About Grant Melrose, Founder of Business2dot0
Saturday, 11 July 2009 17:49
Hello,
I am Grant Melrose, founder and director of Business2dot0.com, b2dot0.com, and Business Tools Limited. Here's a bit about me so you can check out my background.
Over my career I have made over £120,000,000 .... for other companies! A range of other companies from start-ups and small software ventures to large corporations. At one point in my early days, I was in danger of becoming a lifer at The GEC, (as it was called in Coventry). What ever happened to the mighty GEC? That's another story for another day.
Let me break with tradition and start this resume at the beginning.
The Early Years - The Young Scientist
As a child I was frequently building things. I had a keen interest in electronics. I could not wait for my dad to buy me the latest Hobby Electronics periodical. After a quick read, I would disappear to my "lab" and build my latest project - a crystal set, or a short wave radio. And if I wasn't building things I was taking things apart to see how they worked - sometimes with near fatal consequences. I very quickly discovered what 240 Volts felt like, and how long it took to recover your hearing if you connected something the wrong way round.
Family friends called me The Scientist. I wasn't a geek. I was just interested in stuff. As my reputation spread around school (I did say this was the early years), friends asked me to fix things, or build things. A fuzz box effects pedal for a keen guitarist, or even a security alarm system for my physics teacher !
Now I didn't just want to help people out, or make some pocket money. I wanted to do a professional job. I wanted to make sure I was doing something the best way. I taught myself how to make printed circuit boards, and set up cable wiring looms. I wanted to keep track of my designs, the parts lists, the costs, the prices, the invoices, and the profit margins.
So even back then, I didn't just think about doing a job. I thought about the way that a job gets done. Was this the beginning of OCD? I hope not. I just had a desire to make things easier and quicker in the long run.
Part Time Pot Washer
I had a great start to my working life as a student. Part time work at one of the busiest pubs in Chorley, Lancashire, UK. 5 deep at the bar. And there were 3 bars and two cellars. So it was a fairly hectic introduction to working life. The £1.10 per hour was helping me save for a rather expensive Hi-Fi sound system.
I think I had a good strategy then. Work. Save. Then buy the best quality system I could afford. Some 29 years later, I still have the Technics SU-V7 Amplifier, Technics Linear Tracking Turntable, and some rather large, three-way, Acoustic Research Speakers. All working, and Phil Collins, In the Air Tonight still sounds great.
The pub not only taught me about some interesting human behaviour, it taught me the value of preparation. Once a service shift started, and customers were shouting their orders, there wasn't time to think, let alone catch-up from a poorly organised start.
Even as a lowly paid pot washer, the Engineer in me thought there had to be a better way to get through a service. I realised that we actually walked ran miles each and every shift. So if I could re-organise the bar slightly, I could make it easier for every one, and save a few miles. I analysed the sales to see what was the fastest selling stock, and what hardly sold at all. I redesigned the shelf layout so that the fastest selling items where located in the hot spots of the bar. The bar maids would literally have to just reach down, and grab the favourite bottles at their finger tips.
I reduced the amount of the least popular items, and used this space to hold more of the good stuff. Which meant I didn't have keep running down to the cellar to re-stock during service, and I also didn't have to worry about the tedius task of stock rotation on the slow moving tomato juice or barley wine.
OCD? No. I just wanted to save everyone a few miles, while I was saving for my speakers.
The GEC Apprentice
What a great piece of training. GEC Telecommunications sponsored me through University. Which meant I got a whole year of industrial experience, before I went to University. 50 students, away from home for the first time, in one big house on a Coventry golf course, all getting their apprenticeship. Electrical skills, turning, milling, arc welding, gas welding, manufacturing, assembly, operating one of the worlds biggest flow solder machines, electronic design, radio lab, production control, testing, contract management, export. The list goes on.
