Answer This One Question to Know If Your Business Will Scale: Sarah Willingham

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What would you do if I gave you £1 million to invest in your business? Sarah Willingham explains why your answer to that one question tells her whether your business can scale, why making yourself redundant is the real goal, and how she built a £40m business the hard way before learning the smart way!

Sarah Willingham is a serial entrepreneur and investor who has built, bought and scaled consumer businesses for over two decades. She grew Bombay Bicycle Club into the UK’s largest chain of Indian restaurants, having previously opened international sites for Planet Hollywood and led international development at Pizza Express. She was an investor on BBC’s Dragons’ Den across two series, and co-founded the bar group Nightcap – home to brands including The London Cocktail Club and Dirty Martini — with her husband and business partner Michael Toxvaerd. She’s also a personal business mentor to Adam Stott.

She explains:

• Why the answer to “what would you do with £1 million?” exposes whether your model is actually replicable
• Why making yourself redundant, not working harder, is the real definition of success
• Why you probably don’t need investment – you need to go and sell something

Chapters

• 00:00:00 Intro
• 00:01:33 Sarah’s Unlikely Route Into Business
• 00:04:02 The Paris Pub Job That Changed Everything
• 00:06:20 Learning The Business Of Hospitality
• 00:07:15 The Year That Taught Her Everything
• 00:09:22 “Sarah The Small From Stoke”
• 00:10:10 Building The UK’s Largest Indian Restaurant Chain
• 00:11:12 The Hardest Part Of Business And Family
• 00:12:26 Why Doing Both At Once Makes You Mediocre
• 00:14:10 Diarising Your Downtime
• 00:16:40 Life Path Over Career Path
• 00:18:13 Why Holidays Are Business Critical
• 00:20:00 Adam’s First Debrief With Sarah
• 00:21:12 Breaking The Addiction To Your Business
• 00:22:09 The Pie Chart Exercise
• 00:24:48 Everything Has A Relative Value
• 00:26:03 Adam’s Biggest Constraint Was Himself
• 00:27:31 How To Replicate Yourself
• 00:28:36 Why Great Teams Aren’t An Accident
• 00:30:06 Why Grit Isn’t The Answer, Models Are
• 00:30:55 Making Yourself Redundant Is The Goal
• 00:32:10 Building £40M A Year The Hard Way
• 00:33:02 Ads
• 00:33:23 Do You Have A Supportive Partner?
• 00:34:29 Working With Michael: Staying In Your Lanes
• 00:36:43 The Decisions He Talked Her Out Of
• 00:37:27 Dragons’ Den Vs A Year Travelling
• 00:39:08 Why You Have To Do Two Series
• 00:40:10 Walking Away To Keep A Promise
• 00:41:38 The Fork In The Road: Fame Or Family
• 00:43:51 Why Nothing Changes Without Action
• 00:44:34 How To Assess Your Downside
• 00:45:18 Why Fear Is Something To Relish
• 00:46:56 Decision Paralysis And The Investment Trap
• 00:48:30 You Can’t Scale On Your Own
• 00:49:32 The Problem With Hustle Culture
• 00:50:12 Learning What You Don’t Know
• 00:51:08 The £1 Million Question
• 00:52:24 Defining Your Business Model
• 00:53:53 Draw Your Model On Paper
• 00:54:18 Outro

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The following is a verbatim copy of the episode transcript and as such may contain minor grammatical errors.

What would you do if I gave you 1 million pounds to invest in your business?

What a powerful question that is. And that’s a question that I found myself answering five years ago when I was sat opposite Sarah Willingham.

you can’t progress without change. And you cannot change without doing something differently. It’s not possible.

Yeah.

Now, Sarah, who has gone on to become a very close personal friend, a business mentor, somebody that’s coached me, guided me, and somebody who got a tremendous amount of respect for often asked that question when she is looking at investing in businesses, because if a business owner doesn’t know the answer to that question, they probably haven’t got

a simple, replicable business model.

And ultimately, what you want to do is make yourself completely redundant, because then you have got the most replicable, simple model that somebody else can run. Basically, that’s joy.

Because if they did have a simple model, they would know that they can invest that money into one area that would drive the growth of the business. Now, in today’s episode, you’re going to hear me talk about business models with Sarah. We’re going to get deep into it. She’s going to talk about her story of discovering how do you build a scalable model and all of the steps to make it happen.

Why do you need investment? You don’t need investment. You need to sell something. You need to just sell. Just just do it.

Look, this is somebody that I personally have been mentored by. I’ve got tremendous respect, and I know that she’s going to bring you a huge amount of value in today’s episode. So let’s jump on in to today’s episode of Business Growth Secrets.

I think it would be really cool. I know you want to have some conversations and get into some of the businesses, but I think it’d be great if you were to give a little bit of a bit of background on, you know, your journey where you’ve come from, what it’s been like building businesses. You know, how you’ve been able to do the things that you’ve been doing.

I think that’d be really, really cool. So I, I probably wasn’t actually a natural entrepreneur. I wasn’t like, I didn’t I didn’t grow up thinking, oh, I’ve got to be an entrepreneur. I wasn’t surrounded by entrepreneurs. I wasn’t surrounded by people in business. One was a maths teacher. You know, I grew up in Stoke. It was just wasn’t it actually wasn’t as cool then, if I’m being completely honest.

Is it? I think I actually think shows like Dragons Den have made it cooler, and more accessible as well. And much, I guess, easier to start this, fewer barriers to entry. But I was always fascinated with business. Loved it like I, I always found it fascinating that we wore the same brands, that we bought, the same cheese, you know, that we like just we all sang the same.

