In May 2016, before it was cool to do remote work, we upped sticks and took our 1-year-old daughter to Malaga for just over 4 weeks.
The plan was to spend time working on the business and not in it. Something many entrepreneurs find difficult. And I’m no different. When you’re in the midst of chaos or a brief interlude of calm, it’s hard to dedicate time to big picture thinking. It’s hard to see past the next day, and it’s hard to have the passion to think bigger.
But the year prior Martin McAuley and I decided that the business was going to be bigger than just us. We’d brought in some of the best creative talent in NI and launched our studio properly into the market. We had loose ideas of what we wanted to achieve, but not much else.
Growth was on our mind, and we needed the plan to achieve it. So I took myself out of the day-to-day for the month, and I focused solely on the plan for the next 5 years.
Looking back, we achieved almost everything we set out to achieve. Our headline figures were pretty much bang on in terms of growth in revenue and profit. But even the best-laid plans never work out exactly. Because growth isn’t linear. Scale is the gold medal position, but in the real world, costs increase and business changes momentarily. Even with consideration of the potential diversions from the plan, you’re always chasing these down and changing the plan to suit.
Growth isn’t linear
The expectation is that we go from A to B in a straight and steep line upwards. The reality is anything but.
And yet, having a plan is the key. Because no matter how far you deviate from it, having something to come back to, that was written in a moment of calm or clarity, helps you get back on track as quickly as possible.
Eventually, this time away laid the groundwork for building a business that could run without us, and we were beginning to put the team in place to support this goal. Unknown to us at that time, building a business to run without you and building one for sale are parallel journeys. Putting this focus in early and consistently eventually made us a more attractive business to buy.
Did this upheaval work?
I don’t have access to the document I created back in 2016, but I remember it clearly. And yes, the goals we set back then were met. Though it wasn’t as simple as I’d written down on paper.
I repeated this process for the next 4 years, travelling to Spain and spending time working remotely on the business and not in it. I switched off work at 5pm every day and we took walks around the city of Malaga in the sunshine. Weekends were spent at the beach, and it gave me a resurgence of motivation to tackle everything I’d set out to do. The business didn’t crumble without me and I was forced to hand over some of the tasks I’d been holding onto, that should have been transferred years prior. Many of our team took this as an opportunity to support the business and position themselves for growth within it.
An unknown benefit at that time was a lifesaver for our business. By setting up our remote infrastructure for myself, when COVID hit in 2020, our business was able to operate fully remotely within a matter of hours. All our phones were on VOIP, our server was accessible, and our teams dialled in wherever they were.
Not everyone will be able to do what I’m suggesting here. But I urge you to take time out of your business to think about it and to make plans. In the next few months, I’m announcing the first Move at Pace Summit, which will help entrepreneurs like you do just that.
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