View Full Version : Will's Entrepreneurship Extravaganza Log
Monday 12/4/10
First ever post.
Today we put pen to paper for the purchase of the kids clothing store in Dulwich Hill. This process involving lawyers and real estate agents has taken at least six weeks! So for all those out there who can't wait to get in, it takes six weeks! We were thinking six days....lawyers just love to take their time. In retrospect maybe there are lawyers out there who guarantee a fast turn around and who actually know the retail act back to front rather than just assuming crap! Bad systems and totally stuffed service...
Spent a few hours at the school returning the calls of leads. This took a good hour and I will be training my staff this week so that they can sell as good as I do and will be attending a sales work shop on Thursday morning to sharpen up the sales spiel.
Apart from that, I finished my 90 day plan for the next quarter and will be committing to finishing the website updates and video uploads to the website by the end of the month. Also happen to sign up for Craig Rispin's future trends monthly webminars and am talking to a new book keeper to get rid of some of the sorting of receipts that I just hate doing.
Now I gotta go watch Man Vs Wild...Bear Grylls totally makes me feel like a school boy with his survival skills. Makes me feel pathetic whenever I think I am too lazy to do anything or just on the couch.
Tomorrow I am going to design the first sales meeting I will be having with my staff this Friday. Will write it up and review it after Thursday's sales session with David Pengalese.
Bear Grylls = awesome! Man vs Wild is part of every Monday night for me.
Finally got the keys handed over to the new shop. Really had to give it to the lawyers to make the necessary phone calls before things could happen. * Grrrr thank god my partner knows how to turn it on people. *Fake pms really scares the guys haha.
Was half way through my sales session so will have to finish that off tonight. *Was rather unproductive in the morning had to drive the misses to the salon so only really got started after lunch.
Not sure how life changes from here on but Summer Lane opens tomorrow. Will post the website once it launches tomorrow.
First day at new shop today. The domestic just had to happen driving over since the car ride was an hour.*
Felt rather out of my element today sorting the stock. *New experience running a retail shop, many of the regular customers coming in to chat and basically telling us what they wanted us to stock for them which is good. *
Spent the day taking lots of photos of the stock to go online. *Although since we're indoors the lighting was not that good. *Not a bad taking given it was a weekday, looking forward to Saturday to see the real potential of this shop. It's gonna be a very busy few weeks.
Brendan
15-04-10, 11:02 AM
Excellent stuff Will, how does it feel to be actually in the shop after all that legwork on getting all the paperwork and legals done?
I love the log, keep it up!
Hey Brendan. The novelty of it all has sizzled out probably six weeks ago pushing the landlord's lawyers around. Right now the feeling is...yes I want to start implementing all the strategies that I have formulated over the last six weeks to break out of the gates, but ....there is a good load of cleaning up to do, clearing away the mess and clutter to make room for the improvements that we plan on kicking in place.
Process should take another week as well...
Actual computer post today rather than an iphone post
Today was a bit rough. Stayed up to 1am last night working out what the winter stock was that we had to order for the new shop. Rolled out of bed at 6am to get ready for a sales presentation. I'd give the sales presentation a 7.5 out of 10...nice to see he focused more on value far more than the traditional closes, he used more of the products value over attributes but lacked practical application of his ideas.
Then ran over to meet some suppliers which took a while before heading over to do some work at the music school. All day I ate some yoghurt at the sales presentation, then had a vietnamese pork roll for lunch and then had another one for dinner at around 8:30pm....had a can of mother in between ( I only save these for when I have less than 7 hours sleep and I avoid coffee otherwise)
Not that hungry right now but definitely didn't have time to eat anything else. Got back and had to email the subcontractors for respective projects and also prepare a sales training sheet for tomorrow for the school's front desk staff meeting tomorrow. First one in 7 years, should probably be one every quarter!
What's the average number of hours business people sleep? I actually need sleep, I need 8 hours otherwise my exzema flairs up and I just feel itchy, irritated and like a zombie all day....terrible
Well all I have to say is that the best part about buying a business is that there are existing customers. *Today numerous old customers walked in. Yes a few commented on where the old owner was but everybody talked about what they would like the shop to stock.
This is very different to hoping that what you are ordering is going to get sold. *Spent the day looking for more winter clothing suppliers and serving customers. Somewhat eating less these days...
Still plenty to do with the shop though and we really need to get more stock in the store.
The sales meeting with the staff at the school was pretty good. Nutted out some goo points and our point of differentiation and how to communicate this when handling leads. Best to differentiate than compete on price.
