Interim Sales Marketing and Commercial Director for Business turnaround
Sales meeting in the toilet (2005)
January 2, 2012
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I am a dad of three children, Molly 7, Millie 6 and Henry who will be 2 shortly. I am on my third relationship and have experienced my fair share of adversity in my life. My family are very close and like any close family we spend a lot of time in each other’s houses.
My mum and dad, although semi retired now, were successful business people and worked in the retail fashion trade and without their support, guidance and the occasional kick up the butt, I would be lost. The integrity that they both possess is very difficult to find these days, especially in our modern generation.
Since a young lad I have been highly motivated and possess high levels of energy. I would and have worked all the hours around the clock and travelled great distances to go to work and earn a pound note.
I enjoy motivating others and love getting up on stage, speaking to an audience and doing some really crazy inspirational moves to get people to move out of their comfort zones.
I have run my own businesses and worked for other companies but one constant remains and that is – I want to be the best at what I do! During my business and personal career I have succeed and failed in equal proportion.
I was working in 2004 for a small advertising directory sales company and we had just 35 staff when I joined. I grew the staff headcount to over 250 people employed on a full and part time basis. The energy and sexiness within the outbound call centre environment that I created was truly awesome and on a good day, sales and motivational was unrivalled.
Sales on one particular day were way were way off what they should have been and my staffs were sluggish, not performing and KPI’s were way in the red zone. Even my managers were downbeat and were not inspiring their teams and I was starting to lose my patience.
I was watching the floor, which was an 8000 sq ft open planned call centre and waited for someone to take action. No action came and as a result I went to the front of the floor and told everyone to finish their calls, put their phones down and join me at the front of the floor.
I always held two meetings every day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon after lunch. I was always well prepared and inspired my teams using a mixture of personal and business related topics and information.
People always used to say to me that my meetings were awesome and that I pushed people way beyond their own personal expectations for what they could achieve in sales and indeed their lives.
I have always believed that motivating and teaching people is a two way game. I always say “You hold onto one end of the rope and I will hold the other. As long as you hold on, ill hold on but if you let go then so will I”.
Inspiring people is an art and they have to love you, trust you and fear you all at the same time.
So, I am at the front of the floor and I now have 140 staff, 6 sales directors, 8 sales managers, an operations support team, IT team and the CEO looking on. I could see by the looks on their faces that they knew a crap storm was coming and there was an eerie silence as they waited to hear the inevitable.
The meeting that I was about to give them was by no means going to be my usual motivational and inspirational ye ha lets go type of address. This was going to be far from inspirational, but little did I know!
“OK team, sales are down, calls are down, profit for the day is down and not one of you, including my senior team have stood up and made any positive changes that could influence a turnaround for the day’s sales – Why? You have all the tools and personal and business reasons to achieve your daily goals. Yu have the ability and coupled with the superb product that we have you should be smashing the days sales out of the ball park – Why is it that we are having this crap day?”
Not one answer came from my entire team. They knew better and they also knew that in this team we fight, we fight for every inch and we stay on top of our game regardless of what challenges we face. That knew that with excellent performance come great benefits, commission rewards and other team and company incentives and recognition. On the contrary, poor performance comes with one almighty kick up the arse.
“OK then, if you guys are happy with such a crap performance then we are going to hold this meeting in the toilet, which is where the crap goes”.
With that I marched over 150 people into the men’s toilets and packed them in every piece of space that I could find. Some were standing on the toilets, others in the sinks, some were on other peoples shoulders and we were packed to the rafters. I forced and pushed every one into this toilet until the doors were bursting with people.
Whilst in the toilets I explained in no uncertain terms that we do not accept any kind of poor performance and that when things are not going to plan that you stop, adjust, evaluate, change and move forward. I cannot put the exact words in this book that I used but let’s say the use of my vocabulary was colourful.
Inside the room it was hot, stuffy and people were feeling uncomfortable being in the toilet, but they soon got the point. My HR Director was spitting kittens about my methods and I would not recommend using the toilet as meeting point for anyone in today’s tough employment law society.
