The Accidental Entrepreneur

by Janine Allis

  Systems and processes are the heart of a franchise network, and from my meeting with Lesley I realised Bakers Delight were light years ahead of us in their systems and knowledge. Lesley was more than happy to give us any system that would help and also allowed our executives to meet with her executives to see what each department could learn from the other. (In fairness, we were doing more of the learning than they were.) Many of the systems that we use today are a result of those meetings with Lesley.

  After meeting with Lesley, we reviewed our training regime and HR strategy. These improvements at Boost were so effective they reduced our overhead by nearly $1 million.

  We then looked at the stores that were looking tired, and started to upgrade both our company and franchise stores. This investment worked tenfold — each store that was upgraded immediately had an increase in sales.

  From these few, meaningful process improvements came a dozen more; from this dozen came a dozen more and so on. This was the tipping point and it spread throughout Boost like wildflowers.

  This was a pivotal time in the business. The positive outcome and lessons learned made Boost the strong business it is today. Once we were back on the road to success, looking back and remembering all the stress and uncertainty that this period brought made me realise the downturn actually made us a stronger, more systematic and a substantially better company. When people ask me what our worst time was, my answer is, ‘You have to have hard, challenging times to be great'. Going through the fear that your business is in trouble is no fun at all; however, what makes a business great is what people do in the turbulent waters, not what they do when it is smooth sailing.

  The experience also taught us a great deal about ourselves. Jeff was the ‘it will be okay' person, while I was the ‘problem solver', running on fear and adrenaline. So I knew the risks of everything we did and all the ‘what ifs'. Jeff was big picture, and did not share my fear of failure. His attitude and calmness (probably based on not knowing the details!) kept me sane. The stress that you go through when running a fast-growing business is enormous; Jeff had that ability when I walked in the door to make me feel everything would be all right. Without Jeff's calm energy, I would have fallen into a heap during this time. I know I mention Jeff a lot through this book, but that's because he has had the biggest influence on me. (So if there's a little repetition, it's because he deserves it.) Jeff has helped shape the woman I am today. He had more faith in me than I had in myself, and for that I am eternally grateful.

  Most of the executives on the Boost journey have also made a huge difference. I've already mentioned just some of the many people who were a part of the initial team. I cannot say this enough: if we had hired the wrong people at the start it would have been very difficult, if not impossible, to get Boost to where it is today. Mark, our former CFO, created the financial systems and processes we have now, enabling us to truly grow. There are also many franchisees along the journey whose passion and brutal honesty helped us to continually improve.

  Hitting the wall

  After the domestic improvements, the international side of the business had also picked up significantly and my focus was to grow that side of the business (I felt like it was my new ‘baby'). The intricacies of contracts and the differences in the countries and cultures suited my background. We were dealing with people from all walks of life, in places I had never dreamed I would visit. From Arabia, with men in their long white robes, to Estonia, where we had to walk in the middle of the road so we were not killed by falling snow from the rooftops.

  I was obsessed with getting the international side of the business up and running, but this kept me away from my family for over three months a year. My work–life balance pendulum was angling all the way to the work side. I had developed into a strong, confident businessperson with significant knowledge on how to start a business and make it a success, and had formed very strong bonds with people in my team; however, I was losing touch with my husband and family.

  Going at this ridiculous pace, it was inevitable that I would get to a point when there was nothing left in the tank. Trips to a health retreat every year had helped, but there comes a time in every business that the reins need to be shared. This brings new ideas, experience and passion to the table. I believe it is vital for a business to have fresh ideas and enthusiasm to continually grow. In 2006, I met with Geoff and Jeff for coffee and we started to look at a succession plan; two years later, I was still holding the reins and the business was still growing at a massive pace. We wanted the best person and we were prepared to wait for them.

  Balancing the scales

  At 40, Jeff decided to step down from his role as group program director of Australia's biggest radio group, Austereo. Boost was going from strength to strength and, according to Jeff, ‘financially we were okay, but at this stage not through Boost, because we still had not taken any money out of the business'. Jeff had signed a three-year consultancy/golden handshake deal, so he decided it was time to have a year off and take stock. The ‘taking stock' process highlighted a few shocks. Jeff says, ‘How bizarre — I decide to relax, take a year off, and it almost costs me my marriage.

  ‘All of a sudden, the scales were tipped: Janine was in high-powered, global-expansion mode and I was in total unwind mode. Her self-importance, her three months of travel overseas a year, her long hours, her lack of consideration for family time, and her 20 texts each hour (bantering about work while we were playing with the kids in the park) — annoyed the shit out of me! Truth is, she wasn't that bad. However, taking a step back from my perspective, it was her self-obsessed world of focusing only on Boost — making everything else second — that made me question if this was the woman I wanted to be married to.

  ‘Thankfully, when the crunch came (and it was a big ‘bang'), we both acknowledged our shortcomings and promised to work on the issues — and we never looked back.

