Grant Leboff: Guy, in the book you quote the famous James Carville slogan from Clinton's campaign 'It's the economy stupid' and talking about prioritising profit. But what I thought was interesting is talking about the pace, because I think people often think oh we just make as much money as we can as quickly as possible, but actually, it's a bit more nuanced than that I think from where you are coming.
Guy Rigby: I think it is actually. I think it's the type of business you're trying to build, it's dependent on that. If you look at old fashioned businesses that were formed a hundred years ago, even 25 years ago, pre-Internet really, people tended to build businesses. They would start with something, they would open a shop and then think that was pretty good - I've got a bit of cash in the bank so I'll open another one - and that was the way it was. And actually some of those businesses have become very nice large businesses as a result, whereas, the modern way of doing things is to say let's get there as quickly as we can, and what we're going to do is, we're going to invent something, then we're going to roll it out fast as we can. We can raise lots of money and probably sell it. It's all become, kind of, concertinaed down into a much shorter time frame.
I think that a traditional business still needs time to build. And if you don't want to lose control of it by raising too much money, and giving away too much equity, then the steady growth route is the way forward. However if you're going to open a company like Twitter, for example, then actually it's all about audience - and you have to go fast because to get any impact you've got to go from a hundred thousand users to a million users to 10 million users – really, really, fast and the only way to do that is by raising loads of money. So, if you want to stay in control - right? - go the slow, steady route and probably run a slow steady business. A more traditional business.
Grant Leboff: And how do you manage that pace of growth? Because growth can be the most dangerous time for a business can't it, when you are extending yourself... So what are the things that business can do to try to manage that growth?
Guy Rigby: Well and I think any business, any entrepreneur, who has an ambition wants to go as fast as they can. Right? So I think take that as read. In order to go as fast as they can... I have one business that threw off so much cash, they didn't need any help from anybody. So for him it was just getting the right management team, but actually, generally it's management and it's money. So those are the two things you need to go fast, in a business... to go faster than the business would normally allow.
Grant Leboff: And getting the right team?
Guy Rigby: The management is key. Right, at the end of the day. I call it in my book a call about ‘professionalising the business’. Professionalising the business means that you realise that Dot, who used to do the accounts in year one, probably isn't the right person to be the finance director of the company, now that you're turning over 10 million a year. And you just have to keep professionalising every aspect of the business as you go, and employing the very best people you can.
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