So I said, jeez, but it was like a cathedral city. Actually, I think of that. Like I just have got in my head like the power of the advertising and the marketing of this brand, you know, brand of cheese. And then we were all singing the same songs to the same adverts that have been on the TV. So like, it’s this sort of power of creating something and then selling it to people.

And I was always fascinated by that. So did terribly in my A-levels, managed to hustle my way onto the course that I wanted to get on to at university. Thank you. Yeah, and it was brilliant. Studied international business and loved that. And for me, I was very, very driven by I wanted to learn about business. I wanted to learn an all round about all rounder, but also really wanted to travel.

Like my dad wouldn’t let me take a gap year. And I was I was determined to travel and so did international business meant that I got to live abroad and study about Britain’s learned another language. It was brilliant, really, really good and actually came out of that and sort of almost by lock, really fell into the business of hospitality.

So I’d always worked in hospitality, but then I kind of fell into the business of hospitality. I was actually, working part time. I was living in Paris at the time as a student, and I was working on a Sunday afternoon in a pub, in a pub called The Frog and Roast Beef, and it just did three, four hours.

I know they’ve got 54 frogs and rose beef. They’ve got 15 now. They’ve actually done really well. It was two lads from who done an MBA at Insead, which is a really good school, and they wanted to grow this brand and I, I literally just worked there on a Sunday afternoon because I’d heard that they pulled the tips and it meant that you could drink there for free all week.

So I was like, brilliant. So that was it. That was like my, my, my weekend job. And at the time I was, I was working at the Paris Stock Exchange. I’d always wanted. It was the last open outcry, trading floor. And I always wanted to wear one of those brightly colored jackets, like on the telly. So I lied to every single person that had a every single business and managed to get a job, actually managed to get two a gave one to my boyfriend as well at the time, but so it was great.

Anyway, Planet Hollywood back in the day, was opening its first restaurant in continental Europe, and they were having an absolute nightmare with the French, and the Americans just culturally did not work at all. The guys from America, these big presidents of this and vice presidents of that, were flying over and landing. And the French would be like on their lunch break, be like, what?

You know, it was just just did not work at all. Anyway, the people who were running the project came to the guise of the frog and roast beef, because they’d also helped them to open the frog and roast beef and said, we are having a nightmare. We’re never going to get their site open. Could you please work for us for for three months?

And the guy said, no, we’re going to open another pub, but there’s this girl who works for us on a Sunday afternoon. You should chat to her, which came as a real surprise to me. And actually, I think it’s one of those things you just never know. You never really know who’s watching and and who’s taking in what you’re doing.

And so anyway, it paid a lot better than a runner on the open outcry floor. And they offered me a job and, and I went to work with them for 12 weeks. And I loved it. I loved it. I started to understand the business of of something that I’d just worked in before, like I’d been a waitress or work behind a bar or whatever.

I started to understand the business, and then they offered me a job, back in London doing international development. And ultimately I then left there and went on to run the international department to Pizza Express. Loved it, got to travel loads, and again, it was all about understanding the business. Then long story short. Promise. Fast forward a little bit, and I’d realized that international development was just not core business to to Pizza Express.

So I thought, actually, I’m, I’m going to leave, I’m going to go and I’m going to go and do something else. And I went to the board of Pizza Express and said, you know, it’s not core to your business anymore. You know, you want to do a management buyout. I’d like to be part of that. I mean, I was too junior, really, even though I was running the international team and they said, no, don’t go, stay and come and work for us.

And it was probably the most significant year, actually, of probably my entire work life is I then went and shared an office with the CEO and the managing director of Pizza Express, and I was in my mid to late 20s. And the reason it was so significant was because I’d held all of these people up on a pedestal and I’d thought, God, this is so complicated, this business stuff, it’s all so brilliant.

And these people are all so clever and it’s so inaccessible. And at the time Pizza Express was, you know, opening 30, 40 sites a year, you know, this was they had absolutely nailed this simple, replicable business model and doing brilliantly. Actually, it was a floated company on the stock market. And during the course of that year, I must have asked.

I mean, I must have driven them insane, actually with with the questions that I asked. But by the end of it, I sat back and went, I actually really understand what you do. I really get this. I understand why you use equity when you use it. Why you why you’re floated the stock market. I understand your capital structure.

I understand when you take out senior debt, why you go to a bank for it, how you manage your your stakeholders and your shareholders, all this stuff that we don’t really talk about in business because we just look at how can I sell more of these? But actually the, you know, the structure behind the business is really important because often more businesses fall over getting that wrong than the other side of it wrong.

And it was learning all of that, that by the end of it I was like, I can do this, I really can. And having held them up on a pedestal and thinking they were so clever and I was like Sarah the Small from Stoke, I kept this little thing on my shoulder, kept saying Sarah the small from Stoke.

I was like, no, no, no, actually Sarah the medium. I could definitely do this. And and that’s what I did. I was, I was really wanted a family. It was going to be it was the most important thing in my life, actually, to be a mom. That was the that was going to be the most defining moment for me.

And it was and is actually the most important thing. And I knew that continuing to, to open restaurants all over the world was just not sustainable. If I wanted to have a family, there was just no way the two were not going to go go together and I and that was my kind of pivotal moment where I was like, you understand what they’ve done and you need to control your diary, Sarah, like you have to control your own time.

