Lessons from an entrepreneur
“Seeing clarity in chaos - that’s my ‘superpower’.”
- Sarah Willingham
You may know Sarah Willingham from her time on the panel of the BBC’s popular Dragon’s Den series. She is also a renowned restaurateur, entrepreneur and investor, and a mum to four teenage children.
In her twenties, after gaining two degrees in business, Sarah went to work for Pizza Express. It would be the launchpad to a long and highly successful career in the restaurant and hospitality industry, among other things. Sarah shared an office with the CEO of the company, and she never stopped asking questions. She wanted to know everything there was to know about the business of being in business.
The growing realisation that she wanted to eventually start a family meant that Sarah knew she had to do things differently. She was travelling the world, overseeing the opening of new Pizza Express restaurants. She knew that wouldn’t be sustainable when the time came to have children.
With the knowledge she’d gained, she decided to raise the funds to acquire The Bombay Bicycle Club - an Indian restaurant in South West London. What attracted her to the restaurant was the great food, but also the ‘magic’ of the place. She realised that with a formula in place, she could recreate the same success with other restaurants. That’s exactly what she did.
Growth and the frameworks to support it
Sarah is not a ‘starter’; she wanted to have the largest chain of Indian restaurants in the UK, but she realised that if she had to start from scratch - creating a concept, a name, branding, menus, and everything else that comes with a new business, she would probably fail.
Sarah loves - and lives - growth. She learned from her time at Pizza Express that if a business model works, you keep it simple. You tweak, repeat and keep going - that’s how to scale a business, but to do that, you need solid processes and a framework behind it.
Lessons from an entrepreneur:
Know what you’re good at, but nail what you’re ‘great’ at
Sarah knows that she is good at a lot of things, but believes you need to have one skill that you're truly great at. For her, it’s bringing clarity out of chaos in any situation.
There aren’t enough hours in the day to be great at everything, but there’s no need to stress over it. Surround yourself with brilliant people who know how to do the ‘good’ stuff so you can concentrate on that one thing. Finding that one thing comes from self-awareness and being honest with yourself about your strengths.
Know what you want to get out of life, then figure out what you need from your business/es
Keep it simple. Sarah and her husband used to draw a pie chart at the start of each year to figure out what they wanted to do with their lives over twelve months. Early on, Sarah realised that to create the life she wanted and to have her children, she had to figure out how much time and resources she needed to allocate to her work.
By pinpointing exactly what you want to do with your life - travel, spend time with your kids, see friends, etc. - you know how much time and effort you have to spend on work to get to that point. Sarah always wanted to be the master of her own diary, rather than her destiny, and time is a relative resource. If you spend more time on one thing, you have less for something else. This is helpful in clarifying your wants and needs.
Keep the magic alive
Once Sarah put a structure into place at The Bombay Bicycle Club, she knew she could replicate it anywhere, as long as she kept that ‘magic’ that she loved so much in the London restaurant. If a formula works, don’t over-sanitise or overthink it too much, or your business will become sterile and lose the magic.
Understand the importance of good branding
Branding is one of those things that, if you get it right, it’s magical. The Bombay Bicycle Club grew beyond all expectations, even producing its own beer, and inspiring the name of a band. But if you get it wrong, it can mean the end. Educate yourself on the subtle differences between PR, marketing and advertising.
Consistency is the key to your messaging and should underpin your whole brand. But don’t keep saying the same thing over and over. There are lots of ways to say the same thing, and people will respond to messaging differently, depending on what you have to say - it’s thinking of different ways to frame things.
Know who your customer is and don’t neglect your funnel
Perhaps the most important piece of advice that Sarah can give is not to neglect your funnel. To be successful, you need clients or customers; you need a steady pipeline of enquiries or leads coming in.
Get clear on three things:
What are you selling, and who are you selling it to?
How are you going to communicate with those people, your potential customers?
Why should they buy from you and not your competitors?
Know your numbers
By all means, enlist a great accountant to help you, but you have to get up close and personal with your numbers, especially in the early days, because nobody knows your business like you do.
Finally, a reminder that it’s okay to fail.
Entrepreneurship is not for everyone; you need resilience, tenacity and the energy to pick yourself up and go again after experiencing setbacks. But if you know in your heart that your business isn’t working, or you’ve fallen out of love with it, let it go. At least you tried!