The bottom line was this:-
I – My managers realised that they needed to see things before they happen as prevention is better than cure.
2 – Not everybody is motivated all of the time but if you can motivate and keep your top performers motivated then the rest will follow.
3- If you do not perform when I am around then the shit is going to hit the fan and literally, it did.
4 – You can bring some humour into your everyday business life and people will never forget these moments.
The outcome of the afternoon kick up the arse toilet session was that the team flew out of the toilets and went on to smash their daily target to pieces. Now I do not know whether it was because they did not want to go back into the hot sweaty toilet again for another spank or because they were actually inspired by my meeting. Either way, it got the job done and that’s the kind of unconventional guy I am.
Best Wishes for 2012
A great year ahead!
Regards Brad
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Getting a million pounds Investment and loosing everything!
January 2, 2012
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Its 6.30am in the morning, the month is January, and the year is 1994. The birds are tweeting; the sun is rising. I am 24 years of age and have been working night and day for nearly three years building my promotional clothing business. I am on the way to my office, situated above my mum’s shop in Epping Essex. Today is the day that is going to change my life forever. I am going to sign a contract today that will secure me over £2 million pounds worth of imported clothing from Indonesia. The problem is that I do not have one single penny to put down as collateral.
Last night I was working on a fast food stall and Wembley Arena earning extra money selling hotdogs to support my business. On the way home at 2am D:ream were playing on the radio “Things can only get better”.
I had worked on the stock market as a blue button when I was 16. The stock market crashed a year later and I lost my job. I bought my first market stall business when I was 18 years of age costing me £15,000. I also bought my first house when I was 18 and interest rates increased sharply to 15%, resulting in losing my £34,000 life savings that I had invested. I went bankrupt when I was 21 and thought my world was at an end. I clawed back from bankruptcy and started my promotional business when I was 21. I had already experienced major adversity and I was still only a baby.
I arrive at my office in Epping at 7am to prepare for my biggest ever business deal, one that would set me on the road to entrepreneurial stardom. A Korean gentleman called Mr Kim was arriving at 11am to see my business in action. He had been sent by his company, The Kolon Corporation, a multi-billion dollar organisation to open export channels in Europe and I was his one of his UK supply options.
The other two companies who wanted this contract were already turning over millions of pounds, had an established client base and had sound financial backing. Not only that, they had showrooms and warehousing in the clothing wholesale capital of London, Commercial Road E1.
My company was turning over just £250,000 a year. I had little stock and few customers. My first floor office was 300 sq ft with a few racks of stock. I had no office furniture and only two spare chairs, one of which had a broken leg and paint all over it.
I knew that I had to impress Mr Kim and I also knew that if I secured the deal it would mean that I could take my company to a multi million pound turnover business, pretty much over night. In business belief is everything and if you are prepared to do what your competitors do not have the imagination or balls to do then you will win.
I called in four friends dressed in smart suits and sat them at desks and placed phones on the desks that were not connected to any phone lines. I told them that when Mr Kim arrives that they should be on the phones closing deals and mentioning high profile companies. I also asked my family to call and place orders at a precise time and not to stop until we called to say that Mr Kim had left.
It’s 10.45am and Mr Kim had arrived early. My palms were sweaty, my heart was beating and my legs started to shake. I had to calm myself down and prepare for the pitch of the century. The boys were ready, the order pads were out, phones were in their ears ready to take orders and my family were ready to call in 5 minutes to place orders…… Ok action stations here we go!
I greeted Mr Kim downstairs, shook his hand and walked him up the stairs to my office. The only two incoming phones lines I had were ringing off the hook. The sales guys were on the phones that were not plugged into anything pitching customers and taking orders. My family were playing their part in helping me secure the deal.
