We hear the word ‘sustainability’ a lot these days. It’s everywhere. In the news, in government memos and policy fact sheets, in NGOs and NPOs’ mission statements.

From sustainable economic development that will better our global future to the small everyday investment in the Green idea on an individual level, it’s clear that we can’t go on as before. We need to reconsider our use of resources and minimise the harmful effects on Nature. Full stop. So, we’ve long gone beyond talking trends only, here.

And of course, businesses are playing a big role in all this. As business owners, I believe we need to lead by example. It’s no good to claim that you’re thinking green, recycle at home, use a reusable grocery bag when shopping and so forth… But at the same time, you don’t make the same effort when it comes to running your business.

Competitive innovation in business – moving forward in a sustainable way

I’ve talked about this before in great detail. It’s foolish not to put technology and innovation to good use. So, who are the winners in business today, with regards to the global sustainable development narrative? These are the entrepreneurs, who have a deep understanding of all the aspects of sustainability. In other words, we’re not talking about quick marketing tricks and ‘green’, ‘organic’, ‘eco’ logos here.

No. You need to delve deeper. Ok, you invest in innovation to reduce your carbon footprint and this way, contribute to the environment, but also, you need to look into the social and economic aspects of sustainability, when it comes to your business practices, as well. Only then, you’ll be able to say to yourself that you and your company have a holistic approach to sustainability.

Let me give you an example of what we do at FantasticServices.com, regarding specifically the development of custom software, driven by our mission to become a carbon-neutral company in the next few years. Our travel-optimisation tools have saved us thousands of miles and about 20% of travel time. We are talking about getting our service providers out of traffic, assigning them local jobs only and optimising their time on the road by choosing the shortest and least congested route to the job. Voila! This is a no-brainer way of reducing CO2 emissions effectively.

And of course, by being an innovative and disruptive franchisor, this sustainable model of serving our customers and running our processes is replicated across each and every franchise unit under the brand. So, you see how we hit 3 birds with one stone – we think ‘sustainable’ economically and socially (our partners spend less on fuel and enjoy a better work-life balance by not wasting unpaid time travelling or getting stuck in traffic), and at the same time, we help the environment by decreasing our carbon footprint. And all this is achieved with a simple act of embracing innovation and the latest technological tools.

Introduce more carbon footprint reduction practices

I’ll mention just a few practices that businesses can easily incorporate and follow.

Saying NO to paper is an obvious one. For example, at our office, we’ve consciously left only one printer in use for all the departments. Leaflets, flyers, printed company memos – all have a role, but we keep producing those to a minimum.

I’ve talked about this before but let’s emphasise this again. Optimise your operations as much as possible! For instance, we encourage online bookings rather than wasting valuable time and human resources on phone calls, which have a bigger CO2 footprint.

Also, as a business, we’ve really implemented Clean or Repair rather than Replace as a core message translated into our non-stop growing service portfolio. We’ll deep clean even your curtains or small rug, your toaster or coffee maker – items that one can be so easily enticed to replace if they get too stained and dirty.

Furthermore, just as an example, a lot of our cleaning solutions use zero or minimum detergents, such as the window cleaning method with purified water only or the hot water extraction carpet cleaning technique we employ.

Not to mention the huge spike in demand for our appliance and hard surface repair services… Why throw something perfectly repairable on the skip when it can be fixed? So, you see, the mindset of customers has shifted. This means that you should keep your finger on the pulse of your clients’ needs, changes in views and shifting focus on values.

Refuse control and management is another thing we’re all aware of, which needs to be done responsibly. But outside recycling, a lot more can be done when it comes to implementing reusable and refillable products, not only biodegradables, whether around the office or with regards to your suppliers of consumables.

On that note, reconsider your supply chain! And here, we are not only talking about eco-friendly products and their packaging but also about taking into account how sustainable your supplier is as a business.

Providing your staff with flexible work options, like working from home, is also a great way to minimise carbon footprint and contribute to the social sustainability efforts of your business. I hear you, we’ve all been isolated enough during the pandemic, but many of your employees might be more productive and happier, working from home, or it may simply suit their family circumstances better.

Educate and involve your employees to green up their lifestyle

Here, I can talk about my personal experience in great detail. FantasticServices.com is really on a mission to involve all parties – staff, partners, service providers and customers, and encourage them to think and act Green in every aspect of their lives. We do weekly workshops for our employees on different environmentally friendly topics and regularly take part in different green initiatives and events, here in the UK, and also in Australia and Europe.

So, it’s good to think about partnering with non-profit organisations, getting involved in environmental projects and volunteering to help a green cause. Form partnerships with like-minded organisations, whether business or non-profit.

Last but not least, speak up proudly about your contribution to the environment and involvement in green initiatives, as this way, business partners, competitors, suppliers and customers alike will follow suit. After all, isn’t the wellbeing of our planet our common goal?

