- Hello, everybody.
It's Shaf Rasul here.
If this is the first
time you've ever seen one
of my videos, I'm a serial entrepreneur,
I'm a former dragon on
BBC "Dragons' Den" online
and I'm a columnist for
a national newspaper.
Now, I wanna share a
story with you guys today.
It's a story about how I watched a video
with Steve Jobs
and then I sat down and I thought I wonder
how I could adopt that
strategy to my own business.
So I went ahead, I adopted the strategy
that Steve Jobs came
up with to my business
and then afterwards,
when I was talking to my friends about it,
they were like, "Shaf, how did
you come out with that idea?"
And I says, well, I
explained the story to them.
I said, "I saw a Steve Jobs video."
And they were like, "You stole his idea!"
In my opinion, I didn't
but it would be helpful if
you guys left comments below
and let me know do you think
I stole Steve Jobs' idea?
(lively music)
(film whirring)
Well, what do I have in common
with the late Apple founder, Steve Jobs?
Well, Steve Jobs was
exceptionally talented
and I think I've got a
little bit of talent.
What do you guys think?
Secondly, Steve Jobs was
a phenomenal entrepreneur
and in my time, I think I've
done okay as an entrepreneur.
Thirdly, Steve had
really, really good chat
and I think I've got okay chat.
I don't know what you guys think
but I certainly think I've got okay chat.
And finally, whenever I saw Steve Jobs
on a YouTube video or on the telly
or anything like that,
and I saw him talking,
I just realised straightaway,
I thought this guy has got the ability
to think out the box like nobody else.
And I've tried to hone my skills
when it comes to thinking out of the box.
I've done a few videos
about thinking out of the box.
You'll see them just coming
up on your screen in a minute.
I think I thought out the box
when it came to my Crowd
Kitchens development,
my Crowd Kitchens business.
If you don't know what Crowd Kitchens is,
again, please go and check out the videos.
They're on my YouTube channel.
Now, Steve thought out of the box
when it came to the iPad.
Before the official release of the iPad,
I remember reading about it
and I was like why on Earth
would anybody buy an overgrown iPod?
And the press were saying that as well.
The press were polarised.
There was a lot of people saying
it was just gonna be a load of nonsense.
And basically, there was a lot of people
that were saying it was
gonna be a phenomenal product
but nobody knew what it was gonna be.
There was rumours, as there
always is with Apple products,
that there was a new product coming out
and it was supposed to be some kind
of a tablet and there was
various names put forward,
like iSlate and all sorts
of things like that.
But my view firmly was
that I certainly wasn't gonna get one.
I mean, I had an amazing computer,
I had an amazing laptop,
what could this thing offer me
that my laptop couldn't?
Okay, well, after Steve Jobs
presented the iPad to the world
from the stage at the Yerba Buena Centre
for the Arts in San
Francisco in January 2010,
I had to get my hands on one.
I needed it and I needed
it as soon as possible.
I wanted it so badly
that I couldn't wait for
the four-week pre-order time
and had to pay a substantial
premium for a pre-owned one.
Now, today, it's impossible
for me to imagine trying
to organise my life and run my business
without my iPad.
Look, I've got it here right now.
The cleverest thing about the iPad
is until I saw the
presentation on the stage,
I didn't actually realise I needed one
but as soon as I saw the presentation,
I knew I had to have one.
It's as simple as that.
So anyway, for me to explain
how I adopted Steve's strategy,
we need to go back in time.
Basically, in and around sort of 2007,
I was driving to work
and I was driving down the motorway
and I saw there was a construction site
so I made a detour, and I went up
and spoke to the builders
and the developers
who were also on site
and I was like, 'Guys,
what you're doing in here?"
And they're like, "We're
building an industrial estate."
And I thought what a great location
for an industrial estate.
So I sat down with them and I did a deal.
So I ended up buying the bulk
of this industrial estate off them.
And my plan was really,
really, really simple.
I paid just under three million pounds
for the industrial estate.
It was really simple.
I was gonna find tenants for it
and increase the capital value
or the investment value once
I'd got tenants in there
and then I was gonna sell it out
and there was a few units
which I was gonna just buy
and I was gonna flip on.
(typewriter keys clacking)
So deal done.
We agreed a deal, I agreed
to buy the industrial estate.
So it took quite a long time
for the industrial estate to get created.
So by the time the estate
was handed over to us,
we were in the middle of a recession.
All of the people that were
gonna rent units from us
basically didn't want to rent units.
