And, as Elton famously sang way back when, I’m still standing….
1st September 2024, the beginning of FY5 for Dremur Ltd so it’s natural to recap and review the last 12mths of being a business in business serving other businesses who want to succeed in business and remain a business – our business is growing other businesses.
High level summary; we fell short of revenue targets by 15% however, as a result of prudent cost and outgoings management, our net profit should finish somewhere around 100% higher than forecast. So, whilst the year didn’t pan out as originally planned, the final outcomes are, overall, better than planned for and they again give me lots of lessons to learn from as we start a new FY full of optimism about what can be achieved over the next 12mths!
The biggest challenge for me and the business over the last 12mths has been recruitment. One of the originals left which wasn’t easy to handle however no significant harm was done to our relationship and we do still use them on a freelance basis whenever the need arises and they’re free. Upon reflection, I realised the areas at which I was at fault which contributed towards the end result and so it’s squarely down to me to not repeat the same mistakes again! After that, I spent pretty much the rest of the FY looking to recruit at least a replacement if not 1 or 2 more additions and, dear reader, I’m not ashamed to admit that I made some mistakes again during this period.
My desire to grow the team went from being a strategic plan to, as time passed by without finding anyone suitable, becoming too desperate to just get a bum on a seat and that’s why the mistake happened. In my life to date, I’ve recruited at least 100 salespeople (meaning interviewing many more than that) and the large majority of those hires were done when I was employed by someone else and using their money. Whilst I was (and still am) very loyal to my ex-employer and genuinely dealt with a number of decisions by asking myself what would I do if this were my money, there’s an obvious massive difference in the rationale and impact of decision making when you’re playing with someone else’s money vs your own! So, over the years, maybe I’ve overlooked some red flags when hiring new recruits because of feeling confident that, if it didn’t go the right way quickly, we could part ways, the next potential recruit would be around the metaphorical corner and the impact to the business would be negligible. That might be fine for a well established business with more than 50 employees and annual revenues north of £50m but, and this is the big mistake I made, it’s almost catastrophic for a micro start-up!
In my rush to get bums on seats, I knowingly overlooked some significant red flags (and my own advice that I’ve dished out to others many times over) in the naïve hope that they wouldn’t prove true. Well, I got burned badly not just once…twice! It hurts even writing about it again as it’s a reminder of how foolish I was and how much time, energy and money was lost. However, I am well past dwelling on it and I know that it’s critical I absolutely do learn lessons not only for my credibility but simply for the future of Dremur Ltd. Thankfully, it wasn’t all doom and gloom on the recruitment front as I did manage to find someone else to join on a PT basis and they remain on the books!
On the client front, we’ve wrapped up a couple of successful outbound campaigns, 3 unsuccessful ones have been terminated, we’re still working with 4 ongoing clients and will be starting 2 new campaigns for 2 new clients by the end of 2024 so, for the team we have now, we have more than enough opportunities to work on which is great as one thing hasn’t changed… we only win when our customers win.
Allons y!