  ‘Almost immediately, Janine made significant changes in her work–life balance. Clearly not working wasn't working for me, so I went full-time into the business as the CEO, while she concentrated on building our global push. At the time, Janine started to realise there was more to life than Boost; it had absolutely taken everything out of her and she had given it everything. She started getting her life back beyond Boost. Outside of Boost she had no friends, no hobbies and no other passions. That's when she had her epiphany'.

  On a business trip to South Korea everything changed. I arrived a day early to get rid of jet lag and decided to have a massage. It was an over-the-top, great massage. I even had mud gloves on my hands to get rid of toxins. To this day, it is the best massage I have ever had. I can still see myself lying there. And it was during this massage that I had the most amazing epiphany (although I don't think it was due to the mud gloves). I am not sure I have ever experienced such a strong, absolute feeling, and I still find it difficult to explain. In that moment, I just knew I wanted to have another baby. There was absolutely no logical reason for having this feeling. Was it because I knew my biological time was up? Was it the toll of too many days spent entrenched in a ‘man's world'? At the time, I was a director in the Hawthorn Football Club, an Australian Rules club, and in this and my other business groups I was one of very few women. Perhaps what I felt was an unbelievable desire to nurture, or simply it was a great excuse to step away from the business for a little while.

  I was so excited after the massage I could hardly contain myself. I had to speak with my husband and tell him. I knew I faced a few problems before I even started. First, it would be impossible to reach Jeff because he was doing some work in Fiji. Second, per my request seven years ago, Jeff had had a vasectomy. So I did what any modern woman would do in the electronic age — I emailed him. I simply wrote, ‘I want another baby'. My husband is a man of very few words and within an hour I had a reply: ‘Sure!' I don't know what was going through his head at the time. He was probably laughing at me, because the vasectomy must have crossed his mind, but ‘sure' was e
nough for me. My goal was to have a baby; now I just had to solve all the problems that were stopping me achieve this goal.

  Five minutes after getting the ‘sure', I did a Google search on vasectomy reversal. I came across a microsurgeon who was based in Sydney and who just happened to be the surgeon who did the first hand transplant. He was also part of the team who performed the first face transplant. South Korea was approximately on the same time as Australia so, after a few wrong attempts, I got to speak to the doctor. He said there was normally a six-month wait but he'd had a cancellation on Wednesday and could do the surgery that day. ‘That's fantastic — book him in', came flying out of my mouth. Far away, my unknowing husband was sunning himself in the beauty of Fiji. He was completely unaware of the plans I was putting in place. Of course, he had said ‘sure'.

  I arrived back to Australia on the same day Jeff arrived back from Fiji. Timing is everything with Jeff. I made sure I was prepared and waited for the right moment, which came after we had put our three boys to bed. We were relaxing with candles and wine. I had the lighting at just the right level. Jeff casually referred to my email. ‘Oh that', was my attempt to downplay my hours of frantic research and phone calls. Suddenly I couldn't hold it in and blurted out all the facts and data; the romance went out like the candles. I was speaking so fast, but Jeff just sat back, smiled and said he would do it. He suggested that we start the research on reversing the vasectomy. My eyes widened, ‘No need — I have found a surgeon who is world-renowned'. Jeff didn't say anything, so I pressed on. ‘We are sooooo lucky because he can do the surgery this Wednesday.' This took Jeff back a bit and, after a long pause, he said, ‘That would be my birthday!' Needless to say, I did not win wife of the year — although I did spend more on his birthday present that year than I had in all the years we had been together.

  Jeff's vasectomy reversal was a success in theory; however, three and a half months and many failed tests later, none of the sperm were alive. We also interviewed for international adoption. Almost a year from the date of my epiphany, we were still no closer to having another child.

  This baby continued to ‘tap' me on the shoulder from wherever she was, telling me to make it happen. Back to research my options. The next path was IVF and, although this road is complicated and emotional, I felt for me it was relatively painless. However, the first four attempts failed. All this was happening while Boost was growing leaps and bounds. We began to look into domestic adoption when a friend suggested a doctor in the United States who'd had amazing success. Because we were always travelling for Boost, we thought, Why not? After a further few unsuccessful attempts — finally, we were having another baby! I was 42 years old and going to be a mother for the fourth time; I could not have been happier. Jeff had been so supportive of me and this decision from his first ‘sure'. Watching him with his daughter and witnessing the love he has for his ‘princess' makes all the effort of all those years totally worth it.

  Even with my focus on bringing the very much wanted Tahlia into the world, there was no question that we still had to grow — all businesses do. But growing any business and developing a brand is extremely difficult. Having successful systems and processes in place makes it easier, but people still tend to underestimate how hard it is to actually grow.

