We started with a borrowed room, one typewriter and a client who paid late. I have told the encouraging version of this story many times. Here is the rest of it.
What worked
We answered the telephone. That sounds too small to matter and it was decisive. In a market where most firms were difficult to reach, being reachable was a competitive advantage we held for three years without spending a shilling on it.
We also wrote things down. Every process, badly at first. When ISO certification came years later it was not a transformation, it was an audit of habits we already had.
What I would not repeat
I worked in a way that I would now consider a management failure if I saw it in someone else. Seven-day weeks for two years. I did not build resilience into the business, I substituted my own body for it, and when I was finally unwell the whole thing wobbled.
I also hired too slowly, out of fear, and lost two people I should have kept because I could not tell them where they were going.
If you are at the borrowed-room stage: answer the telephone, write it down, and build the thing so it can survive a week without you.