Then off to University with enough money to actually buy books, and food, and beer. Each summer I had to experience one of the other GEC factories in Coventry. After 3 years of this, I graduated from the University of Manchester with an Honours Degree in Electrical & Electronic Engineering, and returned for the 5th and final year of training. At last, it was time for some real work - a proper pay packet.
The Software Engineer
So I graduated as an Electrical Engineer (yes I always spell Engineer with a Capital 'E'). What did GEC desperately need? Software Engineers. Hundreds of them. This was the hay day of the System X telephone exchange. These were essentially super computers, and they needed specialist programmers.
There was also a need for a whole suite of design tools, manufacturing systems, and test development systems. So this is the deep end that I jumped into.
At University, I had done some simple programming. Some Machine Code on a Z80 processor, and a 6502 processor. Some Assembler. Some Pascal. And some Basic. At this time, serious computers were either IBM or VAX mainframes. The PET Commodore, ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro and something from Amstrad were around, but I think the Pac Man arcade machine in the pub would have out-performed this lot added together.
Now, in the GEC deep end, I had some serious work-station toys to play with. I worked on Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools such as Mentor Graphics, to help our hardware design and ASIC Engineers turn their creations into manufacturing reality.
So back in the 1980's I was writing business tools. Tools to save time. And tools to make complex tasks even possible. That kept me quiet for 4 or 5 years.
The Russian Adventure
GEC Telecommunications had merged with Plessey to form GPT, and I had decided I would like to earn some more money. Not by leaving GEC, but by just starting on another track. GEC was big enough to move around. Rightly or wrongly, I came to the conclusion that I could not earn spectacular amounts of money as an Engineer. A quick look around told me that the people at the top of GEC GPT had two things in common. Sales. And Overseas assignments.
Well, careful what you wish for. A visa application, 3 days of sales training, half a day off to buy some essential supplies, and the very next week I was on the BA 872 flight from London to Moscow. Three and half hours later, and my extraordinary Russian adventure began.
The Mission
Back in 1992, if you wanted to make an international phone call, you had to book your call through an operator, wait 10 hours for your reservation, then hope someone answered, otherwise you would have to repeat the whole process. This was very frustrating for The Ex-Pat's and Heads of Representation of foreign companies trying to make a living in Moscow.
GPT and MGTS, the local Moscow telephone operating company, formed a Russian-British Joint Venture, called COMSTAR. With GPT's System X Exchange equipment, and MGTS's local knowledge, International Direct Dial, could be offered for the first time. Imagine dialling your long sequence of digits to call home, and 4 seconds later you were talking to your family with digital clarity.
10 hours or 4 seconds? Surely foreign businesses would pay several $dollars a minute for this service. COMSTAR had a very valuable business. But first, they had to find these offices scattered all around Moscow, hidden away behind steel apartment doors. That was my job. Seek out foreign companies and sell COMSTAR telephone lines.
Send More Shoes
Armed with nothing more than a map, a basic knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet, some Metro station names, and some sturdy shoes, I walked around Moscow to track down these businesses and make my sales pitch.
I was privileged to work with Mitsui, McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Toyota, IBM, American Express, Metropol Hotel, the BBC, the Australian Embassy, and my favourite customer, the British Embassy.
As time went on, I needed to be better organised, plan the geographic locations to visit, note who I had presented to, track leads and sales, ensure the telephone lines and associated numbers were provisioned on time, and of course, chase commission payments.
COMSTAR already had a spreadsheet to store the list of available and taken phone numbers. So I modified this with a few extra columns to help track progress. I cannot remember if it was Lotus 1-2-3 on an old IBM machine, or an early version of Excel on Windows 3.1. Either way, it was another early business tool.
До свидания! or Dasvidania (Da-svi-da-niya)
To this day, working and living in Moscow was probably my most challenging and enjoyable time, and I will forever remember my Russian colleagues. They know who they are. Bolshoi Spasiba. Большое спасибо.
Next - The Commercial Manager
So I was on my way back to the UK on BA 873 with over 80 kilos of luggage in once case. Try doing that these days !