To wrap this up

Sustainability in business is not only about focusing on Nature-friendly products and practices, and essentially marketing those effectively. You have to fine-tune every aspect of your business and transform it gradually to become economically and socially sustainable, too. This in effect means that business sustainability goes hand in hand with efficiency, innovation, cost-effectiveness, social responsibility, better work-life balance for your employees and sustainable delivery of products or services to your customers. Failure to recognise all this, or being short-sighted to our common problems may, unfortunately, cause struggles for your business.

Read more:
Essential sustainable practices your business must implement today or get left behind

As we enter a new year, I want to talk about the importance of balance, perspective, support and productivity and I’m here to make the case that family must come first in business. Hear me out.

When we first started building FantasticServices.com, my business partner and I worked ourselves to the bone. It’s a familiar story for new business owners.

We worked incredibly long hours. We didn’t have much sleep. We spent every waking minute channelling ourselves into making the company work and grow.

Like many entrepreneurs, I knew on some level this wasn’t healthy.

But it wasn’t until a family came along that I realised how much I needed the support, balance, and perspective family can provide.

Your family is your most important support system

I hear a lot of people talk about their need to support their families. What most people don’t mention is that this is a two-way street.

I’m lucky enough to work with a business partner who complements my skills and shares my drive to make the business truly fantastic. Yet, I never really imagined before the kind of support system a family can be for you in business.

A family is a sharing of burdens and challenges, a sounding board for ideas, and a place where you talk things through. Whether that’s how things are going at school or what happened today in the office.

Even the simple act of sharing and talking is the kind of support many business owners would find difficult to get elsewhere.

Your health is precious – keep it safe

I’ve found that having a family to care for (and which cares for you) really opens your eyes to how important and precious your health is and how much we need to work to keep it safe.

It’s true for yourself, of course. You start to realise that you’re not doing anyone any good if you eat, sleep, and sweat work every second of every day.

But a family attitude is suitable for your relationships with your team too. Suppose you can provide the same kind of supportive culture for your employees that you would for your family. In that case, you encourage productivity, build a great team spirit, and create an environment where ideas and innovation are more likely to occur.

Plus, you create the kind of office that you actually want to come into every day.

Finding the right balance in life is important

Like many things in life, business is a balance. I’ve found that family can also be the thing that gives you the much-needed perspective that can help you find that balance.

Without family – or with a family that, in your mind, is a burden, something you work to support, not the other way round – you don’t have much of a rudder or anchor for your life.

Not only does a family give you the perspective you need to achieve a better balance in work and life, but I’ve also found that family actually helps you concentrate on the task at hand.

Perhaps because the different parts of your life have such variety now that you’re able to assess the situation with clearer eyes and proceed with greater focus.

If you have time for family, you’ll be more productive

A particular type of businessperson might think this is nonsense. And at one point in my life, I think I would have been impressed with “productivity hackers” who do things like hang hammocks in their office and try to fit twenty-minute naps into their day to maximise their productivity.

As someone who, at the time, was working almost every waking hour, any method that could get me to do more work would probably have seemed smart and desirable.

I’m sure I’m not alone in this. New business owners and entrepreneurs are notoriously crazed about maximising their productivity.

But there’s a definite limit in there. At some point, doing more work hours does not equal more work getting done. “Productivity maximising” activities are often more akin to sick punishment than intelligent practice.

Again, I’ve learned that, as a rule, people who have time for the family are more productive. It’s all about that balance, support, and perspective. People who have time for their family tend to have these vital qualities and know-how to get the most out of their time without a need from some crazy new hack.

Family first, always 

Family can provide the purpose and motivation that some people need to go into the office every day.

It can be a two-way street of support. A resource for your own health – and to remind you of how important it is to do your bit when it comes to creating a caring, healthy environment for everyone around you.

Your family can also provide you with a fresh perspective that can, in turn, lead to a better balance that can make you more productive than any on-trend productivity “hack”.

All in all, it’s clear. Far from being a burden and something you must support, your family gives you a whole lot of support. This is why I say that, in business, family must come first.

Read more:
Why family must come first in business

If you take a look at any of my businesses, and you know what my influences in business are, you’ll see how much I’ve taken from the world around me and used it as an inspiration to build.

I still do today. See, we, humans, don’t create anything original; we only build on what’s been built before. We built on ideas and inventions alike. That’s how life works. That’s how the universe works.

So, it’s only fair for me to give back credit to the people and things that have helped me create the things I’ve made. From FantasticServices.com to a diving centre in Mexico — I’ve built them, taking inspiration from everywhere.

Let’s dive a bit deeper.

Inspiration on focus and purpose

When do you come up with your greatest ideas?

Let me answer that for you — it’s usually when you’re doing something that has nothing to do with work or actively thinking about something. That’s why shower thoughts and breakthroughs are so common. Our subconscious mind does the work while the conscious relaxes.

Meditation can do the same thing

But in order to get those breakthroughs, you need to know where to focus your efforts and what your purpose is.

Let’s begin with focus, as it tends to be the predecessor to purpose. Before you achieve anything grand, you have to mindfully focus on it — whether it’s your daily to-do, your career, your relationship, or even a business. You have to make a conscious decision that you’ll be focusing on that particular thing.

