Lessons - Why Your Startup Isn’t Growing | Richard Capp - CEO of Milton & King

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scaling this out it starts to work then it turns into a little bit of a business then you're starting to apply like listen we have some systems and processes now we're starting to make some money now we're you know finding better equipment what is the what is the outside of figuring out the basics of the business which already seem to be excruciatingly painful to figure out what are some of the biggest mistakes that you made when you first started out in terms of now it's working but then I screwed this up or I hired this person that didn't work out or I don't know so we on second line we we didn't we didn't have any big stuff ups because we didn't have big budgets like a heavy money and and I look at it now and I think if someone had given me a chunk of cash back then I would have I would have I'd be telling you a story about how I blew all the money on some dumb idea but because it was happily so slowly I we we had time to actually go through we think about and there we all we go with the concept and then we'd think about there's time what are on we were that's a crazy idea there if there is one there's one concept that we did we did it probably almost 10 years ago we had these collections and we're we're selling through the Australian wholesale market so we're selling through the few wallpaper shops that actually exist in Australia and we're trying to figure out how we can compete with all the important stuff which is which is quite a check really even to be shipped from Europe into Australia it's still fairly competitive so we're looking at how we'll do this so we thought what if we kept with customs watchbooks where the the shop can kind of choose which designs and of our collection they actually like because rather than giving them a book that costs us the fortune to make text paper heaps of time and that saves like we weren't good at making books they're costing us fortune to make just to swatch a walk I've swatched so I said all right let's do that let's do a custom book and I I got this guy to create this we'll build this site to do it and it was it it took months for this to happen and eventually we sort of got to the end and this guy hands over this website and I said that is ridiculous I'm not launching that to anybody um and we never launched it so the concept was I paid the guy because he'd done the work but he he hadn't really delivered a decent product so we sort of came to an agreement at the end said well this is where it stops but it's finding because we're coming back to that now it's literally about to go live on our website in a couple of weeks we're going to have customs watchbooks for our US wholesale market where they can go in and they can choose for around two thousand designs and go that design that design that design there the designs I'm going to resell in my store to my clients so it's funny now whilst we wasted the money ten years ago we've actually come back to it now the business is in a point where it's actually going to work so that's but you know all those all those mess ups like you hear this quite often like if you learn from the mistakes and they're not you know they're not wasted right now you have all the learnings of compounded over how many years and I actually like I really have to just highlight something and we were just again very briefly before we turned on the camera we were just speaking about how important it is to be patient and obviously if people are listening like none of this moved quickly I think that you as an entrepreneur I think you're actually a very rare breed in terms of how you think through problem solving and the time horizon that you're committing to solve these problems and I think that's why you're successful because I think a lot of people try and get something done in two months three months six months it doesn't work okay I'm going to give up but you were you committed this for your life and I'll figure it out we're very fortunate sir we were you know we haven't we had a few bigger benches we were one we were outside of the industry so we weren't like no one knew what we were doing we were way down this trail trying to figure out a diesel-print wallpaper so we were kind of we were out of eyesight essentially from the rest of the industry so we had time to sort of stuff around do our thing we hadn't made this big ball statement that we're going to change the world tomorrow and that we were in our 20s well we didn't have we were both when we started we were about single so we moved in with mom and dad we put all our money together we didn't have any but we we do enforce sorry but every power we're sharing side bait beads but yeah so like we we were lacking that we were able to just sort of grow on but as as and we sacrificed for the big picture like we did we weren't taking money we put nine knees before we went on payroll but tell someone that is trying to start a business say it's going to take a decade but John will play it it's going to be 10 years before we get your first paycheck don't be ridiculous on anarchy but we were just and and if we we didn't know that when you started to take that level if we actually start by income but we will we'll essentially we've been sales funded very slow sales but with their sales funded in our breath so we're just sort of moved along slowly you've developed somebody you launch it that sort of pops you up again and then you cruise along and then you go the next stage or the next stage the problem is you then get to your 40s and and you've put everything into your business