  While Boost still had significant growth potential, we also understood it was not about growing Boost anywhere we could put a store; we were very strict on where we believed the Boost brand could be successful. At the same time, international growth was amazing, with 12 countries signing a master franchise agreement. Signing agreements to open Boost stores overseas is one thing; however, opening stores in these countries was slower than expected. Then it hit us — we were just so focused on growing the Boost brand domestically and internationally, we were not exploring other options.

  Building a Zoo

  We have always believed in the value of holding strategic, working retreats with the team, to evaluate where we have been and where we need to go. It was during one of these off-site retreats that we asked a single, simple question: ‘What are we good at?' A few hours of brainstorming and numerous whiteboard scribbles later, we discovered what we were good at wasn't our fluffy bits of marketing; it was our boring back-end. We were great at business, franchising, IT, design and development, legals and finance. These were our cornerstones. These back-end departments gave the business the strong infrastructure required to grow. My annoying focus on every detail and refusal to outsource these departments were the keys to building these cornerstones into the foundations of our business. At the end of this exercise, it all seemed obvious; we'd identified what we were good at and would utilise that to grow.

  The advantages of Boost's ‘profit culture'

  The cultural wiring of Boost was a ‘support centre' that was team-based and focused on providing a ‘fee for service' — in other words, people in every department thought of themselves as their own little business. According to Geoff, ‘A “profit culture” was reinforced strongly throughout the group. From each department's members to all the company and franchise shop teams, a non-hierarchical structure was vital for the company's growth. We also introduced reward and recognition nights, and annual conferences and award nights to recognise key achievers, and welcome new franchisees and new ideas into the Boost family'.

  After much discussion our strategy was to create a new parent company — Retail Zoo — of which Boost would be the foundation brand. Retail Zoo would facilitate the growth of strong, small businesses, using our proven back-end and marketing skills to make these concepts successful. The brands we would look at growing had to be pre-existing and had to show evidence of being successful models. Often the entrepreneurs who started these kinds of concepts struggled to take their businesses to the next level. Largely, this was due to lack of expertise and the resources required to do so. Retail Zoo, however, had both the financial and intellectual resources to take a four- to ten-store business model and grow it within Australia and around the world. What you discover when you speak to businesses of all sizes is that strategy is 10 per cent of the success — execution is where the real value lies. We had the know-how to execute a concept into a successful brand and business.

  Once this strategic step was made, everything fell into place. To be honest, after me growing Boost to where it was at this stage, the business needed new legs to continue the journey. Jeff was fresh after a year's break and we were ready to swap roles; he was chomping at the bit to make his mark on the company. Jeff became the CEO, Retail Zoo was born and we started the journey of buying up-and-coming brands.

  Jeff came across a brand in Chadstone Shopping Centre (in Melbourne) called Salsa's Fresh Mex Grill. I've always been a fan of authentic Mexican food and the variety of dishes it offers — while I don't like Mexican food that's stodgy, heavy, dull and uninspired, I love Mexican food that's made with fresh ingredients such as coriander, red and green chillies, tomatoes and limes. We have our own Aussie version once a week, and it's such a great way for the family to put together their favourite combination.

  Like the smoothie and juice industry when we started Boost Juice, when we first looked at Salsa's Fresh Mex Grill there was not really a ‘fresh Mex' category in Australia, or not one that was well known. In the United States, Chipotle Mexican Grill was growing a market in this fresh Mex category, after early investment from McDonald's. Salsa's Fresh Mex Grill had four company-owned stores and they were operated by Lawrence Di Tomasso — a wonderful man with a real passion for his food. The financial numbers coming out of the stores were amazing, thus proving Lawrence had found a successful fresh Mex formula for the Australian palate. We invested in the company and then, a year later, purchased the whole company. Since then, we have taken Salsa's from four stores to over 70 stores (at the time of writing). The Mexican wave is here, with a number of contenders now in the marketplace — again, a very similar trend to that of the juice market in 2004. Like the juice market, the fresh Mex market will settle d
own to a couple of dominant players. Lawrence is no longer in the business; he was handsomely rewarded and is now building his next concept.

  Salsa's has been an excellent addition into the Retail Zoo family. In any business, change is one of the hardest things to manage and Retail Zoo was no different. Retail Zoo went through its own transition period, moving from everything being about Boost to a situation where people needed to think, and systems needed to be bigger and broader. Managing this change led to one of Jeff's greatest skills: his ability to hire great people. We have two different leadership styles — I am more hands-on, while Jeff is more hands-off. His looser reins allow his executives to thrive, and his new ideas and approach have proven to be incredibly successful, taking Retail Zoo to the next level.

  One such hire was current CEO, Scott Meneilly, who has been with Boost since 2008.

  Hiring to look forward while respecting the past

  According to Jeff, ‘Scott is one of those unique executives who owns the business and its success and failures as much as we do. Scott has risen through the company at breakneck speed because he has taken every opportunity presented to him, doing whatever it takes to get the result and building the future while firmly respecting the past building blocks he now climbs his own business Everest on'.