AT first hearing, the book title sounds more like a view from a London boiler room or something spoken by an East End barrow boy than the thoughts of one of Western Australia’s finest business exports.
AT first hearing, the book title sounds more like a view from a London boiler room or something spoken by an East End barrow boy than the thoughts of one of Western Australia’s finest business exports.
Better, Stronger, Faster – Build It, Scale It, Flog It is WA-bred businessman Brad Rosser’s guide to creating an enterprise and unloading it, in the very best entrepreneurial spirit.
But Mr Rosser, a product of the University of WA, Bond Corp and McKinsey & Co who became Sir Richard Branson’s right-hand man before heading off to become a successful entrepreneur in his own right, doesn’t shirk from the idea that preparing for an exit from the beginning is the right thing to do.
“I think it is the right objective to have,” Mr Rosser told WA Business News from his London base.
“The hard work is the first five years; that is when you have created significant value.
“It’s then time for professional management.”
In fact, the author and businessman points out the historical fact that many entrepreneurs set themselves up for failure by hanging on too long after the start-up phase.
“The skills are different,” Mr Rosser said.
“They want to be involved in every single decision and they don’t let go.
“That can lead to frustration.”
It’s a worthy point from a businessman whose experience is rare, spanning two decades from his formative career with one of Australia’s most notorious entrepreneurs, Alan Bond, to a long period with global business maverick Sir Richard, where he was charged with spearheading all new Virgin ventures.
He then went on to establish a big residential property service business and is currently involved in several other ventures, including online sales promotions.
Local business leader Mark Barnaba is a close friend of Mr Rosser and believes he has astute advice for want-to-be entrepreneurs.
The pair’s lives were intertwined for much of their early years, including eight years of school at Perth’s Trinity College, and studying together at UWA, where their entrepreneurial spirit prompted them to depart from tradition to write a joint thesis for their honours – examining the proxy effect of the Capital Asset Pricing Model.
The pair went on to earn MBAs at US universities (Mr Rosser went to Cornell, Mr Barnaba studied at Harvard), worked at Bond Corp together at its height and ended up at the London office of McKinsey’s.
“He has had an outstanding career over the past 18 years in the UK and he is very highly qualified to write this book,” Mr Barnaba said.
Mr Rosser’s self-help book for entrepreneurs is written in easily digested chunks with plenty of summaries and appropriate anecdotes from his own business experience.
Clearly much of that comes from Virgin where he worked from Sir Richard’s home for five years vetting hundreds of proposals and working with other entrepreneurs to develop, fund and implement business plans in joint venture with the Branson empire.
As a rule, Mr Rosser believes about 20 per cent of proposals were viable but the needs of Virgin and the time required meant only about one in 50 received a tick.
“It was not about rejecting ideas,” he said.
“It’s about trying to see if it can be adjusted to make it commercial.”
Mr Rosser said Sir Richard’s strength was his understanding of the consumer and whether a proposal could fit with the Virgin brand.
In describing that period, one of aggressive expansion at Virgin, the former Perth man uses much of the language found in his book.
There was, he said, no simple rule for making a start-up work.
“Once we had a bullet-proof idea it was all down to getting the right management,” Mr Rosser recalls.
“Every business was different, there was no particular formula.”
However, Mr Rosser does see one recipe in his life that worked for him – being an Australian.
“Australians have a very strong can-do attitude,” he said.
“That is a good grounding, it sets you up strongly to be entrepreneurial, if that is what you want to be.”
Mr Rosser believes getting the right skills, the right people and right partners is what successful start-ups are all about.
He hopes the book will be a guide for those in the throes of creating or building businesses who want help attacking a problem – not a whole range of options.
“I think people will use it like a mentor,” Mr Rosser said.
