Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Finance Focus helps businesses navigate the ever-evolving world of finance. Each episode features expert insights, practical advice, and in-depth discussions on topics such as crowdfunding, trade finance, angel investing and debt. Hosted by Tracy Smart from The Smart Team and Sam Jones from Satellite Finance.
[00:00:00] Tracy Smart: Welcome back to our bonus episode for the Finance Focus podcast. Today we have Paul with us from gloveglu he's very kindly agreed to share some of his top tips under ten.
[00:00:17] Sam Jones: You'll catch a feature episode on your podcast platform and we have a deep dive into Paul's fascinating and fast growing business, gloveglu. Paul, welcome back.
What would be your number one top tip to starting a retail brand?
[00:00:31] Paul Sherratt: Number one top tip I would suggest is, pull together your business plan and I'm not big on a detailed business plan. But I think fundamentally, where do you want to be? How do you get there? It's as simple as that.
Putting the basics in place for that is number one,
[00:00:47] Tracy Smart: I always say, if it doesn't work on the back of an envelope, then no matter how much detail you're going to go into, it's not going to work, on a detailed spreadsheet.
One of the things you were talking about in the longer episode was around, I think you called it a dashboard where you had a tech stack that gave you all the information that you needed to run the business. One of the challenges with that is trying to decide exactly what it is you want on your dashboard.
You know, there's so many different things you can measure.
[00:01:14] Paul Sherratt: Always want to know what my revenues are. Which is easy from a dashboard point of view.Always want to know what the bottom line is, which is harder because, you know, cost of goods aren't dropping, they're dropping in at different stages and so on and so forth. So, then I think for me it's having the ability to look at those revenue numbers by channel. B2C, it's easy, it's a Shopify dashboard. B2B, through Cin7, through our CRM and Amazon is, again, it's an Amazon dashboard. It's either Amazon direct or through Seller Board that we use. So relatively easy to understand those numbers.
We've just, moved over to Float as a cash flow tool, and one of the nice things within Float is the scenario setting. So you have the ability to go, okay, for example, if one of our major retailers, I'm thinking that this year they're going to treble their business. Okay? What does that mean from a production point of view? What does that mean from a cashflow? Okay, what does that mean? Do we need more staff? Do we need a new bottling plant? Whatever, whatever. So I think the scenario model within float is great because that then chucks out the other end A whether we can afford it from our existing cash flow. B, whether we need to take on an internal investment and we can play around with that. So that's going to be a super useful tool in terms of looking forward.
[00:02:26] Sam Jones: What have been the biggest learnings from the fundraising that you've done to get your business to grow to where it is?
[00:02:32] Paul Sherratt: Probably you need more than you think. So we've had occasions where I believe we need a particular number, and again, this goes back to this scenario planning and forecasting. You think you need a particular number, nine times out of ten actually that number is, ends up being slightly more and therefore you then in the situation going back, or we need to raise something else, which is not great when you're taking on debt, because more often than not, it's much better to take on that slightly bigger number and manage it as opposed to taking on three or four different smaller Mm-hmm. ones.
[00:03:02] Tracy Smart: So I think there's scenario planning where then there's also upside and downside, isn't there? Finding a baseline there you can feel reasonably confident that that's likely to be the output or the requirement from a cash perspective.
[00:03:16] Paul Sherratt: And look at the Ts and Cs, look at how you are paying that debt back. Look at the interest that going to be paying on that debt. Can you afford to pay it back? It's clearly an obvious one, you know, how frequently are you pulling cash out of the business to push back to that debt?
And I think we've caught ourselves in the past that, we've got to a point what there may be some deadlines and we past those deadlines, and suddenly everything ratchets up quite substantially from an interest point of view. Which maybe we hadn't anticipated that, we hadn't planned it, we hadn't thought about that and suddenly you are then playing seriously, playing catch in a way that you shouldn't be if you'd either taken out the right product in the first place or recognize what as and when those points will come where it gets super nasty.
[00:04:05] Tracy Smart: It's about getting the right product, isn't it? And uh, it's not always easy.
[00:04:10] Paul Sherratt: Maybe sometimes you don't have any choice. So, you know, at the end of the day when we, when you're growing as rapidly as we've grown, you pedaling bloody hard and quickly. As an entrepreneur, you just want to keep pedalling hard and pedalling quickly and therefore sometimes if there's only one solution there that's going to allow you to pedal hard and quickly, then to some extent, you're forced to take that.
But again, the bigger you get, the easier that gets. Suddenly you've got choice of more products and more. It just, again, it's this whole cycle that you go through. But being in the communities that I'm in, again, I get the reassurance that, you know, people around me going, oh yeah, we've been there.
Oh yeah, we did. Oh, that was two years. Oh, don't worry, you'll get through that. So if, you know, if you know you are not the only person having those challenges, it's very comforting.
[00:04:59] Sam Jones: Excellent.
Thank you very much. That wraps up our Tips under Ten. Once again, all our contact details and details for Paul will be on our show notes on the platform of your podcast choice. Thank you much, Tracy, and thank you Paul.
[00:05:11] Paul Sherratt: Thank you very much.
[00:05:12] Tracy Smart: Thank you.