- Hi gang, James Sinclair here on the YouTube channel
designed to help bring your business.
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please comment below,
because if you're interested in recruiting people
and you're interested in finding superstars
for your business, then this is the video for you.
Because in this video,
I'm gonna go through my four steps stages of recruiting,
great, talented people.
We are in the depths of the biggest recession
in the last 300 years.
Some say in the biggest recession ever
because of the Coronavirus pandemic.
Well, I'm gonna show you how we're now
growing our business and looking for talented people
to come and help us build our businesses
and talking about there is our farm shop.
So we've got this farm shop it's doing well.
It's doing sort of 12,000 pounds a week in sales,
but we haven't got a decent manager.
So we're going through the four step stages,
stage number one is group interviews to tell people
about our vision, our weaknesses,
our strengths as a business and how the possible candidates
can come and help us grow our business.
This video, you're gonna see live me delivering stage one,
the group interview process to come work for us.
Let's pull back the curtains and watch now.
Right, so guys, we're gonna make our way now,
if you can all follow me, I just wanted you to see this,
'cause I think it will be easier for tonight.
And then if you just follow me, we're going,
I'm going quite a trek, but not too much of a trek
just down to our central restaurant.
So follow me, let's go.
So we've taken the business from doing sort of
four or 5,000 pound a week, up to 12,000 pounds a week now.
And we've been doing it piecemeal with our staff
that we've got, but they're not retailers.
You know, we're not good at that.
We know what we want to achieve,
and I wanna share that with you now.
And that's I put this business plan together.
I mean, even the branding, the development, the logos,
and all of that, that's all come out
in the last three or four months.
And so we've got it to a point
and we think our wastage is too bad,
we're not got good controls on labor,
our merchandising isn't good enough.
We've only just got a software system in,
you know, the tills area that you saw that was all offices.
We've, that's where all the floors look horrible
because we've knocked the walls down
and everyone was coming in one way and out the other way.
And we thought, because of Coronavirus, we couldn't do that.
We got cook concession over there
for no one knows what the cooked frozen food is.
We've only had that for three months.
We pleaded and begged with them during Coronavirus.
We didn't have any shelves.
So, and because we couldn't buy anything during Corona,
we couldn't actually get any retail units or anything.
Everything's been a bit piecemeal, et cetera, et cetera.
So we want a superstar to come in and say,
"Yeah, I'm gonna take this on, I will lead it,
I will manage it, I will micromanage it to efficiencies,
I will put the systems and processes in."
Because I understand here's what we're good at
as a business.
We're good at getting people through the door,
we're very good at that.
We're very good at marketing.
James, our Marketing Director, who's watching here.
I'm, I love marketing as you can probably guess
from my loud mouth,
and I spend most of my time in the getting customers
area of our business, but I want someone really
to manage the day to day.
And that's what we need is what I've just told you.
We want someone to come in and say,
"Okay, team, you're really good at
running litter attractions.
You're not bad at running day nurseries,
or you're quite good at the property game."
We make teddy bears, we make all those.
So we're good at making those things.
You're good at getting customers, but you're not retailers.
We are in the process of making a documentary,
that's why it's all being filmed,
where we're gonna build a million pound
plus revenue business from scratch in a pandemic.
And we're gonna document it, it's gonna come out
at 7 o'clock on Boxing Day.
And we want that person to come in and help us run
and make that a reality.
We will back out with investment.
Our senior team will help,
but this person will be making the day to day decisions.
They will be doing the buying, I think that's a,
Oh, am I gonna be customer centric?
Coming to the buying in a minute.
We want someone that's super duper customer centric.
Someone passionate to their DNA
about good customer service.
Someone that answers the phone brilliantly,
presents themselves well and motivates their team
to do the same thing.
We have been from our conception,
a business that loves great customer service.
It's in our fabric and our DNA.
And when we do something wrong,
we go over and above to put it right.
So we're a very customer centric business
and that's why that comes up first.
So buying, we're not very good at buying.
We're very good at buying for this sort of stuff
'cause we've been doing this for 17 years.
