Running your own show can be tough
ENTREPRENEUR Janine Allis says she did not take a salary for three years and it was five years before her Boost juice empire turned a profit.
The family home she shared with husband Jeff, then an Austereo radio executive, was sold to fund the business.
But the Boost founder and Shark Tank mentor warns not everyone is cut out to run their own businesses and some people may be better suited working for a boss.
“If you are risk averse and you haven’t got the appetite or have the patience to know that it takes time, you are better off working for someone and having a career,” she says.
Ms Allis launched Boost in Adelaide in 2000 after she noticed the growth of juice bars on a trip to the US.
Her first bar, in Prahran, didn’t work so she regrouped and started afresh in Adelaide.
She was on maternity leave with her third child and wanted an interest. After tossing around ideas, Boost was the answer.
With a curriculum vitae running from part-time strawberry picker, Target checkout operator, nightclub door girl and nanny to publicist and cinema manager, Ms Allis is now Retail Zoo executive director.
Retail Zoo owns Boost, Salsa’s Fresh Mex and CIBO, an Adelaide coffee chain, along with Queensland-based Betty’s Burgers.
Private equity firm Bain Capital acquired Retail Zoo in 2014. Ms Allis has spoken of the juggle that often saw her propped up in bed on the laptop at all hours of the night, working on Boost.
She joked that her husband dubbed her a “laptop dancer”.
In 2004, Ms Allis was named Australia’s Telstra Business Woman of the Year.
She says the Telstra awards exposed her to other business people who were now friends.
“I made really good friends that I still have today,” she says.
Ms Allis is a judge for this year’s national Telstra awards, to be announced in September.
The Queensland winners will be announced next Thursday.
She says business is tough and most businesses fail in their first four years.
While some sectors of franchising have taken a hit, Ms Allis says people running a business under a franchise operation are more likely to be successful.
“A bit of luck helps, too,” she says. Ms Allis says that for her, the involvement of Jeff was invaluable.
“I think, for me, I was lucky enough to have a husband who was earning to fund a lifestyle. We sold our family home,” she says.
Ms Allis says that as time has gone on, she has shifted her work and life focus, walking her daughter to school and making time for yoga and other interests.
Over the past three years, she has been a “shark” in Ten Network’s Shark Tank series, where successful entrepreneurs assess start-up businesses and, if they like what they see, take a share in them.