Welcome to part 6 of of our series “If they can, so can you!” in which we feature ordinary business owners that have thrived, in spite of COVID and economic challenges.
Undeniably the post-COVID landscape continues to present a mix of challenges, including cash flow constraints, markets we relied on drying up, talent shortages, supply chain issues, our nearest and dearest telling some of us to “give up”, marketing woes and complaints around pricing abounding….to mention only a choice few.
How then dare we be so bold as to say that it’s going well?
The reality is that the number of global market dislocations since 1929 now sits at 29. In each of these catastrophic seasons there have been businesses that struggled and went bust to be sure. But there have also been those that boomed and after the market re-stabilised (as it always does), these businesses came back better, bigger and stronger. In short, what we have and are still going through – awful though it has been – is simply the next and current dislocation. Once we are through it, we may have some calm before the storm. But before we know it, there will be the next big thing, and as business owners our jobs will yet again to gear up, get through, survive and thrive in spite of it.
In this series we have been featuring ordinary entrepreneurs (just like you!) who have had some of their best trading times ever over the last 2 years, but not because their business was uniquely suited to “pull through”. On the contrary, they are part of those sectors that were some of the hardest hit by the pandemic. We have covered what they did business-wise and their stories. We highlighted what the BIG problems were at the time COVID hit that they had to overcome. We talked about what they did to remediate their situation and overcome the challenges, as well as some specific advice they had for what YOU can do. It has been an informative, inspiring and enabling journey.
In part 5 met Zeke Murphy and Angela-Lee Wright from Sustainable, an e-commerce site for technical “green” products for your business and home that has had to hold its own in the global online space with over 1.88 billion websites to compete with.
Now, in the last of this series we’re meeting Carwyn and Noleen Samuels, the owners of bioCURE that operates in the industrial and commercial “cleaning” arena that largely closed during COVID.
CASE STUDY #6: BIOCURE
Owned by Carwyn and Noleen Samuels
Carwyn and Noleen are first-generation owners of a thriving business that (in their words) “is blessed to be the service solutions partner of choice to those customers in the Waste and Environmental Industry who are invested in customised solutions for their problems in the fields of Odour Control, Grease Trap Maintenance and Water Remediation.” Based in Cape Town and servicing the Western Cape, bioCURE is a family-owned business that was founded on building relationships, being purposeful, walking their talk, being first-class at what they do and having a deep-seated enjoyment in being able to serve others.
Focused and operational in the commercial, industrial and municipal sectors, their clients will share that what they do comes with the sort of old-fashioned service excellence that continues to surprise and delight them. They’ll also tell you that the products that bioCURE uses are carefully sourced, green, environmentally friendly and independently tested, with the sort of safety results that create real peace-of-mind for all their end-users.
Their team is invariably praised for being “well-trained, professional and personable”. They take great care in instilling in every person that works for them a sense of pride in what they do. That this training investment shows on-site is evident.
Well, that’s alright for you (you may be saying) and lucky for some. But, in truth, this customer praise is the product of hard, intentional, courageous, ongoing diligence and building their business by the best practice principles long before COVID. So, what were the particular challenges that bioCURE, Carwyn and Noleen faced?
“Arriving at a successful, profitable position is one thing, but ensuring that you are built to stay there is another thing altogether.”
Designing an enduring business
When they first met their business coach, Kathi Clarke, a couple of years ago, Carwyn and Noleen had no real middle-management to help shoulder the load, they were almost solely dependent on one big CoCT contract, they had team issues, no clear vision and a sense that while they needed to “step-up”, they weren’t entirely sure how. In short, while they had success, they needed to work hard to put in place what was needed to keep their success going. “Arriving at a successful, profitable position is one thing,” says Kathi, “but ensuring that you are built to stay there is another thing altogether.” This resilient ability to stay profitable month-after-month, year-after-year despite the marketplace challenges and turmoil is what is behind an enduring business, and it is no mean feat. It is arrived at by design.
The first thing they worked on was applying Steven Covey’s end-in-mind thinking and getting clear on their business Vision, Mission and Values (VMAV). This included considering:
- What their ideal mix of business was that they wanted in their different sectors;
- What percentage of CoCT work they wanted;
- How much they needed to fund the business and their lives;
- What their long-term personal plans were, including what needed to be taken into consideration to care for their family and retirement;
- What they wanted ultimately for the business and;
- What was their reason for being in THIS business?
