Dean Salakas is the Chief Party Dude at The Party People. The Party People is a party supplies retailer based in Sydney Australia.
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
When business took over difficulties overcame:
“When we took over, I’d previously worked in it since I was little, so I’ve been in it since I remember. So coming in wasn’t that difficult in terms of getting adjusting. We made some pretty drastic changes overnight, and that sent the business spiraling up in terms of sales. We tripled our volume in a couple of months of taking over, our biggest problem for years was capacity, we were growing at such a rapid rate that every time we fixed something there was another problem, we needed more computers, then staff then computers, then space. Every time we solved a problem something else became a problem and then we got a point where we were running out of space and needed a new site. So capacity was constantly a problem, and a nice problem to have because we were growing quite easy, we found the marketing side quite easy, we just found the operations side quite difficult, so that was probably our biggest challenge early on”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
The New One Minute Manager Book by Ken BlanchardAlso mentioned:
Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way Book by Richard BransonFavourite Quote:
“Luck is where preparation meets opportunity”
Recommended Online Resources:
Power Retail – Australia’s news and information resource for e-commerce retailers.
Inside Retail – A trusted source of retail industry news for more than 35 years, produced by a staff of seasoned journalists and commentators.
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“If you’re not passionate, it’s not worth pursuing. In business you constantly get setbacks along the way, and if you don’t love what you do, no sane person will put up with a situation with not much return, so you have to be passionate and do what it takes to succeed. Then you might have a chance of being in that 5% of businesses that succeed”…[Listen for More]
More About Dean Salakas:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“The best books are the ones that ask the most questions.” Jonathan Safran Foer
Other Quotes From the Chat with Dean Salakas:
- “We kind of just fell into it”
- “I don’t think we’d have succeeded as well without prior experience”
- “Entrepreneurs have an advantage over larger businesses when it comes to culture”
- “Change is an opportunity, not a hindrance”
- “Change creates an opportunity to capitalise before everyone else”
- “Being on top of change is critical to success”
- “We just didn’t plan well enough. We made changes to the business hoping for something great to happen and then when it happened we went oh crap, what are we going to do, we didn’t expect to succeed as well as we did, we made changes not really knowing the impacts and that slowed it down”
- “I went in blind, thinking I can manage this, I don’t need to do to do lists and I don’t need to do a strategic plan, but it’s become more apparent that’s very important. If I’d have known that sooner we’d have avoided a lot of issues and we’d have grown much quicker”
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