Business Surgery: Matt Moss, of Smart Garden Offices, in Thurston, explains how spider-like resilience helped him to 'seal the deal'

What do arachnids and owners of small businesses have in common?

No, it’s not the multiple pairs of hands needed to juggle all the daily demands!

It’s resilience and a refusal to give up. I’m sure you all know the, probably apocryphal, story of Robert the Bruce and the spider whereby the latter inspired the former due to its efforts to rebuild its web no matter how many times it failed.

Now I don’t propose to offer any advice about resilience: there are thousands upon thousands of business books out there that try to do just that. I just want to give my own testimony about how I surprised myself as to my own ‘Spidey skills’.

So forgive me if there are quite a few first-person references. I just want to share my own challenges from four years ago.

I had started, with two colleagues, to plan a management buyout (MBO) of SMART Garden Offices, based in Thurston. One month after joining, I was told that the business was likely to go under as it was not only loss-making but leveraged to the hilt, with very short lead times on orders and no visible order book beyond the next 12 weeks.

Could I let this business go under? There was no way I was going to let that happen. At the time the business employed 35 people, who had put their trust in me, to follow my leadership and direction, and one month after joining it could have all been for nothing.

I felt daunted, really daunted, but decided to push on with the MBO, with the extraordinary help from Paul Sheppard and Sue Philips who took on the day-to-day running of the company. Time was of the essence, although there wasn’t much of that left!

I got the financial information in order, prepared the forecasts, worked out what I needed to make this happen and hit the marketplace to find a financial backer to support this. As an accountant, my previous experience had taught me the selling side of a business, but I had never bought one before, although in my previous life I had clients that had done this, so I was confident that this was achievable.

I followed the most obvious route – the main high street banks (so-called Tier One lenders). Everyone I met was very impressed with the business and the vision, but they all said ‘No’ or ‘Not for us’ or ‘Not at this moment in time’ or ‘Unfortunately we can’t get this through credit’.

A setback for sure, but that did not dampen my enthusiasm or determination, so off I went to the Second Tier – or non-bank – lenders, where I got exactly the same responses!

The pressure was now really mounting, and I was running out of ideas. So, I reached out to a few contacts to see if I could raise some equity funding. I didn’t really want to share the business with an investor, but for the greater good I was willing to do this to get this deal done.

I met with a few high-net-worth individuals, but in the end they all said, ‘no thank you’.

After many meetings, calls, discussions and consideration it was looking highly unlikely that this was going to be successful.

I could also see that the cracks were starting to appear, and this was affecting staff morale and business performance.

What to do? My ‘spidey sense’ said that I needed to eat some humble pie.

It was clear that this was a job for someone that really knew what they were doing, a specialist. Having dismissed this option previously, thinking I could do this myself, I conceded and sent an introductory email to a finance broker.

The response was positive, the expertise secured, as was the necessary funding!

That email proved to be the start of the next chapter for SMART. Exactly four months from receiving the draft heads of terms, on 21st June 2019, we completed the MBO, saving the business from immanent failure and setting it on a new course.

Since then, we have doubled in size, become a much greater business and are now one of the UK’s leading manufacturers of garden rooms.

The moral of the story is despite the setbacks, the rejection and the persistence of doubt, if you truly believe and pursue something with all your focus it is amazing what you can achieve.

Oh, and listen to your ‘spidey sense’!