaves). By the summer I’d gathered many more customers in our street and was unable to cope with all the work, this is when I learned my second lesson in Business.I hired my friends to come and help, some were on car washing, some were on raking leaves and I was on Sales. I would literally stand in the path of passing cars, get them to stop and tell them about services. Sometimes we were warmly welcomed, sometimes almost run over. It was great, I was earning more than ever before, I was with my friends, they were not earning and I was actually working less hours than I was before… the lesson was Team (Together Everyone Achieves More) – (I hate that acronym it’s so cliché but it’s so true))Time for lesson number 3! Customer Services and Systems. One area I had lost complete control over since hiring my friends was the quality of what we did. At first this was not a problem but as more and more kids joined our team, things got out of hand. Scratches .. work, uneven hedges. There was one guy who paid me £3.50 per hour/per person! (that was the going rate at time for adult workers!) to clear his overgrown garden, then paint the fence. It took two 14 year olds, a 15 year old and a 16 year old about 25 hours each to make absolutely no progress at all! He paid £350 and then did the job himself in 1 weekend! He was not a happy man and I’d like to apologise, I am sorry. :)Soon I had to bare the full brunt of this when customers started to drop off, then complain and finally tell their friends!! Within about 2 weeks we were banned from washing cars at anyone’s house in the street.It’s a long time since then and I got some amazing lessons from doing something a bit different with my Saturday afternoons. It did take me a few more years to fully appreciate the learnings.Since then, I have personally been involved with many other businesses, including: internet business, health products, beauty, franchises, sales and marketing and now business coaching. Due to the internet the last 10 years has seen a hike in the availability of information. We have more opportunity than ever before to make our business thrive and all it takes is applying this information. The way I see things is that there are enough people in the world that “have been there, done it and got the t-shirt”. All that most business people need to do is learn from the mistakes those successful people made rather than waiting to learn from their own. My passion is helping business owners 1) to access the tools, systems and processes that many before them have proven to work time and time again and 2) to stay focused on the important things in life in order get the results they deserve.