5 ways to disrupt an industry and achieve massive success

From food distribution to labour hire and the renewable energy sector, entrepreneur Richard Turner has turned each industry he’s worked in on its head, using innovation to disrupt traditional practices and build several multi-billion-dollar companies. Here’s what this savvy business builder wants fellow entrepreneurs to know about scaling your great idea into an industry game-changer.

Problem-solving at its finest

Richard Turner has built multiple successful businesses that have impacted their industries substantially.

Creating a first-of-its-kind livestock management system with the basic computer coding he learned at university in the 1980s, he turned his father’s meat wholesaling, processing and distribution company into the biggest in the country.

He diversified his next business venture, a food services distribution company, to both help and co-exist within the hospitality industry. From changing operating hours to suit their hospitality customers and digitising their ordering system to avoid costly human errors, they built a hospitality staffing agency that helped fill labour shortage gaps for the entire industry.

Now the founder of ZEN Energy, Australia’s first clean energy retailer, it’s clear that innovation and industry disruption is in Richard’s blood. Chatting with editors Cec Busby and Adam Bub on the First Act podcast, Richard generously shared some of his best advice for entrepreneurs and founders interested in doing more than simply running a business and genuinely wanting to change the world.

What does it take to be a change-maker?

Lesson 1: The small business advantage

Richard says small to medium-sized businesses have a unique advantage over larger companies when choosing to do things differently.

“With innovation and disruption, it’s a matter of finding things as a smaller, newer business that established people can’t compete with,” he reveals. “Larger entities can’t simply change the way they do business, so you’re leveraging their company size against them.

“There’s a lesson there for smaller companies starting up. Find that unique thing you can change in how the market operates to create that advantage.”

Lesson 2: Building the right team

No entrepreneur knows everything about running a business, and many waste precious time working on business tasks they could automate or pass to a professional. However, Richard says this solo attitude is only holding business owners back.

“Ask yourself as founders: ‘Do I have all the skills to go on the journey I’m going on?’” Richard says. “Transitioning to become an energy retailer was an important step for us, but that was certainly beyond my skills. I understood branding and how to get the business going, but I didn’t understand the complexities of the energy markets and the regulations that controlled energy in the grid. I needed to know about other technologies and have an economic understanding of what was happening in the market. They were skills I didn’t have. So, I had to find those people, or they found us.

“Your people are the most important asset,” Richard insists. “If you can be passionate about your business and reflect that in your vision, people will come to you like bees to a honey pot. So many companies don’t have a vision. How can you create a culture and a passion if there’s no vision?”

Listen to Richard Turner on the First Act podcast:

Lesson 3: Test your market

How do you ensure that your good intentions will make sound business sense? Richard says it’s all in your market research.

“You’ve got to validate that market and test it hard. Go out to potential customers and ask the difficult questions. Validate the business model because you’ve got to have a customer that’s willing to pay the price for your product or service.

“Ask yourself questions about what you’re selling – is it a product or a service? Because they’re very different businesses. When selling yourself as a service, you only make money when you are working, which is always challenging and very difficult to scale. Venture capital firms are hesitant to invest in service companies. So, suppose there’s a way of ‘productising’ your service or building a platform as an extension of your service that enables you to sell day and night worldwide instead of just providing a service in your local market. In that case, it becomes a very different company.”

Lesson 4: The difference between starting and growing a business

Richard says it’s essential to understand the stage of business you are in and to have a business plan in place.

“Starting a business is very different from growing a business. Starting a business is the ideation and creation stage. Then, it’s testing and validating the market, piloting ideas, getting the product market fit, and making sure there is a customer. But for growth, you’ve got to do a business plan.

“I spent hours with my accountant going over the numbers on the true cost of goods and defining the products and services we were selling,” Richard admits. “How much of this product do I have to sell to make a profit? What markets and customers am I selling to? What infrastructure, technology, and people do I need – an office, warehouse, or truck? And how am I going to finance it?

“Every business plan is a living thing,” says Richard. “There’s nothing fixed in stone, so you change it as you go. Having that vision statement of where you want to go is a critical thing for companies to have. It not only reflects you and your passion and why you do what you do, but it also excites everyone around you. It’s not just for your people; it’s so your customers, stakeholders, and suppliers understand the passion, the vision and the long-term objective.”

Lesson 5: Thinking big

“You get so busy day-to-day, you can’t see the wood from the trees,” says Richard, but he has a clever approach to gaining business clarity.

“Imagining the business in five years and at ten times the size is an interesting exercise, and I encourage everyone to do that. First, think about margins, profits, infrastructure, people, and organisation charts. Next, understand what that company looks like in five years and create a profit/loss statement. Then, work back year by year to where you are now and consider what changes have to happen each of those years to get to that five-year plan.

“Suddenly, it all starts to appear in front of you, and you think, ‘I can get there, and this is what I need to do’. But, then, focus on what must happen next year because that’s where you have the most clarity.”

This interview with Richard Turner packs in tidbits and wisdom from his decades of experience in industry disruption and innovation. Feast your ears on the entire First Act ep now!

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