Adam Balon, Co-founder of www.innocentdrinks.co.uk, shared some wonderful nuggets of wisdom and managed to entertain as well. Sarah Curran the women who built on line fashion retailer www.my-wardrobe.com also has a great story to tell.
The event anchor woman was broadcaster Adrienne Lawler, she mixed up her apples and pears a bit when it came to understanding sources of funding, but hats off to her for keeping it light and fun. Incidentally she has a venture of her own – a good news channel to counter the dour nature of current news content – you can add your own news at www.inewsu.com.
Barclays Bank painted a fairly positive picture of the business economy saying that there are plenty of businesses showing strong growth, with Inner East London being a hot spot – so what were the nuggets of wisdom?
“There are no mistakes but a learning curve” – Sarah Curran, My Wardrobe
Sarah Curran started out as the classic ‘do it all’ business owner literally sourcing stock (no easy task as the big brands did not want to know), photographing it, listing it onto her website and when order came in, packing and posting out the goods plus everything else that it takes to get from A to B. Her tip are to recognise when it’s time to let go and when it is find great staff and empower them. If you don’t you will end up lost on the minutiae instead of focused on the big picture and of course on line marketing is critical.
She says her approach to customers is a 360 degrees package, making sure that customers are well segmented so she is not sending out blanket emails that end up winding up people rather than giving them what they want. When asked about her biggest mistakes she said ‘there are no mistakes but a learning curve’.
On finding staff “A hole in your business is better than an ass'ole” – Adam Balon, Co-founder of Innocent Drinks
Innocent Drinks was well established by 2008 but really hit the skids that year which makes their story all the more fascinating. The three co-founders set out to set up a business that would ‘solve a problem in life’. They had no experience of the sector they chose, no real business track record and were young so the dice were firmly stacked against them. When Adam was asked ‘did he ever feel like giving up?’ he said the toughest part was the year leading up to going live and the thing that most kept them going was being three – if two were having a bad week the other might have a glimmer of good news that kept the vision alive.
Adam said their vision and mission has been really central to working through the tough times – they actually give 10% of their profits to charity, a decision they made right from the beginning. Innocent Drinks purpose is ‘to make healthy natural food and drink to help people live and die well’ and their vision ‘to be the earth’s favourite healthy food and drinks company’ plus they have a clear set of values.
When they hit tough times in 2008 their first instinct was to entrench but then they realised it was against their vision and sought funding, eventually ending up with the controversial backing of Coca Cola. Naturally when the going gets tough there are repercussions in your workforce and rumours abound about what’s going to happen – Adam said they went for full disclosure so their team knew exactly how bad things were and how they were going to handle it and this helped to keep people motivated and on side.
On finding people he said you have to find the best and if you can’t well hang on until you can because, and he quoted an American not partial to mincing words, ‘it’s better to have a hole in your business than and ass'ole’ Don’t you just love it?
Here are a few more tips and nuggets from Adam:
- In the tough times they realised they had a mission and it was important
- Being transparent harnessed every-ones energy
- Start small and make your mistakes small e.g. they tackled a launch in Austria before Germany
- Keep listening – what do clients want?
- Keep innovating – new products represented 40% of sales over the previous 3 years so no new products now would hit sales in three years’ time
There is tons more to Adam’s Innocent story so if you get the chance to hear Adam tell the story himself go for it.
Little disclaimer - this is my take on events and all written from memory so because I am only human don't take the quotes etc as verbatim.
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