A tribute to Sir John Harvey Jones MBE – One of Britain's best industrialists

When I was little, I was always surrounded by business.

Watching my father start one of, if not the first, online companies for valves and industrial engineering products back when there was only dial up connection (if you were born in this millennia, you probably do not know what that is) I had an immensely good understanding of what a business was and how much sheer dedication and hard work it took to run one.

The glamorous allure of being an illusively termed ‘Entrepreneur’ has been made popular by the likes of Dragons’ den. To my foreign readers, this is a prime-time Sunday night broadcasting on the BBC where members of the public pitch their business ideas to very successful figures in British business, with hopes of landing a successful investment and partner in their businesses.

An entrepreneur is defined as ‘an individual who identifies opportunities, takes risks, and organizes resources to create and grow a business or venture, often with the aim of generating profit and driving innovation’.

But for so many people who start their journey in business, so often this whole molarky of entrepreneurism and business is not all what it is cracked up to be…

Many people when they come up with an idea do successfully ‘identity opportunities’ pretty well.

Opportunities do indeed exist everywhere. When you walked into Starbucks or Costa or one of those over-priced posh independent coffee retailers for your morning Mocha-Choca-Lattechino this morning, did you think of why that company took your money? Was the coffee shop in a good location - Enroute to your office which made it easier for you just to ‘pop-in’ and buy a cup? Was there a quite attractive young woman/man/it/whatever is the politically correct term is nowadays working there (and you have a bit of a crush on them) so you keep coming back every Monday? Whatever it is, that company took your money somehow.

It is not hard for somebody to think of an opportunity to give a customer a better price, a better cup of coffee, or a better service for that cup of coffee and thus have identified a market opportunity. For many people they may take that risk to open their first coffee shop and front their hard-earned cash. When they go to sleep that night, they will dream of becoming a millionaire with their chain of new, innovative coffee shops across the UK, conquering Europe and the rest of the world. Not a bad outcome for popping into your local Starbucks for just a cup of coffee, eh?

But this is where it all starts to go a bit horribly wrong. How on earth do they ‘organize their resources’ to ensure that their customers buy the coffee? What should a new entrepreneur spend their money on and perhaps more importantly, time? If they achieve all these things successfully and implement solid answers to these questions, well... what are their actual chances of staying in business with competitors 'hot on their heels', uncontrollable forces such as the economy and supply-side factors stopping them to actually ‘grow a business or venture’?

Two of the biggest mistakes that I have seen and personally had experience of making myself is firstly, being fooled into investing heavily into unnecessary things at the beginning and secondly, the most important, taking way too long with everything.

Please allow me to address the latter first because truly, it is the heaviest weighing mistake for any business to make. People think that, in business, things take way too long these days. This is pretty down-right peculiar when you think that our generation is defined by wanting and 9 times out of 10 having everything quickly.

You want to build a new website. You approach a web developer. They quote you something like ￡20,000 and the site will be ready in three weeks. Let me to give you another example. One of your key suppliers is closing their factory and you need to find an alternative supplier. You allow a colleague the task of finding an alternative supplier and they say that it is not possible soon and may need months to find one, meanwhile your lead times for your products are becoming uncompetitive and the business consequently suffers in losing key customers. Does this sound slightly familiar?

It is so common with every business, regardless of whether you have been in industry for ten days, ten years, or one hundred years. There absolutely, unequivocally must be one leading voice within the company that demands speed and that does not mean that quality has to suffer as a result. Why does a website take three weeks to develop? It doesn’t. Ask the development company can they get it done in three days and if they can't you will find a different company. Why can there not be one factory that produces what you need? There are! There are thousands of factories in China alone that can produce what your company needs. People take too long. Some people are (let’s cut to the chase) lazy or unwilling to ask for help and advice. One million times over if you give people the choice to do a task slowly or quickly they will always choose the previous. Or, they just really can’t be bothered and are completely unmotivated to do something quickly as they are not properly incentivized to. Whether this is a machinist working above and beyond to increase output, a salesperson cold-calling ten more customers than his normal numbers in a day... whatever, or whoever it may be in any organization.

The crucial thing that any business must remember is that entrepreneurism is hard.

It is a tough old game business, akin to a blood sport really. There will be new challenges and problems every day that the company must overcome to stay in business and if you take too long to solve one problem, the problems start to pile up very quickly. The business world is ultra-competitive, and should you take too long to change, what is stopping the business putting this decision off another month, another year, another decade. Before you know it, it is too late to change, and your customers no longer hold a good reputation for your brand. Making quick decisions and producing content quickly for your business is vital.

Of course, the second mistake is also crucial not to make. When people often start a business or are in the early stages of its development and maybe they have achieved some success, they often invest heavily into unnecessary things such as offices, staff, expensive services etc. All you really need to do is to market your brand and get the customers in. A business with a cheap website in most industries and a contract business phone started at home with minimal to no start -up costs, but the founder is willing to cold-call 50 leads a day for 5 days a week without end will be 100x more successful than the business that thinks the first thing to do is to register the business, register for VAT, get an accountant, get a company car, credit card, swanky office the works.

The customers are your business.

Repeat. Customers are your business.

Without them, you do not have a business. Maybe this seems obvious, for so many people setting up one, it is forgotten. Or, for successful businesses, this is forgotten lost in corporate meetings with objectives set by people who do not really understand your business and have never spoken to one of your customers in the first place. The first question anyone should ask when they set up a business or venture is, do I have customers for this? Yes, okay how many? No, is it easy to get them? Everything else can come after. The swanky office, the accountant, the flash company car or van, the fancy business cards with the expensively designed fancy logos… it’s all irrelevant and a complete utter waste of your time without customers that are willing to pay you for your goods or services.

Moving forward, everything you do should be for your customers and how to thank them for giving you an opportunity to stay in business everyday. So call some of your best clients today, with nothing other than checking in on them and see how they are doing. See what you have done well in your relationship together, or perhaps what you have not done so well and promise them to deliver above and beyond in the future. Tell them that you value their business. Ask them if they need anything more. Look after your customers and they will look after you.

?Next week will mark what would have been the 100th Birthday of one of my personal icons- Sir John Harvey Jones. For those unfamiliar with this legend of a Man, he was a very famous British industrialist noted for his involvement with a company called ICI from 1982-87 in which he was a director, turning the company into a billion-pound valuation.

He was admired for his charismatic leadership style and his ability to turn around struggling businesses through innovative strategies and management techniques. Harvey-Jones was an advocate for employee empowerment, operational efficiency, and the importance of adapting to changing market conditions. His contributions to the field of business management have left a lasting impact, inspiring generations of entrepreneurs and business leaders worldwide. He left a long-lasting impression on my dad which motivated him to set up a business which he developed over twenty years to a multimillion-pound business, supporting local people and giving them a secure job and income to buy houses, raise families and live a good happy life (which of course, everyone deserves all of those things). He made a long-lasting impression on me, and this article is a bit of a testament to this great man- a leader in business in his day and perhaps one of the best industrialists ever to have (and possibly that shall) lived.

“The only companies that innovate are the companies that believe that innovation is vital for their future”