And I wanted to make a bit of cash because that gives you freedom, right? Not always. But if you put a whole lot together, it gives you freedom. And that’s when I thought, right, I’m going to do it myself. And that’s what I did. I was I wanted to have the largest chain of Indian restaurants in the UK, because I felt that that was a very, very fragmented part of hospitality.

Everybody loves curry, but there were no chains, there were no brands. And that’s what I thought, you know, create that brand. And that’s what I did. And I did end up having the largest chain of Indian restaurants. And, you know, I moved on and then investing, etc., etc. but that’s how I started. So, you know, I loved my 20s.

I learned and learned and learned and learned and surrounded myself with brilliant people, and then got to the point where I was like, right now, now, now you do something, Sarah, and now you move. And I did. That was a very long answer, wasn’t it? To what was the.

You mentioned, you mentioned the family part, which I think is really, really important. We’ve also got, you know, lots of people in the room that probably have families and are looking to run businesses. I’m sure there’s lots of people that want to have families and run their businesses. What were some of the challenges like that in the beginning when you were building that chain, and what were the things?

Did it? How did it did it drive you? Did it hinder you? Was it like, what? How did you manage that? It’s really hard. Really, really hard. I think it’s the hardest thing. And I think everybody’s balance is different. You know, my my balance is very different than your balance might be. Than your balance might be. It’s.

And you have to learn to feel that. I think when you, you know, when you go too much in one direction, you’ve got to be able to say, this is pulling me too much away from from my values here. This is, this is too far. One of the things that I did learn, I think probably the hard way, actually, as I’m sure everybody does, is to to try and do both in any moment.

Is failure. Like it’s just going to lead to utter disaster? I think you are basically very mediocre and everything. Well, I was, a very mediocre mom or a very mediocre person at work or a very mediocre wife because I was just trying to do it all. So, you know, I’d be on my laptop at the same time as trying to look after a child, as you know, thinking about what was every having fatigue tonight.

So what I learned quite quickly was the importance of of segmenting and actually going, I am working, I am a mom, I am cooking tea, you know, like it’s the separating those. And actually, I mean, everything is always a blurred line, right? In reality of life there are no straight lines, are there? Everything blurs. But trying to make that as clear a definition as I could to be able to say, actually nursery or help at home or husband, you’re on duty.

And then I would leave and and I’m now working. That meant that I was so much more efficient, like so much better at everything. And then the promise to myself that these, these moments with my family are magical, like, really special. And I’m never going to get this back. So be there, like, be in the room, be in that moment, and don’t don’t be sidetracked by the laptop or even the crazy thoughts in your head, right?

If you’re feeding the ducks with your kids, feed the ducks with your kids, or don’t. And I think that’s that was the big lesson for me was, was was learning to do that. And I actually ended up diaries it because, you know, like, I’m sure a lot of people in the room, I, I’m an adrenaline junkie, right. And I feed off that, you know, the, I guess almost the power of, of new things and the excitement within a business.

It’s it’s, it’s, it’s I think it’s probably an essential part, actually, of being an entrepreneur. You’ve got to thrive in that almost crazy environment, which means your head’s always going. So it’s really it’s really it was really important for me to almost force myself. So I actually ended up diaries, downtime, like diaries. Mom alone.

Mom alone alone alone alone.

And you’ve obviously there’s lots and lots I’ve learned of you. One of the things that I’ve observed, having spent a lot of time with you, few things I was, is you definitely do spend a lot of time with your family. In the early years, was there a lot of was there a lot of sacrifice then for the kind of lifestyle that you have now?

Or do you feel that you’ve always kept that balance? How do you think that’s kind of work? Because I know, obviously you spend loads of time with your with Michael and the kids and you know, your family and you seem to you seem to have a lot of, a lot of joy in your life with your family, but you’re still running a business has got thousands of employees.

Yeah. And do you know what I actually always have and I that but that’s important to me. Like, that’s not necessarily right for everybody. But for me it was my why. And because it was the most important thing to me, I, I really felt when I went off track. So I know, I mean, of course everything’s a compromise, right?

So like, it’s not, it’s not completely black and white, but sacrifice is too strong a word, I think. Compromise. Yes. Sacrifice? No. Because that would have gone. I would have felt that I wouldn’t I wouldn’t have been able to sacrifice. And I don’t think you should because you don’t know what tomorrow. I don’t think we know what tomorrow brings.

So I think it is really critical. So. So I think I’ve said this to you before. I don’t believe in a career path. Right? I’ve never believed in it. I don’t even like like the word. I believe in a life path and think your work has to fall into place. And that has never left me that, that, that drive, that because that drive.

The reason I do it is because the life that I want. So I’m not prepared. The journey also has to be good. It’s not about the goal, it’s the journey also has to be the journey that you want. So you’ve got to make it work. It can’t be like, oh, I’m going to sacrifice the next ten years, and then the next ten years after that are going to be great because they won’t be.

And it’s not how. It’s just not how it works. You’ve got to make the these ten years great and they’ve got to make them work. And if that means you go a bit slower, that’s okay. If it means you find a different way of finding the balance, that’s also okay. And it isn’t easy. And I meant that when you asked a question like when I said it’s really hard, I honestly think it’s the hardest thing to get right.

I really do because you it’s an internal battle really. And only, you know, only you know your lines. But I, I constantly recalibrated constantly. And I’m also a big believer in holidays, as, you know, like really think it’s important to take time is a big believer in holidays.