and there's actually nothing in your in your private beef cat but your business is still going and that's the thing we're still cruising along and people probably look at it and say oh they're so lucky to have done that but we missed we pretty much missed every party in our 30s because because we didn't have the money to get to the you know you sort of walk yourself away to get this thing going and now it's starting to pay off because we've had the vision to actually see it through but it's come with a huge amount of sacrifice a huge shout out to federated computer for supporting today's episode let me explain why I love federated computer why they are friends of success story they are changing the way businesses buy software because we all need software to run our businesses I don't care what kind of business you're building but the best business software doesn't have to cost thousands of dollars each month so federated computer replaces a lot of the software that you're using right now let me explain the average typical federated computer customers save 75% or more on their software built and gets great software top notch customer service and support and a software solution that is uniquely installed for your business without any sort of surveillance or breaches of privacy for example if you use Google for email sales force for CRM slack for team chat list monkey for customer 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they see the they see the venture backed you know SF tech companies that IPO in five years and people are overnight millionaires deck of millionaires sent to millionaires billionaires overnight by you know any objective standard five years is a pretty quick time to build a business but then they get they get burnt out and I actually I love the fact that you said it took you nine years to go on payroll because I've said this in different ways many times like if you commit to anything for 10 years and you find ways to learn from your failures and you iterate through all the problems that you have you will find a way to become some level of success if you commit 10 years to anything like it's very hard to screw it up if you're a smart person keeps starting say there you just go to keep showing up and that's what it's about like you can I had a land Lord in Brisbane at one stage said I just do one thing every day in his business life he just works on the facts he does one thing every day that actually counts um and as long as you put that sort of mentality all right we're pushing forward all the time um yeah it just sort of starts to build up and then eventually you get to that 10 years and you look back and you go wow like we've come along and um so my mother's actually she came for a visit um this week and we're in the office last not and and she hadn't been in for Shenbury in the US to check out what we've been doing so we've had this facility here in Dallas for um going on nearly two years and she sort of walked in and she was blown away because she just didn't expect um really what we've so set up she just didn't have that in her head um and you think right hey well it's only been two years and it looks like a spade around a hollow log and that but then you think back 10 years and it's yeah well because you start to see you know like if you look on a chart like you start to see you'll have this like marginal marginal growth and then all of a sudden like when things start working and you start investing more and more into the business you do that hockey stick growth curve right and that's where you that's where you're at after 10 20 years of doing the business but that's a beautiful place to be but people would never most people would not want to sacrifice nine years of their life without taking a paycheck oh no no well it's about it but we we definitely weren't doing it in store like it was like what if you go on this weekend all right we're going to have the money this week you go yeah and there's I'll style your you was your budgeting your budgeting which are going to go to like sorry yeah that was that was the thing well we we did it with um essentially with with styles funded the whole way through and that really did turn it was always it was always starting well then it was always five feet well we thought was always profitable there's been losses in there but um but it made sense to get you know so yeah and yeah it's it's it's it's all about all right that's that's how go that's what it want to be what have we got to do to do that and and we've never brought some of new admin mentality we're going to get rich from one style or one client or two people that we've got to put lots and lots and lots together to make this actually work and that's what we're just been trying to do it so yeah it's it's getting better like now we we have systems in place and we have a really good little team of people that uh know what they're doing we're not doing all the work ourselves and uh you know I spent a lot of time working night shift doing customer service for the US yeah even telling someone to get out a bit at one o'clock in the morning or two o'clock in the morning to sit in front of a chat either when the live chat comes up well hey where we're there we're actually told it and I'll be sitting in the dark at home in winter wash with mahuri on answering the fine at the toy on chats um you know that's all that I just text that just text tall whatever thanks for tuning in if you found this valuable don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode and if you want to dive deeper into this conversation check out the links in the description to watch the full episode see you in the next one