“Needing or deciding to grow into a resilient position that can survive the long haul takes effort, pushes everyone out of where they’re comfortable and involves sweat. What keeps us at it especially when it gets tough is to be able to remind ourselves why we’re doing this – what wants and dreams will be served by our doing so,” says Kathi.
The value of sharing your vision
Establishing this VMAV was key to bioCURE, because it provided them that much needed end-point that made it possible to draw up a plan. And this is so for any business – your plan is your roadmap, and it follows that it therefore has to be going somewhere. You have to have a clear end in mind or a ‘True North’, before you can make or talk a sensible plan. And once any business has these key puzzle pieces nailed down, the destination and map to it provides the essential context and necessary focus for decision-making that ensures good prioritising, actioning the now and the next well. With theirs in place, bioCURE was able to filter what came their way and make much better choices. It also enabled them as owners to ask at each strategic point: ‘will this take us towards or away from where we are going’ – as now it was clear where the “there” was. This in turn galvanised alignment from their environment and team, and gave them a clear focus to improve everyone’s chances of arriving at their “there”.
Having their VMAV was also key in getting their team to “come along for the ride”. As the business owner you get to share this direction and your plan on how the business will get there with your staff, including prospective staff. If you can ensure they resonate with it, as bioCURE did, it adds substance and depth to hiring and keeping capable talent. “A-players need and want to be part of what you are building, and it is the job of the owners to present this compellingly and consistently as team glue”, comments Kathi.
Carwyn and Noleen have always had a unique vision. Their business is not unique – there are other players in the field – and their products and services are also not unique. However, although they had been neither explicit nor verbal to others about it before they met Kathi, the heart behind what they do and their “why” is. They both come from communities and families who have not historically owned and run successful, multi-million-rand businesses. And for this reason, they remain grateful each day for the privilege of owning what they do – a business that is thriving in spite of tough trading times – and being an inspiring example of what is possible. Their raison d’etre has always been to pay forward all that they have learned so others can step up, take a risk and emulate them, but they hadn’t made this sufficiently public. Their long-term desire has always been to steward well what they have been entrusted with so that they can leave a legacy for others who come after them and show their three children what is possible – but again it was unstated and privately held. They have been, from day one, determined to offer their clients a real competitive edge, gift their team the dignity and joy of secure work, provide their supply chain with continuity of business and to our beleaguered South African economy, offer a beacon of hope in hard times that good business remains possible – but they had never actually spelt this out. In short, they are a business on display to their team, suppliers, clients, marketplace, prospects, family, friends and critics for all the right reasons – testimony to the fact that something well-run, profitable and resilient is possible, what it looks like and that it can both endure and grow – but hadn’t said so.
And while Carwyn’s natural modesty gets in the way of him being forthcoming about what he and Noleen have built and still hope to achieve, his team will tell you that this vision and the values he and Noleen holds are the main reasons they work there. The reality is that why we do what we do remains a compelling clarion call to the marketplace – to prospects, clients, suppliers, service providers and talent – and our vision is a key part of this. We do ourselves and everyone relying on the business a massive favour when we make this public and passionately so.
Drawing those (tough) lines in the sand
So having written down and shared their VMAV, their True North prescribed the essential plan needed to get there. This in turn enabled a sensible conclusion on which staff were needed and to do what. And this enabled bioCURE to tackle their second critical problem – staff they shouldn’t have had.
“Holding onto employees who have the wrong attitude, or aren’t doing their jobs despite having had clear instruction and training, is NOT good business. Yes, you may have empathy and wouldn’t want them to suddenly be without employment, but it’s what Kim Scott in her very readable book Radical Candor calls “ruinous empathy” – bad for you and bad for your employee!” Carwyn and Noleen had to accept that toxic employees needed to go, even if they had had long service or started out well. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief when this happens. It also meant failing fast when new hires didn’t work out as hoped, or existing team members refused to “come to the party”. It meant dealing summarily with staff who crossed a moral and legal boundary and above all having robust, working recruitment AND induction processes.
All of this required both Noleen and Carwyn to “toughen up” and be less of a social worker and more of a business owner when it came to their human resources. Admittedly it is an elegant line to draw in South Africa where so many needs are met in gifting someone employment. But it has to be drawn, and we need to remember that our first priority is to be a great owner of a great business that can offer secure and properly paid work. If we try to meet the myriad of societal woes and injustices indiscriminately or at the expense of the business, we will dislodge our own oxygen-mask as business owners that offer a unique contribution to fixing our economy and serve no-one.
