Make cost cutting your business like John Lewis

TUNDE OYEDOYIN  

Tunde Oyedoyin is a London-based personal finance coach and founder of Money Intelligence Coaching Academy, a specialist academy of personal finance. He can be reached as follows: +447846089587 (WhatsApp only); E-mail: tu5oyed@gmail.com

The Evening Standard of Thursday, September 12, had a report titled: “John Lewis cuts first-half losses after turnaround.”(p.26). It contained how the leading partnership and its Waitrose arm nearly halved its pre-tax losses of £59 million to £30 million on revenues of £5.2 billion for the six months to July 27.

Though things were tough and sales reported to have been ‘down by 3% to £2 billion’ in what they described as a ‘challenging market’, and which thereby caused their ‘operating losses’ to rise ‘by £24 million to £45 million,’ there was nevertheless an increase in customer numbers by ‘2% to 13.6 million.’

Despite that, John Lewis group attributed their recovery to the Waitrose arm of the business. Sales there increased by five percent to £3.9 billion. This caused their ‘adjusted operating profit’ to increase by ‘£75 million to £113 million.’

It’s worth mentioning that the group noted that the losses on the John Lewis side were partly due to increased investment in stores. That being said, they have pulled themselves out of the woods and are even confident of a “positive” Christmas trading coupled with“significantly higher profits.” According to its chief executive officer, Nish Kankiwala, “these results confirm that our transformation plan is working .”

Here’s the takeaway for us — make cost-cutting a personal mission of yours. Like John Lewis, you may have taken some hits in one aspect of your personal finance in the first half of the year, either through investing in your future career and skills development or embarking on a project that dragged you into the red, let’s take a cue from the group. Figure out what your transformation plan will be and start putting the same to work .

It could be having to work harder and smarter and not biting more than you can chew. Your transformation plan and loss cutting plan may mean you’re simply going to be paying down debt or withdrawing from over committing your financial muscle.

Do whatever is needed, even if it means being thrifty. If, like John Lewis, you invested in up-scaling your skills or some technology, you need to aggressively seek for how to turn those skills and technology around and start earning. Have a plan in place to have an impressive outcome in this second half of the year like Britain’s leading partnership.

An evening celebrating a colleague’s milestone

While the world’s fastest women were lining up for the Olympics 100 metres final at the Stade de France in the evening of the first Saturday of August, my colleague, Olabisi Omole, had a different idea.

She had her family, loved ones and friends gathered around her at the Cosmos restaurant at the Brewery in Romford for dinner. Though she clocked sixty on August 1, the celebration of reaching the milestone was that Saturday. As it turned out, it was even a buffet.

Marking her diamond jubilee birthday celebration there wasn’t cheap, though. But as mentioned last week, putting something aside to celebrate your milestone makes plenty sense.

The old girls of her secondary school were there to make some noise and sing: “For she’s a jolly good fellow, for she’s a jolly good fellow, for she’s a jolly good fellow…” And so say all of us, there.

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