So some are starting out on a farms.
We just, we've never done it before.
We never understand what we're used to such high margins
on this sort of stuff and then I ain't gonna sit.
We can, we can only make 30% margins, 40% margins,
we're not used to that.
We're like times in everything by five in this world
because that's, and then,
so we were learning all this stuff.
So we're not very good at buying,
that's another one of our weaknesses.
So we want someone to go in there and make sure that
the signage, the customer service they deliver,
the brand, sorry, the supply lines
that we're buying from is consistent.
At the moment, you know, there's no full time manager
in there and what happened was, during lockdown,
none of our other businesses were happening,
so that the best of the best of our organization
working on it for like my MD, Aaron
was like the shop assistant of this whole big company,
but then everything else has opened up now.
So we've sucked out all of that talent from that business.
So we've just got zero, our part time people
running it on a seven day a week operation.
And we're already starting to let down
some of those loyal customers that we had in the beginning
because our SMT, Senior Management Team,
have now come out of the business.
I think it's worth saying as well,
we are a business of profit.
Don't get me wrong, we want to make a profit,
but we're in the business of making profit for generations,
50 years.
You know, I'm in a very fortunate position.
I don't have venture capitalists
or any shareholders to bloody answer to,
you know, it's me and my senior team.
And we, you know, we are a business,
I'll say it again, that wants to make a profit,
but we'd rather be here in 30 years time
and not just make loads of money for the next culture
and then disappear.
So yes, we are a business of profit,
but we also like to think we're fair at the same time,
and that's very important to us.
The next thing I was gonna put this here,
anyone guess, this is one of the things
that I really want us to get better on in this business
is margin.
And someone said well, look, we don't mind
having that as a loss leader cause it's sort of know,
I mean, I say that we're completely stupid.
I sort of do understand how to retail works to some degree.
Yeah, we're gonna sell the bread and the milk
really low cost, but we're gonna make more margin
over there.
And we sort of get that stuff,
and we respect that as a business,
but we haven't really come up with a system
and process to deliver that consistently.
So we want someone to come in,
really look after our margins, protect our margins,
say, "Look, we're gonna sell that as a loss leader,
but we're gonna have a customer for life."
We are a business, just if one of you hopefully
will be lucky to come work for us.
We never stopped talking about labor
in this organization, it's our biggest cost
and it's the difference between a profit and loss,
especially in our leisure business and overspending
creepage on labor can happen so very, very quickly.
So we want someone to come in and say,
"These are the percentage labor controls
that you will have on a month to date basis.
This is what I want them to be,
and you will keep them consistent."
What we don't want to do is see super low labor
and then go look at my profits really massive,
but we've really marked up on customer service.
Crucially, but also done in one or the other way, you know,
spending so much on labor, but we don't have a business
and no one has a job to go back to.
So we just want that nice, even, consistent labor control.
What makes us very unique as a business?
You think when we got this farm shop,
we've already got quarter of a million people a year
coming through the farm park.
And as we develop into this,
and if you can read the business plans,
this won't just be a farm shop.
This will be a leisure attraction gift shop
and a retail experience.
What do we mean by that?
Well, see that big top there, we've bought another big top
that's gonna go next to the farm shop
and two 1960s route master buses,
which is gonna be the catering
for just the retail experience.
And the big top is gonna become a Christmas shop
and it's gonna be dressed with Christmas trees.
So it's not just food retail, you're gonna be doing some
we bought I think two and a half thousand
real Christmas trees to sell this year.
That would all come under your demands.
So, and the reason I'm throwing all this stuff at you
is because some people like consistency.
We want consistency, but actually you're gonna be
sort of running an events program that is a retail centric.
So we will next year be doing a sausage and cider retail
or a cheese retail day event that will be free to get into
that will hopefully find us new regular customers.
They've got quite some great cheese there,
actually I'll buy my bread there
and my wine there regularly.
Anyone that's successful in this organization
to come work for us in a senior role,
to be heavily involved in the marketing of the shop
and demand from our marketing team.