A book that played a major role for me as an entrepreneur was “The Pumpkin Plan” by Mike Michalowicz. The book’s message is simple, and it takes a closer look at pumpkin growers and how they grow competition-ready squash.

See, pumpkin growers start every season with a handful of plants. Once they start growing, all smaller vegetables are discarded, and the growers focus all their time, efforts, resources, and skills on the biggest pumpkin.

This is a simple premise but a vital one in the world of business — focus on what works and don’t be afraid to cut off the resource-draining tasks.

Purpose will help you decide exactly where to focus your time and resources. Now, I tend to look at purpose through the prism of success. What success really is?

To me, for a long time, success represented growing as a professional. Nowadays, a different kind of shift is happening where I’m focusing more on my family.

Robert Holden’s book “Success Intelligence” was vital in understanding what success is to my business partners and me. It’s also one of the main reasons why we focused our efforts on the people, planet, and profits, in that particular order.

We built a company that cares for the people and planet, leaving profits as a product of doing great work. That’s called finding a purpose.

On going through hard times

Every business is bound to hit a roadblock or two… or three. It’s only natural because if you don’t, you’re most likely not having an impact on the world. But, hustle culture rarely talks about the hard times of running a business. It’s all sunshine and rainbows, mansions and Lambo’s.

“The Hard Thing About Hard Things” by Ben Horrowitz came as a natural successor to “Success Intelligence”. It taught me that, when in hard times, businesses should think about their employees first, product second, and finally about profits.

It also highlights the fact that if you’re never alone in business. You have your team, but you also have access to an unlimited pool of information on how to deal with any problem.

Then, as I got older in my entrepreneurship life, I came about “Business Nightmares” by Rachel Elnaugh. Rachel argues that success is making it through the hard times and not the good times. I can’t agree more, but it’s also a point for every entrepreneur to experience for themselves.

I used to think my company was successful, but it was only when Covid hit, and we saw first-hand how quickly the whole world stopped to a halt did my business partners and I realise what success really is. It’s not about growth, t’s about sustainability when everything else around you falls apart.

Success and creativity go hand in hand

The business landscape is quickly changing into a world where ‘data’ is worth everything, and invention and innovation are quickly fading into the background.
I get that. After all, people want 100% security in their investment and data kind of gives them that feeling of control, however vague it may be. However, if you take a look at the world of data analysis and market trends and what people are buying, you could easily see products with no particular purpose thrive.

Gary Dahl invented Pet Rocks. It was a rock, sold in a box, marketed as a pet. Funny enough, he walked away with $15 million in profit six months after starting the company. We had fidget spinners a few years ago. No market analyst ever predicted the need for any of those products, yet they were raving success.

That’s because data is only valuable if you know how to use it. Yes, you can improve your product by analysing what customers think about your products. Yes, you can base decisions on expanding business operations, but don’t let data create your products. John Doerr’s “Measure What Matters” taught me that.

And when it comes to invention and innovation, “Steal Like an Artist” by Austin Kleon is by far the best 160 pages you will ever read in your life. The book goes through the real truth that there’s nothing truly original ever created. Everything is an amalgamation of previous human inventions mixed with creativity and the willingness to take, mix, and see what happens.

And if you feel like you’re stealing (ideas, I mean), and it’s below you, I strongly encourage you to watch “Everything’s a Remix“. You might find your favourite author or musician or director is a master in stealing like an artist.

On building for the future

Since antiquity, people have been fascinated by what we now call “memento mori”. Literally translated, it means “remember death”.

Philosophically, it stands for remembering that whatever you do in life will be the only thing that survives after you’re gone. When you look through that prism, your actions start to change, and you really start looking for positive ways to leave an imprint on this world.

“21 Assets” by my friend Daniel Priestley follows the same logic, although not to the extreme of death. The book shares his views on creating in business. Way too often, founders and CEOs focus on creating things that increase revenue. But true growth happens when you’re building assets.

Read more:
The seven books that helped me on my entrepreneurial journey

Here’s something that you’ll hear rarely — running a business is like raising a child. While this analogy may be strange, I believe it holds true.

There’s no business person I know out there that doesn’t hold their business close to their heart. That’s what happens when you spend ten, twenty, thirty years of your life and millions to build a company. It becomes your baby.

But the funny thing is, only when I became a dad did I understand how similar both are. In the rows below, I’ll share my thoughts on how being a dad and a businessmen compare to each other.
One of my biggest revelations was that to be a good dad and a good business person, you have to know what you truly want.

Growing Fantastic Services to a £40,000,000/year company in 10 years wasn’t an easy feat. Back when we started, in 2009, we had a rough idea of what we wanted to achieve with the company, but let me tell you, that vision was quite… broad.

We knew we wanted to make the easiest place to book services for the home. But we never imagined it would’ve been as big as it is today.

To be successful in business you have to know exactly what you want. Otherwise, you’ll spend a lot of time chasing ideas around and never get to materialize anything.

How does that overlap with fatherhood? Well, for starters you should know what you want to teach your child. For me, it’s always staying true to yourself, and consistency. Those to me are the most important aspects of life.

