We were getting a bit lost
We know we have a good product. We know we have a good service. We know that we can do what we say we can do. But that wasn't translating into getting customers talking to us. And I suppose from the journey of going through a couple of Business Development Managers, and not getting any traction, I was very sceptical of taking on another one.
Some people were saying, "Just get another person." And I was sitting back looking at this going, "We've tried this twice, if you take it over the course of a year, between salary and expenses and everything else, you're talking about 150 grand of something that just clearly wasn't working." And for me, keeping on just going at that again, with no guidance on it, was just a recipe for disaster and a recipe for wasting more money.
We're doing something wrong here, and there's some part of this business that we're failing on.
And that was really the driving force behind starting to talk to you. And, as you know, when you're so involved in the business, it's very hard to see what you're doing wrong or what you're not doing right. And that's where I wanted someone like yourself to come in and take a look from the outside, and use your experiences to say, "Right, well here's what I think you are doing, or what you need to be doing."
I'm very sceptical about consultants
It's happened before where you've seen consultants come in and it's nearly, "There's my next cash pinata to whack." Right from the start of Regen Robotics, I have been 100% anti-consultants, because I find, you bring a consultant in to do something, they nearly own that part of the business, and they're always managing it.
And what I have seen before in business, is when a problem happens then, it's, "Ring up the consultant to come in and fire fight the problem." And I don't agree with running a business like that, because I think you should have the skills In-house.
If I hadn’t known about yourself, I would have been sceptical about just going out to the market looking for someone to help. But having talked to different people that had worked with you before, and from having sat in meetings with you before, where I sat back and thought, "There's something in this, there's definitely something here that's completely different thinking."
I've seen the success of what you’ve done before, so it was an obvious step to take to say, "Right, well there's Aurelius we know who it is, we know what they're capable of." So it was a fairly comfortable decision.
The work we've done has been crucial
When I sit back now, and look at what we've come up with over the workshops, it's in the back of your head all the time now. You can sit down, and when you're sitting talking to someone, be it in an interview, in a presentation, or in a conversation, you're thinking, "Is this the customer we want to work with?" As opposed to, "Well, we're in front of them now, we best make the sale." So it just brings focus to every conversation.
And you know, we put together that 90 day action plan in terms of the marketing strategy, sales, recruitment strategy, around that whole, and this is how we're going to make it come to life. You know where you're going.
It's very easy to get bogged down in the day to day stuff and I think that's what was happening to me certainly at a lot. I was just getting stuck into the day to day stuff to a certain extent because that's the easy thing. I know how to do that. I can do that all day long but that wasn't sorting out the long-term problems.
Having 90 day rocks now, and having that structure on it, leaves me that, "Yes, I do the day to day running of the business, but I also have my eye on what I need to have done in the next three months." And it just gives me a drive on getting all them other things, that actually have to be done for the long term benefit of the business, it's getting them done now, as opposed to saying, "I'm too busy. Sometime when it's quiet, I'll go and look at something like that."
I think the approach you have, it's different
I've seen consultants coming in, done the job, went out again and think they’ll be back next year to do the same job again. And that always left me very sceptical of having consultants come in and taking the knowledge away with them again, as opposed, I suppose, to what you’ve done with us. It's teaching us about what we're missing. That's a massive difference.
I suppose, the one thing I would say, and anyone that knows me would know, is my scepticism of consultants, and of having someone coming in and telling you how to run your business.
At the start of this, and when I started thinking about it, I thought, 'no, it's fine for certain industries, but our business is different than that. It's not that type of a business. So you can get stuck into that mindset of, "Well, it's actually a different thing than they're probably used to dealing with, so they wouldn't really know how to help us in this."
Where, I suppose, the approach you're taking is the same approach as I take to tank cleaning. You just think you've a different tank. I know you've the same tank. And I know how to sort your tank as well as I know how to sort everyone else's tank. So, it's the same approach. And that's what I would say to anyone – you think your business is different, but it isn’t really.
I'd recommend you to anyone
But especially somone like myself who gets stuck into what they’re good at, who’s great at the, "How to do things." And the fire fighting and the solving of problems, but not good at getting time to themselves to stand back and look at, "Where's this business going?"
We’ve an idea in the back of our heads about where the business is going, but aren’t actually doing anything long term, to actually get it there. We think we are because we're working hard, and it's nearly the old adage of the busy fool, we're running round being really, really busy, but long term, we're not getting ourselves to where we want to be.
Everybody thinks they're doing the best, and they are doing the best that they know, but I think every owner should just take the time out to do this even if you might think you're too busy to do it.
And if you are too busy to do it, you definitely need to do it. Because you shouldn't be that stuck, you shouldn't be that involved, and if you are that involved, you definitely need to do it because you definitely need to learn how to take a step back and start looking at things in a long term, and working for that.