Michelle Mone: My business advice

Michelle Mone, co-founder of MJM International has seen her business expand since the launch of the Ultimo Bra range in 1999 and its lingerie products can now be found in countries all over the world. The entrepreneur offers her advice on the key skills that business owners need to ensure that their venture succeeds.

Organisation
"If you walked into my office every lever arch file is up the right way, each has a label with the same font and if the stickers are not straight then you restart it and do it again," she says. "What surprised me was walking into a business and it being chaotic, messy and unorganised. I was seeing disgusting cloths lying in a sink where people were making food.

"I basically started off with organisational skills and once those started improving they started thinking about the business more because they weren't working in a mess and a heap of paperwork. I thought that was just what businesspeople did."

Management style
"I'm extremely fair, I'm always very clear in what I want the team to deliver on and if they can't deliver on that then they need to speak up. What I can't stand is if I don't get any questions but then weeks down the line they say ‘I didn't know you wanted that' or ‘I didn't think the deadline was then'. But I always encourage a team spirit as well; you've got to enjoy what you do."

Over the years, Mone has come to realise just how important her own behaviour is to staff morale and business performance in general. "A few years ago I used to come into the office and be quite stressed," she recalls. "The staff would think ‘Oh God, she's stressed' so they used to get stressed. Your team will smile when you smile and be stressed when you're stressed. That's something that I always remember: even if you have to put on a good face and be a good actress, do not let staff get down."

Managing cash
"You have to keep an eye on your cash, not just once a month or once a week but daily," she says. "Look at the costs of the business and review them, right down to your kitchen roll. See if you could get more out of your team, look at your product, look at your competitors and always be better than them. It's not necessarily a case of cutting back or not spending money on research and development, advertising or taking your customers out for dinner but you've got to be smarter with your cash."

The most common mistake she sees from entrepreneurs is people having a good month and then spending the proceeds. "I don't think ‘I've got that amount of money in the bank; let's go and spend it'," she says. "It's just there and if we go through a bad period then there's money in the bank to cope. You never want to ask the banks for money, especially in this current climate. There are some real horror stories and it's not nice so there's no bank that will darken my doorstep. I'm in charge of the business and that's the way it will stay."

Ambition
Despite all she has achieved, however, Mone says she doesn't feel as if she has "made it" yet. "I don't know if I'll ever be able to say I've made it," she says. "Does it mean you've made it if you're in The Sunday Times Rich List worth hundreds of millions? I don't know. There's so much that I want to do in terms of Miss Ultimo, Ultimo Perfume, Ultimo for Men; I suppose that's why I feel I've not made it yet."