Translating this to business, knowing what you want means that you have clear goals, targets and a roadmap to achieve them. A team needs a clear vision and goals in order to be successful. To set those, you have to know what you truly want to achieve as a business.

For this to happen, you need to be patient. Just like you are with your kid.

Any parent will tell you that patience is the golden ticket to successful parenting. You just can’t rush things when it comes to raising a child.

They need to learn on their own. And more often than not, kids take things at their own pace.

It’s exactly the same with teams, employees, and well… business. Quite often, it doesn’t matter how much you push your team or employees, they will take things at their own pace. And that’s okay.

As a leader, you have to realise that and accept it. There’s no rushing learning a skill, or understanding a niche. It comes with time and experience.

You have to support that team and your employees throughout the different projects and stages your company goes through. Only then you will be able to go grow a company that’s a force of nature.

But most people don’t talk about how much of a mind-game running a business is.

Now that you know how important it is to know exactly what you want to achieve with your business and the setting of clear goals, it’s time to talk about the whole mind-game that comes with entrepreneurship.

Trust me, raising a kid is hard. So is growing a business. But when it comes to keeping your head straight and working hard, it can be challenging.

See, as a businеss owner, you have to give up a lot of things. Not only that, but even if you make a million you may end up with not enough money to pay yourself. Here’s where a lot of entrepreneurs on the internet don’t give you the full picture — revenue and profit are completely different things.

Finally, being in business is very much about building your dream world.

Most of us spend at least 40 hours a week working. So, why don’t you make it awesome? Raising a kid is pretty much the same. You have to create a magical world for them too.

Ever since I can remember, I’ve had an obsession with Legos. Mainly because you can create anything your mind imagines. With business, it’s the same. It’s your small world and you get to do things the right way.

Whether it’d be ensuring your employees build amazing lives, or you help make the planet a better place you can do it. There’s this saying I love “Everything you can imagine, you can create”. I always remind myself that. And I’m always reminded of that whenever my son and I play with Lego.

The teams within your company, your goals, the culture, the experience — they’re all a part of that dream world I’m talking about.

To wrap things up, my advice to any entrepreneur (or parent) is to act the way you want your company to act. Lead by example. But I digress.

Read more:
Lessons fatherhood taught me about business

Throughout my career, I’ve been lucky enough to witness almost everything that could happen to a business throughout my careers.

I worked as a chef. I worked as a marketing director. And I’ve been a CEO and co-founder too. Let me tell you one thing — no matter the industry, at the end of the day, you’re fighting for the customer. You want them to come back again and again and again. That’s how you build a successful business.

But it’s much easier said than done. You know that. I do too. So, when it comes to marketing, getting customers, and growing a business, I believe that I have a few tricks up my sleeve from exploring all types of careers over the past 20+ years.

Let’s dive deeper, shall we?

I truly believe that word of mouth is the most important marketing channel for any business.

Think about it. If you have 10 customers tell five of their friends about how good your services are, you have 50 new potential customers. Now do that same thing with 50, 100, 1000 customers.

At Fantastic Services, we service 50,000 people a month. If we do our job well, there’s a potential for a quarter-million new customers!

But here’s the catch — it’s impossible to always do the job to a level that makes people want to talk about you. Especially if you’re working with people, there’s a lot of room for error, which is completely normal.

Yet, you need processes in place to ensure that you make even unhappy customers at the very least satisfied. I’ve worked hard not to build a “sorry” company.

“Sorry, we couldn’t turn up on time.” “Sorry, we’re not available at that time.” You get the point. The market doesn’t care. They’ll simply go to someone who can get the job done. 

Make it a conscious decision to minimise the number of mess-ups that happen and make sure everyone working in your company preaches the same values.

People want convenience and speed.

Companies that can do both are the ones that thrive. It’s a fact of business.

Take a quick look at Uber and Revolut. Both companies disrupted two very stagnant industries — taxies and banking. And there’s only one reason for their success. Both were more convenient and faster than traditional means.

They just made things quicker.

I’ve implemented the same methods in all the companies I’ve built. For example, we made booking services for the home as easy as possible at my most successful venture.

Whenever you feel like your company doesn’t help move the industry forward, think about what you can change in terms of speed and convenience.

Questions that can help you are:

• What do customers hate about the industry?
• What cliché about your industry do you hate?
• How can you make it better?

It’s really easy to be disruptive in business.

Well, not easy-easy, but it doesn’t take much effort to come up with a disruptive idea. Realise what people truly dislike about the industry you operate in and work towards solving that issue.

It’s easier to find that problem than people think.

When you’re doing anything marketing-related, focus on how you help your customers.

Ask any marketer in a tech startup what makes or breaks a product, and they’ll tell you how important messaging is. Messaging, essentially, is how you communicate your services or products.

It’s the words you use.

See, words are the most powerful tool a founder or a manager, or a brand can possess. Words can inspire and motivate. When used in the wrong way, words can be disheartening too. That’s why you have to be careful.

When you work on your next marketing campaign (be it a digital one, or you distribute leaflets), focus on how your services or products help the customer solve a “pain”.