Here's a very good read on what to do with life. I have done some travelling and risk taking but probably not in the detail of this guy...
On Changing your Life - EDF Forum - Politics, Lifestyle, Travel and Gambling (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/79/edf/changing-your-life-787/)
Left the shop at 1am today. Give me a hell yeah for business!
Left the shop at 1am today. Give me a hell yeah for business!
Not a bad day today have a lot of things to smooth out. Trying to get some sleep back and want to roll out marketing.
School wise need to watch how I speak to people
Things are getting better and the shop is finding it's feet. Now to get into some hard core call to action marketing to really pump it!
Only got home at midnight but did get close to 8 hours so feeling good!
My first chance to blog on the computer all week. First day of actually leaving the shop at 6pm closing time but had to drop by a department store to pick up some storage supplies. Now that we have all the new stock up ( about $4K worth of baby clothes and gifts, etc) we can go about marketing the thing.
Have done my channel research and will keep people up to date with how it goes. The staff are doing alright at the school so since the invoicing is taken care off the next thing to do is to systemise and diarise the marketing stuff that I do and also a few other key actions.
Going to aim to write some quality this time round.
Friday
Had an interesting experience with the fact that this is the first time I have outsourced some work that I needed done for a client with my e-marketing business. The work that came back was off target, but still able to be used following some editing. So despite initially going through some initial stress, I managed to keep my head down, have something to eat to keep me energised and turn the work into presentable material.
I'm not going to stop using the particular subcontractors but learnt a lot about the type of specific instructions that I need to give especially with the type of work I want out of them. I'd say they deserve a 6.5 out of ten but with good instructions I can lift their game to an 8.
School
Had my work really cut out with me with several 'female' parents on the prowl ready to challenge why we are raising our prices. I gave them the usual costs too high, etc and really had to challenge them since I know they probably pay more for doing their hair than having their kids educated in music!. Will be presenting each of those families a voucher at our new baby clothes shop and that should help smooth things out since all of those families happen to have little kids!
This type of price rise challenge occurs every time we have a price rise. It's a very challenging way to grow since people are just naturally adverse to it, I know it since every time I see somebody raise something by $1 or even just 50c, my body goes haywire and I want to avoid them...but hey it's just $1 or just 50c! And yet my body has adjusted to petrol price hikes and continual to just pump away.
Got to rest really well on Sunday and much needed given the tough week. Today I have made a list to keep myself productive and not wander off and read this awesome forums that I have found.
I would however like to outline three very food businesses that have really amazed me of late with how successful they are:
1. Bourke St Bakery ( Surry Hills, Alexandria and Marrickville)
Have been at the stores at least three times in the last three weeks. They have a huge following. Their steak sandwiches are ok, but at 6.50 I reckon their priced aggressively, but you can taste the steak. I think the shining star is the sausage roll, it is the best sausage roll ever and gives a new meaning to it. Everything is clearly made on site so everything tastes natural and not mass produced yet. Far better than what bakers delight have evolved into and also just so much more heart and effort than your vietnamese baker. So....good delicious food...nice interior...haven't noticed any marketing yet....but yeah that is seriously all they are riding on.
2. Sideways Cafe Dulwich Hill
Somehow this place is a magnate for mums with prams in the area, is it just that area where there are loads of mums with prams who need coffee? Food is nice yes but like pretty darn expensive...$14 for steak sandwich but better than your average cafe fair of just chicken schnitzel. High income area, the place seems always packed. So again good food, they look after babies well, very bright and nice design...good formula, no real marketing...
3. Makan ( city)
This Malaysian place always has a line flowing out. Their claim to fame are their 'Malaysian' roti pancakes which they make onsite. Somehow people like them so much. I guess it's the only place to get them...they're like 50cents in Asia...well the place has gotten damn famous and such a huge following. Should probably brace themselves for another outlet really. Bravo...and I'm absolutely jealous, amazed, angry, everything...secret? some dudes just flipping these pan cakes out the front, some good malaysian curry and that's it...people line up for it.
Well...this gives me impetus to look at my own business and assess our own following....
This week has been alright with me actually managing to hit the hay 8 hours a day by strictly not turning on the computer after 9pm, and rolling out of bed early to solve all the necessary problems.* The shop has had a pretty awesome week and now gives us good capital to buy some much needed new stock to please our customers, especially with winter approaching.* Going to* immediately give out cards that allow each customer who makes a purchase a discount on their next purchase.* This week is at least 1.5 of last week.* * Learnt this trick from Borders and yes I did buy a ton of books from borders before I discovered how cheap it is to just get things off the internet.
