Dear Jim,
I’m so stoked you’ve decided to take this leap. Finally, at 29 years old, you’ve realised there’s nothing worse than wasting your life on something that you don’t want to do or believe in, and the decision you’ve made means you’re going to do something that makes your heart sing.
It’s exciting. But there are also a few things that I want you to think about.
Are you willing to sacrifice your life for this new venture? Can you handle starting a business with your big sister, Suze? Are you prepared to lose friends and push your loved ones’ patience to the limit?
Because the truth is in the years to come, you’ll forget what sleep is. You won’t have time to eat, let alone hang out with mates. It will be relentless. Non-stop driving, emailing, chasing, gate-crashing buyers’ meetings and more. But your loved ones will stick by you. And you’ll stick with your dream.
You and Suze have always been different – she’s a 5-star hotel girl, while you are happier in a camper van – but that makes you damn good business partners. When you sell her your mad-hat idea of making your own iced coffee, she’ll get behind it 100%. She already has some experience running a business (you’ll use her cafe as a a late-night recipe-perfecting lab) but she’ll sell it to join you on a quest to make the best iced coffee in the world.
Running a business together as brother and sister is pretty unique, but you accept each other’s differences and believe in each other, whatever happens. Suze is the ultimate to-do list basher. She knows the importance of up-to-date bookkeeping, while you’re not much of a paperwork kind of guy. Your mantra has always been life is too short to read the small print.
When you start this journey, you will feel like a rabbit in the headlights. And, as you work on building the business, there will be times when you think “what the hell are we doing?!” None more so than when the banks won’t lend you any money. But your parents will offer you £140,000 to get things going. So you have to make it work. And you do.
I’m not going to lie to you. There will be dark days. You will receive a phone call from your production company in 2012 telling you that your product is on hold until you pay them the £250,000 that you owe. You won’t have the funds and are hauled into an emergency meeting to make your case. You beg for a second chance and, somehow, they give you one. But the product is on hold for a month and your debts are mounting up. Still – and this is important – you keep positive and keep going.
Trust your gut: you know the crazy-good days are coming, so push on. Nerves are good – they mean you’re out of your comfort zone – but never be embarrassed of your dream. Dressing as a giant carton of Jimmy’s Iced Coffee will be partially responsible for landing you a contract with Tesco. Your enthusiasm and positivity are what will make this work.
One month after that phone call, which could have ended it all, you’ll secure a contract with BP to stock your coffee in their service stations. Three years after that phone call (and five years after you started the business), you will break even.
So be prepared for knocks. People will tell you no a lot. Work on how you can turn that into yes. And stay focused. You’ll be distracted by a thousand and one things, but it’s down to you to decide whether something is good or bad for the business. Keep things as simple as possible. And embrace the challenge to keep producing, keep selling, keep being real and keep bouncing back.
Because, at some point in the not-too-distant future, there will be a moment you’ll tap Suze on the shoulder and share the realisation that you’re doing something awesome together.
Jim
Jim Cregan is the co-founder of Jimmy’s Iced Coffee.
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