Mr Kim questioned me for almost two hours nonstop. The sales guys kept taking order and my family as requested kept ringing in. After about an hour someone took an order from my family, later I found out it was dad. The order was for 6000 jackets and I can remember saying to myself “calm down family”, that is an order for £120,000 and if they keep placing silly order like that, it’s going to blow my deal out of the water.
Mr Kim had questioned me about sales, marketing, manufacturing, ranges and design styles, colours and size ordering breakdowns. We had discussed import and export duty, ports of origin and ports of destination. In fact we had covered everything from fabric and the mills that would be making it to container sizes, shipping and warehousing costs.
I understood it all and had been studying about manufacturing for a long time and besides, both of my parents had inducted me into the world of fashion from about 10 years of age – Thank you mum and dad!
Mr Kim knew that I was buying jackets from a Company in London called The Cobles Company ran by a Jewish man called Lawrence Cohen. Mr Kim also knew that Mr Cohen was spending a good few million dollars in Indonesia producing the jackets. What I did not know is that Mr Kim knew his exact import numbers and had the use of the factory two streets away producing the same goods and he had his eyes set of Western Stardom and needed me to make his dream a reality.
Another 30 minutes went buy and I held my nerve and made Mr Kim believe that I did not need his imports. I finally shook hands and Mr Kim left the building.
What I had achieved in the last two and a half hours was this:- I secured over £2 million pounds of imported goods ordered and ready to be delivered in ninety days to my 20,000 sq ft warehouse. The beauty of the deal was this. I did not have to lay out a single penny security. I had just placed an order for £2 million pounds without a single penny deposit. To this day I have not heard of a deal being done like that by a guy of 24 years of age.
I had no warehouse, no customers, no distribution and no way of even financing the deal I had just signed. I had just ninety days to prepare to take a business from turning over £250k a year to a £3 million a year business.
I did just that and by 1996 I was supplying Walt Disney, Coca Cola, Wembley Stadium, Capital Radio, The Spice Girls and had supplied products to just every brand that you could imagine from food to drinks, pop and rock groups, formula one racing teams and SkyBSB. I built a blue chip client network that was the envy of the promotional clothing world. I was turning over £3.3 million pounds a year, had been approached by Dunn and Bradstreet for outstanding growth as well as Sir Richard Branson’s Fast track 100.
It all seemed to be going so well until the Far East Crashed in 1998 costing me over half a million pounds and everything that I had built over a 5 year period.
When you lose everything it hurts, but the extraordinary people get back up, learning from their experiences to go on and achieve greater things and that’s why – Everyday People Achieve Extraordinary Things.
Best Wishes
Bradley Chapman
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Tax Free Gifts To Staff
August 4, 2011
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In an environment where most employee ‘perks’ subject to tax it may be helpful for you as an employer to be aware of the few concessions that have been made by HM Revenue & Customs.
Long service awards
Long service awards are allowed within strict limits. There will be no tax charge so long as the employee has been with you for at least 20 years and the article given has a value not exceeding £50 for each year of service.
Suggestion scheme awards
Such awards must be made under a properly constituted suggestion scheme, based on a set percentage of the expected financial benefit to your business. The maximum award allowed is £5,000. There is also a concession for ‘encouragement awards’ of £25 or less to reflect meritorious effort on the part of the employee concerned.
Staff parties
Staff annual functions (e.g. a dinner dance or Christmas party) are tax-free where the total cost per person attending is not more than £150 per year (including VAT).
Promotional gifts
Such items are normally purchased for advertising purposes and must display a ‘conspicuous advertisement’. Staff may receive promotional gifts tax-free provided that the overall cost of the articles involved does not exceed £50 per person per year.
Gifts of food, drink, tobacco or vouchers are specifically excluded.
Trivial benefits
Although all gifts are strictly subject to tax trivial benefits such as a turkey or bottle of wine at Christmas, or flowers on the birth of a child are not generally assessed as a benefit. A cash benefit, however, is always taxable irrespective of the value.
Ten Tips to Survive the Recession
August 4, 2011
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Here are ten tips to help you be one of the survivors.
