1. From my own experience I have learnt that the first step in any venture is the
hardest. It is the very moment when you have to put the old saying that to know
the path and to walk the path is different to the test. For Rob and Brandon this
moment came eighteen months after they started working for the cleaning
company.
Fate it seems has a sense of humor, or irony- it depends on the point of view. As
I said before, both of them worked hard and it was inevitable they made good
impression on their supervisors. So just before they started searching and
analyzing the London banks for the best leasing options for small businesses,
they were both offered promotion- position of team leaders and a substantial pay
raise. The offer was not bad at all, but both of them were already dead set on a
fundamental principle- they did not want to work for anybody else.
So much to the surprise of their manager they simultaneously resigned and
started writing their business plan. It was a leap of fate, a jump in the dark, but
after all they were both just twenty four and could easily find a job if their plan
failed. Rob told me in retrospection that they were extremely lucky, because
they went for their shot just two years before the recession hit Europe and the
UK. Their luck held further, because just one bank refused them the lease- the
second one they went into actually offered them extremely favorable terms and
out of a sudden they were good to go.
This is when theory actually had to turn to practice. Brandon had targeted some
newly opened offices in Brixton who might have been interested in cleaning
services and even if they could get just a third of them to sign a contract, that
could well keep them running good. The first challenge actually was logistic-
hiring people, finding an office to run the business, dealing with documentation
and accounts. Rob admitted it was the most dreadful part of it all- to actually
interview people for the positions they offered and at times deny those, whom he
thought would be no good for the job. Brandon was a natural, though. They soon
understood they couldn’t do everything together and actually have to split their
responsibilities- Brandon was hiring people, while Rob managed to find the
perfect spot for their headquarters and actually started negotiations with some

2. chemical companies for detergent deliveries and inventory. Both of them were
surprised how fast everything seemed to happen from ground zero and their plan
actually started taking shape. In two weeks they had assembled to cleaning
teams and actually signed deal for detergents on very good prices. They were
ready to attack- but this of course, is a topic for another post.