The most important things to take your business up to the ‘next level’?

Grant Leboff:      Lara’s book “More Balls than Most” has hints and tips and ideas for success, and that’s really what I wanted to talk to you about today. We’ve got lots of business owners out there who are starting businesses, or they’ve got businesses, but they want to take them to the next level. What would you say to them? What are the most important things they should be looking at doing?

Lara Morgan:      So scary. When you start to realise you’ve got something about you and it’s working and you think, “OK, I don’t want to be on my own anymore”. It’s very lonely isn’t it, and I did that for two years… Painful. Then obviously you think you’ve got this gem of an idea, and I’ve never, by the way, seen the gem of an idea end up being the business…

Grant Leboff:      A hundred percent.

Lara Morgan:      … as it will be and as it will evolve, because if the market changes, you change with it. So success wise, I think multiple, multiple, multiple skill sets. But listening to the customer from the outset so that you can adapt and be flexible, that’s a real advantage for a small business. I think the success of – this is so hard – you can say it, but it’s much harder to do; employ superbly talented people from the outset if you can.

I was extremely lucky with some of the recruitment decisions I made, but also when you recruit those people, treat them with respect and set down some very clear standards, and the ‘vision and the values’, is how business calls it, which tells them what you want to do…

And tell them where you’re going, and ironically, they’ll probably help you go in that direction. But so many of us forget to communicate; ‘actually this is what the business does,  this is our unique thing’ and actually, ‘this is what we really like doing’. And we’re going to celebrate a bit if we keep doing it, and doing it well, and we’re going to share in the profits.

I think all of those things are really important and I think that when I look back, being honest, success is bloody hard work. So don’t be deluded that this is going to happen and that it’s a part time proposition. If you really want to run a business, and you want it to be an asset that has value, it’s not, therefore, a lifestyle company.

Think very, very clearly about the fact that you’re going to need some help. The family are going to need to understand it. You’re going to miss some children stuff, you aren’t probably going to have much of a life balance – that’s a reality check – to get to the other side, which is hugely rewarding for some people and a great honour. There will be very bad and lonely days.

Grant Leboff:      Absolutely.

Lara Morgan:      Also help in the market, the mentoring and those sort of things that nowadays are much more available.

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