1. Cut costs as soon as you can
As sales revenue falls you will have to cut your cost cloth accordingly, so act decisively and make the big decisions straight away. Numerous small adjustments can feel like death by a thousand cuts and could take too long to have the desired effect. Use your business plan to assess where cuts should be made and how deep.
Take advantage of any government backed schemes like the redundancy payment loan scheme. When you come out the other side of the recession leaner and meaner you will need key skilled staff to take you forward, so consider if it is wise to lose them all now. Try cutting salary and benefits or the working week to reduce costs but retain the skills, and whilst this may be short term it may buy you enough time until the economic picture improves.
2. Maintain up to date management information
Keep up to date records of every business transaction in order to review performance. It is highly recommended that you produce monthly management accounts INCLUDING A CASHFLOW. Make sure they are produced in a timely manner and that you review them immediately, and even more importantly, ensure you understand what they are telling you. Compare them to your annual budget and investigate any major differences.
3. Remain in control
When a company becomes insolvent the directors need to act in the interests of creditors rather than shareholders but ordinarily that does not give creditors the right to dictate terms, and that includes your bank. Choose your own business advisors so you can be confident that they will act in your interests. Often the spectator sees more of the game and the warning signs are often more obvious to a casual observer than they will be to you.
When you are in the thick of it, punch drunk from fending off creditors and juggling your budget, you can miss the bigger picture. It is not normal to constantly get chasing phone calls to make payments, cheques bouncing at the bank, being on stop with suppliers, or for the bank to insist on an independent review. If this happens, take matters into your own hands and make some changes.
4. Focus on cashflow
Look at all areas of the business. Consider strengthening credit control procedures and debt chasing, reduce stock levels, and try to negotiate extended credit terms. It is also worth looking at taking advantage of “Time To Pay” agreements with HMRC. Some of these will not be easy as everyone is in the same position and is looking to maximize their own cash position.
Don’t forget the old cash clichés as they are even more relevant in a recession, “turnover for vanity, profit for sanity” and “cash is king”. When times get tough it is very easy to chase turnover but remember, you only want profitable turnover. You may have under utilised assets within the business that could be sold to raise cash but ensure that this would not damage the business in the future.
5. Prepare or update your business plan
This is essential as all business owners and managers need to understand where they make or lose money and need to look ahead at different scenarios, like what changes would be needed if sales were to drop, say, 25%. Most importantly, more businesses will need this information to optimise cashflow and maintain reasonable headroom within agreed facilities.
If a company is looking to secure bank or Business Angel funding, a sound business plan is a prerequisite to even get in the door. A business plan obviously looks forward but if you have a monthly reporting system in place, it can be used to compare against actual performance allowing the business to identify and react to differences much more quickly.
6. Update your trading terms
Many businesses have relatively little experience of their customers becoming insolvent. In a sharp recession this risk will become a more frequent part of doing business and needs to be built into pricing and terms of trade, including provision to charge interest on late payments, termination of contracts, taking early recovery action and claiming a lien or retention of title to goods. Obtain up to date credit reports on major customers.
Ensure you have an efficient, computerised credit control process and use it to chase customers before the payment terms are stretched. You may need to take further action if contacting the debtor doesn’t result in payment. Consider using a local solicitor to send official looking reminders to debtors, it doesn’t cost much and may speed up payment. The normal standard payment period is 30 days, after which you might consider charging late payment interest.
7. Look out for opportunities
For every business that fails there will be customers, key personnel and other assets available to those that survive. Register on IP-Bid.com, the UK’s online insolvency market place, to receive email updates and opportunities. In the current climate there will be many companies coming up for sale so update your marketing plan to include market growth by acquisition. This will make you a bigger player in your market and may present an opportunity to buy a competitor cheaply.
8. Inject additional working capital
In the current climate the banks are no longer prepared to take all of the risk in a business so you may have to consider putting some money into the business yourself to pay creditors, especially if your bank has declined additional facilities. You may be able to tap up friends and family, sell some personal assets or release equity in a property but there are a number of potential pitfalls you will need to navigate, so seek specialist advice first.