Simply put, the brand that makes Nurofen doesn’t sell pills, they sell hangover-free Saturday mornings. If you have a farm and grow fruits, you don’t sell fruits. You sell the healthy lifestyle associated with fruits.

You get the point. Your marketing needs to solve customer pains.

Don’t be afraid to admit your failures.

I have a special relationship with failure. Any successful person out there does—even those outside of business.

Michael Jordan has missed more than 12,000 shots throughout his career.

Embracing failures is important for one big reason. To welcome your flops is to admit to yourself you can do better next time. So many founders and companies hide their failures and create these stagnant cultures within their ventures that eventually end up hurting business.

When you mess up, admit it. Then go above and beyond in making it better. Read my first point in this article again. Admitting failure welcomes experimentation and improvement within a business.

Make repeat customers.

There’s this famous talk by Gary Vaynerchuk and Jon Taffer that’s going around the internet where they talk about making customers come back to your restaurant.

When I was a chef back in the early 2000’s we used to do that exact same trick — first-time customers get a red napkin. You go above and beyond in serving them. This increases your chance by 40% of that customer coming back to your restaurant. Do that three times, and now there’s a 90% chance for that customer to come back a fourth time.

That’s how you make repeat customers and increase brand loyalty. Back in 2014, we built a custom CMS that allows us to do that. This was crucial for expanding our customer base and onboarding new franchisees.

Now, that’s no excuse to slack off on your returning customers. Quite the opposite, this is a framework for constant improvement. You’ve already set the expectations quite high. You need to deliver.

To wrap everything up…

Business is a persistence game. Wake up, show up, go above and beyond for your customers, repeat.

Do that every day for two years in a row, and you’ll see business start to grow. That’s what we teach our franchisees as well. Although it doesn’t take them that long to start getting business, two years is a realistic and healthy timeframe for most new companies to start growing and seeing success.

Read more:
Effective marketing tips to make your business stand out from your competition

I wholeheartedly believe that business and shark diving are essentially the same thing. Both are exciting. Both have their fair share of risk. Both require you to be on your A-game all of the time.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You can’t die in business. Well, I tend to disagree. Yes, you can if you don’t take care of your physical and mental health. Business can be pretty dangerous.

A decade ago I had the wonderful opportunity to go on my first-ever shark dive. I fell in love with it. The euphoria. The adrenaline. I loved it so much that I bought a shark diving business shortly after my first dive.

With that said, I’ve come to feel like shark diving and running a business are the same thing. At least, the same four rules apply to both things. Which is peculiar.

Here’s what shark diving taught me about business.

Always be prepared for the unexpected

In the world of business anything can happen. You can prepare quarterly or yearly plans, but life has a funny thing about completely ignoring what you’ve planned for and throwing you off-course.

That’s when a business plan is boiled down to just words and nothing more. That’s what you have to be prepared for — the unexpected.

It’s the exact same thing when you’re in the cold waters with deadly beasts like sharks. They’re unpredictable, scary, and have a knack for throwing your plans off-course.

So, you have to plan for the things that you least believe can happen. A challenger brand coming in and swooping your customers right under your nose. A massive change in consumer behaviour. A world-wide pandemic. You never know.

Know what you’re dealing with

When you go in the shark-infested waters, you want to know what you’re dealing with. It’s the same with running a business.

Whether you’re launching a new service, expanding your operations in another country or continent, or optimising your day-to-day operations, you have to know what you’re dealing with.

That means doing the dirty work and researching the matter at hand. It also means going the extra mile to find the people you need to talk with to make things happen. It can be really hard, and you’ll have to be prepared to face the challenges; however, there’s very little room for error, unlike running a franchise, where you get a bit more room for failure.

There’s nothing wrong with backing down from a fight

People tend to accept backing down as a failure.

Well, it’s not. In business, you have to be extra smart with the fights you pick. There’s no glory in wasting time and money fighting for things that are not worth fighting for.

Know when to step aside and refocus your efforts into something more productive. It’s the same with shark diving. If the weather isn’t right, or you don’t feel okay proceeding with the dive, just don’t.

Always ask yourself: “What am I getting out of this?”. If the answer is not satisfactory to you, skip the fight.

Keep your eyes peeled

Shark diving requires you to have eyes on your back. You need to be on top of everything that’s going on around you, and that’s near impossible when you’re underwater.

Running a business is kind of the same. It requires you to be everywhere, see everything. And that’s hard.

You have to know the techniques and set in place the right processes that will allow you to monitor the correct data in order to make the right decisions at the right time. Whether you need to pivot a product, double down on performance marketing, or optimise your customer experience, you need to keep your eyes peeled even for the little things.

Final thoughts

I understand that business and shark diving is a slightly strange comparison, but I think you get my point.

It takes a lot to run a business, and it takes even more if you want to run a successful one. You have to go above and beyond while staying aware of your surroundings.

Remember to stay focused and know what you’re after with everything you do. If it feels like something isn’t your cup of tea, don’t feel afraid to back down.

