The show Risky Business on ITV follows Cosmo Fry and Lulu Anderson through the creation of The Big Sleep Hotel in Cheltenham. Their business idea is simply to turn an old, rather ugly tax office into a chic designer hotel – with reasonable prices. Their approach is somewhat haphazard to say the least, quite how they managed to get investors to back them or a bank to lend them millions I don’t know!

The episode this week really did make me cringe, because:

• They fired an employee on camera in what appeared to be a rather informal way, which left me wondering if they’ve left themselves open to an unfair dismissal claim.
• Fry attempted to get the bank to release funding after telling them the business was in trouble.
• Fry suggested he wanted to get a general manager with sales and marketing experience and able to rescue the hotel all for a mere £20K salary. Fortunately he caved later in the show and hired a promising manager for £40K, but not before he tried some cheap marketing.
• They had an internal applicant for general manager who Fry forgot to inform when he didn’t get the job, nor did they really seem to encourage him. It’s not surprising staff moral was low resulting in graffiti throughout Fry’s diary.
• Fry’s approach to cheap marketing was to grab the Yellow Pages and have the reception staff cold call their way through it, a somewhat risky business as the Yellow Pages information is copyright and using it this was is against their terms and conditions (and they have fake entries in there to catch people out). Furthermore the businesses they were calling could have been registered with the Telephone Protection Service (TPS) making it illegal to cold call them.

Needless to say this low cost marketing didn’t work. Thankfully their new general manager immediately proved his worth and seemed to be rapidly getting the hotel turned around. Ironically his first promotional move was even cheaper that Fry’s – networking by inviting the other local hotel reception staff around to see the hotel and asking them to refer guest to The Big Sleep when their own hotels were full.

There’s some lessons for the budding entrepreneur here:

1. Treat your staff well they are the public face of the business.
2. Cheap marketing can hurt your business.
3. Networking with your competitors can pay dividends.

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