I actually think that who’s having a lot of holidays though a few of you left hands. Who wants some more? I actually think holidays are business critical. Yeah, I really do, because you’ve got like actually days like this I think a business critical a holidays business crystal it’s taking yourself out of your life to have a moment where you kind of free your, free your brain space.

You know, I’m a big walker, right? This is walking is my thing. And that’s what I do when I walk, I, I try and empty my head so I don’t listen to podcasts. Actually, I don’t listen to music. I don’t have input in my ears. What I’m trying to do is empty it. And the reason I’m trying to empty it is because I’m trying to free up space.

And when I free up space, that’s when everything falls into place for me. That’s when one I’m calmer, the adrenaline leaves my system and I make much, much, much more balanced and better decisions about my life and about my work. And that’s what I’m constantly trying to do. And again, like, I don’t now because it’s second nature now, but for years I diaries that like that actually doing it.

And I think that’s really important when you when you have a family or whatever it is that you’re trying, whatever it is that balances you is, is forcing that balance so that it isn’t a sacrifice and that it doesn’t feel like a sacrifice because it’s sacrifice that does a hard word. It’s interesting, though, because you what you’re mentioning about diaries, it’s still a discipline to have the discipline to diaries, your time, diaries, your time with your family diaries, your time walking all of these different things.

And it’s also self-awareness to be able to say, actually, I need that. Yes. And I think that’s a lot of people don’t have that self-awareness. They just keep running and they keep running and running until they break. Right where I definitely the thing that since I remember the first few things when I started working with Sarah, the first thing after London Kensington, first thing we did is we had a debrief and about and actually I had a little bit of a hangover from a previous business that I’d run a little bit like, I should have done better, you know, beating myself up a little bit and you and Michael helped me overcome that.

So first thing, second thing we then did is design my life path. What do you actually want your life to look like? That was the next thing that we did, which was really, really good. And then you may and actually before my business improved. And this is the important thing which I think we’re coaching is before my business improved, I improved as a dad, which is which is an important thing, isn’t it.

Right. You know, before because like the results that you get from coaching are not always just the business. It’s like improving you as a person, the person you become. And I think that was one of the first things that happened to me. So why did that? Because I got much more diaries, much more incisive when I’m with Samuel Moussaoui, when I’m doing this other stuff, whatever, switch my phone off, focus, don’t care about work.

I’m on it. And actually, I broke those chains of addiction because I think a lot of business owners are addicted to their business because they like the adrenaline, the feeling. And then you got me to go gym. Still don’t like you for that, right? And then I did. I made you buy an Apple Watch. Yeah, yeah I did, I did make him by that.

So I started getting fit and and that helped me to get my, my brain clearer. That’s before we even started to welcome that. As before we even looked at the business. Because I honestly think that question that you’ve just asked there about that it it’s that self-awareness is, is once you nail that actually your life will fall into place.

But it’s, it’s you know, I don’t know if you have you ever talked about the pie chart? Yeah. That we did. Yeah. Well not entirely, but one of the things. Yeah. Are you saying. Yeah. Because one of the things I used to do, if you’ve got a whiteboard notes, fine, I can I’ll just, just imagine it.

Yeah. One of the things that Mike and I used to do years ago, and again now it is more like second, this makes us sound really boring, but I promise with loads of fun is at the beginning of the year, a calendar year we used to sit and reflect on previous year. We take like a day out, go out to stay in a hotel or whatever, reflect on the previous year, but then also look at what we wanted this year to look like.

And in the in the context of time, which is the most valuable thing that we have. Right. And it’s the thing you can’t buy, you can’t trade in it like you can’t. It’s, it’s, it’s right. Now, what are we doing in this moment? And what are we all what do we choose to do with this really precious thing that we have time?

And we used to sit and draw. We sit with a draw, a pie chart. So we put a big circle down on a big piece of a huge piece of paper and we’d say, right, what do we want this year to look like in terms of time? And the reason we did it in a pie chart was because it showed the relativity of the decision making.

So you might go, I just want to spend the whole year on holiday. Brilliant. 360 degrees holiday. And then you go, well, okay. What about, we need to be fit this year. We need to, you know, we we’ve just had kids. We both need to lose some weight. We need to get fit. Okay, well, we’ll take a little bit of time getting fit.

The kids are maybe at school, or we want to be parents, or we want to spend great time with the kids. Mom, you might want to write a book. Write a book? I want to be a good daughter. My parents aren’t getting any younger. Want to spend some time with them? I’d like to learn a new skill.

Anyway. You go through all the stuff, basically that takes up your life and the stuff that you want to do. And funnily enough, often like work, if you think of it in work, gets quite far down on the list when you actually think about the things that you want to do. Now, often when we as entrepreneurs, we actually love what we do and we should love what we do.

So actually that forms part of the pie charts. We’re like, I want to build something, I want to, I want to see my definition of success within the business context. What does that look like? I want to make progress on that. And actually I’m prepared to spend quite a lot of time on it. So that takes up quite a big chunk of your pie chart.

But what happens is everything has a relative value. So so every time you put something into the pie chart, it’s got it. What’s prepared? What am I prepared to lose. So okay, I absolutely cannot write a book this year. That’s insane. Book goes out the window. Well, really, have I really got time to get fit? I’m not prepared to compromise that.

The fitness has to stay. But what you do is you go. You start to look at how much time you prepared to spend on your business, how much time you prepare to be a mom, how much time you spend to be with friends or alone or whatever. But you start to look at all the things that are important to you and the relativity of them all.

