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Introduction

When I started my business Coffee Nation in late 1996 I believed I had found a good opportunity. I also thought I knew something about business, as by then I had been running and growing my own consulting firm for almost five years. I set out a growth path in my business plan which I thought realistic.

I was soon to discover that this path was going to be a whole lot tougher than I had bargained for. My previous business experience counted for very little – the modest ambitions for growth I had set out meant that the entire venture was not worth the effort required and the idea that I thought so simple proved to be anything but.

I persevered but had to make drastic changes along the way. The business plan was soon out of the window and I was experimenting constantly with limited funds – and hence time – in which to find the answer. It was nothing like I expected and to be honest, for much of this period, it wasn’t a lot of fun either. I had to change and I learnt much about myself along the way.

For as long as I could hold on I was determined to never ever give up. It was truly at the eleventh hour – as I was thinking I would have to call it a day – that some light emerged at the end of the tunnel. From there events moved quickly and ten years later Coffee Nation had become a known and loved brand up and down the UK. By now that little business I started has probably served over 100m cups of coffee.

So why have I written this book? Many friends and colleagues with whom I shared the journey of building Coffee Nation encouraged me to tell the story. Contrary to what you might expect, it’s not intended to be an anyone can do it inspirational guide to starting your own business written by a successful entrepreneur. Although if my words do inspire you to start your own venture then that’s great.

What really encouraged me to write Wake Up and Sell the Coffee is the need to help more entrepreneurs not just start a business but to survive and grow. I noticed that so much of what is written and talked about relates to start-ups, not what comes later. The journey beyond survival and on towards growth gets little coverage.

Looking at the figures, out of almost 250,000 businesses that started in 1998 only roughly one-third survived to 2008. The odds are not great, but if you can start from the right place then your chances of success may be greater. Merely encouraging more start-ups is not enough. We need more of these businesses to survive and go on to become high-growth companies. We need quantity and quality.

It is high-quality businesses that survive long enough to become high growth ones, evidenced by the fact that 70% of high-growth companies are at least five years old. Most businesses start small and stay small - they lack the ambition, potential or both to grow beyond this. Only 1.5% of start-ups reach 20 employees. High-growth companies represent only 6% of all UK companies employing ten or more people. ^[1]

High growth is not about vanity. These businesses are proven to be more resilient through recession and account for a disproportionate share of job creation. In the period 2007 to 2010 the number of UK businesses growing at over 20% per year remained broadly similar to that in the periods 2002 to 2005 and 2005 to 2008. In these periods, insolvency rates for high-growth firms were approximately 2.5% compared with 4% for non-high growth businesses. ^[2] It is the tiny number of UK firms experiencing high growth (around 12,000 businesses, or just 6% of those employing more than ten people) that account for more than half the growth in jobs. Between 2005 and 2008 the average high growth UK company almost tripled their headcount. ^[3] High-growth firms attract and retain the best talent and advance society.

There has never been a better time to start your own business in Britain. I would like to encourage more entrepreneurs to think and dream big and then look for an idea that could be one of those high-growth businesses, rather than settling for starting something less ambitious and with less potential.

I hope Wake Up and Sell the Coffee can play some part in helping more British start-ups start well, survive and get on the right track to becoming successful mid-market growth companies with annual sales of £10m or more and heading on to £100m and beyond. We need more of these, a lot more, if Britain is to maintain its position as one of the world’s strongest economies in the coming years.

I do not deny the role of luck and opportunism, but I think we can do much to enhance the prospects of success. Through telling my own growth story, sharing the lessons I learnt and setting out how to start with the end in mind to design a high-growth business, I hope Wake Up and Sell the Coffee can help more of Britain’s entrepreneurs dream big and achieve big.

Martyn Dawes

November 2013

Endnotes

1 ‘Measuring Business Growth, High growth firms and their contribution to employment in the UK’, NESTA (October 2009). [return to text]

2 ‘Vital Growth: The Importance of High Growth Business to the recovery’, NESTA (March 2011). [return to text]

3 ‘Measuring Business Growth, High growth firms and their contribution to employment in the UK’, NESTA (October 2009). [return to text]