9. Have a structured survival plan
Battening down the hatches and hoping to survive the recession may not be the best option so you will need to put together a plan to get you through the difficulties. This will prevent knee jerk panic decisions particularly when looking at cost reductions and will also look at how you will maintain and grow your sales at the same time. You can only cut costs so much but if the sales are not there you will still suffer severe cashflow problems.
10. Don’t panic
You can be sure that in the current climate you are not alone with your problems and challenges as just about every other company is going through the same. Despite the negative coverage in the media over the last year, the world will not end next week and if you are proactive and actively take steps to get through it you will survive and be better for it.
Don’t feel a failure if you seek professional help from a competent business advisor. If you need specialist insolvency advice they will tell you. Recent case law has clarified that as long as directors act in accordance with professional advice they should avoid personal liability.
REMEMBER!!
There are usually a number of constructive options available, especially if you take early advice. This may be the first time you have faced being unable to pay creditors but we see this type of situation every day. Even if the company cannot be saved, often the business can. Be positive and you will survive, bury your head and you will become a business failure statistic.
What does it to be an entrepreneur
August 4, 2011
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What does it take to be an entrepreneur?
With the UK economy in full re-build, it will be the entrepreneurs, who create jobs, through innovation and by putting their ideas into action. Being an entrepreneur or business owner is not an easy thing to do and with so many new business startups perhaps more than ever before, you have to ask yourself one question:-
Am I ready?
Being an entrepreneur requires a passion, determination and courage that few people actually realise. You will experience the highest of highs coupled with the lowest of lows. At times, your mind and resolve will be tested to the limits and only when you face real adversity will you know whether you truly are entrepreneurial.
Entrepreneurial Leaders
Entrepreneurs are natural leaders that inspire and innovate through ideas and creation. An entrepreneur must accept and realise that he is not skilled in every aspect of business and day-to-day operations. The skill is knowing when and where to seek help and how to use it and in what quantities. Always stand up and be counted even when things go wrong. When your ideas work, ride them, when they do not, evaluate and reapply.
Your idea
If you are starting a business then you must test-drive your idea. Do not keep it to yourself, as you are not re-inventing the wheel. Put your idea out there, as that is the only way to know if it is going to work. Use your friends and family to test drive your idea but also use people who do not know you, as they will answer honestly without emotion. Above all, listen to them, as they could be your future customers.
Finance
Do you have adequate finance to get your business where you need it to be? If you do not then you have two choices: – either wait until you have secured enough money to fund the business or start it knowing that you will require investment at a later stage. Some investors prefer to see something tangible, live and working. Be careful and choose wisely.
Employing people
During my career, I have employed thousands of staff. I have learned only recently at a great cost that you must employ the best person that you can and if that means you have some kind of profit share then do it. Getting employment wrong, can cost you time, money, grow and can have a negative impact on your business. When I met and interviewed David recently he reinforced that to me.
Business planning
Your business will change as soon as you create it. A business pan rarely goes according to plan. Keeping an eye on costs is key and reviewing your monthly costs is essential if you are to survive.
Always look at your three month cost base and if you are not making money then ensure that you either decrease costs, increase sales or your GP to stay above water. Always remember that if your business makes 10% net profit after all expenses then for every £10,000 in turnover you achieve you earn £1000. Every £1000 that you spend requires you to turnover another £10,000 just to make it back.
Time and resources
Entrepreneurs work long hours and often take home less money than they were paid by the jobs they enjoyed prior to starting in business. I would advise that you have a second income while you build your business. The less you draw from the business, the stronger it will be in the long term.
Your resources are everything and the contacts that you make will help you grow your business. Business networking is an essential tool for any business owner and there are many business-networking opportunities for you to explore.