*
As for the school, it has not been a bad week.* Although there are some students leaving for various reason like price rise or moving, etc there have been a few really good new sign ups, customers who are not so price concious and appreciate us for what we are providing which other people don't.* That makes me real motivated to invest in more print advertising to a much wider audience and not just relying on online seo.* Remember, if the acquisition cost is lower than the life time profit of a customer, than that means we're not advertising hard enough, so spend away!
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I*have a few school systems I have to implement this week, and I'm going to write them here:
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*Have a new customer service treaty where any staff can spend up to $20 to keep a customer happy...comes with better margins and higher prices.* Give them some free stuff if we've stuffed up or they have been dealt a bad experience
*Write out how to do day end
*Go over the invoices
*Hire someone to do the wages ( oh god!)
*Smooth out the whole acquisition process
*Really have to input some KPIs that I wanted to implement
*Fix up the website improvements...stupid programmer
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Am going to meet with a new book keeper on Monday to get things off my back!
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Till next time
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Will
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*
Find it at CarPoint.com.au New, Used, Demo, Dealer or Private?
silkinteriors
02-05-10, 12:49 PM
Hi Will, I just wanted to say I'm enjoying reading your updates and about how you're tackling everything. Have a great week :)
It's been a while since I was able to get near a computer for a thorough update and have planned this particular post out so that I get some good detail through:
Shop:
Well last Sunday was Mother's Day and since our shop does mainly babies and kids gifts, that meant a very quiet weekend. But somehow Sunday, yesterday, was a great day, and we had many customers walk in buying gifts for the respective parties that they were attending. The customers are recognising the improvements to the shop and are actually purchasing the new gift items like toys, bears and clothes.
We now also have the website up. Summer Lane Gifts for babies, kids, moms and dads, nappy cakes, toys, books (http://www.summerlane.com.au) up and it is continually getting tweaked. The webcart is near completion and we have to start building traffic to the site. This will take time but the wheels are definitely in motion. Still needs a solid 20 hours or so work on it with link building, article writing, directories and all round SEO.
We have also generated a very healthy mailing list which we will start emailing to work on increasing repeat sales, and referrals. The key will be using the SMS technology that we use for the school so that there's no such thing as an email that is unopened.
One interesting decision we have to make now is actually discontinuing a line of business, which is the formal wear side of things. The person we purchased the business off actually referred it to as a very good line, but since we have not found a decent supplier we just can't seem to get an edge on this and will most likely have to stop offering this service with the clothing and gifts part of the store doing well....Really putting on a good show with the formal wear will actually require a big investment, which right now is tough since funds are limited and we are still working out how to budget in a retail store.
School
Pretty interesting since we are in transition and following an implemented price rise, some customers are leaving and we are posting up some new more upscale customers who have signed on using the new price.
Had one major screw up where customer was not explained all the costs involved with taking a violin exam and she is now really upset since she feels it has blown her budget and wants to explore other options. This really sucks, but at the same time, it means that we may lose another budget minded customer.
Have implemented some new website updates so that is near completion and have out aweber soon 100% set up to include another strand of marketing. Some pretty good leads and conversions coming out of the print advertising I'm doing in ethnic papers, so combined with the website it means that we have not dropped in leads coming in to fill in the vacant spots by the customers who have left.
Major improvements:
- A plug to Macquarie Uni, they have a pretty good graduate accounting work experience program where accounting students are required to do 70 hours of work experience. I am taking up a student to help me with my accounting and setting up some of my new point of sale systems and online webcarts. There's no need to pay them, and they get taught how to do different things. Win win situation. If you are keen on this give the accounting office of Macquarie Uni a call!
- Wrote some key systems and now have staff doing end of day for me...major relief!
- My iphone is on it's last legs...really need a new phone with a better battery life!
Hey Will. I just had a look at the website for Summer Lane. I reckon you should make it clearer on the home page that this is a bricks-and-mortar business. At the moment it looks no different to the dozens (or probably hundreds) of online children's stores.
The fact that you have a 'real' shop should be a great point of difference. A picture of the shopfront (if suitable) would be great in my opinion, or at least some prominent wording detailing the store address or something.
Just my opinion...
Still needs a solid 20 hours or so work on it with link building, article writing, directories and all round SEO.
Whack it in Child and parenting link directory | Giraffian (http://giraffian.com/links) ... I collect links to this kind of site. Probably under online shopping - baby clothes or something.
