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Challenge

This is the fourth year of Guroo. We're now up to 9 staff and turnover should be half a million this year. That's a lot more than start-up but I'm also finding it hard to control ever escalating costs and get to solid profit. … read more

Defining Moment

When I was made redundant from the shipyards in Newcastle, I became a salesman. I never really had an ambition to run my own business until I was in my late 20s. I’d worked for a number of companies based in London all in the education sector, but I was… read more

Lifestyle Story

People say that one of the downsides of running your own business is that you work harder and longer. But I don’t actually see that as a downside because I enjoy what I’m doing now. I didn’t leave the office until eight o’clock last night and my two… read more

Lifestyle Story

I sleep better now that I own my own business. I used to wake up in the night worrying about sales figures, the latest advert, whether I’ll meet my targets for this month. These days, I know I’m not going to earn any money today, I just try and keep the… read more

Lifestyle Story

There’s plenty of perks. I’ve just been invited to the Sunderland mayor’s drinks evening for people who make a difference in Sunderland. I don’t know whether I am actually making a difference in Sunderland, but it’s really nice to get that recognition.… read more

Mistake To Avoid

No matter how good you are at anything, there’s always something to learn. Part of learning is making mistakes, so I think we should embrace them, especially since I’ve made a series of them! I’ve spent money where I shouldn’t have spent it because I… read more

Mistake To Avoid

We’ve spent a lot of money on advertising when we really shouldn’t have. When you’re a new company you’re often simply ignored. What we should have done is worked hard and marketed the company directly by going to face to face with our customers.… read more

Mistake To Avoid

We’ve made a load of mistakes with getting the product developed, but actually that’s not mistakes that’s just working on getting the product better. We started making some videos which support the learning materials. The first video we made was awful.… read more

Mistake To Avoid

Part of being the boss is that you can’t do everything yourself, which means that other people will make mistakes as part of the process. When someone else makes a mistake and they’re spending your money, there’s a temptation to jump up and down and say… read more

Secret

The best advice comes from the people you want to sell to. If a customer says, that’s a bad idea, it probably is. If they say it’s a good idea and you don’t think they’re simply humouring you, they look genuinely interested and start asking questions,… read more

Secret

You don’t need to be five times better than anyone else, just a bit better, then in the end the customers come to your door. You need to have a degree of humility and accept that you don’t know it all; you can get great advice from the people around you,… read more

How I...

I knew that I wanted to have a business in the education sector as I’d worked in it before, but I didn’t have any idea about what we would actually do. All I did was I went to colleges and just asked them, what do you want? We went to both senior… read more

How I...

In terms of raising finance, I’d agreed (with my wife) that I would invest £100,000 of my own money, or rather money that I’d got out of the sale of my shares, into the business. I put all of that money aside into a separate account, so once it was gone… read more

Pearl Of Wisdom

One of the biggest problems with having a good job is that you’re frightened of leaving. It’s a very big decision to leave that salary behind and agree to take none whatsoever because at the start, you don’t have any income coming in. But if I’d have… read more

Pearl Of Wisdom

It’s difficult when you have family commitments, to put those at risk. I’m at a stage in my life though in my late 40s where those family commitments are starting to decrease a little, and therefore I feel I can take a risk again, but a risk that can be… read more

Pearl Of Wisdom

I wouldn’t change what I did under any circumstances. Even if the company fails, I’ve had a fantastic time and I’ve tried my best. I can look back on that and say, at least I gave it a go. There’s no better time than now to start; it doesn’t get any… read more

Aspiration

I’m now working with an organisation called NStar who are here in the North East, to raise external finance. I’d like to raise enough finance to enable us to employ dedicated sales people and probably two customer support people, and that will help us to… read more

Challenge

One of the hardest things is trying to understand how much someone will pay for the products and services you provide. You have to identify where the budget is, and follow it. For example, if someone’s got £10,000 to spend, let’s make sure that the… read more

Success

When I was sixteen, success to me was getting a girlfriend. As I got older, success was getting the numbers for the month to take to the boss which was very short term success. Now, success is less financial and more motivated by what people think of… read more

Support Story

We were fortunate to win some grants from Business Link and the City of Sunderland Council. They were only a couple of thousand pounds each which doesn’t sound a lot compared to £100,000, but it did make a difference. It helped with the initial web… read more

Support Story

Speaking to people who’ve done it all before has been a very good thing to do though. I joined organisations like the Chambers of Commerce and was introduced to people through people at Business Link and the Entrepreneurs Forum. I have a little bit of… read more

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