Call: 01225 851 044 | contact us
Robert Craven Website

THE ELUSIVE MILLION

Robert Craven on how to break through the £1m barrier and why you need a sound exit strategy

 

What do the successful do differently from the rest?  The Directors’ Centre Magic Million Survey compares and contrasts the attributes, traits and characteristics of successful entrepreneurs with their less successful counterparts to find out just that.

The survey asked what successful (and aspiring) owner-managers/directors of growing businesses think is required to break through the MM (Magic Million) barriers: namely a £1m turnover and taking £1m out of the business.

Big caveat number one is “Beware of the ‘Survivorship Bias’!” - we see the winners and learn from them, while forgetting the huge unseen cemetery of losers. The second beware when people attribute their success to certain key factors or activities - performance (good and bad) is probably related far more to chance than skill, yet people rationalise their success and create a cause/effect explanation.

Learning Lessons

Lesson 1: When comparing the winners and the losers, one sees more similar attributes than contrasting ones.

Lesson 2: When asked ‘What’s holding you back?’ the aspiring growth businesses tend to blame the outside world for their slow progress. Fear is the dominant emotion: of relinquishing financial and managerial control. At a similar stage, the successful recognise that they, the founder entrepreneurs, are the problem and the bottleneck. 

Lesson 3: Highly successful businesses consistently have a preoccupation with:

• Strategy
• Marketing
• Teams.

Lesson 4: Entrepreneurs must also have a willingness to let go of:

• Financial control - sharing ownership
• Management control - sharing the responsibility of growing the business with the team (delegation) and outside advisers (taking advice).

Lesson 5: Every ‘how to make a million’ title has an inevitable (and pretty much identical) list of what the successful do.  Unfortunately it’s the same as the list of what the failures also do! It seems that the big difference is massive energy and a lot of luck.

Winning Character

All our winners presented a combination of all of the following:

1. Charismatic leadership (and not always by consensus)
2. Attitude - A ‘can do…’, ‘yes, and…’, blame-free culture that recognises that success and failure go hand-in-hand, and a ‘willingness to pay the price’
3. A fast-moving, exciting business environment
4. Rewards and systems that motivate the individuals concerned
5. Employing the right people
6. Luck.

Note to the owner on getting past a £1m turnover:

1. You are the problem
2. Work ON not IN the business – create the systems and processes
3. Sell something that people really want, charge sensible prices, blow them away with legendary service
4. Take massive action.

Note to the owner on getting  £1m out of your business:
The company must be able to put ticks in all of the boxes below to find a buyer:

• Systematic, underlying, repeatable, sustainable profit machine
• Reference and trophy clients
• Uniqueness and excellence
• A senior team to take it to the next stage.

Some 70% of small businesses hope to get their millions out of the sale of their business, yet only 25% actually make any plans to do so - you need an Exit Strategy. Hope is not a method!

Copies of the Boardroom Briefing: The Magic Million Survey 2008 can be obtained from The Directors’ Centre.

 

About the author

Robert Craven is a keynote speaker and author of the business best-sellers 'Kick-Start Your Business' and 'Customer Is King'. He has recently been described as 'one of the UK’s leading marketing specialists' and the 'entrepreneurship guru'. He runs The Directors’ Centre, helping growing businesses to grow.
For further information, contact Robert Craven on 01225 851044. (rc@directorscentre.com) www.directorscentre.com

©2008. Robert Craven

publication details

First published in Growing Business Magazine, April 2008