KnockTheHustle
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So I'm 29 years old and jumped into business 4 years ago before finding this forum or reading TFL book (oops). I had no prior experience, was extremely naive, and didn't find many resources that I thought would be helpful or as relevant since the location that I was actually embarking on business in was Sub-Saharan Africa. The business I'm dealing with is sweets, cakes, and high end desserts in Sub-Saharan Africa, at that. Having said that, I've spent the past 4 years quietly fighting a battle/war behind the scenes to grow the business, overcome a learning curve, grind out the essential systems and processes, while rapidly growing the brand and gaining a wealth of experience in the process.
Despite my business having been "valued" at more than $1M by various investment groups and PEs (they often times cite a valuation metric of 4-8x EBITDA), it feels incredibly illiquid because selling private company's in the country I'm in is incredibly difficult. Either that or I'm still incredibly inexperienced or too disconnected from the proper circles to know how to execute a sell. So this means I have a cash-flow positive, profitable business, with no real exit strategy. That's problem #1.
The next problem #2 I'm facing is that despite my brand having grown enormously in the past 4 years and being incredibly popular in the main business capital of the country, I feel as though I've basically hit the ceiling as far as growth. I made the mistake as MJ refers to of entering a market with a very low ceiling in a best case scenario. I've executed very well, however, maybe close to best case scenario, and grew to 8 locations in my first 4 years, without any partners, investors, loans, or credit. It's all been organic growth, financed by cash and profits, starting from one location. The brand has transformed also visibly in appearance from being rough around the edges to being quite polished and professional, as you would expect of an international standard brand. Our customer recognition in the market is extremely high, and our brand has a lot of weight in the market. But we are already located at all the prime locations that are likely worth opening without many other places to go.
Also, as MJ mentions, not only is the ceiling low, but the floor beneath me doesn't feel very secure. Things in Africa can be unpredictable and unstable at times, even though I've got a lot of experience here now. Hence why my situation feels a bit stuck in the middle between slow/fast lane. Although the profitability is there, the scalability is limited, the ceiling is low, the expected growth is low, and the risk of declining sales feels high. Other business friends I know here are a lot more optimistic than me, but nobody can really say with certainty.
But, the two most valuable things I probably have going for me are that 1) I have learned and gotten extremely good at automating operations and creating systems to remove my involvement. I started out completely bootstrap hands on, at the shop, helping in the kitchen, purchasing things myself, etc. Now, I have an operation with 8 shops across the city basically run by my small management team of just 4 people, while I occasionally supervise what's going on maybe an hour a day or so, or sometimes not at all. The amount of work and stress I deal with these days with 8 shops is a small fraction of what I dealt with when I first started and had just 1 shop. Not only are my stress levels down, but my profitability and efficiency on a per shop basis is higher. The 2nd most valuable thing I have going is 2) The brand still has enormous respect, trust, and recognition in the market place. We're one of the most known brands in our sector. So, while things seem to have peaked, it seems like I should/might be able to leverage these 2 factors to pivot somehow into a faster lane.
There are 2 ways that I'm considering that might be good for where to go from here. The first one was to start franchising my brand into other neighboring countries of Africa so that others can open shops as well. Since I've already developed systems that have made it possible for me to seamlessly run 8 shops, I think the business model is primed already (or can be) for franchising. I don't have experience in that space though and would have to get caught up to speed.
The other option I was considering was starting to get into FMCG creation of various products using our brand, or another, that can be produced/processed and then distributed into the market at lower margin / higher volume. This would leverage current productive capacity we have at our production facility, and would also potentially leverage our brands reputation into other products. In Africa, the real potential definitely is low price point, high volume products that tap into larger portions of the consumer base. Our desserts are more high end for the upper class market, at high end malls, hence the ceiling I am reaching.
So I'm at a point where I'm literally unsure if I might be on the cusp of something even better, or whether it's time to look into bigger opportunities that address bigger needs, with more potential. I've considered just letting the current business run in the current form and going a different direction all together but don't have an immediate idea of what I'd want to get into.
Despite my business having been "valued" at more than $1M by various investment groups and PEs (they often times cite a valuation metric of 4-8x EBITDA), it feels incredibly illiquid because selling private company's in the country I'm in is incredibly difficult. Either that or I'm still incredibly inexperienced or too disconnected from the proper circles to know how to execute a sell. So this means I have a cash-flow positive, profitable business, with no real exit strategy. That's problem #1.
The next problem #2 I'm facing is that despite my brand having grown enormously in the past 4 years and being incredibly popular in the main business capital of the country, I feel as though I've basically hit the ceiling as far as growth. I made the mistake as MJ refers to of entering a market with a very low ceiling in a best case scenario. I've executed very well, however, maybe close to best case scenario, and grew to 8 locations in my first 4 years, without any partners, investors, loans, or credit. It's all been organic growth, financed by cash and profits, starting from one location. The brand has transformed also visibly in appearance from being rough around the edges to being quite polished and professional, as you would expect of an international standard brand. Our customer recognition in the market is extremely high, and our brand has a lot of weight in the market. But we are already located at all the prime locations that are likely worth opening without many other places to go.
Also, as MJ mentions, not only is the ceiling low, but the floor beneath me doesn't feel very secure. Things in Africa can be unpredictable and unstable at times, even though I've got a lot of experience here now. Hence why my situation feels a bit stuck in the middle between slow/fast lane. Although the profitability is there, the scalability is limited, the ceiling is low, the expected growth is low, and the risk of declining sales feels high. Other business friends I know here are a lot more optimistic than me, but nobody can really say with certainty.
But, the two most valuable things I probably have going for me are that 1) I have learned and gotten extremely good at automating operations and creating systems to remove my involvement. I started out completely bootstrap hands on, at the shop, helping in the kitchen, purchasing things myself, etc. Now, I have an operation with 8 shops across the city basically run by my small management team of just 4 people, while I occasionally supervise what's going on maybe an hour a day or so, or sometimes not at all. The amount of work and stress I deal with these days with 8 shops is a small fraction of what I dealt with when I first started and had just 1 shop. Not only are my stress levels down, but my profitability and efficiency on a per shop basis is higher. The 2nd most valuable thing I have going is 2) The brand still has enormous respect, trust, and recognition in the market place. We're one of the most known brands in our sector. So, while things seem to have peaked, it seems like I should/might be able to leverage these 2 factors to pivot somehow into a faster lane.
There are 2 ways that I'm considering that might be good for where to go from here. The first one was to start franchising my brand into other neighboring countries of Africa so that others can open shops as well. Since I've already developed systems that have made it possible for me to seamlessly run 8 shops, I think the business model is primed already (or can be) for franchising. I don't have experience in that space though and would have to get caught up to speed.
The other option I was considering was starting to get into FMCG creation of various products using our brand, or another, that can be produced/processed and then distributed into the market at lower margin / higher volume. This would leverage current productive capacity we have at our production facility, and would also potentially leverage our brands reputation into other products. In Africa, the real potential definitely is low price point, high volume products that tap into larger portions of the consumer base. Our desserts are more high end for the upper class market, at high end malls, hence the ceiling I am reaching.
So I'm at a point where I'm literally unsure if I might be on the cusp of something even better, or whether it's time to look into bigger opportunities that address bigger needs, with more potential. I've considered just letting the current business run in the current form and going a different direction all together but don't have an immediate idea of what I'd want to get into.
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