That said, any team is only as good as its weakest link, so, first up we need to make sure it isn’t us as the boss that is under-performing. Then if someone needs to go, while this is never pleasant and often not easy, it is simple and it is our job to get it done competently. Great job descriptions and clear daily, weekly and monthly meetings will keep everyone focused on what should be happening and cue all when or if it is not. This makes any evidence in the face of wrong-doing or sub-optimal action much more objective, visible, tangible and fair. If we can all see the gap between what should be happening, what’s actually happening and what is not improving, it is a business reality that a cut-off point is required and quickly.
“If you’ve been a rubbish boss though, don’t jump too quickly to it being their fault”, Kathi warns. The legal machinery in South Africa quickly finds you out if you’re making employees pay for your bad management. Kathi’s advice based on her conversations with English cricket captain, Andrew Strauss, is to “look first in the mirror and ask yourself if you’ve done what you needed to, to fix the problem. Then you are free to look out the window (so to speak) at the team.”
Diversifying sales
Another big problem facing bioCURE was prioritising sales beyond the lucrative and critical CoCT supply contract. All too often business owners who enjoy a robust and reliable “big contract” think they can feel secure, which is precarious. they think that they are selling, when in fact they are simply order processing. Selling is the critical full-contact sport of not just servicing existing customers, responding well, closing inbound inquiries and winning over word of mouth/referred new business. No. Selling is the business ability to identify a lead by getting out there and finding it…then bringing it in and through compelling and systematic interaction, closing the deal…on your timetable, when you need it.
If your business cannot do this, then you will remain vulnerable to the ebbs and flows of business seasonality, market downturns, seismic catastrophes, unforeseen personal/business emergencies, an upsurge in competitor activity, clients leaving or termination of something in your supply chain. Being unable to turn on a sale when you need it, and not just when it happens because of an incoming inquiry you didn’t generate or a word-of-mouth referral you don’t control, is why so many small businesses fail. Don’t be one of them.
bioCURE had to beef up their sales which meant working with Kathi to refine their offerings, define their market sectors, identify who on the team would drive outbound sales to which clients within these sectors, what proper targeting looked like, scripting best ways to handle gatekeepers, objections and middlemen, hiring additional competent sales members to bolster the team and engaging in the sort of courageous stretch that accompanies tackling this critical element of the business requires.
And prior to COVID they were successful. New team additions working on commission, new market opportunities, new negotiations with suppliers and new interchanges with clients kept the profits climbing and the business on a growth upturn – slow and steady. And true to their VMAV and business identity, Carwyn, Noleen and their team haven’t turned into the sort of obnoxious, pushy, archetypal salespeople we all love to hate. Instead they have prized relationships with clients and suppliers, and have become much more intentional in going after business instead of waiting for it to come to them. As Kathi summarises: “For bioCURE, people ARE their business, and they take relationship building for the long-game as the tone for their selling capability very seriously.” And while this has meant that sales were not as fast and furious as they could have been prior to COVID, the investment has proved itself over the last two years.
When COVID hit the business kept going. Why? Well, they had a clear and compelling vision they could keep flying, they had a rhythm of team meetings, cloud-based accounting practices, established processes, essential status for some of their services, fabulous and robust client relationships and a history of having worked hard at preserving a great workplace for a hardworking, loyal team to “be safe”. They paid salaries right the way through COVID and kept the communication channels to ALL their stakeholders alive and well. Teams went out as often as possible to existing clients and round-table discussions with suppliers remained on the calendar.
As a result, bioCURE has emerged unscathed even though work was largely forced to stop during lockdown.
Lessons learnt
So, what’s their advice? Carwyn will tell you it’s been about “the value of vision, the authenticity around it, staying true to prioritising people, playing the long game and leading by example” even on days when he hasn’t wanted to. Noleen will say that it’s been about “failing fast, prioritising and finishing a recruitment system and the habit of looking for great people all the time – not just when you need them. I had to learn that it wasn’t serving them nor me to avoid having the brave conversations when it became clear an employee wasn’t going to make it, fit or deliver. Instead I had to learn how to take action, be decisive, clear, fair and learn to chop not saw!”
And Kathi will be the first as their business coach to underline that it wasn’t always easy but “in learning these critical lessons of prioritising sales, handling team optimally and flying a clear and compelling vision as the business plumb line, everyone in and associated with the business has benefitted.”
bioCURE went into COVID already engaged in great business practices and as a result they came out of it better, stronger and on track in spite of. Inspiring or what?
By Kathi Clarke, registered Industrial Psychologist, internationally-certified Business Coach and an award-winning business growth expert.