“The life we live is a busy one.” For most of us this becomes increasingly true as days go by.
In the hustle and bustle of daily life it’s easy to lose track of the small tasks that need to be done. Realising this, many new companies have focussed on helping their customers perform those tasks with greater ease and convenience.
This is precisely what Gregory Junior Sydney had in mind when he conceptualised Quick Delivery, an official courier service that’s all about convenience.
His first interest was quantity surveying, a career he aspired to after seeing buildings being constructed from the ground up on his way to school with his mom; the person whom he credits for his innate desire to be successful.
Gregory would later go on to further his studies in that field at SALCC (formerly Morne Tech) and the University of Reading in England. He has since become an established entrepreneur in his own right, but prior to his breakthrough in business, he first had to overcome quite a few hurdles. Dazzle had the pleasure of chatting with him about his experiences.
Dazzle: Describe the process from conceptualising the idea for quick delivery to it becoming a reality.
Gregory: Like I always say, necessity is the mother of all invention. In 2009 I was sitting in my office doing a project plan for the Mardini Building in Rodney Bay. Since I had a tight deadline I couldn’t go out to get lunch, although I was hungry. That’s when I thought to myself we really need a service that can deliver your food for you. That same weekend I wrote up a business plan for what would become Quick Delivery. But I pondered on it for a while and bounced the idea off of a few people whom I got tons of positive feedback from.
One of my friends who co-owned Route 69 with me, convinced me to start Quick Delivery before someone takes the idea and make it their own. Within a few days of her telling me that, I went out and got branded shirts, I put out ads for new staff and it took off from there. At that point we had no clientele, and with limited finances we couldn’t do much marketing outside of word of mouth. We operated for a six- month period and in that time I used the experience as market research. We closed down in 2013 so that I could continue doing my construction work and save up to relaunch the business four years later. Now we’ve been operating for 14 months consecutively. Despite the challenges, we’re here to stay… and since we did a full year we understand how the different seasons work.
Dazzle: What’s the most difficult challenge you’ve encountered since starting up Quick Delivery and how did you overcome it?
Gregory: Knowing where to start, and financing. We started constructive planning with the assistance of a business coach at the end of 2016 to launch in March 2017. But when I first started off in 2013, that money wasn’t available to me at the time. I’d send my business plan to various banks but got turned down because they don’t finance new businesses. But the economy cannot grow if small businesses don’t get financed. It’s like what Einstein said: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” So things will only yield the same results if small businesses keep getting turned down for something as crucial as financing.
The other thing; knowing where to start. In 2017 that was the challenge for me because I then had the financing but I had no idea how to get started. With entrepreneurs, we always have the idea but to execute it is something difficult. Through various contacts I met up with Carissa Daniel, a business coach from Trinidad. She coached me for about three months before I started operating the business. And because I had a coach, everything became clearer and began to materialise as time went on, despite the initial pressure. I’d advise anyone planning on starting a business to get a business coach to really get the ball rolling.
Dazzle: What about the negative feedback that you get?
Gregory: We get very little but the negative feedback is always more appreciated more than the positives. Whichever customer gives us negative feedback, we always work towards the goal of making them regular, satisfied customers. One particular occasion, a food delivery took an unusually long time to get to the customer. It was a time where anything that could go wrong, did go wrong. And it happened to the wrong person because they were extremely hungry and the food got to them late, and it was cold by then. We sought to mend the relationship so as to avoid them having a bad impression of the brand. It was important to us that they have only the best memories about us. We treat the negative reviews with more urgency and respect because there’s an opportunity to make things better.
Dazzle: What are your strategies for efficiently maintaining a time-sensitive business like Quick Delivery?
Gregory: Planning is everything. Some orders you can get done right away but most of them are placed within a detailed plan with routes, estimated times and the nature of the deliveries. It’s a given that our drivers must know the routes to ensure that we save time and money while on the go. As for dealing with traffic, we have various checkpoints that we can contact to determine how heavy traffic is and whether or not it’d be wise to take an alternative route to ensure a speedy delivery. We always let the customer know if there will be any delays and we let them decide whether or not they’d want to use the service at that time.
Dazzle: In the near future what can we expect from you, as well as Quick Delivery?
Gregory: For me, I want to keep being the great person that I am; peaceful, helpful to others. As for Quick Delivery, the plans could be materialising soon. We plan on getting it done by the grace of God, and me being a go-getter with a solid team around me, we’ll make it happen. There’s lots that we want to offer, so for now I’d say stay tuned to see the progress come through!
We hope that Gregory sees all his plans come to fruition in the near future!
