When I was young and helping my dad in his business, I had an evening hobby – making automotive performance parts…
Here is Nic Cooper – Founder and CEO of Turbosmart:
I got involved with helping some friends with their cars. This soon grew into me using some space in my Dad’s business to further make these engine parts and rather rapidly it grew to making large production runs.
Advertising started and they sold like hotcakes! The hobby rapidly grew, cheaply and economically, from this space in my dad’s business, and we were making lots of money.
But we soon outgrew this space and a few years later, we were expanding like crazy and started to spend like crazy. We didn’t have any systems formulated to control the business and no method of expanding but were just purely reacting to all the demand on the business.
Before we knew it we had 26 staff, problems with the products, lots of debt and no profit!!
Things were tough and this hobby was now a nightmare! I was working 7 days a week and saw no social life further than the end of my desk. I ate, slept, and thought problems to do with the company. As to building my life dreams of wife and family – this was an impossibility!
We finally had a shift in management and then rapidly implemented all the tools of the Model of Admin Know-How Course written by L. Ron Hubbard.
We implemented the Organising Board and created divisions with divisional managers responsible for specific functions and duties.
We set up statistics to assist with the ability to see what was truly going on with the company.
Staff training was begun and this enabled all the staff to operate off the same methods in increasing the smooth-running of the company.
A simple but effective communication system now prevented documents from being mysteriously lost.
Another amazing tool that was also covered in the training was the subject of ‘Completed Staff Work’ that made the managers and staff of the divisions able to solve their own problems and enabled me to authorise their proposed changes – and the world was a different place.
Slowly but surely, the company has turned around and we are now profitable! We have been able to open our US office and still keep up a positive cash flow.
I taught myself how to make High Performance Products but I could not teach myself how to manage a company. With the staff training, I learnt all the effective tools to run a business.
When times are tough, this is when you need these tools EVEN MORE. But to build a company from the bottom up with these tools in place from the beginning is like night and day.
I now feel I am in control of my life. I have a life outside of the company and when I do turn up to work, it’s all good news and I can get on with building the dreams of the company.
And even more importantly, the staff are 100% happy and comfortable to work here.
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