Read more:
What shark diving taught me about business

Ever wish you could go back in time 20 years and teach yourself the leadership lessons you know today? I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently … What would you say to yourself? What would I say to myself? What lessons have I learned in the past two decades that I wish I’d known when starting up? Here’s my 20 leadership lessons I wish I’d known when starting up.

1) A “boss” isn’t the same as a “leader”

Bossing people around. Shouting. Pointing fingers. These aren’t the actions of a leader.

As a leader, you need to lead. This often means working longer and harder than anyone else. Show by example what you expect from your team in terms of work ethic.

Equally, when something goes wrong, don’t be the voice that’s raised loudest in condemnation. You can identify mistakes without yelling at someone in front of the rest of the team.

2) You can’t force a culture

Your company culture is more about what you do than what you say. You can insist that your company is a green and pleasant land in which to work until you are blue in the face.

But your actions will speak the loudest. Be a “leader” and not a “boss” if you want to create a company culture that nurtures talent and encourages commitment.

3) Don’t think “I”, think “team”

It’s not all about you. It’s a team effort. Leaders who say “I” a lot tend to be leaders who think about themselves instead of their team and the business as a whole.

4) Don’t be afraid to hire for personality

Hire people fast. Train them intensively. Those are words to live by. Personality is in many ways more important than skillset. Choose people for how well they will fit in with your team and train them to have the skills you need them to have.

One of the things I’m proudest of at Fantastic Services is the way we nurture the people we hire. We see a lot of them go onto great things internally and externally.

5) Don’t be afraid to hire people smarter than you

On the flip side, sometimes you need those skills and experiences. Don’t be of a mindset that because you’re the “boss” you need to be the best at everything.

We all have our areas of expertise. No one can be across everything. Where your expertise ends, don’t be afraid to hire someone who is an expert in the thing you need to know.

6) Draw attention to hard work

When noses have been to the grindstone for a long period, it’s good to give recognition to the people you noticed really put the work in. If that’s the whole team, make sure they know it.

Even when it’s just another day, heartfelt praise raises self-esteem and contributes to creating a positive place for people to work in.

7) Don’t pass on the criticism

While a new entrepreneur, I’m sure many of us had the experience of being criticised. Customers and clients. Other entrepreneurs. Even friends, who meant well but sometimes still sprinkled a little criticism in with their support.

Remember that it’s your job to absorb that criticism. Don’t pass it on to your team. Remember that boss early in your career who thought it was okay to take their negative feelings out on their team?

Try to remember who that boss is. Don’t be that person.

8) Get the whole story

Sometimes, it can be difficult to tell exactly where your company is “at”.

You might have your sales team saying they have problems while the people delivering your services saying they’re getting fantastic feedback. You might have people in accounts saying everything is great while you know people have complained about a product you offer.

As a leader, you need to be aware of and balance all of these different opinions – well-informed or otherwise – and actually know how your business is doing. Don’t just rely on one perspective, even if it’s your own.

9) Define your message

Once you have taken all of the different perspectives on your business into account, it’s your job to – sometimes quietly, sometimes actively – broadcast a cohesive message to your team in a positive, proactive way.

Companies that operate with too much opacity don’t usually have a great culture. Be strong. Be clear. Be open.

10) Practice being self-aware

As well as awareness of your company, you need to be aware of yourself. What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses?

Knowing your own strengths and weaknesses will help you build the right team and even, in my experience, find the ideal business partner.

11) Use your network for feedback

Networking plays a vital role in building a business. At Fantastic Services, we offered free services and more for both charitable reasons and to build firm friendships with local firms and people.

But your network has another important role it can play – that of feedback generator. If you need an outside perspective on a problem or opportunity, it’s a great place to look.

12) Stress-test your old ideas

Over the course of a career, it’s natural that people get stuck in their ways. Avoiding this calls for regularly stress-testing your old ideas.

Does the approach you had or your standard response on a topic still hold true knowing what you know today? Spend the mental time to ask yourself and be sure. Changing your ideas in response to new developments and data is not a weakness.

13) Listen

Good ideas can come from anywhere. Inside or outside your organisation. From those at the very “top” to those at the very “bottom”.

Keep your ears open for new ideas. Whether they come from remarks made by customers, team members, your longest-known business partner, or the new hire that just walked in through the door on their first day.

14) Treat everyone with 360-degree respect

This is something I’ve always had firm ideas about, but 20 years as an entrepreneur has definitely underlined how important it is.

Whether someone is working as your CFO or the company’s newest cleaner, they are a person and should be treated with the same level of respect.

15) Build 360-degree happiness

Build on that basis. Being treated with respect. Feeling that their ideas are listened to. There are many ways your team should be treated by their leader if you want them to be happy. A happy team is a motivated team.

16) Offer a virtual presence

This is a new one that the events of 2020 have brought out into the spotlight. One of the successes we’ve had when dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic at Fantastic Services is in creating virtual events and forums to keep our franchisees connected.

Providing virtual coaching is a great resource for franchisees and team members alike. As is enabling them to connect with decision-makers in the company to make sure they feel listened to and informed.

