If We Can, You Can

Author:

Chris Baxter

Business:

GENI

Published:

29/06/2009 11:01:00

Before GENI I worked for a number of manufacturing businesses around the North East in supply chain management such as logistics, planning, purchasing, systems, and customer service. In 2002 I used a redundancy payment to fund a year studying for full-time MBA at Durham Business School, mainly because I needed to change direction as I'd had enough of working in corporate organisations and wanted to do something different. After the MBA I worked for Durham Pine for a very “interesting” year.

As I progressed through the employed part of my career I realised that certain comfort zones were holding me back. I knew I should have achieved more and often hadn't because I’d been able to get away with hiding inside my comfort zones.

This started to really annoy me as I didn’t want to look back on my working life and know that I could have done better. So I took the decision to throw myself in at the deep end and enter the world of self-employment and entrepreneurship, because I knew that in order to succeed I would have to confront and conquer my comfort zones.

I resigned my last job in 2005 without much of a clue as to what that path would actually be and what I was going to be. All I knew was that my first “toe in the water” of self-employment would be through a franchise.

I searched through the various forms of franchise available in the UK and came across something that would make best use of my previous experience and most importantly offer lots of variety and interesting work – business coaching. After a thorough due diligence process I bought a franchise from Ology and got stuck into building my business.

In the beginning I turned to the Entrepreneurs’ Forum to find out whether the business coaching idea was viable. The feedback was that there is a need for business coaching but it will be a difficult sell. I was encouraged and that advice has turned out to be very accurate.

Most of the initial support then came from the franchiser. From them I learned a lot about how to sell an intangible service.

However, over time it became apparent that the franchise had rather lost their way and weren't adding any value to my business any more – they came to me for advice more often than I turned to them. I realised I had outgrown their business model and to be honest, I found the relationship stifling.

My defining moment was in October 2008 when I sent them a rather large commission payment and realised that I had developed, without any of their help, all of the services that had generated that month's revenue. It was time to get out and stretch myself again. I decided to set up my own business coaching company, Good Enough Never Is (GENI).

Now that we are trading as GENI we offer our customers a more comprehensive range of better developed and more effective products and services. GENI works mostly with SME's across the North East of England to help them to get the best from their people and teams.

We do this by working with people one-to-one, working with teams, delivering training, and by helping business owners and boards develop and deploy strategies and plans that improve performance across their business.

We usually work very closely with our clients typically over a number of years. Some of our clients are satisfied with shorter-term engagements designed to achieve specific goals or solve specific problems.

The business name – Good Enough Never Is – came from Tom Maxfield. In 2003, as part of my MBA studies, I interviewed Tom and he used the phrase “good enough never is” to describe his approach to the standards he established at Sage and in Tom's Companies. The phrase stuck with me and became part of my business ethos. It makes a catchy acronym too: GENI.

In terms of the products and services we offer we've been able to develop and improve many of the services we offered when we were Ology, and offer a much more potent combination of people, team, and business development services.

My aspiration is for GENI to be the most highly respected business coaching company in the North East of England. Our passion is working with entrepreneurial SME business and I want to keep adding to the long list of business that enjoy greater success and employ more people because of the work we've done with them.

GENI will also become a platform for the development of other related businesses and leverage the GENI brand. These will include a coach-training school and a learning products business that creates leading edge training and development products.

I do however consider growing a business to be an even bigger challenge to starting it in the first place. And growing a coaching business is not as straightforward as I’d like it to be because my clients buy me, not an easily replicable service.

However, I keep reminding myself that successful people are successful with things that other people give up on. So this is a challenge that I will overcome.

To launch GENI we raised some money from our bank – which proved to be amazingly easy – and Business Link also proved to be very supportive too. Our PR and Marketing partner (O-Communications) have also been excellent in helping us get a high profile for the launch of GENI.

Over the last four years I've also listened to many great entrepreneurs and learned countless valuable lessons from them – perhaps this has been the most important support of all.

My wife, Heather, now plays a much bigger role in the business and has led the development of our branding. Heather has worked very closely with O-Communications and together they've created fantastic branding and a very successful PR launch.

The best idea Heather had was to send all of our existing customers cup-cakes with the GENI logo in icing on the top of the cakes. As a way of drawing attention to the new business I can't think of anything better. Every one of our existing customers knows we re-launched and know all about the breadth of services we now offer. The cakes and press coverage mean that we're really on the map now – the feedback we've had has been fantastic.

When I was with the franchise I had to innovate much more than I thought would have been the case. I had expected the franchisor to provide franchisees with new and superior products and services, but in fact they developed very little. But this weakness has led me to discover a strength I didn’t know I had – I’m really good at developing solutions that exactly fit my clients’ needs.

Since starting the business I’ve put together programmes covering organisational culture, management development, customer service and more. I had also expected to see out my contract with the franchiser but in the end left the franchise a year early so that I could plough my own furrow. I guess the lesson here is that what actually happens is bound to be different from what you originally expected to happen.

My biggest mistake was when I was once advised to leverage my income from an existing customer and find ways to provide them with additional services. The advice failed in mention that in doing so I should never put my needs before the customer’s needs. So I persuaded a customer to take on some additional services that they didn't really need, and ultimately this tarnished and shortened our relationship.

Fortunately I made this mistake soon after starting my business and learned a very valuable lesson. I was naïve. So now I always put my clients' needs first and my own second. This means that I'm willing to do something detrimental to my business in the short-term so long as it's good for my client's business. In the long-run I know I’ll be repaid for selflessly putting my clients first. In my line of work integrity is everything.

My biggest success stems from a large succession planning project that I won back in 2006. The client is a digital-sector business that has gone from strength to strength during the time that I have been working with them.

As well as the initial succession planning project I have worked with a number of their up-and-coming managers to help them successfully manage their relentless growth. This business isn’t particularly well known, even though they employ over 150 people, as they’ve never sought much publicity, but of the 36 businesses I’ve worked with across the region this one is probably the best and most successful.

In 2008 the business was sold and the acquirer was extremely impressed by the quality of management in the business. I’m now working with the parent company too.

In terms of a lifestyle change from being employed to having my own business, the biggest difference is the number of really incredible people that I have met since rubbing shoulders with entrepreneurs and working with business owners.

I’ve met multi-millionaires, business heroes, people who are bursting with passion and energy, and generally 100’s of people who are nothing short of inspiring. So I’ve become a much more positive person and generally enjoy life much more than I did in the days when I had a job.

If you’re thinking about starting a business I would say this: Quitting at the first, second or third obstacle is not an option. Successful entrepreneurs rarely take the path of least resistance because they know that most of the time it won't get them to where they want to be.

Most of the time success lies along a path that is rocky, steep and thorny. So never kid yourself into believing that the path of least resistance will get you to where you want to be. Success comes to those succeed when others quit.

Few of the challenges I’ve had to deal with are really very difficult because lots of people have successfully started and developed their businesses and that’s all I’m trying to do. I just have to remind myself to get outside my comfort zones and get stuck in.

Running your own business isn’t an easy option and you must have an appetite for self-development and a strong streak of fearlessness. Success often does not come easily and any business owner is going to have deal with a numerous knock-backs and challenges.

If you are not deeply and even obsessively passionate about your business then you may lack tenacity and energy to prevail. So if you are going to start a business then you must be very passionate about it. A business is not a hobby, it’s a way of life – to get your business up and running you’ll need to live and breathe, and walk and talk your business 24-7.