JKR

Sinclair Beecham

Seven learnings from Platform talk

Platform is a members club that meets monthly at Adam Street Member’s Club to hear first hand from some of the business world's leading innovators and learn a few secrets of their success.

Sinclair Beecham is a ‘poster boy’ for British entrepreneurs, having co-founded Pret a Manger with his friend Julian Metcalfe in 1986.  Pret has been so successful and become so ubiquitous on the high street that it’s hard to believe how grim life was for office workers wanting to eat something fresh and healthy at lunchtime back in the early eighties.  These days Sinclair’s moved into the hotel business with his Hoxton Hotel, shamelessly ignoring the ‘stick to your knitting’ advice always dished out to aspiring entrepreneurs.

Here are the things which caught our ear...

1. Find something that’s rubbish and do it better. Sinclair hopes to do to hotels what Pret did to sandwiches back in 1986.

2. Treat your customers like friends. Reward them, don’t rip them off.

3. Trust your instincts.

4. Think about how to make your customers more happy, not what will make you more profit.

5. Determine your Product and Price around what customers will pay, not around what is available and how much it will cost.

6. Think what your competitors will do and how you can reward your customers more than they will.

7. Growing a business is like climbing a ladder. Your perspective changes as your business changes and your decisions should change with your perspective.

The next Platform speaker will be Tess Alps (CEO Thinkbox) – 18th May. There’s a high demand for membership but if you’d like to attend the next Platform, please e-mail Tanja at tanjabrockmeyer@jkr.co.uk and she’ll do her damndest to get you on the list.