17) Fall down seven times…

“Fall down seven times, stand up eight” is probably my favourite aphorism. It encapsulates the strength of resilience that I believe every entrepreneur needs if they want to succeed.

Determination might be even more important than intelligence or natural talent when it comes to what defines your future success. If you want to succeed, prepare to be knocked back a step for every few steps you take.

18) Rule through security

We’ve all seen corporations that seem to operate on a system of shaming individuals or striking fear into sections of their workforce.

But the most powerful tool you can use to energise and motivate your team isn’t fear or shame. It’s security. If you can provide a working environment where your team feels safe, they will be more innovative, more creative, and more loyal.

19) Don’t let profit always be the driving factor

Constant worrying about squeezing every penny out of every action can detract from other, sometimes more valuable, goals.

What about sustainability? Your values? Your overriding purpose for your company?

It’s often said that you should concentrate on the process and let the product come. You could also say concentrate on the process and let the profit come.

20) Improve your work-life balance

Finally, one of the leadership lessons I’d known twenty years ago is the importance of work-life balance.

Starting your own company can be a time of incredibly long hours and endless hard work. It’s one of the reasons I’m such an advocate of the franchise business model today (why do all that hard work when someone else already has?).

Whenever you can, do everything you can to make that work-life split a little more even. You will find it all the easier to do all the things a leader should be doing if you’re coming from a place of balance.

Read more:
20 leadership lessons from 20 years as an entrepreneur

Why we chose to build a franchise instead of the investor-beloved marketplace platform? If you are a small business owner in the services industry, a platform can look very appealing…

It gets your business out there. You could potentially get found by a lot of people if you choose the right platform.

Sure, some platforms cost money. But in return, this could be a big new marketing channel for your business.

Yet that’s all it is. A marketing channel. Compared to the other options you have – such as franchising – you’re not getting much bang for your buck.

Plus, there are some pretty hefty downsides to listing your business on a platform. Because, unlike a franchise network, a platform is a competitive space.

When you sign up to one, you aren’t joining a supportive network. You better be ready to dive into the shark tank.

Competing in a whole new arena

A platform is not a collaborative business environment. You are usually in direct competition with all of the other similar businesses that use the platform in your area.

This means you’re going to need a couple of things to do well on a platform:
Firstly, a good idea of how to market your business on it. Some platforms might help you with this. But even then, you are going to need to know the unique selling points of your business you want to promote.

For example, if you are a reliable plumber, what sets you apart from another reliable plumber on the platform?

In the eyes of your potential customers, perhaps not much. Or, more to the point, perhaps only the reviews you’ve received.

1000 new bosses governing your every move

Your reviews are those 1000 new bosses. In a platform environment, your reviews can help you swim. Or they can sink you.

Speak to many people who have their businesses listed on platforms and they will tell you how they live in fear of bad reviews.

Of course, every business owner should want to deliver a great quality of service. You should want and in many cases ask your customers to leave you reviews to show off what you can do.

But you don’t want to be in a position where you are held hostage by them. On many platforms, this is a situation that is all too common.

It’s easy to find small business owners or self-employed service professionals on platforms who feel they can’t turn down any job even if they’re overwhelmed. They can’t take a day off. They live in fear of getting sick.

Because they know that any one thing could lead to a reduction in their overall “score” and less work in future.

Platforms vs franchising

I’ll level with you. When we were growing Fantastic Services, we briefly considered creating a platform rather than a franchise.

Investors love platforms, people would tell us. Sure. But do the people on the platforms love the platforms?

I would argue not very many of them do. So for us, it became the difference between creating a place for small business owners to compete against each other on one hand.

And building a communal network where it’s in everyone’s best interests for us all to succeed on the other.

Competition vs community

You always need to think about what you want to actually get out of the business opportunity you are considering.

If you’re thinking about putting yourself or your business on a platform, this is the key difference between the two business models.

One is a competition. The other, done right, is a community.

Control and growth

Some people might argue that it’s the platform that really lets you be your own boss. A platform might levy some control over your standards. But in a franchise system, doesn’t your franchisor have even more authority over how you run your business?

To that, first of all, I would say Uber. The UK courts recently ruled that drivers on the Uber platform are most certainly employees rather than self-employed because of the many, many standards the platform expected them to adhere to.

Of course, those drivers still had to live in fear of getting too many negative ratings and being kicked off the platform. At one point, that “negative rating” meant a score of well over 4 out of 5.

In a franchise, you are your own boss. But with benefits. Those of us who have grown our own companies know that when you’re starting from scratch, anything can happen. When things go wrong, who do you turn to?

Usually, you only have yourself or your business partner (if you’re lucky enough to have one) to count on. As you grow and develop your services, you are iterating and testing through a long process of improvement.

As a franchisee, you skip past all that to use processes that have already been proven, with central expertise to call on should a bump in the road appear.

Getting your business out there: the right way and the wrong way

Franchising and signing on with a platform are both ways of getting your business out there. But one comes with a demand that you meet set standards and throws you into a pool of competition where you are at the mercy of bad ratings.

