Sunday 19th April 2009: Work Smarter

Hello and welcome to my blog. Unless you're an avid reader of the business sections of one of the Sunday broadsheets you probably had no idea who I was until you saw me on the BBC's online version of Dragons Den. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dragonsden/ after all I am not a sports star such as David Beckham or a pop star like Lily Allen or even someone who makes other people famous like Simon Cowell I just build and help businesses make money  and yet I am not a banker I am an entrepreneur
 
I hope that my blog will help more people not only understand what an entrepreneur is but also to get on one of the most exciting and biggest adrenalin rides in the world.  I’m not talking about bungee jumping the 341-foot plunge from Victoria Falls I’m talking about running a successful business. It doesn't matter whether you set up a new business or buy an existing business and turn it round to make it profitable.  The buzz is exactly the same; although these days I seem to prefer the latter.
 
When I grew up I never thought that I would end up being an entrepreneur. I went to Strathclyde University to study corporate law. After I graduated I went to work for a Legal firm in Glasgow. Before my first day was out I had decided that working for someone else wasn’t for me. A chance encounter with an old friend on the train home that day led me to become involved in the IT business.  Before I knew it I was running a multi million pound business retailing and supplying computer equipment to consumers and businesses worldwide.
 
Fast forward a few years and there I was, twenty nine years old having over achieved every possible goal I had set myself. I was a multi millionaire and could have, if I had wanted to take it easy for the rest of my life. I decided that I would take it easy and perhaps go back to university again but prior to that I thought that I should set up one more business and then came another business ………..and so the pattern has continued and my business portfolio continues to grow.
 
One of the big misconceptions that people have is that they think you have to have a revolutionary idea to be successful in business. People are always trying to think of something that has never been done before. Do you know this is so untrue? I have bought so many businesses and assets over the years and sometimes within several months I have improved them and made them more efficient.  Sometimes selling them on for ten times more than I paid for them!  More about this later....
 
Often the best strategy in business is reinventing an old idea and doing it better and more efficiently then anyone else for example Mcdonalds didn’t invent fast food and Ford did not invent the motor car but both companies came up with strategies that made them better and more efficient than the competition.
 
When I was around 12 years old I used to work in my fathers newsagents in Stirling. To this day I remember a conversation I had with a gentleman who used to come in every morning to get his copy of the Scotsman and the Glasgow Herald.  Most people only read one or the other but this gentleman bought both everyday.  As a child I used to think this was very strange!  What I found to be even stranger was that he used to arrive every morning in a gleaming brand new prestige car.   One day he would be in a 4x4, the next day in a 7 series BMW and the day after that he would arrive in a gleaming Mercedes.
 
Some days he would be dressed as if he was going to work in a Stockbrokers office with his expensive suit and crisp shirt, complete with gold cufflinks.  On other days I would see him wearing a grotty shirt, a pair of jeans and the oldest boots I had ever seen.  They were always absolutely covered in what I thought at the time was muck.  However he would always be driving a very expensive car.
 
All sorts of theories formed in my mind as to what he did for a living.  Some days I thought he was a secret agent. Other times I thought he was just driving his boss’s car. It took me about six months before I finally plucked up the courage to ask him what he did for a living. I was a bit confused when he finally told me he was a coal merchant.

My next question which I blurted out without even thinking was “Can you make a lot of money selling coal?” He looked at me a bit bemused.  I’m sure he thought it was a strange question coming from a twelve year old boy.  He finally imparted on me the first words of business wisdom, which I have filed away in the back of my head and hope to share with the readers of my blog. He said " not really but we work smarter then every one else". So here you have Lesson One in Shaf's world of business:
 
You don't have to have a revolutionary idea.  You just have to do an existing idea better then everyone else. You have to be more efficient and you have to work a bit smarter than everyone else. Note the use of the world smart rather then hard.