Grant Leboff: Can I just go back to ‘vision and values’ because we work with quite a lot of companies and what amazes me, is they get to a level where the vision’s not quite there. I’m not saying that it’s not there at all, because there was something when they started their business, but often it’s a question of ‘Well I can do this better than the company I’m working with’ and that’s the initial motivation.
Lara Morgan: Yes. Many, many times
Grant Leboff: But how do you then get to a point, when you start bringing in teams of people and those kinds of things, you need something a bit meatier and a bit stronger…
Lara Morgan: Yes you do.
Grant Leboff: So how does that come about? Does that evolve? Is that then something you have to really sit and think about? How did you find that that worked?
Lara Morgan: Well I am your prefect idiot, in the sense that I have no business training. I started the business when I was 23. So it was all sort of cobbled together and – you can buy it in the W.H. Smith book section actually – but in terms of ‘idiot’s guides to growing businesses’ they now they exist – they didn’t 25 years ago when I started. And I think the vision and value piece actually is another part of the evolution because in your early days, you’re all in one room, its small, it’s easy to communicate… Oh my God, does that change!
You can’t have those chance meetings on the stairwell, because you’re now in a building. So, I think, the other thing I would say is; your vision is your vision for how you want your business to be. It’s your culture, its your intent, it’s the way you behave, it’s your corporate and social responsibility, it’s how you engage with people. I believe the values of a business are also started with the leader because I want people to praise each other each day, I want them to have fun at work, I really believe that they need to understand that the customer pays their wages. But actually, I’m not all what it’s about, because the team have to believe in the value and the vision.
So what we would do is, every year, we would revise and review these visions and values and the mission of the business to say; well actually are we on track? But this is a team event.
Grant Leboff: Yes.
Lara Morgan: And if you are going to be a success, you are not going to be on your own doing it. I mean its madness. I’ve got £4.5m turnover as a not very many manned group of people, running a business on an Excel spread sheet. It was a miracle. Please don’t try and do it!
Grant Leboff: Yes.
Lara Morgan: Get some professionalism in first, and grow up sooner than I did.
Grant Leboff: I was interested on your take on planning in the book. So where does the planning for a business owner have a place? Because the vision, the values… these are things that are structured, get processes in, where does a plan – especially if they want any capital investment at all, they have to write this great plan – where does the plan fit in?
Lara Morgan: I don’t think it needs a great plan. I mean, on our website ‘Company Shortcuts’, [https://www.companyshortcuts.com/] which is a sort of my vision for getting a bit back into business, there’s a three pager I think it is. You know it doesn’t need to be this epitome of detail. But actually it has to have the accountability and the target markets and It has to have some key stuff about what is your Unique Selling Point, and tell me about the calibre of your product, and give me some foundation about the quality of your people, but actually it also has to have come serious numbers in it, and had I done better at planning… so here is some horrific statistic that I’d no real business plan per say, not a professionally devised, understood one for nine years, and yet we were doing £4.5m p.a. and making £664,000 p.a. But I went to a course, I did a business plan over a six week period on and off, going to a course. Eight years later, so less than a year than the previous bit, I was doing £3.3m. That tells you, you need a plan.
Grant Leboff: Yes.
Lara Morgan: And I mean £3.3m p.a. EBITDA [Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization] on an £18.5m p.a. turnover. So from £4.5m p.a. sales to £18m p.a.? Turnover’s rubbish, but £664,000 p.a. to £3.3m p.a. profit makes a business go from being worth a couple of million to worth £20m.
Grant Leboff: Yes, exactly right. Thank you very much
Lara Morgan: Huh! Scary.
There may be small changes to the spoken word in this transcript in order to facilitate the readability of the written English