And actually it forms such an it was so powerful to us because it kind of forced the framework. So all those times that addiction comes in and you’re like, I want to work on my business. I want to work on my business, want to work on my business. And you sit and look at this pie chart and you go back to it like every month.

You kind of have a look at it. You’re like, whoa, I am way off. Like, I haven’t been to the gym, you know, I’ve not done this. I’ve not done that. I’ve not done the other. I’ve not taken a holiday. I’ve not. So actually you start to it helped. It really helped us in the early days to recalibrate because what it did was give us the relativity of time.

And what we found is if we could get the other stuff functioning well, actually, the business stuff fell into place. Well, I definitely I did that exercise with you. Yeah. I think your house did it, and I what I found was that I wasn’t willing to compromise on time with Sammy. I had to make changes. And then we looked at the constraints.

We started to look at my model, didn’t we? And and then the first constraint we found. Don’t know if you remember. Do you remember what the first constraint was? Was it the in terms of the actual business model? Was it the the funnel? Well, it was me. Was it. Yeah. Well yeah yeah yeah. Well obviously but I was seeing we’d already done all of that.

But he was the problem. That’s the nutshell. Yeah. So the constraint initially was made that the business couldn’t grow because too much was running through me, you know. And and that often is the is what we did. And then I don’t you remember I was out on the road and what we did is we combined essentially my life path with understanding that actually, I need to come out of the road, I need to record, do a webinar.

Remember I recorded that and then all of a sudden then I started training people and we started to grow, and then we started to build the other pieces of the model out, because the challenge with one of the first things we sat down and talked about. So, so after going through, I guess, you as an individual in your life, and once we sort of got that sorted, we were like, right on the business.

What do you want to achieve? And when we looked at what you wanted to achieve was actually not possible to replicate you. That was that’s the challenge is how how when when something is so dependent on your brilliance, how do we grow a business? And that’s when we looked at okay, you need to have, as you’ve just said there, you need to have the webinars.

You need to make sure that you’ve got you surround yourself with really brilliant people that actually can you can also train and that you can also work with, and that you start to look at the replicability of what it is that you’re producing. Actually, you can help more and more businesses. We need to go, what are your superpowers?

What are your what are you bringing to. Let’s keep you there and let’s see over here how we can replicate you without you actually standing in the room. And one of the biggest compliments we get nowadays on the business, it’s got nothing to do with me to do with the team. People will say, how have you got all these good people like, you know, you’ve got your Damian’s, you’ve got Ross and you’ve got Steve, and then you’ve got Andrew and you’ve got all these other people coming through.

And you know, Anna’s now be part of the team and all these different people. And it is all down to actually looking at purposely building out and looking at the different constraints and removing them, as obviously we talked about this earlier. Right? Yes or no team. Yeah. So I’m trying to trying to show that I’ve been through this process myself as well.

Right. And you know, the the outcome of that is that I got more of my time back. I could be better with my family, could have more holidays and make more money and build a better business. Right. Which if you do it the right way. But I was one of the things I was saying to everyone earlier is I always remember now what I mentioned is Michael actually obviously Sarah’s other half.

I will definitely I want to ask you on this in a minute about relationships and the importance. But I always remember when I sat down with Sarah Michael, first time I sat down with him, I said to him a few times, it’s like I’m not lazy and I talk a little bit. I was like, I’m not lazy, don’t mind doing it.

I’m not lazy anywhere in. At one point he went, so Sarah’s really nice. Michael’s like, can be quite hard, right? In a good way, right? And he’s like, Adam, will you? Why do you keep saying that? I’ll say because I’m not. And he goes, yeah, but like you’re saying that like it’s a good thing. I said, well, it is a good thing I’m not lazy.

And he went, no, no, no. But I think you misunderstand. And what I didn’t realize, and this is what I was trying to say to everyone earlier, I don’t even remember this. Actually. Remember this.

It was it was a me and him moment. And what had happened is I had got caught up believing the only way to grow a business is through sheer grit and work ethic. Remember it? Yeah. And and I was addicted to it. It’s like I have to drive it. It was only in that moment I started to break that and realized that that was a realization for me.

It’s like, actually, it’s not about it’s about having the right system. It’s about having the right model. And then we spent probably the next three years talking about model model, model monitor and model model model model. And that obviously helped me with the break from you think it’s because I’ve always defined success when any business that I’ve been part of is making myself redundant, and this is in any, every aspect of the business.

So you’ll start off when you start your business, you’re doing everything, you’re doing the big investor presentations and you’re cleaning the toilets in the afternoon like it’s a whole lot. And then actually you think, well, I can continue to do the investor presentations now I’ll train the sales team. I’ll also do the books, but somebody else can clean the toilets.

And this, this goes on and on. As you as your business improves, you find somebody else who is as good or better than you at the job.

And ultimately, what you want to do is make yourself completely redundant, because then you have got the most replicable, simple model that somebody else can run. Basically, that’s joy.

If you’ve got like if you’re trying to sell that water, if it’s not reliant on you getting up every single morning for the machine to keep turning, it’s constantly trying to make yourself redundant.

And that’s what we were saying. How do we how do we say, as business owners, what is our superpower? What are we absolutely brilliant at? Keep doing more of that. And how can we replace ourselves with people who are brilliant at the stuff that we’re not great at 100%? And that for me, the big learning, if you imagine this I’d built my first business, I built for a decade.

I built it to 40 million pounds a year, and I really didn’t understand constraints, business model, all the importance of it. That’s crazy, isn’t it? Really? I just did it through just effort, really. Like, just like working as hard as I possibly could. And I think when I met yourself and Michael, you got me to see that. Actually, we can do this in a much more profitable way, a much more simple way.

