Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in business development but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Dan Wells, Founder, and CEO of GrowCFO Limited, located in Godalming, Surrey, United Kingdom.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

GrowCFO is an independent learning and developing platform for aspiring and existing finance leaders, plus their finance function team members. We have around 20,000 subscribers and 50,000 social media followers. Our clients range from startups and scale-ups spread across over 100 countries and states to some of the largest Fortune 500 businesses in the world. We deliver value to our clients via our market-leading online platform and through our impressive professional mentoring team, who share our values and passion towards supporting such a fantastic community! Our services include online training courses, peer group workshops, career development programmes, professional mentoring, and business boot camps.

Tell us about yourself

I'm an ex-KPMG Big Four partner and have dedicated my career to helping entrepreneurs and their management teams to achieve their business vision successfully. When my Dad unexpectedly died from cancer a few years ago, I became determined to build a legacy that will help future generations of finance leaders to overcome their biggest personal challenges and deliver their full potential whilst maintaining a healthy work-life balance and dedicated sufficient time towards the things in life that are most important to them - family, friends, hobbies, etc. My personal mission is to ensure that nobody has to ever go through the significant challenges of achieving their finance career ambitions alone and that GrowCFO provides the necessary support to them regardless of their personal circumstances and available budget.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

Building a business from scratch requires you to create something from nothing that didn't previously exist. You must develop a powerful brand, create a sought-after customer value proposition, and earn a market-leading reputation. My proudest achievements to date are hiring a fantastic team of passionate, talented people and creating a vision for GrowCFO that has encouraged so many impressive members of the finance leader community to fully support our mission statement. We will always be incredibly grateful for the huge amounts of people who have given up their personal time to help us grow the business into what it has become today.

What's one of the hardest things that comes with being a business owner?

Being a business owner is very different from being an employee of a company. Nothing prepares you for the emotional drain of ultimately being responsible for all aspects of the business. For example, paying your team, delivering to your customers, and managing risk. You have to accept that you cannot do everything, and you need to focus your time on the tasks only you can do, which will make the biggest overall impact. You need to avoid the temptation of spending lots of time on low-value activities and avoid overwhelming your team. Recognize that it takes time to grow a successful business and that the well-being of your people is more important than anything else. People build businesses, and it is important that everybody works sustainably. If somebody needs time out from the business, do everything you possibly can to give them the space needed to recharge and overcome any personal issues they are facing. Business owners have higher highs and lower lows than employees, which can, unfortunately, lead you to become desperate and impatient at times, especially when things are not going well. Recognize the impact that your emotions may have on the people around you and create thinking time to consider the impact of your decision-making and actions in advance. Many decisions and behaviours carry unintended consequences which need to be recognized early on.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

  1. Make sure you have enough personal savings to avoid needing to earn any money during the first 12 months and that you have some surplus funds to cover unforeseen business costs before receiving income from your clients.
  2. Do not assume that many people will buy something based on an obvious need or gap in the market. Persuading customers to spend money on your product is not just about creating something helpful. You also need to implement effective, scalable processes to create an ongoing interaction with them and generate emotional urgency to trigger them to actually spend their cash.
  3. Virtually everything in business takes longer than you would initially expect it to and contains burdensome requirements that unexpectedly drain your company's precious time and resources. Try to simplify and streamline all your activities as early as possible so that they will still be fit for purpose in several years as your company grows, and seek to automate tasks wherever possible. Only hire the best people, and never rush into employing somebody who may not quite be right for your business. It can take huge amounts of time and emotional effort to remove and replace somebody who does not work out for you.
  4. Think long and hard about whether you want to take on an investor. Experienced, knowledgeable, and well-connected investors can be great for your business but recognize that once you take on outside investors, much of your business focus will revolve around serving your investors' needs, delivering your mission statement, and providing the best solution for your customers.
  5. You will need to take many risks when growing your business from scratch, and you will no doubt try out many new ideas without knowing for sure whether they will work. It's important that you are fully aware of the maximum downside of any corresponding risks and that you mitigate against any undesired negative outcomes. It is impossible to remove all risks, and you need to be comfortable with what you expose yourself to. Approach new initiatives in a way that allows you to determine whether they will deliver their expected returns quickly. If they don't go as planned, then ensure that you fail quickly without investing too much time and money. Many great ideas do not work out as expected for reasons that are not always obvious upfront.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://www.growcfo.net/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/growcfo/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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