So our marketing team, we've got full time videographer,
full time web designer, in house graphic designer in house,
James is like the head of those people
and the commercial director,
but that person, whoever is successful in this role,
has to pumps and shout the loudest to get their attention,
to do great things for your department.
As we expect our child care team to do.
And we measure on that because we have that resource,
but we want you guys to say, look, you know,
the signage isn't good enough for, you know,
we started putting TV screens around with adverts,
and I wanted them in, but we haven't got the adverts
on there because there hasn't been a manager
pushing it day to day to make sure we get that
over the line.
So we learnt all about marketing, we've got,
we've already got a contract with Essex radio,
just for the shop, telling people about the events
that we're doing, the retail events.
So we we've got all that resource,
but we need someone to say,
"Come on, I need more, I need more, give me more."
And then we will reward that as we go on.
Weekends and holidays are gonna be essential for this.
You know, Christmas is going to be
a huge part of this business.
Weekends are a huge part of this business.
We're not metaphorical ourselves.
We do not expect you to work every single weekend
of every single year and it's not many late nights,
but you know, there has got to be presence
from senior management, those high days and holidays.
We just, you know, we're not really people that want someone
just sitting in an office, becoming a spreadsheet junkie
and just giving us all the best numbers.
We want someone that's gonna be with the team
and present with the team on those key high days
and holidays.
We're looking for someone that's happy and hard working.
We don't like mood hoovers.
We're not, I mean, you might think I'm a la la.
We are serious business people at the same time
and then wearing pink trainers today and shorts,
for an interview.
But we do want happy and hardworking people.
We don't want mood hoovers coming into our organization.
We haven't got time for toxic people.
So we want people, now, when I say happy
we don't expect la la la la la.
We're not looking for that.
We just don't want mood hoovers.
Now, I mean, this one, I really wanted
to make sure everyone understands this.
The systems and processes that we've created
for our dealers that are tried, tested and proven
aint in that place up there.
So this person is going to be the architect
of creating the systems and processes.
You're not gonna come in and we're gonna say,
"Here you go, here's the operations manual
for this business."
We're gonna be saying to you.
"Can you create an operations manual
for this business, please?"
So we just want everyone to understand,
they're not coming into some willowy old machine here.
It ain't fixed, it aint, yeah, we know what we want
we know what we want, a customer centric focus business
that turns between one and 1.5 million
that makes a 20% return, that's what we want.
And we want our staff and our customers to love us
and keep on coming back.
But we want someone to create the systems and processes
to make that happen.
I just want to put this up here.
We want to build the farm shop and retail experience
that families love.
And all of our businesses are really around building brands
that families love.
Whether it's a day nurseries, farm park, our play centers,
or our teddy bears, we wanna build good brands,
families love, that are generational.
We, you know, all of our businesses,
we've never closed the business down.
We're good, consistent.
We don't wanna make, you know, huge, great,
matching great profits.
We just want consistent profits that are,
they're generational.
That's, that's what we're about.
So guys hope you enjoyed that
and hope you got some great ideas on how you can spice up
your recruitment process going forward.
This is stage one of four.
Second stage is gonna be a one to one interview
with me or one of my other senior team members.
Then the third stage will be a one-to-one interview
with someone else,
me or another one of our senior team members.
And we do that so that we can be really sure
we're making the right decisions.
Stage four is one of those candidates
that I've got through this deselection process.
Remember this we're going on with the deselection process.
They get to de-select us
as much as we get to de-select them.
That's why we do this four stage interview.
And the fourth one is a presentation to us
on what they're gonna bring to the table
and how they're gonna help us achieve
our business' visions.
One of the biggest things
that great entrepreneurs understand
is we think with the end in mind.
We're telling these people what our destination looks like,
they've gotta help us on that journey.
And that's why we call it a deselection process
rather than a selection process when it comes to recruiting.
If you've loved this video, please subscribe to the channel,
click on this video for more tips
on how to grow your business.
And I will see you in the next video.
I'm James, bye bye.
(upbeat music)