Cheers guys. The shop still has the old name of the business on it. So once we put up the new shop sign, we will be taking more photos of it to put on the website. If you are keen, look us up on facebook, summer lane and you will see a few more photos!
Well it's been quite a contrasting few weeks now that the shop is in the full swing of things and the school has just gotten past the latest batch of students doing music exams.
Shop wise,
We had a really good week two weeks ago where we hit $2.5K that week in sales, the weather was great, people came in and purchased stuff and weekends were busy.
Then it was last week with the buckets of rain and we only did $1.5K in sales which is quite a bummer since we were on the previous high.
Gotten more stock of toys in and also found some good new suppliers that people are warming to. We now know what the staples are ( girls dresses) and what are the second in line items that keep the shop going.
A new coat of paint on the wall and a new counter ( which we got off ebay for $50) has made the shop more professional and customers are noticing changes. All good since it looks like we are just building up the database and basically setting up to net a big one once Christmas draws close.
Still behind in changing the signage, which is the next step once we pay off some of the bills and rack up more cash.
School wise
I am continuing to systemise more and taught staff today how to do the payroll and also the accounts. I think the next step is to actually get a supplementary credit card for some key staff and they can handle my bills and paying off all the little things.
The next step to that is handing over the password to the bank account and just letting them do everything and trusting they won't empty my entire bank account...but that is true leverage!
Have done some more advertising this year than last so it's been good since I am working the whole customer acquisition cost theory. It's been good but at the same time some media have not produced as good a return so need to drop them off. Will put my head down next week and work on some of the statistics of customer life value, average sale and acquisition costs so I know where I stand, I'll even post them up here so everybody can comment on them.
Have been talking to one of the trady dads about renovations and he reckons $10K to do the lot...should be good, will start negotiating with the landlord for a longer lease to ensure my renovations aren't in vain.
I think I'll setup for another business acquisition by the end of this year so that I am ready to pounce on that next good deal
silkinteriors
06-06-10, 02:49 PM
Good stuff, Will. I enjoy reading your updates so keep 'em coming :)
It's been a while and a lot has happened so here is an update and here is me trying to get back on to regularly tracking my progress.
Well since June, shop wise, we have managed to:
* Hold our first VIP sale in the middle of winter that was very well attended
* Attend trade fairs in Melbourne to find the new suppliers to deck out the shop ready for Christmas
* Secured an overdraft to really go hard at racking up a big turnover during Christmas
* Picked up a few internet orders, although this still requires a lot more development
* Discovered how slow retail can get during cold winter days
* Hired and trained a few new shop assistants ( 18 year olds) and have had to read over all the industrial relations awards to ensure we are doing the correct thing and providing the correct pay.
* Generated a much more high end image for the shop which means better margins and better customers
* Secured new accounts with some new suppliers who will come and build retail systems to make the place look really good.
So pretty much fingers crossed for a big christmas to knock us out of the overdraft and really shoot up the shop's turnover.
School wise:
* Will be getting ready to move to a new premise which is bigger and has ducted air conditioning
* Accountant has finished the P&L so will present it to the bank to further extend the overdraft needed to go through with renovations
* Managed to upload at least 25 videos on to youtube to promote the school and obviously increase our image. I was on a roll until I broke my finger playing oztag and had to slow down. You can view at www.youtube.com/shinemusicshool (http://www.youtube.com/shinemusicshool)
* Promoted the school on www.ouffer.com (http://www.ouffer.com) and had a really huge response. So suddenly we have customers travelling from as far as Glebe or Bangor to Parramatta for lessons. Once we move to the new premise I'm going to register through all the coupon places like ouffer, scoopon, bestdeal, etc...I highly recommend it if you have a low end service or product business.
* Also have taken full advantage of n-computers and have a computer in every class room now, all which cost less than $800.00
So my direction for the rest of the year is moving into a debt filled expansion plan. I am looking to be in debt about $60,000 by the end of the year but should bring my turnover for 10-11 to about $600,000. Plan to buy another business at the start of next year once I leverage myself further out of the school and we clear the Christmas overdraft with the bank...
Well...that's the dilemma I have now. Is that how a person builds their business? To get into debt expand it, increase the revenue and then knock it off with an asset sale of some sort and then do it all again and shoot higher? Anybody with comments?
web_designer
20-01-11, 09:23 PM
well done
excellent..
Thanks for sharing Will - I've really enjoyed this thread of watching a business grow. How did Christmas go and are you thriving? Any tips, hints, huge learning curves, major successes disasters and what would you do differently?
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