Chris Cole, managing director of business switching service Make It Cheaper, explains how to build a business from £0 to £70 million in ten years

1. From 0 to 70 million in 10 years
Presentation by:
Chris Cole
Managing Director, Make It Cheaper

2. Unspectacular school achievements:
Who am I? • 5 O-Levels (They’re what GCSE’s used to be called)
• 0 A-Levels (Kicked out of sixth form – parents still don’t know)
• Attended local college
Life going nowhere, shaped up, launched a recruitment company with
some friends and discovered the wonderful world of business.
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10 years later:
• Listed for £67m
• #1 on the Virgin Fast Track list.
In 2007 helped launch Make It Cheaper with focus on saving SMEs and
start-ups – businesses like yours – money.
In 2012 we will save businesses £100m with our free impartial service. In
a 20 minute phone call we could save businesses £2k, which goes straight
to profit. That’s a huge number of pints, haircuts or bunches of flowers. If
you get fully on board this could grow to 4 or 5k each year.
I am passionate about growing businesses and the role of SMEs and start-
ups in the economy. I’d like to share some things I’ve picked up along the
way – some things I have learned myself and some I have borrowed from
others...

3. Life/Work balance People talk about the life/work balance
BUT
Is there really any such thing?
To me there’s just life. When it’s over I want to be able to
answer ‘Yes’ to this question:
Have I spent my life doing what I wanted to do?
Working hard, growing a business or selling a company may
or may not be on that list. (It is for me, along with growing a
happy family, travelling and a few other things.)
If you end up answering ‘No’ then the only person to look at
is YOU.
80% of people want to start a business but only 5% actually
do so.
Who’s thinking about it? Who’s going to take the
plunge?

4. Do something you’re passionate about
Hearts and Minds Why?
• More likely to make your million
• Even if you don’t, you’ve enjoyed yourself
Ask yourself this:
What motivates me? What is my goal?
For me:
Money Houses Cars Holidays Achievement Security
Regardless of scale, key is to align your actions to your goals.
For me this meant:
• 14 to 20-hour days
• Commuting from London to NYC
• Not seeing kids from Monday to Friday
• Selling my flat for capital
You don’t question this if:
a) You enjoy it
b) You’re doing it for yourself

5. Set a vision for your company, then take it on a mission. This is a lesson
Mission not a job
I learned at Richard Branson’s event for the Virgin Fast Track, where
speaker after speaker spoke about this idea.
The power of the 3-year plan. Two years too short, five years based on
too much guesswork. Three years gives you focus and direction.
At Make It Cheaper we set an aim to save UK SMEs a total of £500m by
2014. We want to do this by:
• Achieving more revenue balance across our services
• Meeting more needs for more customers
• Reducing our reliance on third parties and getting in charge of our
own destiny
It’s a mission, not a job, and all our staff are on it. We have developed
a culture to help us achieve this, based around these values:
1) Passion 2) Integrity 3) Expertise 4) Professionalism 5) Impartiality
Do you know your values? Do your customers?
Remember the cleaner at NASA in the sixties who was asked what he
did? He replied, “I am putting a man on the moon.”

6. Be Unreasonable Here’s something I learned from Charles
Dunstone, the guy who started Carphone
Warehouse:
Be unreasonable, and your team will be
amazed with what they can achieve.
Invest time in coaching people, challenging
people, developing people – and learn how to
delegate with accountability.
At MIC we measure team and individual
performances and challenge staff to keep beating
them – just like high-performing sports people.
Jack Welch (former SEO of GE):
“If you don’t measure it, you can’t
manage it.”

7. Shoot for the Stars Here’s a true story about my Aunty Elena.
She grew up in a wooden hut in the foothills of the Himalayas
and went on to become the headmistress of a great school in
the UK. This is a pearl of wisdom she liked to share:
“Aim for the stars and you’ll hit the moon. Aim
for the tree tops and you’ll hit the ground.”
In four years Make It Cheaper has gone from a back bedroom
start-up to a business with a £10m+ turnover operating in
two continents.
By 2014 we plan to turnover £30m+ in four more sectors and
three more countries.
Aim
HIGH,
think BIG

8. Select a market where the force is with you.
A Following Wind
For Make It Cheaper, four factors that we knew would support
growth:
• Growth in energy prices
• Energy shortages
• Boom in price comparison websites
• Grim economic outlook
So, we could offer customers something they wanted – a way to
make sure that the hard work they put into growing their
companies’ top lines ends up on their bottom line. It’s much harder
to make profit through revenue than it is to make profit through
saving.
At Hydrogen we spotted gaps in the recruitment market where the
demand for candidates outstripped supply, which is not the norm.
Out strategy was to always seek out this imbalance. In 1997 it was
accountants, in 2007 it was engineers. Since 2007 we have grown an
international engineering business that is about 30% of the group
from a standing start.

