Mike Lloyd has demonstrated that business ideas can sometimes come from unexpected places. After a career advising other people on how to set up their own businesses, Mike has now, at 60, found himself running his own business, delivering flowers.
“I committed a cardinal sin,” comments Mike. “I went into something that I knew nothing at all about. It meant I really had to hit the ground running and learning about this new business has been hard work.”
Mike has set up Flying Flowers Network, a delivery service for florists in the North Somerset area. It is not something he had expected to be doing. For many years, Mike was a business advisor. He has worked for PRIME, and his most recent job was working as a regional development manager for the InBiz organisation. “It was an interesting job, working with socially disadvantaged clients and helping them into self-employment,” he explains. That job came to an end when he was made redundant, following funding cuts. “It was a purely financial decision and entirely amicable,” he says.
Initially, Mike was not too concerned about his change in circumstances and intended to get another permanent job. But it was harder than he anticipated. “I had lots of experience and first-hand knowledge in a management role, supervising staff, so I thought I would apply for a similar job in the south west,” he says. “So I started applying for jobs, but got nothing. Then, one Sunday, my wife and I were at a garden centre and I saw an ad from a new florist, wanting a driver and I thought that would that would do me until something else came along.” A week later, Mike had begun his new job, as a van driver.
“The first job I did was a delivery to a local undertaker. When I arrived, three separate florists’ vans were also delivering flowers,” says Mike. “I could see at once how inefficient that was, so I suggested to the florist employing me that if I invoiced him, rather than working directly for him, I could do deliveries not just for them but for all the local florists and that way, I could help them to reduce all their costs.”
Having had this idea, Mike did an outline of his business plans and spent three months researching the market. “I needed to see if anyone else was doing this, and no-one was,” he says.
The chief objection to Mike’s new delivery service was one he anticipated: all the florists he approached said they already had their own delivery van. “So I had to go away and regroup,” he explains. Researching the market further, Mike discovered that all the local florists belonged to different telephone ordering services. By delivering these orders himself, he could save the florists money. In order to make this business viable, Mike has had to discover a great deal, very quickly, about the flower business and how it operates. “The florists have been very good,” he says. “They tell me about the way things work.” But it has still been a challenge. It’s been a vertical learning curve,” he admits. “But I now work for nine florists and have three part-time workers.”
In four months, Mike has trebled his turnover and the business is now self-sufficient. “I haven’t had to put any money into the business,” he explains. “The trick is not to spend too much in the first year and not to borrow if at all possible.”
Mike is now anticipating a rush in the run up to Christmas, and then a quiet period afterwards, in which he wants to get a website up and running and get uniforms made for his staff.
“The challenges have been the same as for any new business, except that I have had to learn about a completely new subject,” he points out. Mike feels his background, which includes 26 years in the police, has helped him in different ways. “I know a lot of former police officers, many of whom are now self-employed and who are willing to help out with the odd afternoon or day, so I can turn that on and off as demand ebbs and flows,” he says.
Setting up the business has been demanding and involves long working hours. “My first delivery is at 8am and the trick in this is to develop a circle of routes, so I can move round one and then another,” explains Mike. “I’ve generally finished by 5pm, so it’s not a bad working day, but of course the downside is that I have to work on Saturdays. In fact, I have suggested Sunday morning deliveries, at a premium, so I now also work about one Sunday each month.”
Mike has delved deep into this market and now knows a great deal about flower selling in the UK. “I keep things simple and I keep asking questions,” he says. “I’ve learned things I knew nothing about, in double-quick time. It is really exciting.”
While it may seem to have put Mike under pressure to start a business in a completely new market, his reaction to the experience is different. “My previous job was a highly-pressured job,” he says. “I was earning a good salary, but I was having to travel constantly. Now, I think I could do this job for another 10 years. The other morning, for instance, I had just made a delivery and had a spare 35 minutes, so parked by the sea, had a double espresso, read the paper and thought - this is the life.”
Mike may be enjoying his new life, but he believes it is important to keep one’s business feet firmly on the ground. “If you spot an opportunity, you must rationalise it,” he advises. “You need to do the research and development. Then you need to incorporate all that into a plan and stick to the plan. If that doesn’t work, you need to write a new plan - and then stick to that.”
He also believes it is a mistake to expand too fast. “I think it’s a good idea to move on steadily, rather than rush on,” he says.
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