How EO Helped EO Brisbane Member Find Success
EO Staff
EO Brisbane member Shane Ridley was recently profiled in an edition of the Sunshine Daily Coast. In an article titled, "Valley man is no small-town thinker," Shane discusses his failures in business and how EO has helped him become a successful entrepreneur.
Read the full-length article below:Shane Ridley’s business should be a failure. He followed some bad advice a few years back, he runs a “staffing solutions” business at a time when job markets have thrown up more problems than solutions and he works in the highly volatile rural agriculture sector.
Instead, CPE Rural is growing at more than 100% per annum and is on track to record revenue of $8million this year. Mr Ridley, 30, says a combination of solid company values, being a specialist with a niche target market and membership of the Entrepreneurs Organisation (EO) were the reasons for that success.
“We know and understand our clients and that is only because we listen to them,” he said from his Toowoomba base. “We look at others in our market who claim to be specialists in everything. But we only do corporate agriculture so we know our market, we understand their wants, needs, desires and pains. Labour is such a critical part to our clients’ business. It represents between 30% and 60% of their total operations costs. So if we can get some gains in efficiency in their workforce, that can have a fairly significant impact on their bottom line.”
Mr Ridley’s five-year-old business has six staff covering southeast Queensland and northern New South Wales, including a team member on the Sunshine Coast. It has among its clients the biggest grape and tomato growers in Australia; three divisions in hire, recruitment and consulting and places anyone from a backpacking strawberry picker to a senior executive. His EO membership is restricted to businesses with a minimum annual turnover of $US1million.
“The fact that my business has grown at more than 100% per annum for the last three years is directly related to the support and learning I have gained from EO,” he said. “I guess it took me out of that small-town thinking and gave me a more entrepreneurial view. I come from a working-class family in the Lockyer Valley and when you are running a business it is very lonely. And people who aren’t doing it don’t get that.”
Mr Ridley plans to turn his business into a national organisation within five years and stick to his corporate agriculture niche.
“We’ve expanded into other markets previously and we couldn’t manage the distraction,” he said. “Before joining EO, some advisors told me agriculture was doomed and that I should diversify. So I followed that advice and it nearly cost us our business. I have since learned to trust my own gut instinct, to take advice but to not let others make decisions for me – it’s about staying the course.”
