Gary Das built this business up to roughly a MILLION POUNDS WORTH OF TURNOVER, which he thought was a great goal that he was aiming and looking to try to achieve.
But actually, once he got there running a Million-Pound Business wasn't what he wanted.
It consumed him.
He says, how he was so busy all the time. He constantly had to buy new leads. He needed more and more stuff. They weren't necessarily rewarded that well because he didn't know how many he was going to convert. They were low quality and poor quality and he just had to kept buying.
It was this vicious cycle and circle.
That actually a moment of challenge in his own life in that he couldn't get a Self-employed Mortgage that led him to go, "Actually, maybe there's something better in terms of what they should be doing and how they should be operating.”
And I think actually it's really key to just delve that little bit deeper because that presence of mind that Gary had at that moment to just go, “Actually I've built this amazing business and amazing that means it obviously run to build a company to a million pound of revenue turnover.
It is no small feat... That takes some doing.
But in terms probably looks amazing on the outside, HE WAS PROBABLY LYING TO HIMSELF. When people asked what was going on, “Oh, I've got a million pound business”
And realistically clearly, wasn't happy. Otherwise, he wouldn't have scrapped it all and rolled it all back to just him and an assistant and started again.
But it's that little process there that I wanted to really delve into that.
That awareness...
That state of mind at that moment in time to just go,
“Actually this is what I've built and I'm sure lots of people would be happy to have built. But having built that and seeing the life I now have, I'm not happy.”
And I'm sure that what Gary did actually was ultimately come back to and go, “Look, I found this real problem with self-employed people and how they get mortgages.”
“I just didn't understand that was this challenging area of it. And I can see how.”
In a lot of cases what people want to buy is they want to buy moving towards pleasure or moving away from pain.
He could get some initial inquiries from people who go, “Oh, I want to be able to move towards getting a mortgage to buy the house that I've identified that I would like.”
But he could also have people who maybe have gone there in that process, maybe with their bank or a different broker, and it hit stumbling blocks and challenges and were now massively frustrated with that.
So, I think Gary managed to capture both ends thereof of the market. But I'm sure what then Gary was able to do was to look forward into then the future and go actually build.
Having a business like this: “What would it look like as we rolled this out into the future?
I know he says he likes to do sort of a one-year plan. Doesn't really like to go much beyond, but I'm sure in those early stages it was. I can see a way over a period of time this can become made bigger and better business than the business we already have.
And then what courage did it take?
You know, to have something that you could argue was to a degree working businesses clearly growing. They clearly had plenty of leads. They were clearly generating lots of revenue.
For Gary to be able to stand back and look at that and go, “Do you know what? No, let's roll it back to just him and an assistant.”
I think it take great courage and I'm sure there's lots of people around him who would've told him to do absolutely not that. You know, if you've gone and asked for advice and guidance.
I'm sure there's plenty of people who have gone, “No, hang on Gary, you've got something here. You know, you are, you are generating a million pounds worth of revenue. People are clearly interested in what you do. They like what you do, and potentially they keep coming back. Clearly, you know, you should stick at that and you should improve it.
And I'm sure it's very easy from the outside that we can all look at it and go,
“Oh, that was a bit of a gamble. But I'm sure Gary assessed it. I'm sure he weighed up the pros and the cons and he looked at all the things that could go wrong and probably missed some bits as well.”
But that variability to do that now, I think that we all probably get to that stage within our business, not necessarily what we're going to completely start again, but actually where what we've done is we've grown to a level where we go,
“Do you know what? I'm kidding myself. I'm saying this is successful, but it's not what I want. It's not what I deem as being successful. I'm just learning to myself because I'm giving a different story behind it.”
So certainly, for myself, we did that in terms of around 2015, 2016 or so, we'd grown to 500-ish clients, something around there.
And when people would ask, “Is business going well?”
We'd go, “Yes, and this is the number of clients we had”
But ultimately in terms of the profitability that we had within that business,
it wasn't what we wanted.
It wasn't giving us the life that we felt we could live.
It probably wasn't beyond what I could go and get if I went and had a good job within the industry.
And it took a moment for us to step back, for me to realize the errors of my own ways, because I was very much leading the company at that time.