And you don’t have to do all the work.

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How many want to do less work? Right? Let’s send you with it. But it was like a wake up call for me, for sure. And both of you had a big, big contribution to that in I think relationships is another thing. There’s obviously going to be people in the room that have got very supportive partners that lift them up and support them, help them grow.

There’s going to be people in the room don’t have supportive partners or supportive family. I think that that you’ve you’ve obviously got and I think this is a thing, you can make an observation, but you never obviously, I’ve seen you a lot with Michael and you’re great, you know, together and you support each other. But no doubt there’s been a lot of work that’s probably gone into that, isn’t there?

Yeah. I mean, I think all relationships are work, right? Like, I don’t think it’s just, you know, it’s a I have a really great marriage. But I mean, my God, it’s work. Like. Yeah, it doesn’t just happen like it is. Again. It is compromise. It’s effort. It’s support. It’s it’s not always being the first. You know, it’s it’s not always it’s about being selfish in a good way, but also about being selfless in a good way and understanding that balance.

And when we work together. I’ve always worked with Michael. So there is I mean, we’ve gone through times when I’m like, I’m actually going to kill him. I think, you know, it’s like I got it’s just he’s the most frustrating human. And then now there is nobody on the planet I would work with other than him. Like he’s just he is just exceptional.

And where it has worked really well is us understanding kind of our lanes. And I think as time goes on, we’ve understood that we we whilst we merge, you know, there is a blurred line. There’s, there’s a merger of us understanding each other’s superpowers. That is just stuff that he is just much better than me at, much better than me.

And so when now, now, when he goes into a room to deliver what he is going to deliver. I don’t I almost don’t even need to know. And now and ask him how it’s gone. I don’t ask him for the business. Ask him for him, because I know he’s going to do a better job than I would.

There’s other things where I’m like, can we just have a chat and a sense check before you go in and set off a bomb? Fine. And vice versa. You know, and sometimes he enters my lane and I push him back a little bit. No, no, that’s my department. But we work really well together. But it’s communication.

And actually, Michael taught me that I have to hand it to him. Michael’s a very good communicator and also very self-aware, which helps. But, you know, I, I’m a I’m, I’m naturally a real doer. Very action. Like, just get it done. Get it done, get it done. And Michael, sometimes painfully and sometimes a bit of over chat, if I’m being honest.

But he likes to talk it through. And he has actually taught me the importance of that. He and I have really learned from him, that has there been anything like is there any. Because obviously you’re done. I was talking about the rest. It was the restaurant. The first show. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, the restaurant. And then obviously we had dragons then and, and all the other stuff you’ve done and you are, you are all over the place as well.

Like doing you obviously getting booked all the time to, to gigs and you speak on big stages and doing all this stuff. So you’ve got a very you’re doing stuff all the time. Has there been times where, you know, like, has there been decisions that you didn’t want you to do? Has there been conflict in time? So that’s a that’s a really good question.

It really didn’t want me to do strictly and I didn’t do it. Yeah. Yeah. He really didn’t want me to do that actually. Well I didn’t oh because everyone runs off with a. Yeah, I think that was what I think of what you could have had.

We could kept him on for the books.

And actually. So when I was doing Dragon’s Den, we I this whole thing where my dad had said I couldn’t have a gap year and I’d love to travel, right. So I, my kids were all between the age of five and ten at the time and, well, a bit younger actually, when I first started doing dragons and I really wanted to travel, I wanted to take a year, take the kids and just bottle this period of time that I would just never forget.

And Michael read and want to go to begin with. So I was I was a nightmare. I made him like a little scrapbook pretending that that was. This was our year. Happy Christmas. I got the kids to leave little notes going. Daddy, I really want to go traveling. I didn’t like, let me tell you that this nightmare.

Little, little subtleties everywhere. Little things on the fridge. No, he’s a nice picture of a beach in the Philippines. Anyway, in the end, he came round. He always comes round at the end. He came round. So when I was asked to do Dragon’s Den, we were quite close to this year where we were. It was a year before we were planning on going traveling, because to do anything like that, let me tell you, to make yourself redundant from your own life is bloody difficult.

Like the universe conspires for you to stay in lane and keep going. So to come off track is really hard. So we were unraveling ourselves from our life as much as possible and make this was even. I mean, it’s before Covid, right? So it was like it wasn’t as easy to do stuff online, but we still did do online and we were able to fly back for board meetings if we needed to, etc., etc..

Anyway, I said to him when I was offered Dragon’s Den, I was like, I can’t do one series because when you do one series of anything in TV or when you do something once, you don’t really enjoy it. You bit like rabbit and headlights. No one knows who you are. You don’t sit comfortably in the seat. You need, you need in order to enjoy any time, right?

And doing something like Dragon’s Den, you’ve got to do a second series, because in the second series, everybody knows who you are. You win the right bids, you know, like it’s the first series. Everybody may sort of come in with a Deborah or Peter cap on the red because nobody knew me, Tuca or Nick, because we were all new.

The second series, people came in and if it was like the Craft Gin Club gin, they were like, we want Sarah, you know, so it it was you need to do the same. All the restaurants and hospitality wanted you, didn’t they? And booze, funnily enough, actually, but the director consumer stuff, I was naturally kind of one those bits because that is my area of expertise.