Business Networking
Business networking is a vital tool for your business. Get out and join as many business networks as you can. Entrepreneur networking will help you make new contacts that you can later use to your advantage. Raw Business online offers free online business networking. Every registered member also receives a copy of Raw Business Magazine each month. Join as many networks as you can and make as many new contacts as you can.
Bradley Chapman
www.rawbusiness.com
Kavita Oberoi Interview by Bradley Chapman
July 15, 2011
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Kavita Oberoi Interview
The Secret Millionaire – Interview by Heidi Weir
Kavita Oberoi is one of the UK’s most successful female entrepreneurs.She is probably best known for her appearance on The Secret Millionaire.
Since her appearance she has become a Director of one of the charities she supported on the show: Sisters with Voices, an eight week programme for disadvantaged young women which provides mentoring, coaching and activities to increase self confidence and life skills, and Kavita has now sold the programme into three schools and to the Sure Start scheme in Derby.
At the age of 38, Kavita runs her own multi-million pound Healthcare and IT consultancy which she started from scratch in 2001 and has a personal fortune of over £10 million. She spotted a gap in the market for IT training and business consulting and she quickly won a large contract and by August of 2001, demand for her services had become so great that she established Oberoi Consulting. The business now provides IT training to more than one in five GP practices across the country.
Kavita, I’ve heard you believe that you got your entrepreneurial spirit from your dad, can you tell me a little bit more about why you think that?
My father came over to England in the 1960s and he was a very smart man. He pretended that he knew how to fit bathrooms, he just watched a plumber do it and off the back of this he set up a very successful plumbing and heating business. He called the rest of the family over to do the manual work so that he could concentrate on the thinking. That business has now gone 3rd generation. At one point we lived above the shop where the plumbing and heating retail business was based and I used to go down from the age of 2 and sit in the office for hours playing on the phone and the typewriter. My father would to take me with him when he went to see his clients so I think I had some very early training.
So what was it like growing up?
I came from a traditional Asian background. The premise really was that girls shouldn’t work and shouldn’t be educated. My sister got married very early, she had an arranged marriage when she was 19 as was the case with most of the girls in family. My mother was brilliant, she really empowered me. I wanted to do more, for example, I wanted to attend after school activities; Ballet and Tap, she’d sneak me out, not let my father know so that I could do those things. Had it not been for her I would never have been able to have gone on and completed my degree. My father died when I was 15, shortly after I wanted to go out to work and I got a Saturday job in a shop, my mum and myself received some backlash because it wasn’t the ‘done’ thing. I fought this with the backing of my mother and then went on to go to university. I used to have to commute everyday because I wasn’t allowed to formally go away so I stayed at home and travelled an hour and a half each way every single day. I think after I achieved that, I almost became a trailblazer and now it’s opened the way for mother family members who have all had an education and mare working.
Do you think that because you were pushing the boundaries from an early age it helped you when it came to business?
I think it certainly has helped, I’ve always been quite driven, I’ve always wanted to achieve and do better and like you say; push the boundaries so I probably had a lot of confidence and drive at the point of starting my business. I am a really focussed person so I knew what I was going to do and I knew that I was able to do it.
You started off working for a large pharmaceutical business where you were comfortable and successful so what on earth possessed you to take the first steps in launching your business by going freelance?
I got to the point in my career where I wanted promotion so I went through the interview process and missed out. I was absolutely devastated because I felt I had earned it, I had been so successful in my current role and this was a job in management. The feedback I was given was that I wouldn’t be a good leader and I wouldn’t be motivational. It was a real set back and I actually started to go for interviews with other companies, that’s when the realisation dawned on me; I could do the same thing for another company for another 8-9 years for them to tell me that I wasn’t good enough when I knew that I was. I had built up a lot of skills whilst working for the pharmaceutical company and I worked out that I would probably have to work 3 or 4 days to be able to have the same take-home pay per week and I knew that I would be able to do that.
Was there ever a time that you faced such adversity that you just wanted to give up?
