Joossens consolidates its growth plans with SME Excellence

What insights did you gain from the programme that might offer a response to one of the challenges your business is facing?

To be honest, we joined the programme quite impulsively, at the last minute. Someone in our professional network recommended it when we told them about our future plans. We enrolled a week before the programme started with the idea of giving our company more shape and structure. As is so often the case, we lacked time, which was actually one of the main reasons for deciding to enrol: how could we create time, structure and calm in our organisation while still committing wholeheartedly to growth?

Those growth ambitions are where the challenges lie: how should we tackle healthy growth in terms of our staff? And what financial structure should we set up? For example, a new showroom requires considerable investments. Are there other things we need to consider? Opportunities we shouldn’t miss or pitfalls we can avoid? Those were the questions at the back of our minds when we started the programme. Ultimately, we ended up turning every aspect of our company inside out, examining everything in detail.

We soon realised we had masses of ideas and had already chosen our direction, but we didn’t yet have a well-defined approach. Like many entrepreneurs, we were chasing one opportunity after another, and we just kept on going. It dawned on us that we needed to make choices and bring focus to our ambitions and working practices.

What did you do with those insights in practice? What action did you take?

Our story is a bit of an unusual one, because we participated in the programme as a couple, yet with individual backgrounds and identities. We work in the same company from completely different angles, but we have managed to develop a shared strategy all the same. As it turns out – and as we already suspected ourselves – we’re enormously complementary. The group we took the programme with confirmed that on several occasions. Elke brings great knowledge, considerable family history and brilliant business sense to the company, whereas Kristof’s financial and structural contribution offers a completely different perspective. During the programme, we chose different buddies to challenge ourselves more and strengthen our vision. We pricked up our ears, worked hard and gained a huge amount from working together both as a couple and as entrepreneurs.

When it comes to putting it into practice, that might be the key: working together.

We realised we weren’t obliged to do it all ourselves (or not anymore), let alone being able to do it all ourselves. So we have learned to find partners, and trust professionals and experts. Obviously that requires investments, but they are sure to pay off. For example, we underestimated the importance of marketing for a long time, but now we have the courage to let someone else take care of that.

We also learned a lot about segmentation of what we still do and what we don’t. When things don’t fit into our business strategy, we don’t do them, even if they look like opportunities at first glance. We stick to our chosen route and don’t simply grab every passing opportunity.

With that in mind, we have now set up a very intensive process with the necessary investments, implementing Business Central as our new ERP system. That will enable us to put our own KPIs into a matrix and grow together with our best customers.

What impact have you achieved by giving the insights a concrete form?

At a personal level, we have learned more about each other’s strengths and each of us allows the other to do the work they love. The way we divide up our tasks has become much clearer, which also enables us to let go more easily. We work even more as a duo, alternating as well as reinforcing each other. And we’re reaping the rewards.

Now the strategy has been written out, we have been able to calm things down, both at work and in our private lives. We used to go really fast, but we didn’t know where we were going. We’re still going fast, but we’re much more aware of our goals and we’ve become more focused in the meantime. We check our everyday problems against our long-term strategy. If something doesn’t fit, we stop doing it.

We’ve also discussed things with our team many times along the way. They’ve helped us reinvent the company. We’ve been able to achieve even greater engagement, and their expectations are now more in line with our shared strategy. The team know where we want to go as well, we don’t get random questions anymore, and we all enjoy the calm that comes with well-considered plans for the future. The entire team identifies with the plan and contributes to it. And maybe that’s the most important thing of all: realising that, ultimately, the people you work with are the deciding factor. They are people to learn from and work with; people who help you build a company into which you can pour all your knowledge and passion.

We are really proud of the final result of our SME Excellence adventure. Our business plan got real, in-depth scrutiny, with a critique of pretty much everything. “That’s nice, but that’s not how things work”, is one comment that really hit home. We got critical questions and were often confronted with people who had far more experience than us, but we put our backs into it and we have enough to keep us going for at least another five years. Of course we’ll need to make adjustments along the way, but we know what our goals are and the direction we want to take. That gives us focus, calm and a taste for more!