9. Read ‘Eat That Frog’ by Brian Tracy.
Where will you make If you eat a live frog in the morning, it’s probably the worst
the difference? thing you’ll do all day.
Relax, it’s only a metaphor.
Successful people don’t put off the big stuff. They face them
head on, sort them out, then move on.
It’s too easy to get carried away with the day-to-day running
of your business – but the trick is to decide what you’re good
at and what you’re not so good at. For me:
 Setting a vision  Systems
 Spotting a market  Processes
 Selling  Making tea and handing
 Hiring out biscuits
 Crisis management
For the things you can’t do, find people who can do them
really well.
And get on with the things you can do really well.

10. Tough times are almost inevitable when running a
Tenacity business. The trick is to stick with it and hold your nerve.
In the early days at Hydrogen we were close to going
bust, but we stuck with our convictions and held our
nerve – even though the stress sometimes felt like a lead
overcoat.
Our office burnt down. We held our nerve. Out first hire
left. We held our nerve. The markets went up and down.
We held our nerve.
We posted a profit by the skin of our teeth – then the
business really took off in year two.
However, like a market trader or a gambler at the roulette
wheel, know when to cut your losses.
If something hasn’t worked, it hasn’t worked. Learn from
it. Move on. Keep going forward.
If you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t learning.

11. Know Your Models For your business to succeed, you must know
your model. Tesco CEO Philip Clarke
said, “retail is detail”. He knew that the
success of his business depended on getting
the detail right.
• How does (and how should) your
business work?
• How do you delight your customers?
• Where do you make your money?
• Who are your most important
stakeholders?
• Who are your best people and how can
you keep them?
Don’t go bust because you don’t
know the detail.
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But at the same time, don’t stifle grow
by over-managing the detail.

12. Exit From the day you start your
business, you should have your exit
strategy in mind. I used to find this
point frustrating but here are two
pieces of advice:
• Make sure your business is
profitable with good growth and
cash flow.
• Realise that markets have
windows. Be on the look-out for
the optimum time to float or sell
your business.

13. Sales and Accountancy
Here’s two reasons why some start-ups fail, according to
my Grandfather (he was a venture capitalist in much more
austere times):
1. The founders didn’t know finance
2. The founders couldn’t sell
I’m no accountant but I know this: Turnover is vanity, cash
is sanity and profit is reality.
When you start, focus more on what you’ll spend than on
what you’ll earn. That’s something you can control.
To sell, be sure to answer these questions. Keep asking
them and keep discussing them with partners and key staff:
• What is the proposition?
• What makes us different to our competitors?
• How can I effectively communicate the way my product
or service meets my customers’ needs?

14. There are a million ideas out there, but not
all entrepreneurs can execute that idea.
How I lost my first A friend of mine once had a brilliant idea
for a business – so brilliant that I sold my
Aston Aston Martin to back it. He strategised and
strategised but never got far with the
execution.
So I was stuck driving a second hand
Prius.
There’s a good reason why Richard Branson
wrote a book called, “Screw It, Let’s Do It”.
Sort through your ideas
rigorously, choose the best ones, and
put them into action.

15. Learns and wash Review and learn. If there’s no time to
do this when you’re running a
ups business, make time.
(At Make It Cheaper we take one lunch
time a week to “wash up”.)
What were our goals for our latest
initiative?
What were the outcomes?
What worked, what didn’t work?
What have we learnt and how would
we improve it next time?

16. Don’t be scared to employ people as you grow.
No Compromise on Keep it fun and hire great people.
People Apply Sir Clive Woodward’s plane test when
judging a candidate:
Could I sit next to this person on a plane
for 24 hours? If not, forget it.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and
Development reckon this:
A high performer will outperform an
average performer by 1000%.
Once you’ve hired the right person, set them
clear goals, visions and career plans. Recognise
their achievements and reward them
accordingly.

17. The What’s? At Make It Cheaper our most important appointment each
month is our customer survey meeting.
The Customer Since we engage directly with our customers, we can ask
them direct questions about our service.
What are we doing well? What do we need to
improve on? Are we missing a trick somewhere?
Make interaction a natural part of customer engagement.
The tools are all there waiting to be used:
When you get bigger, make sure your sales managers are still
meeting customers, not just analysing spread sheets.

18. Tackling the difficult stuff is just a
question of perception.
Get Control of The difficult stuff gives you a
your mind challenge. It’s the stuff that others
can’t do as well as you. It’s the stuff to
embrace.
It’s the stuff that makes the
whole thing fun.
Surveys show this:
Successful people tend to be
more optimistic.
(And vice versa.)

19. The world is a big place
The world is
getting smaller BUT
The internet makes it smaller and
air travel is cheap.
SO
Go visit, show commitment to your
partners and customers, explore
new markets, distribution channels
and business opportunities.
Act as an international company.

20. That’s It
One final thing. Make sure you act
on your bright ideas because
growing a great company is EASY –
just don’t tell everyone…
Follow Make It Cheaper on Twitter
@makeitcheaper or like us on
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