How I Solved My Biggest Business Problem

Welcome to DreamMail, a newsletter where you can keep up to date with the dreamers you see in my content, as well as actionable advice to help you build your own dream.

If you’re enjoying these updates, Amazon has just made my book ‘What’s Your Dream?’ £5.49. The cheapest price EVER.

Back in the 2010s. I was in Hong Kong, building my company Fluid. (The company that got me rich.)

It was growing rapidly. We had CNN and Estée Lauder as clients. Revenue was climbing and I thought everything was going great. But there was one problem I just couldn’t work out how to fix.

People kept quitting.

For years I was in denial about it. I blamed the hires. Said they "didn't get it." Told myself we'd find better people next time.

But the pattern wouldn't stop. We were constantly short-staffed, losing clients, turning down work and eventually it got to a point where I just couldn't ignore it anymore.

So I did something I should have done from the start. I talked to the people who left and actually listened.

The feedback was brutal and consistent: "Your business has no purpose. We're just helping other companies make more money. There's no reason to stay late. No reason to go the extra mile."

They were right. And it was killing us.

I'm not alone in learning this the hard way.

Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, hit the same wall in 1991. After years of rapid growth, the business stalled during a recession and he had to lay off 20% of his staff. He didn't know where things had gone wrong.

So he took his key employees to the mountains of Argentina and asked them a simple question: "What are we actually trying to do here? What's important to us?"

That trip redefined the company. They stopped chasing growth for growth's sake. They committed to making the best product while doing the least harm to the environment.

Today Patagonia has a 4% employee turnover rate. The US average is 57%.

The fix at Fluid:

My wife Helen and I went back to why we started in the first place. She was a brilliant designer who kept getting lowballed by clients. She'd do incredible work and get paid next to nothing for it. That was the whole reason we launched, to let creatives do what they do best while someone else protected them.

Somewhere along the way, we'd lost that.

So we made a decision. We stopped being a company that helped brands make money. We became a company that celebrated creativity. We made sure our people were paid what they were worth. We told clients they couldn't have rush jobs if they wanted quality. We removed the two things that crush every creative: not enough money and not enough time.

After that, we never had a turnover problem again.

How to find your purpose (and make it real):

A mission statement isn’t a purpose. A purpose is something you should live by. Something you can feel throughout the whole business.

1. Go back to the origin story.

Why did you actually start this? What problem pissed you off enough to build something? What wrong were you trying to right?

Yvon Chouinard started Patagonia because he noticed his own climbing gear was damaging the rocks he loved. The problem was personal before it was a business.

2. Ask the people who left.

Exit interviews are mostly theatre. People give polished answers because they want a reference.

If you want the truth, reach out 6 months later. Buy them a coffee. Ask: "What was actually missing? Why didn't you care?"

3. Find the tension and pick a side.

Purpose shows up when you make hard calls that cost you something.

Patagonia once ran a Black Friday ad that said "Don't Buy This Jacket." They'd rather lose a sale than contradict their values.

Ask yourself: What would we refuse to do, even if it made us money? If you can't answer that clearly, your purpose isn't strong enough yet.

The truth:

There's a quote I think about often: "Culture eats strategy for breakfast."

Your culture grows directly from your purpose. Get that right and people stay, clients notice, and the business stops feeling like a grind.

Get it wrong and you can have all the revenue in the world, and still be bleeding out.

I go WAY deeper on this in my book What's Your Dream? including how to find your own purpose and use it to build something that lasts.

The paperback version is out on January 1st and for a limited time only, Amazon has decreased it’s price to £5.49.

Security scales with you

People look at compliance and security like it’s a box to tick. Something you have to do, or you might get sued.

But it's actually a competitive advantage. The start-ups that are compliant stand out from the rest. They look serious. They aren’t cutting corners, and investors want that.

Vanta's helped 14,000+ companies build and scale their security programs without drowning founders in busy work. If you're starting a business, I’d recommend getting this done early. Their free EMEA guide breaks down exactly how to stay compliant.

See you next week!

- Simon Squibb