Anyway, that meant as putting off the trip around the world for one year, and I was like, I if I do it, I have to do two years. This is a date that we will go traveling and and when it came to me leaving, then leaving Dragon’s Den, they were so I mean, they were great. They were like, you know, will shorten the filming time.

You can fly back or, you know, and I was like, no, absolutely. I have made a commitment to my family. I am, I’ve done my two series. It was amazing. Thank you. But it was a lot. It was actually a lot to walk away from. And I mean, Michael would have been he never needed to be because we were actually on the same page.

But he absolutely would have been uncompromising about that. Like it was that was the commitment. If you’re going to do this, which is a big ask for the family, actually, because I didn’t want to be famous. You know, you still need to be able to shout at your kids in Aldi without anybody caring. And I was like, this is my worst nightmare.

Somebody’s going to care, you know, like, and then I didn’t because you only really get sort of famous, I guess, after the second series. And we didn’t really feel it that much after the first series. But after the second series, you, you could feel it. And I was away traveling. So we definitely that that was the tipping point at which had I have yeah.

There’s part of you that you know the ego, right. If you’re being honest with yourself, you know, it’s it’s a fork in the road and you can like I had that option. I could have gone down that path, which was much more celebrity, much more strictly, much more all that stuff, more presenting, more TV. Or I could have gone down the path that I went down, which was I’m still me family, businesses.

This is where I get my joy from. I can still dance on some, not always, but dance on the table with my mates and nobody really cares. But, you know, it was definitely a fork in the road and had I have wanted the other path, there is no world in which Michael Order supported that, do you think?

Definitely not. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He wouldn’t he would not have wanted me to go down that path. So. And that I’m sure that probably did form part of my decision making. Like I probably knew that. I mean, I didn’t want to go down that path, but it had I have wanted to he wouldn’t have it would have been a definite no from him for sure.

He didn’t like that world. No. And again, it sounds like compromise, right? So yeah, I mean, I hate to say it because I but it kind of everything kind of is. Yeah. You know, even just going back to the pie chart, it’s all a compromise, right? You know, you take a bit more from here, a bit less from here.

Yeah, absolutely. In terms of focus and building a business and building a business model, what do you think is what would you say to everyone here today? We’ve been talking about removing constraints. We’ve been talking about the business model, building the halo effect, building your lead gen type of funnel. What do you think is the message you would get across all these different business owners in the room?

Because there’ll be some people in the room that, you know, a very early in the very fearful. So maybe you’ve got a message around fear. There’s some that are very ambitious and ready to ready to go. What would you say to them? What would your messaging be? So, you know, I, I said earlier, like I’m a real action person and really, really believe in action.

So I think can I ask why you believe in that? Because I don’t think everybody says that, but I definitely am as well. But I’d like to I’d like to understand why do you believe in action so much? Because I just you cannot progress. You

you can’t progress without change. And you cannot change without doing something differently. It’s not possible.

Yeah.

Perfect. So for me, you have to. You have to take action in order to do any like to get anywhere, to make any change, to make any progress. I think it’s not just action for action sake. You have to. I always think when I’m faced with a path or a decision, or should I or shouldn’t I?

I look at my downside and not everybody looks at it like this. It’s just this is just what works for me. I look at my downside and I’m like, can I andel it? Yeah. You know, I’m not. It will it? Is it my health I’m playing with? Is it my family? Is it like the roof over my head?

No. Is it okay if it goes wrong? Am I, you know, losing some money, potentially my reputation, all of those things. I’m like, okay, it’s a bit scary. And I think it’s good to be scared, by the way, because I think that means we’re coming out of a comfort zone and we’re doing things differently.

I think fear is is a is something to be relished.

And I think if you don’t feel fear, it’s like, what are we all doing? If we don’t, you know, you’ve got to get that kick and you, Tommy, and like, oh, that’s when, you know, I think you’re about to break through. Yeah. There’s going to be change, you know, and it’s when some people recoil, but then it’s fight or flight, isn’t it.

Right. But it’s I think the critical thing for people who do feel that. So there are people that that retreat at that point. And I understand it because it is scary. And I think if you are one of those people, come back to again, okay, what is my downside here? Really? You really come down to it. What can go wrong and when?

And be honest with yourself. Can you handle it like your worst case scenario? Can you handle it? Worst case scenarios you fail. What does failure mean? Like what? What does it look like? What impact does it actually have on you? Can you handle it? And if the answer is you know what, if I dig deep here? Actually it doesn’t sound great.

But yes, I can pick myself up from that. Then just do it. Just get on with it and just do it. I mean, I remember I’ve started I think I’ve, I’ve sat here before with, talking to some business owners, you know, another one of your events and one of the biggest things that I think so many people have is like, it’s it’s like decision paralysis.

It’s like, it’s it’s this, you know, and some people say to me, I need to get investment. I’m trying to get investment in my business. And I’m like, why you talk to me? I need to get. But why?

Why do you need investment? You don’t need investment. You need to sell something. You need to just sell. Just just do it.

You know? Just get out and sell one bar of soap. Just do it, then sell two, then sell for, then sell ten, then sell a hundred. You know, and it’s you don’t need investment at all actually. You just need to sell the bars of soap or whatever, you know. And I think that’s that I understand the fear and I think it’s okay.

We can all talk very openly about the fear. And I think it’s very, very normal. And if you feel it, it’s a really good thing. Embrace it. It’s great, but don’t let it paralyze you. Yeah. And then that’s definitely a message for, I think, a really good message for a lot of people in the room. There’s also some really, really good business like some businesses that are crushing it.

