Chapter 2 Tuesday evening
Slater sat at the breakfast bar in her kitchen, absent-mindedly swivelling the seat she sat on from side to side. This was where she tended to do most of her work as the high-level work surface allowed her to be seated on one of the two bar stools, or she could work standing up if she wanted to. She preferred this whenever she was doing her kitchen design sketches.
Slater knew she had a good eye for home interior design, especially for what she thought was the nerve-centre of any house, and that was the kitchen. She’d previously worked in sales for a national DIY chain of stores that offered a fitted kitchen service. She’d go out and show the potential customer brochures of the units and finishes they offered and then she’d measure up the existing kitchen space and prepare a quote for them. If they accepted it, then she made her sales commission when the job was completed.
She’d been the top salesperson in her area as she was able to help the customer understand the benefits that their finished kitchen would deliver to them. She was the only woman in the sales team and while she knew other salesmen talked about how it would lookwhich was important, of courseshe also recognised that the kitchen was a working and socialising area, and she had a good way of including this in her sales pitch. This, she knew, helped her to frequently connect with the woman of the house to understand their ultimate need, and that was how she’d become such a successful salesperson.
Slater also recognised that people still had issues when their kitchen was of a smaller size, and apart from the new-build houses which tended to have larger kitchens, people generally found their kitchens to be too small. And especially so considering the increased number of appliances they had. Unless the people with the smaller kitchens were planning on a building extension, they frequently thought the cost of re-fitting their kitchen was way too high for the extra value they’d get out of it.
She’d always thought that there must be a way to help out these people with small kitchens, and that was why she’d started out on her own a few years ago with the aim to offer a cheaper and more personal service than the bigger kitchen companies. And while she’d got a steady (but low) stream of business, customers still thought the cost was too high for them. Which was why her business was struggling.
But Slater’s thinking now wasn’t directly about her business. It was around what she wanted to get from her business. The better life that Zak had focused on. She’d felt slightly perturbed that she couldn’t say precisely what she wanted from her business when Zak had asked her. She thought about this now.
What successful elements of her business would she point out to someone who was interested in buying it so that they’d increase their offer to her?
Some businesses wanted to get loyal customers who were committed to buying from them on an ongoing basis, but with kitchens it was different. For it would be many years before you needed another kitchen refitso that wasn’t of value to her thinking. The phrase ‘would you like fries with that’ came to mind and she wondered if she could sell another service on top of kitchenslike bathrooms. But who would want to do both their kitchen and bathroom at the same time. Or even close together in time as they were both expensive items to renovate. And she didn’t have any experience in bathrooms eitherso that was a non-starter.
If someone were interested in buying her business it would be because it was making good profits, which meant she needed to be busy for most of the year. Or it would be because of something that only she could do, or only she had. But what could that be?
She decided to move on to the next question.
What does ‘having a better life’ from your business mean for you? Again, don’t focus on the monetary aspects, but highlight the quality elements of your work/life balance.
Slater knew she enjoyed all the different elements of her work. From going to site to meet the customer and to give them her vision of what their kitchen could look like. She could measure up and give the designs to Gerry the carpenter that she worked closely with who’d make all the items. Sometimes she even assisted Gerry to install the kitchen if she wasn’t busy and she quite enjoyed that aspect of the business too. She could work from home when she wanted to, doing the quotations and the designs, or she could work from the little office in the small workshop unit she rented to store all her materials in. So for her, there was flexibility in how and where she worked and she thought she could have a good work-life balance however successful her business became.
Let’s look at the last question, she thought.
And finally, what are some of the things about your business that make you get out of bed in the morning and looking forward to getting to work?
As she’d been thinking through these questions she realised she’d been absentmindedly sketching on the paper in front of her. It was a corner cupboard with a double-hinged door. She enjoyed sketching and was quite artistic with a pen in her hand. She loved the design process where she incorporated some innovative new space-saving device into her designs, as customers were always excited to hear about itand even more thrilled when they actually saw it installed as an integral part of their new kitchen. She realised that she truly enjoyed the front parts of the entire design and installation process that she was good at, as Gerry could handle all the manufacturing and actual fitting. And she knew that he enjoyed that part of the work tooso it suited both of them.