The other gives you training and access to proven processes so that you naturally meet high quality standards. It supports you throughout the time you are growing your business. And, if it’s a franchise like Fantastic Services, does all of the marketing on your behalf better than any platform anyway.

Platforms were one of the first innovations back when service companies were trying to get found online back in the early days of the internet. Franchising is the way of the future.

What do you think? Do you think a platform has advantages over a franchise Comment below and let’s get the conversation started.

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Always choose the people you work with rather than building a business for investors

Running a business is no easy thing.  For the past 18 years, I’ve been on that journey of entrepreneurship. A journey filled with buzzwords like MVPs, scaling, growth, hustle, work-life balance and whatever else fake gurus say on YouTube to sound fancy.

And let me tell you, it’s a tough path to be on. The world really does not care about you, your business, your dreams and what you want. One second you’re on top of the world, and on the very next there’s a global pandemic happening and all of a sudden what you worked so hard and so long for can crumble in front of you.Unless you were running a Big Pharma company, you know what I’m talking about. I’m not a fake guru, I don’t sell courses.

I sell franchises.

For the past decade, my business partner and I have built Fantastic Services from just us two working from a sofa to a business operating on three continents and spanning a franchise network of over 500 partners and 2,000 professionals operating under our brand in the UK, Australia and the US. We dared to be different and to deliver extra value for our customers and that is why we have focused on building a franchise business.

And if there’s one thing that I’ve learned during these 18 years it’s to always stay on top of the latest trends. You don’t have to go all-in on them, but it’s your responsibility as a business owner to understand and explore them.

Trends keep the world moving forward and your business is very much part of that world.

There are two types of businesses in this world. Category creators and everyone else. The difference between the two is that category creators will always be the leaders in terms of market share. Why? Because they create their own markets.

And I’m speaking from experience, Fantastic Services was the first company to launch End of Tenancy cleaning, with one car and one team. It wasn’t a revolutionary service by any means, but it was a convenient service that no other cleaning company offered. Right now it’s the bread and butter of the company.

Furthermore, we were the very first company in the UK to offer real-time booking. A decade later every other property maintenance company offers online requests. But we were the first and our software is the best there is, automating everything, leaving for our clients to simply choose their service, type in their address, personalize the service, and voila, you’ve got it scheduled in less than 3 minutes.

We took this approach of designing our own category in the franchise part of our business as well. Six years since we onboarded our very first franchisee, Fantastic Services has created a model just as revolutionary as McDonald’s was back in the 50s.

We’re riding the wave of sustainability because sooner or later it’ll become a tsunami.

For the past decade, sustainability became somewhat of a buzzword in the business community. But unlike most buzzwords, this one really matters. It does because we owe it to ourselves and our children to build sustainable businesses.

And it’s not just about ecology. Being green is just part of the solution. When we designed the franchise model for Fantastic Services we did so with everyone in mind. Our goal is to provide everyone with the opportunity to run their own business, be happy and satisfied with the work they do in this world.
That’s why we crafted three separate franchise types to suit all.

One for the people who love to do the job themselves, and it’s an affordable entry to the franchise world, whether it’s gardening or cleaning or removals. Another for people who want to run a small enterprise and still have a calm and sustainable business. They don’t necessarily want to do the job themselves so they’re the managers who focus on helping their employees get better at the services they deliver. And finally, we offer an opportunity to people born with that entrepreneurial spirit who want to revolutionize the way people receive services. Our area development and master franchising opportunities offer just that — an equal opportunity to have financial freedom and be on top of your life.

Because business is so much more than just making money.

It’s about giving back to the community and the people around you.

Furthermore, business is about innovating. I’ve always thought that if you don’t innovate and reinvent as a business you’ll eventually die.

Businesses that accept innovation at their core thrive. And you don’t have to be the next Facebook or Amazon to innovate. Thinking this is just an excuse to not try something new and bold. All you need in order to innovate is to improve something around you that’s causing you trouble in your day to day operations.

Let me give you an example: in 2018 we were dealing with London traffic like every other London-based business. It was hell, our professionals had to constantly stress about arriving on time. Well, we can’t control how Londoners commute, but we can adjust how we do it. That’s why we developed our backend system that handles all our bookings to assign the jobs closest to our franchisees and their teams. With the help of AI and real-time GPS, we can also assign the fastest route for each job. This ended up saving us around 30,000 miles travelled in 2019 alone!

To wrap this up, I have to say that innovation should be at the core of any sustainable company.

Business is in essence marketing, innovation and operational work when you really boil it down to the basics. Now, we believe we’ve created a system that gives people the opportunity to focus on the operational, day-to-day stuff, like making sure your customers are happy with the job you do.

However, the real power of a franchise comes when you support these people with what big businesses do — know-how, operations, marketing, and innovation. This really levels the playing field for small business owners. It means that they no longer have to fear if they’ll go out of business because a big-name company has expanded operations to their area.

Innovate. Shamelessly and fearlessly. Make one thing better today. It doesn’t have to be big, you just have to start, the small changes are the ones we make now, and a decade later they naturally grow.

Read more:
Why innovation is the key to sustainable business