The Last Bullet: Storm Ride’s Story
For seven years, Dave and Andrew’s decisions at Storm Rides had paid off. Then a perfect storm of a cyclone and exchange rate flux resulted in 2 years of losses, taking away a lot of choices, and the confidence to make the right call. Down to what they called the ‘last bullet’, the wrong call could have been devastating. Business Growth School and Point16 Coaching helped them trust their judgement again, and pull the trigger.
The Challenge
Storm Rides imports leading global electric scooter brands and sells them through its own store, e-commerce, and a network of other retailers. Dave and Andrew, friends since childhood, built it ten years ago. The business was always meant to buy them freedom, flexibility, and time with their families, for Dave maybe even a place his special needs son could work one day. Not mega wealth. Just a decent income, a good life, and the freedom to be good dads.
For seven years, the business delivered on that. It grew every year, with each being more profitable than the previous. Then came what Dave calls a perfect storm: Storm Rides lost significant money two years in a row, wiping out the carefully built up reserves, the word ‘liquidation’ was floating in the air. Keeping the business alive became a sleep-losing problem, the kind that follows you home.
Dave and Andrew had previously been confident in their judgement, it had steered them and the business well. Initially bootstrapped on credit cards working nights and weekends, to a muti-million per annum business with several employees. Those two years of losses took a lot of that confidence away. The difficulty was not that they had run out of options. There were several, and they all looked reasonable. What they had lost was the confidence in their ability to pick between them. Dave described it as ‘being down to the last bullet.’ “When things are going well, you've got plenty of shots, you can fire, adjust, and try again. When things go badly, you're down to your last one, and you just aim, and aim, and aim, and never pull the trigger” because of the concern that the wrong decision now, could be the last decision the business gets to make.
“When things are going well, you've got plenty of shots, you can fire, adjust, and try again. When things go badly, you're down to your last one, and you just aim, and aim, and aim, and never pull the trigger”
because of the concern that the wrong decision now, could be the last decision the business gets to make.
That question that was on Dave and Andrew’s minds had a real cost. Whether to double the product range, bring in new brands, and commit more money at the exact moment the business could least afford the risk, sat unmade for months. They knew what needed to happen, but struggled to make themselves do it, and every day that decision waited, the window to make it shrank.
The Approach
Dave and Andrew knew they needed to ask for expert help. As Dave puts it, every top performer in the world has a coach, whether they're the best golfer or the best businessperson. He didn't see why they should be any different.
What drew them to Business Growth School specifically was speed. Dave and Andrew had previously attended a variety of different business courses between them and found a common theme to be that while regular mentoring gave a little time each month, it would inherently take a year or two to work through every aspect of business to isolate what Storm Rides most needed. They didn't have that kind of time. Business Growth School compressed every core part of business knowledge into 6 days, broken down into three 2 day in-person blocks. During each block they gained new knowledge they could go back and apply to the business. The weeks inbetween gave them the time to test and measure the learnings resulting in fast feedback which allowed them to get clear on on the real problems, and opportunities.
It wasn't an easy call financially. Storm Rides had no ‘spare cash’ left, using overdraft to pay for the programme. Dave was candid that this was no easy decision to make, and while investing both time and financial cost into the program seemed counter intuitive at the time, being short on both. They knew that the business was fundamentally solid with real opportunities, they just needed to unlock them, and quickly.
How it’s going since Business Growth School
Business Growth School didn't hand them a new strategy. It helped sharpen their existing disparate plans into a clear strategic play, bringing back certainty, confirming the calls they already knew were right and surfacing blind spots they couldn't see alone.
The first shift was a simple one: Dave and Andrew learned they'd actually been running the business correctly 80 to 90 percent of the time, even in the middle of two years of losses. Seeing that clearly is what gave them the confidence to fix what was left. That reframe, from feeling like they were failing, to seeing how much they'd genuinely gotten right, is what enabled them to start trusting their judgement again.
From there, the fixes were practical. Sharper KPIs and a stronger grip on operational efficiency gave every role a clear, ownable target, so each person could see exactly how their work connected to profit, and to the business as a whole. Applying that same scrutiny to Storm Rides' customer service uncovered a broken process that had quietly been costing them time and money. Fixing it clawed back three to four hours of staff time a day, time that went straight back into growing the business.
Just as important was what changed between Dave and Andrew. BGS gave them a shared language and more formalised methodology to tracking business metrics and making informed decisions together. Instead of two people quietly doubting the same call in the same meeting, they had a framework for making it, together, and moving on.
"Once we joined Point16 and Business Growth School, we were able to make those decisions, see that they were sound, and that's what helped bring us back to profitability."
- Dave Cranwell, Co-founder, Storm Rides
All of it built toward the decision they hadn't been able to confidently make: doubling the product range. With the noise cleared and the confidence back, they finally pulled the trigger, and this time, it was a well-aimed shot. Storm Rides is profitable and growing again. The business runs leaner, the team shared in the win through pay rises, and the guys are back to building the life they set out for, for themselves and their families.
Is there a call you have been sitting on?
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