Grooming the Business: Cover Your Weaknesses First
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 7
- Confidence
- —
In 2008 a corporate finance adviser told Cookson he had a phenomenal, vertically integrated, high-growth business with one big problem: if he got run over by the proverbial bus, there was nowhere for it to go. Nobody buys a business with a single break point. Their verdict — that he was not the man to groom it — became the challenge he took on. Over roughly a year he systematised every job in the company into a process book, honestly audited his own strengths and weaknesses, and hired directors to cover the gaps in a deliberate order: finance and operations first, where he was weakest, then marketing to elevate an area he was already good at. The principle he distils from it is simple: as priority, cover your weaknesses.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Ask the bus question
If you were hit by a bus tomorrow, where does the business go? A company with one person as the sole break point is unsellable and undelegatable. Cookson describes hearing this as a eureka moment — the adviser was right, and he did not want to be doing everything forever anyway.
- 2
Give yourself a hard deadline
Cookson set one year to professionalize the business. A fixed window converts an open-ended cultural change into a project with an end date, and stops grooming from being permanently deferred behind daily operations.
Pro tip Being told you cannot do it is useful fuel — Cookson treated it as a red rag and set the year deadline in response.
- 3
Systematise every job into a process book
He went back to his programming instincts and documented everything from printing an order to picking an order — every job in the company — into a handbook for how to run the business. Functional and operational only; the creative side stays with you.
Watch out Do not try to systematise the creative or entrepreneurial work. Cookson explicitly excluded it.
- 4
Audit your own strengths and weaknesses honestly
He assessed himself as creative, entrepreneurial and technical, weak in finance, and weaker in operations than he should have been despite having run five warehouse moves. The audit is only useful if you name the gaps you would rather not admit.
Watch out Being competent at something once is not a strength. Cookson had done operations work and still classed himself weak there.
- 5
Hire into your weakest functions first
Finance director and operations director came first, precisely because they covered what he could not do. This is the ordering rule: recruit against the gaps, not against the work you enjoy.
- 6
Then hire to raise your ceiling where you're already strong
Only afterwards did he bring in a marketing director. He was already good at marketing — the hire took it to another level. Strength-amplifying hires come after gap-covering hires, not before.
- 7
Step back to the front, not out of the business
With processes and a senior team in place, the founder moves to vision, product and the creative work. Cookson later reflects that in an early-stage business you still need to be driving from the front; grooming is about removing single-point dependency, not absenteeism.
Watch out He tried a fully delegated, remote, few-days-a-week model on a later business and concluded it does not work when push comes to shove.
In the wild
Around 2008 Myprotein was making a couple of million pounds EBITDA, was vertically integrated, and sat in a sector forecast to grow hugely. A corporate finance boutique told Cookson the business was phenomenal but had one big problem — him — and that he was not the man to groom it. He gave himself a year. He built a process book covering every functional job in the company, audited himself as strong on creative, entrepreneurial and technical work but weak on finance and operations, and hired a finance director and operations director first, then a marketing director. The business went to market with a senior team already in place.
→ Roughly 25-30+ offers arrived, including Pepsi, Nestlé and The Hut Group; the eventual deal was £34m cash plus rolled equity.
Common mistakes
Hiring for the work you enjoy
Founders tend to recruit people who look like themselves and reinforce the functions they already like running. Cookson's ordering rule inverts that: finance and operations first because those were his gaps, marketing later because he was already good at it. Amplifying a strength before covering a weakness leaves the single point of failure exactly where it was.
Delegating before documenting
Cookson wrote the process book — every job, from printing an order to picking one — before and alongside bringing directors in. Handing responsibilities to new senior hires without a written handbook means they invent their own systems, which recreates key-person dependency at a different desk rather than removing it.
Assuming founder dependency is only an exit problem
The bus question was raised by advisers in a sale context, but Cookson's own reason for acting was that he did not want to be doing everything forever. Treating grooming as something you only do when preparing to sell postpones the delegation, processes and senior team that make the business survivable and liveable in the meantime.
From the transcript
“If you get run over by the proverbial bus,”
“So I will give myself 1 year to professionalize business”
“So I got the finance director and operations director first. And then I brought in a marketing director.”
From the episode
How To Bootstrap £500 into £350 Million - Oliver Cookson Founder of Myprotein
Oliver Cookson