they would literally send customers out of their shops to come and see us on a Saturday! Our competitors misunderstood that niche within the sector to such a level that they used to be our biggest sources of leads.

We were fundamental in crafting the 'last minute package holiday', which was a market that simply didn't exist until we 'invented' it. When I look back at what elements enabled us to create such high margins it was unique offering, huge demand from ideal customer base and - at the beginning - no competition. Within the travel industry we had created a very unique proposition so our stores became very profitable, very quickly. Once you've decided you can hand over control and trust someone else, then you've got a choice to make do you look for outside investment, or are you trying to grow by bootstrapping it, organically using your own cashflow. For example, once we’d got started and the first Travelworld store was generating enough profit we would look to find another site to open and then repeat the process.Īs I have often shared, the hardest thing in business - in my opinion - is to go from one to two shops. Even access to information on how to grow via a cash injection was also a lot less simple to find, so many of us business owners could - and would - only grow our businesses as fast as cashflow would allow. to a certain point then brought in external funding to accelerate.īack in the 1980's (if you are too young to remember those heady times lucky you!) when I first started Travelworld, access to capital was a lot (and I mean a LOT) less easy to come by. As someone who has used both methods, in this blog, I am going to share how my first major business used cashflow to grow. you reinvest your own profits back into the company to enable expansion. The plus side of taking on investment is that you can often speed up the process of business growth, the downside is that if you are heading in the wrong direction you just expedite getting to the wrong destination faster!Ī slower - but often more stable - way of looking to scale up your business is via cashflow i.e.

Cashflow club