“Finding and taking advice”

Cheese Talk with

Juliet Harbutt

• How one cheese shop supported locals in lockdown
• Rory Mellis, IJ Mellis: “Local businesses have a chance to flourish”
• Why we should be proud of the cheese industry’s response to Covid
• The joy of cheese grading
• “Keeping the faith”

I have spent nearly 2 months in NZ giving masterclasses, tastings, workshops and advice to retailers, potential retailers, restaurants and cheesemakers. It’s what I do, and as most of my clients seem to be very happy with the advice and are willing to recommend me I assume I do a good job

But sometimes I wonder if it is the old story where “in the kingdom of the blind the one eyed man is King”. So before I work with a client I establish what their experience is and what advice they really need, then do some serious thinking about what I can offer before I commit, whether its a half day session or an ongoing project.

With people new to food retailing, cheese or deli products, I believe my role as consultant is to answer the questions they don’t know to ask. IT people, on the other hand, tend to answer the questions we already ask, which ends up costing us a fortune because we don’t know enough to ask the right questions or even use the right terminology. So how do you choose the right person?

Professional organisations can give you a list but they can’t and probably won’t recommend anyone, so start by looking at all the businesses you like that are doing it well. See what you can learn from them or even if you can pick their brains – when I first started, most retailers I asked were willing to talk about what they did right and wrong, but as many did it by the seat of their pants they couldn’t say why things had worked. They could, however, tell me how costly the wrong advice had been. My clients thought I was mad when I said they should “camp” outside their potential shop for three days – after two they called to thank me (they would have gone bust).

When someone recommends a consultant (or a key staff member), find out what they have done and what they did before they started advising people – how much experience have they had doing what you are doing and what exactly was their role? Working in a shop is not the same as setting one up and running it. If they worked with cheese or in retail, did they inherit someone else’s excellent system and contacts or did they set them up and manage them? Even those people, or especially those people, who run training workshops need to have been there and done that and got a wardrobe of t-shirts, not just learnt how to train.

Ask successful businesses if they have used anyone and if their advice or help was effective long-term. Short term fixes are not what you want. I recently asked my friends to recommend someone to help me understand and capitalise on social media as I was too busy with a zillion different things (aren’t we all) to do research. Well, £750 down I still don’t understand how to use Twitter, he never mentioned Instagram because I didn’t ask, he created an “ad” that got precisely no response, and the tweets he did on my behalf – without consulting me – were facile at best. Note to self: practice what you preach!

And then you have to be willing to pay. A few years ago, a very wealthy businessman called me and said he was looking at starting a new cheese venture with a number of investors and wanted to run some ideas past me. I gave him my rate and he responded, “Oh, I only wanted to pick your brain and thought we could do it over a good lunch”. Five years and a few million later he and his investors lost their money in a venture that to me was flawed from the beginning. Easy in hindsight but his model was wrong.

Lastly, they don’t have to be your new best friend but you do need good rapport. If you don’t feel they are listening to you, you don’t understand what they are trying to say when you first talk and they don’t seem to get what you are trying to do, then find someone who does. My wonderful IT man ‘Big D’ has taken all the stress out of IT. He is expensive but he is always there to listen and help.