Either they didn't exist as businesses,
they had huge cashflow problems,
or the current premises they were in,
originally, the premises,
they'd outgrown them
but now, they were in the situation,
revenue had collapsed
and they didn't need bigger premises.
The people that were
gonna buy units off us
couldn't get bank funding to buy the units
and there was no point in trying
to take legal action
against any of these people
because quite simply, they
literally didn't have the money.
(typewriter keys clacking)
So that left me with a bit
of a huge, huge problem.
So we had the industrial estate revalued
and the value of this estate went down
to a million pounds.
Let me say that again,
it went down to a million pounds.
So we basically wiped out
one and a half million pounds
in value and it was a vacant, basically,
industrial estate, which
meant we were paying rates
on all of the vacant units.
Now, to say I was stressed and annoyed
was an understatement
and I remembered watching
this Steve Jobs video
and I thought, well, Steve's
come up with a gadget
that we didn't even know that we needed
and everybody wants one.
Now, we tried every single avenue
to try and rent this industrial estate.
We'd appointed two agents,
we'd done loads of advertising.
We'd created a website,
we had press coverage,
you name it, we did it
and we still couldn't let the units.
My agents were urging me,
they were saying, "Shaf,
let's drop the price."
But the problem was there
was other industrial estates
around which had vacant units
and all that would happen
is we would start a war of attrition.
So let's say we dropped our price
to five pounds per square foot
for this industrial estate.
Our competitors would just
drop it at four and a half.
Then I would drop it down to four.
They would drop it down
to three and a half
and the price would just go down.
And this would be a problem
because most leases
are for 10 or 15 years.
And all that would happen
is we would basically destroy the capital
or investment value of
this industrial estate.
So that wasn't gonna happen.
So literally, we had no lettings.
Anyway, I thought back to the
whole Steve Jobs iPad thing
and I thought I need to find clients
that don't even know that
they need industrial premises.
I need to come up with a solution
whereby I find a segment of people
that take these units.
And I need to do it in such a way
whereby it doesn't even
cost them a lot of money.
(typewriter keys clacking)
So I thought about it.
Now, in 2010, e-commerce
was just really sort
of starting to gear up.
We had Amazon sellers,
we had eBay sellers,
and the vast majority of these people,
they used to work from home.
They'd have all of their
stock in their garage,
they'd have it in their spare room
and they'd be dispatching orders.
Now, it used to cost an eBayer five pounds
to send a parcel out.
That was about the going rate.
If they were doing anything
from say, I don't know,
10 parcels to 100 parcels,
it was costing them five pounds.
However, if an eBayer
was doing 2,000 parcels,
it would cost them three pounds 50.
So I came up with a cunning plan.
My cunning plan was I had a meeting
with a courier company.
I sat down with them
and I said, "Look, if we
collectively give you 2,000 parcels
"from this industrial estate,
what will you charge?"
And they said, "We will
charge you three pounds 50."
I then got a list of eBayers
in and around the local area.
That was dead easy because
you have the option
to buy products locally on eBay
so when you do a search on a product,
you can search it so it
shows you the products
that are closest to you
and we just basically
contacted all these eBayers
and we said, "Excuse me,
"how much do you pay for your carriage?"
And they're like, "Oh,
we pay five pounds."
Some of them even paid more.
Some of them paid 5.50
and we said to them,
"Look, why don't you move
"to our industrial estate
"and you will be charged
three pounds 50 in carriage?
"Okay?
"You will make a saving on each order.
"Now, the saving you make, obviously,
"you'll have to pay rent out of some of it
"but you'll be left
over with a net profit."
Very, very, very quickly,
we started getting tenants
in this industrial estate.
We promoted it in the press
and the next thing you know
was this industrial estate
basically was literally full
within a matter of months.
So that changed the value of our asset.
So it went back from being
vacant industrial buildings
that are worth a million pounds
for the industrial estate
and it went close to the
figure we'd actually paid
for the industrial estate.
So that's how I used Steve Jobs' idea.
I thought I need to apply this to somebody
that doesn't even realise
that they need an industrial unit.
Now, we're going back into a recession.
I've got no doubt that times
are gonna be hard and if
your business is struggling,
what you need to do
is you need to look around you
and get inspiration from other businesses
and try and apply that to your business.
Anyway, listen, thank you
for watching this video.
If you have any questions,
please post them in my
Ask Shaf live videos
because every question you post on there,
I take a selection of them
and I answer them in the week following,
so please post any questions you've got
in my Ask Shaf live video.
Thank you.
(upbeat music)
