Answer This One Question to Know If Your Business Will Scale: Sarah Willingham

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What would you do if I gave you £1 million to invest in your business? Sarah Willingham explains why your answer to that one question tells her whether your business can scale, why making yourself redundant is the real goal, and how she built a £40m business the hard way before learning the smart way!

Sarah Willingham is a serial entrepreneur and investor who has built, bought and scaled consumer businesses for over two decades. She grew Bombay Bicycle Club into the UK's largest chain of Indian restaurants, having earlier opened sites internationally for Planet Hollywood and run international development at Pizza Express. She was an investor on BBC's Dragons' Den across two series, and co-founded the bar group Nightcap - home to brands including The London Cocktail Club and Dirty Martini — with her husband and business partner Michael Toxvaerd. She's also a personal business mentor to Adam.

She explains:

Why the answer to "what would you do with £1 million?" exposes whether your model is actually replicable Why making yourself redundant, not working harder, is the real definition of success Why you probably don't need investment - you need to go and sell something Chapters

00:00:00 Intro 00:01:33 Sarah's Unlikely Route Into Business 00:04:02 The Paris Pub Job That Changed Everything 00:06:20 Learning The Business Of Hospitality 00:07:15 The Year That Taught Her Everything 00:09:22 "Sarah The Small From Stoke" 00:10:10 Building The UK's Largest Indian Restaurant Chain 00:11:12 The Hardest Part Of Business And Family 00:12:26 Why Doing Both At Once Makes You Mediocre 00:14:10 Diarising Your Downtime 00:16:40 Life Path Over Career Path 00:18:13 Why Holidays Are Business Critical 00:20:00 Adam's First Debrief With Sarah 00:21:12 Breaking The Addiction To Your Business 00:22:09 The Pie Chart Exercise 00:24:48 Everything Has A Relative Value 00:26:03 Adam's Biggest Constraint Was Himself 00:27:31 How To Replicate Yourself 00:28:36 Why Great Teams Aren't An Accident 00:30:06 Why Grit Isn't The Answer, Models Are 00:30:55 Making Yourself Redundant Is The Goal 00:32:10 Building £40M A Year The Hard Way 00:33:02 Ads 00:33:23 Do You Have A Supportive Partner? 00:34:29 Working With Michael: Staying In Your Lanes 00:36:43 The Decisions He Talked Her Out Of 00:37:27 Dragons' Den Vs A Year Travelling 00:39:08 Why You Have To Do Two Series 00:40:10 Walking Away To Keep A Promise 00:41:38 The Fork In The Road: Fame Or Family 00:43:51 Why Nothing Changes Without Action 00:44:34 How To Assess Your Downside 00:45:18 Why Fear Is Something To Relish 00:46:56 Decision Paralysis And The Investment Trap 00:48:30 You Can't Scale On Your Own 00:49:32 The Problem With Hustle Culture 00:50:12 Learning What You Don't Know 00:51:08 The £1 Million Question 00:52:24 Defining Your Business Model 00:53:53 Draw Your Model On Paper 00:54:18 Outro

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