If she was honest, it was the designing work that really excited her. Looking at an existing kitchen and visualising how it could be better and more efficient to suit the needs of the owner. She started to realise that it wasn’t so much the designing of an entirely new kitchen from scratch, but the re-design where she had to apply clever ideas to make the best use of existing spaces. That was the really fun part for her. But if only there was more work coming in…
That same evening in Nick’s study.
Nick was pondering the same three questions that Zak had asked them earlier that day. They seemed like obvious questions that should have obvious answers, and Nick was a little uneasy that he couldn’t answer two of them. The first question about a getting a potential buyer of the business to raise their offer was more straightforward. For Nick, he realised that he would have to tell the potential buyer how he had regular customers who he knew by name. For if his café was busy for most of the time, then there wasn’t much more he could do. And in a town like theirs, it was all about getting regular customers rather than trying to appeal to the once-off passing trade.
Zak’s second question had been around What does having a better life from your business mean?
One of Nick’s hobbies was coffee. When he was younger, he’d spent a few years in the Royal Navy and had toured the world and sampled coffee from so many different countries he’d lost count. When he’d left the navy and joined the insurance company, his love of coffee continued and he’d always had coffee making devices of some kind in his home. From a simple coffee percolator, to a Turkish copper cezve for making the intense Eastern coffee, to a French press and moka pot, and eventually a fancy espresso machine. He’d experimented with different beans from around the world too. And now that he could order beans from anywhere via the internet, he’d sampled some really interesting coffees. He’d even got a small coffee roaster so he could buy green coffee beans and roast them himself. He’d started flavouring his beans as he roasted them and even he had to admit that his hazelnut-roasted Colombian Arabica beans produced an amazing cup of coffee. It was what he was sipping now as he pondered Zak’s questions.
Nick, his wife and daughter were a very close family and they’d always talked about doing something together someday. Nick’s wife Alicia was a sensational cook at home, and her food was never overly fancy, but always extremely tasty. He’d often joked to Alicia that with her cooking and his love of coffee, they should open a café together. And when he lost his job at the insurance company, that’s what they did.
After his daughter left school, she’d completed a course at the local college on food nutrition and computer studies. He’d asked Alicia what sort of strange combination that was and what she’d do with it to get a job. She’d told him that it was what their daughter wanted to do and so they shouldn’t interfere. It turned out that his daughter had struggled to get a job and so she’d joined them in the café. This wasn’t a problem for Nick as they needed the extra help, and they all got on well together, so it made things quite enjoyable during the day to be working in their own family business.
It had taken a sizeable amount of money to lease and fit out the premises and he was desperate for it to be a success as Alicia was younger than him and he was keen that she would have a source of income if anything ever happened to him. He knew that he wasn’t the healthiest person and so he had to be planning for his family for the future. And this all summed up what having a better life meant for him. It was about Coffee & Company being successful and providing a fair income for the three of them.
Zak’s final question concerned the things about your business that made you get out of bed in the morning and look forward to your work. For Nick, it was about having regular customers, for he was the chatty type and loved making his customers feel special. In his time at the insurance company he’d discovered that he was excellent at remembering names and faces, which now stood him in good stead with recalling the regular customers in his café. But he knew that regular customers didn’t always want to eat and drink the same thing. So he’d always thought it would be essential to offer new and varied items on the menu to keep appealing to them. This way a first time customer would return again and again, and so become a regular.
This appealed to Nick. He imagined himself speaking with his regulars, and making recommendations from the menu on the day’s speciality coffee he’d be offering or on the dish-of-the-day Alicia had added to the menu. That was the sort of thing that he’d really look forward to. Surely that would help to create more regulars and increase profits?
He absentmindedly swirled the coffee in his mug and the hazelnut aroma this action released stimulated him into action. He began to write down his answers to Zak’s questions in his notebook…