To have discussions with Sam -- my wife-- who's also my business partner, and just go,
“Hang on. We can work a better way forward with this. And that's when we started to move from being everything to everybody”
And we've got this, we don't really have true relationships with our clients, and if we don't have true relationships, we can't really build trust and respect and they can't really know us and like us and trust us overall.
That's probably where the challenge comes in, that actually they don't want us to do lots more work for them because actually they don't know us like us and trust us.
So, we set on a journey just to go, “Hang on, how do we make sure that happens more? How do we make sure that we build that Like and Trust?”
And through that comes through great customer service, great quality of products and services that we offer. Then obviously charging for that if it's going to be at a premium and some people don't want that and that's fine.
But yeah, it was also that shift moment for us as well, that become that point to go, “Hang on, we've lit, we've reached sort of a glass ceiling” if you like, and go, “This can't work anymore. We have to shift that. We have to change”
And it doesn't happen overnight.
We had a few members of the team that we parted ways with to get to the right values and culture that we wanted within the business.
To get people who wanted to go on a journey that was going to be challenging, but was also going to be rewarding when we got it.
And we set about making our way forward...
And if we fast forward all of that to today,
yes, there's been challenges,
there's been obstacles,
there's been difficulties,
But it's so rewarding!
You know, we're probably double the turnover that we were back in 2016, 3, 4, 5x the profits!
Working sensible hours now myself, expanded the team significantly, and we're doing all that from only roughly 150 clients, not 500.
So, the relationship level that we have with clients now is so much higher.
We understand what makes them tick. We ask better questions. We really know them; we like them and we trust them.
And in turn they know us, they like us, and they trust.
I'd say it's probably, there's a much more closeness between it being a professional relationship and a friendship between us and our clients.
And it's also very much like that with our team as well.
And that's not to say in those early stages running up to that point that I thought I was doing something wrong.
I really, really didn't.
We thought we were doing the right thing. We thought we were moving in the right direction. And maybe just maybe there will become a point in the future where we'll reach another glass ceiling in terms of the way that we're operating now.
There'll be some other shifts that move us forward to that next level where we'll go, “Ah, okay, this is what we could be doing... This is how we could be improving and doing things better.”
But the key thing is, it's that self-reflection moment that you're looking at what you are currently doing.
Going: “Hang on, is what I believe to be doing the right thing, the actual right thing that I should be doing based on my own values and beliefs?”
Or am I kidding myself?”
Like previously we were going, “Oh, we want high relationships with clients and we want to do that, but at the same point, we were relatively low in terms of the fees we were charging.”
So therefore, we needed lots of clients.
So therefore, that contradicted the fact that we couldn't be high relationship because there wasn't the value exchange. Like the clients weren't paying enough in order to buy enough time to have that level of connection and that level of relationship.
So, I think if you want maybe a lesson to look at, maybe your own business and your own journey and pathway.
Mine would be maybe take some time out just a day.
And just sit and just go,
“Hang on. What is it I'm really trying to achieve?
What is it I believe is the right thing for our business to be doing?
What's really, really important to me?”
And now in the actions that we're taking based on the services and the products that we are delivering, Am I living that and just be true to myself and just identifying, am I really living?
What I'm telling myself, I'm living what I'd like to be living and it is probable that the answer is probably no, not completely.
And in which case then next step is, “Okay, what can I be doing more?”
That means I'm moving in that right direction. And that's it. That's my, that's my thoughts and everything from Gary’s Interview.
I think it was great that he was open and honest with us about that. He thought he built this successful business and he realized and had an epiphany moment that he needed to just start again.
And that for him, that's quite an, you know, not for him, but for overall, that's probably quite an extreme reaction.
But for him, that was the right reaction because clearly look at where he is at now.
For the rest of us, it might not be that we need to start.
But it might be that maybe we need to look at what we're currently doing and we need to refashion it into a different shape because actually we've just got consumed by growth.
That's my thoughts. Hopefully it's been useful and it gives you some food for thought and areas that you think that maybe you can help to just move your business to that next level.
Thank you and if you want the Full Episode of Gary Das’ Interview, here’s the link:
Please also feel free to join our The Leaky Bucket Podcast Community on Facebook:
