The Next Step

“Talking to craft brewery owners around the world was important because we realised we needed to be able to bring something different to the market, creating beers which would break boundaries but still follow tradition,” Luci says.“ The UK craft beer market is sufficiently mature so we couldn’t launch with crap branding or a beer which needed improvement; customers wouldn’t be prepared to give us the benefit of the doubt because they already have expectations of quality when it comes to craft beer. So everything had to be right from the get-go.”

“The biggest challenge though is time – the number of hours in the day. That’s why a managing director has to recognise they will have a better understanding of particular parts of the business and that they can’t specialise in everything. That’s why you’ve got heads of department. Your role is to bring it all together.”

“At the beginning I found it difficult letting ago – most founders are something of a control freak – but I worked out that if I carried on trying to do everything, the business couldn’t continue to grow,” says Young. “Of course, it’s difficult to delegate, but I realised, for example, that there are more important things for me to do than update Twitter – and that someone else could do it better as they would have more time. If we fast-forward to now, I’ll check up on things if I need to, but I’m focusing on what’s ahead, not looking over anyone’s shoulder. And then you realise that people are coming up with ideas that you’d never have thought of when you were doing those tasks.”

“Rather than simply setting a target and then hitting it come what may, building a business is best achieved by consistently surpassing customer expectations – because sustainable growth doesn’t come from putting your core principles at risk.” Not that Lisa Dargan, a director of URM Consulting Services is suggesting that an ambitious company should eschew something to aim at. She says it’s about context.

“It’s all too easy to set up food or drink business because there are so many companies who will help put the recipe together, source ingredients for you, and then do the manufacturing. But I wanted to do it the hard way, knowing the provenance of what I would be working with. So, in terms of the botanicals in our gin for example, the watercress comes from the beds just outside our premises, the lavender from just around the corner, and spring water bubbles up on-site. It’s about authenticity.”

“But it’s really important that a growing company, desperate to fill positions, is even more selective. Just because the candidate sitting in front of you can do the job, you still need to do the due diligence; as well as their skills and experience, do they have a thirst for knowledge, a desire to progress? If they haven’t, it isn’t going to work out for us, and the impact of that on a small, independent company can be colossal.”

“Knowing which audience to pitch to is important in terms of being able to reach your goals. For an SME, a particular size of project might be attractive, but you have to factor in that while the return might be considerable, it might not be immediate. And larger potential clients might have expectations beyond what you can provide in terms of resources to deliver the project. The key is to identify where you can add most value. If you can demonstrate the art of the possible and then establish the first step, that will give the customer a tangible benefit.”

“If I was going to give advice to anyone setting up their own business, I would probably say something along the lines of continually believe in the decisions you are making,” says Baily. “Even if they go wrong, you will learn from them. And believe your first instincts. Usually, they turn out to have been the right thing to do.”

“We each bring a slightly different attribute to the business, covering selling, finance, and technical,” explains Poddar. “It didn’t happen by design, but we’ve gained real value from it. And it means we can sanity check each other all the time. With three of us we can ‘verticalise’ the business without it being fragmented, and we have a broader platform which should improve scalability.”

“What remote working means is that we can recruit by skill-set rather than geography, which deepens the talent pool. We have a member of staff who has a serviced office building closer to their home than our office, so we hire a desk for them there when they need it. Video calls to people working remotely don’t just have to take place at scheduled times – you can make them in an unstructured way just for a chat, which is more like how life would be in an office. But you need the discipline to make that call and that employees are happy to make contact as well, rather than them thinking they are disturbing you. It’s about having that digital equivalent of an open-door policy.”

How then, is he able to keep the different plates spinning? “It’s by having good processes in place. You can’t clone yourself, but what you can clone is the undertaking of particular tasks, using technology to make them happen and to complete them,” he suggests. But how hard was it to be accepted by the staff as managing director when he moved up from the ‘shopfloor’? “On my first day I received a resignation, but you have to keep in mind the expression about what has to happen if you want to make an omelette,” he says ruefully.

According to Sandberg, an owner-manager needs to know their strengths and weaknesses. “From the start I’ve tried to get myself out of as many tasks as possible, bringing better people in to do them,” he says. “You do need to separate ownership from your role in the company. If you consider yourself to be a shareholder, why would you then feel it’s a requirement for you to manage everything?