Reflections from firing myself from my own business 10 years ago

Back in 2014 I took the daunting step of firing myself and stepping away from the day to day running of my business. Accepting my own limitations and relinquishing control was one of the hardest business decisions I have ever made. On balance, it was probably one of my better decisions; however, like most things it had both positive and negative consequences:

Positive

I did not come from a wealthy background; my mum is from the Czech Republic and my dad was a pop singer in the 60s. They taught me kindness, compassion and instilled in me a sense of belief that I could achieve anything (thanks mum and dad!).

One self-limiting belief I had picked up however was around money. I intrinsically wanted to discount and offer things for a low price. This belief held Pure back in the early days and meant we picked up many of the wrong type of customers (who turned out to be unprofitable). By handing over the reins to someone else, this incorrect belief was made patently obvious and had held the business back.

My core skill set is in thinking and imagining what could be. I can spend hours, in my own head working out different scenarios and the implications of them. One of my biggest weaknesses, however, is the inability to be able to see detail around systems and processes. This became a problem as the business grew; you can’t grow a big business without robust, documented systems and processes.

Bringing in someone whose strength was in implementing the detail is one of the reasons we were able to scale the business to over 100 people across 3 different countries. There is no way this would have happened if I stayed in control of the day to day.

Probably also because of my upbringing I am intrinsically soft and extremely loyal. I dislike confrontation and try and naturally see the best in people. Whilst I like this aspect of my personality, it has meant that I am not always the best judge of character and have to navigate some really tricky situations because of it.

One of the first things our new leader did was ban me from interviews. My default is to like everyone, therefore in the interview process my bar was far too low. By banning me from interviews, the team were able to recruit better people and save me the internal conflict of not hiring everyone.

Negative

Detail is important. Although I may not be a detail person, understanding what is going on and certain elements of the detail is critical in order that there are no surprises. Since appointing people to run the day to day there have been times where we have made mistakes or not provided the service levels I would expect.

Understanding what is important to know and what I can ignore has improved over the years but remains a challenge.

Sometimes the big picture is the most important aspect of the business. Whilst I naturally think in terms of the big picture, many of the people in our organisation are better at focussing on the detail and their own silo.

Over the years this led to innovation being stifled. I have learnt that ultimately that holistic innovation lies with me. This resulted in me spending 18 months working all hours and paying for expensive specialists to re-imagine the business for a world with AI, evolving AdTech and consumer behaviour. The real hard part has been communicating my vision in a way that the team can implement and run with.

Whilst there is no doubt that it was right to hand over the reins at Pure, it has not been all unicorns and rainbows. Relinquishing control is hard, making sure that the company operates within my vision and ethos is even harder. On balance, if I could go back, I would do it again, however I would keep a closer eye on some of the details!