Start Your Business in 7 Days: Turn Your Idea Into a Life-Changing Success by James Caan

Author:James Caan [Caan, James]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780141971070
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2012-02-29T14:00:00+00:00

Giving yourself an extra edge

Finding the person who has the right skills which you don’t possess could have a dramatic impact on your chance of success. I was working with a supply chain management business that had been set up by someone whose background, like mine, was primarily in HR. The business was doing fine but seemed to have plateaued. We needed a radical shift in gears to move on from the status quo, so I suggested we find somebody who was a specialist, somebody who lived and breathed that sector. I used my network, talked to a lot of people, and somebody came up with the name of a guy who happened to work for one of our direct competitors.

I met him and immediately I could tell he was right. He spoke the right language. He had a passion for understanding how a supply chain management service could be fine-tuned, and maximized in terms of value, cost and delivery, because the sector was his home turf. Naturally my MD was cautious about bringing in somebody who might be perceived as a threat, but I said, ‘Don’t be afraid of him, embrace him, because he adds value. It doesn’t make you better or worse, just different. You both have different skills.’

I convinced him to hire the guy, and within six months the business was transformed, because the new guy saw things we wouldn’t have seen. Because the MD and I both came from an HR background, every time a client said, ‘I want more of this,’ our instinctive response was to chuck another body at it. The new guy’s response was to think, Hmm … we need to tweak the software. The difference was we would have taken on a £35,000 salary overhead, and he would spend £500 on a software tweak. All of a sudden our margins shot up because we were winning more long-term contracts but not spending any more money, just using the technology more efficiently. You needed to be a technology guy to think like that. And of course the MD was ecstatic. Which proves you should never be intimidated by somebody who has different skills from yours.

Bev James, who founded the Entrepreneurs’ Business Academy with me, sums up really well why you should understand the value of bringing in the skills you lack: ‘It is not what you do well but what you don’t do well that gives your competitors an edge.’

At the investment stage entrepreneurs will often use the logic that it is better – because it is cheaper – for them to do it on their own. They are thinking, I’ll only need to get £50,000 worth of investment, but if I have four people I might need £200,000. But that’s false logic. In those circumstances it is actually easier to raise the £200,000: the team of four poses far less risk to an investor, because all the components are in place.

How quickly will that four-person business get off the ground compared to

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