I think it was difficult when I first started. I got a large contract with the pharmaceutical company and had to put it on hold at one point. It was going to get so much bigger and it seemed that it went on for months and months before we got the approval to really take it to a massive level. So, I’ve never wanted to give up but most entrepreneurs are really impatient and want everything today to happen now.
Can you talk me through the journey you’ve taken from Employment to Freelancer, to launching your business and where it’s taken you?
I had built a lot of skills and I had a real passion for computers and I knew the primary care market. Whilst I was working for the pharmaceutical company there were some guidelines that were launched on the treatment of heart disease which affected the GPs that I was visiting at the time. I’d found that they were very good clinically but they really used to struggle when it came to IT. Some GPs were having trouble identifying their patients on their computer systems, so I self taught myself the systems and I would run lists off which the doctors could use to start calling in patients for treatment. As the same time as I’d gone on my own a colleague of mine had gone to another very big pharmaceutical company and they asked me to do a trial in their area. The trial was so successful that the marketing department called me in and literally handed me a £250K contract!
Being of Asian background and choosing an IT based business, you’ve obviously faced some real challenges; what do you feel has been the biggest challenge you’ve faced as a woman in business?
I don’t really see myself as a ‘woman in business’ like it somehow makes us deprived. I think at the end of the day, if you’ve got the skills and the knowledge and you know your subject area, it doesn’t matter if you are a woman or a man. I think women are more tenacious as they almost have more to prove because they don’t want to be seen as a failure, they spend their time managing so many roles but I think that makes us stronger.
The biggest challenge that I’ve faced is; staffing, recruitment, motivation, developing people and letting go because most entrepreneurs are very controlling so actually letting go of things and letting other people deliver can be very hard. Sometimes you have to allow your results to come through others and give people the chance to learn from their mistakes. There is also a balance to be found because sometimes you can employ and develop people who may leave, I get very attached to my employees, I understand the importance of flexibility on working hours and the pressures that having a family brings. We have a really good team atmosphere so you don’t expect people to leave and when they do it can really hurt. For me the biggest challenge I face and have faced is recruitment, staff development and retention. We are in quite a niche market so we first of all struggle to even find the right people, I could easily employ another 10 people tomorrow if I could find the right individuals. To overcome this hurdle we try and work by word of mouth, when we work with GP practices we try to look for people there that may be looking to move on. We use agencies, we advertise, we explore every avenue to recruit the right people but it is a real gamble. It’s costly, it’s time-consuming and it’s definitely my biggest frustration.
What is the one piece of advice you would give to a business that is struggling right now?
I think it’s all about attitude and what you have to look at is not moving away from your core business but diversifying and re-packaging. I believe that recession is a good time for start-ups. Some of the most successful businesses started in a recession; Hewlett Packard, Disney… all started in a recession. I think you have to remain focussed and being in a difficult situation means that you learn some very important lessons. When you are cautious with money it’s not a bad thing because when the recession lifts your business will flourish, I think it’s all about the attitude.
If you were 18 again, would you do anything differently?
I think the only thing I’d do differently is the way I went about recruitment, staffing and employment contracts when I started my business. It has been a really big learning curve for me, I didn’t have any leadership skills and I’ve had to learn the hard way. I’ve used a mentor and a coach to help me, somebody who’s very experienced in that area, I think it’s good through networking with others to be able to find people. It’s important that you know what your weaknesses are so that you can try and work on them.
Knowing what you know now, if you were to go back in time and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
There’s so much more that you can achieve so always believe in your own potential. Some people are just happy where they are and some people will aim a lot higher. I would always advise that you aim a lot higher because you’ve got that ability in you. If somebody says you can’t do something, don’t listen because I was told I’d never be a leader or be able to motivate people and I have my own company now. I guess that gave me the fire inside that has made me achieve.
We talk a lot about ‘feeling the fear and doing it anyway’, what’s your biggest fear?
I think for most people in business when you have major contracts the fear is losing them and having to replace them. That is why I believe that it is so important to not become complacent and why we are always looking for new business.