Sarah, in this room, actually, there’s some people that are early and that need that message. I mean, because if you do nothing, you surely will get what? Okay. So you need to take action. That’s very simple for a lot of people to push forward and move towards where you want to be. There’s some people in this room that are doing a lot.

Yeah. What’s the secret? I mean, I’ve been over the model, but what is the secret? And we can go deep into that to scaling to, to be in because there’s people in there doing a million. They’ll want to go, ten people doing 500,000 of up on air. They’ll want to go to a million. What do you would you.

I think there’s two answers to that. Firstly, can’t do it on your own. Like you’ve probably got your business to the point at which, you’ve, like, pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed, and now you’re like, now what? You know, I’m almost stagnating at this particular point. You just can’t do it on your own. And if you think you can, it’s it’s not going to work.

And I hope even sitting in an environment like this, you realize you can’t do it on your own. That’s important. Not so many people think they can like. And I think that I thought that if I’d have met you when I run my first business, I think I sold it for 100 million. Yeah. Because I was just like.

It was almost like a bit of arrogance to being like, oh, I want to show everyone, but it’s stupid. Yeah, it is, it is. And I think a lot of people think it’s just really cool to say, oh, I’m so busy. I do 120 hour weeks and you think, what? Oh my God, that’s just not cool at all.

But that is the problem is there is a bit of hustle culture out there, a bit of a bit of Instagram. Oh, I’m up at 4 a.m.. I was like, you know, I’m asleep. Yeah. Have a good one. Yeah, exactly. Enjoy your. Yeah. On your treadmill at 4 a.m..

So. Yeah, I think you can’t do it yourself. And I think there is a point. Definitely. There’s an inflection point within a business, like a tipping point in a business where you need to be smarter. And that’s that, I think is often the constraint to growth is that you not knowing that you you’re kind of in the way of the business and you know, where do you find great people?

Obviously environments like this, you need to know what you don’t know. And often we don’t even know what. We don’t even know that there’s something to know that you don’t know. And do you know what I mean? Like, you need to surround yourself with good people so that often the holes that you will fall into in a business are actually the same.

It doesn’t. I’ve seen so many businesses over the years. I’ve been part of so many businesses over the years. It’s all the same. So you need to have good people around you that kind of go right. This is how you grow over here. This is what you need to look out for over here. And it’s not going to be every single one of them.

And then some of the holes you will still fall into, maybe because you didn’t listen, or maybe because it was just a new hole, but you will fall into some of them. So I think that’s an important thing is to, is to surround yourself with really good people and know learn what you don’t know. So it would be open to that.

And then the second thing is, I think one of the really good questions to ask yourself as a business owner is if if I gave you £1 million, what would you do with it? You just told them I go on holiday for a year.

Give up.

But actually, if you could answer that business, if you could answer that question within the context of your business, the chances are you already have a very simple, replicable business model because you know exactly what you’re going to do with that million quid. You know what you’re going to spend it on, and you know what? You’re going to get it back for it.

A lot of people already stage business can’t answer that question, or they answer it wrong or they answer it wrong. Yeah. And a lot of people might go, well, I’m going to build out a T, I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that. And I’m like, yeah, but what am I getting back from £1 million? Like what?

What where is the return on investment for it. Where’s where’s the business model. And I think it’s the reason I think that’s such a powerful question. Somebody asked me that year and years ago, and I was fundraising for something. I can’t remember what it was. Got £1 million. What would you what would you do with it? And I thought it was such a great question.

And I now asked people that same question because I think it tells you the thinking of where you are at within your business. And what you need to do is you need to define your model. So what is it that you’re what is it that you have here? What? So with this million quid, I’m spending it up here.

Chances are I’m getting customers in some form or other. And how does that then convert into sales. And what comes out here. Because if it’s a million in and a million out to basic million in and 500 grand out real problem, you know, it’s £1 million and 5 million out winner. You know, it’s like how what is that circle within the business.

So I think it’s you know I don’t think it’s as simple as define you because and usually it’s because the small business owner has never had any business training there. Trial and error. They’re guessing, aren’t they, as to what it should be. And they’re just like, well, I’ll give this a go and give that a go, see if this works and see if that works.

It’s like a discovery phase, isn’t there, of that different part. Where that’s where I think the coaching comes in, have been able to say, well, this is exactly what it should be, almost drawing it. Like, do you remember we sat and drew it, didn’t we? We actually sat and I’ve been teaching them.

I’m talking about, you know. Yeah, we actually drew it. We drew it. So it was, it was something visible that you could constantly come back to and go, you know. No, that’s your model. That’s that is it. That’s you spend a pound here and that comes out here that, that is that is what you’re doing here. And I think for every business trying to define that, things to get is this is why.

Because that’s what building a business is.

Well, I hope you enjoyed hearing from Sarah today and you enjoyed that interview. She is just a tremendous entrepreneur. I love working with her. I’ve had many, many of our events, and we also have lots of other dragons that come to our events. And the next episode we’ve got coming up is another dragon from Dragon’s Den.

He is an AI expert. He is changing the game in AI and he is Pierce. If you enjoyed today’s episode, you’re going to love the next one, so make sure you are subscribed and if you would like to help us out and give back to other business owners, go on over to the. Go on over to go on over.

And if you would like to give back and help other business owners, if you could give this podcast a five star rating on Apple or Spotify, it would in turn help that grow and get it out in the algorithm. I appreciate you. Thank you for listening, and thank you in advance for reviewing the podcast. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode with peers.

Lenny. Nice.