Why the ‘F’ word *(failure) shouldn’t be a dirty word

Let me ask you a question… How comfortable are you talking about failure? Are you happy to admit when things go wrong, or do you hate the thought of owning up to your mistakes?

At Aristar, we’ve had a great 2020 as a business and it’s made me reflect on how far we’ve come over the last couple of years. The truth is, it hasn’t always been this way.

I’m gonna put this out there. In 2018, I hit an all-time low in business terms. To put things plainly, I realised the company I’d built was, well, ‘a little bit shit’. I was reminded of this recently, when pitching to a potential new client I was embarrassed that a business they were familiar with had received a poor service from us in the past. I decided there and then that honesty was the best policy and I held up my hands. I’ll admit, for a couple of years, I got things wrong. Badly wrong.

I set up Aristar to provide a remote finance team for recruitment companies. No offence, but recruiters are brilliant at sales, but bloody awful when it comes to the back office and building their own high-performing finance teams.

I started out in 2011 just after my twins were born, so naturally the first year was a blur of not much experience and very little sleep. So Aristar didn’t properly lift off until Year 2, but from then on and up until Year 7, we were flying, with a great growth model of around 40- 50% per year. And here’s the problem. Because things grew so fast, we didn’t have the right structures and processes in place to keep up and we’d lowered the bar on our own recruitment standards.

I soon realised that I was providing much of the knowledge and drive, but there was an increasingly growing void appearing under me. Despite spending cash on coaching and training, I wasn’t building the organisational and leadership structures I needed around me. The balance was way off and it wasn’t sustainable either for me or for the business.

A 4 week road trip to Canada with my wife and kids brought it crashing into reality and provided the clarity I needed. So much about my business wasn’t working… the clients, the staff and also too many processes we’d badly outgrown. I came back and cut ties with several clients. It was a risky manoeuvre and left me in a financially precarious position. But my only other option would have to been to raise the fees and I didn’t have enough confidence in the service we were providing to justify that.

In a way this solved another problem. I knew the team I’d built wasn’t right and many of them made their own decision to leave the business. I didn’t take it personally, they could see the cracks so I don’t blame them. Fortunately, it created an opportunity to put things right. I needed to find an amazing ‘Number Two’ and thank goodness, I found one.

Jules (my incredible Managing Director) had no specific recruitment experience, but she had management skills, a background working with SMEs, plus she had the right attitude. So, together we set out to rebuild the business in 2019. Crucially, she brought a culture of accountability with her. And this is what I believe has made the all-important difference. With Jules by my side we have built a structure that develops, trains and rewards. Suddenly my remaining team members were growing into their roles and fulfilling potential that has always been there but never been nurtured.

As previously mentioned, I’d ditched a load of clients and I wasn’t ready to add any new ones into the mix until we knew we’d got things right. It was a period of transition and allowed us to tweak everything. Once we knew we had our processes sharpened and our confidence back, we won our first client and things have rocketed from then. Ours is a business built on retained income and in the space of a year we have added 50% to that figure. The real win is that every single client we’ve onboarded in 2020 is delighted with our service, and in-house, team morale has never been higher.

All that remains to be said is that thank God we were in this strong position once the events of 2020 unfolded. I think of it as an accidental positive. Understandably, our entire portfolio of clients went into panic mode as lockdown was announced. I felt like I was on a permanent Zoom call from the crack of dawn until late in the day coaching, counselling and consulting, doing everything I could to support them. Each of our team leaders stepped up to the challenge too and in some ways the adversity presented a career-defining opportunity. Bizarrely the Pandemic has created a growth phase in our business. I’m not taking it for granted as I know other industries haven’t been so fortunate. But I also know I wouldn’t be saying this if we had gone into it in the same position I’d been in just a couple of years earlier.

We are now entering 2021 with an exceptional leadership team who all have accountability and ownership at their core. They have the ability & potential to run teams three or four times larger than they currently are due to the systems and processes we put in place to support that growth. We have a team with strength, depth and a real customer service ethic. As a result of this, our customer satisfaction is higher than it’s ever been. I also genuinely believe that the journey we have been on over the last two years has made me better placed to advise our client base through their tough times, not just from a financial perspective either.

Possibly most satisfying of all is the business success you can’t measure on paper. I’m proud to say that with the exception of one external candidate, our entire leadership team is now made up of people who have been on this journey with me and stepped up to the challenge. It’s almost like they spotted the opportunities for themselves and made their own progression happen. What more could you want as a boss than for your staff to flourish; even the ones who may not have always been the most obvious stars.

So, there you have it. My crisis of confidence led to real and measurable improvements in my business. Admitting your past mistakes and failings won’t break you. In fact, it can make your business fly.