Who’s been your biggest supporter – your rock along the way?
My mum has always been brilliant, she’s always encouraged me and been very supportive but I’m quite lucky in that I’m driven. My business is like my baby, I’ll keep going, I won’t stop.
If you woke up tomorrow and you’d lost everything over night, what would be the first thing you’d do?
Well obviously I’d start again. I would research the marketplace to find the needs. I went to Mumbai in India last year and there’s no begging out there, it was very interesting to see how the families are surviving and how it brings out your entrepreneurial spirit. For example on Valentine’s Day even the children make cards to sell because there’s a need. There’s no welfare system over there, so if you haven’t really got anything you have no choice but to go out and do it. In the slums they’d go and get the recycling from the 5 Star hotels and sell it on. The slums were generating around 750 million from this and now the government are trying to tap into that to get people out of the slums and re-house them but they don’t want to as they are doing absolutely phenomenal business. These are people with nothing really, if they can do it, what excuse has anybody else got.
Tell me a little about your business now and what the plans for the future are?
The Core business is clinical audit, what we do is we go into GP practices, gain projects through primary care trusts or a sponsor and we’ll work on different disease areas and help the doctors to identify the patients on mass and put a strategic plan together to recall the patients, so it’s all around the use of IT and healthcare. From a personal perspective I’m now investing in Commercial Property and also setting up conferencing and meeting rooms. We’re finding in this recession that more people need rooms and office space on short term leases so I’ve done a deal with a local developer to buying some commercial property, which most people right now would not be doing. I’m in a position where the banks will lend, the rates are low and I have a tenant for one of them already, the other I’m turning into a conferencing facility. These are both within walking distance of my current offices in Derbyshire.
How did you feel after doing ‘The Secret Millionaire’, the follow up and what was your reaction to it?
It was a really, really good experience, it was such an eye opener. I’m a director of Martha’s Oasis and we’re trying to nationalise The Sister’s with Voices programme, we’ve sold it into different schools so it’s been really, really good and it’s given me a different type of adrenalin rush than I get from the entrepreneur side.
Why did you decide to participate in the programme?
I actually turned it down when they first contacted me because it was a brand new series and I didn’t know if it would be positive or what it would be like. I think the major factor was when I visited Mumbai and was inspired by what I saw. I met this lady out there who set up the National Spastic Society 35 years ago, she had a daughter who was disabled and she was perturbed as her daughter had no rights to education. She was so angered that she went over there and changed policy. Her own daughter has now graduated from Oxford. It’s true that everyone should have the right to education. I found her really inspiring and when I came back out of the blue the phone call came for the second time and I thought this time I have to do it.
A lot of the women in the network want to see more success stories from women but it seems that there are less high profile women entrepreneurs than men, why do you think that is?
I think some of it is a confidence thing. Some women are hugely successful but they just don’t want to do anything on the PR side of things.
What do you think makes a successful entrepreneur in your eyes?
You just have to be very passionate about what you are doing, very focussed and determined and have a lot of selfbelief. If you have an idea, do not stop until you’ve achieved success.
You’re a successful business woman and obviously now you’re very involved in charity so what’s better; giving or receiving?
Whatever you give, you will get back ten-fold. That’s not just in terms or money but in terms of connections. Both organisations that I gave to on The Secret Millionaire I now work with. I have received back much more than I gave. If you give something (and it doesn’t have to be money, it can be time or passing on a connection) they will pass you on and you will benefit in the long term which is why I see the benefit in the Raw Business network.
Have you got a favourite saying or quote that you would share with our readers?
I think I would say; ‘Hard work leads to profit but mere talk leads to poverty’, I think that’s from The Bible but I remember somebody saying that and I thought that really ‘fits’ me.
Thank you to Kavita for her time, for her honesty and interest in our business. I would like to wish you, your business and the Sisters with Voices Programme all the success in the world.
For further information on Kavita please visit: www.kavitaoberoi.com and for information regarding her Healthcare and IT business please visit:
