(单词翻译:单击)
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm honoured to have this opportunity to talk to you.
大家早上好!很高兴有机会做这次演讲
Eight years ago, I bought my first computer, but I soon discovered that where I lived, it was difficult to find accessories for that particular make. That made me realise that other people must have the same problem.
八年前,我买了我人生的第一台电脑,但很快我就发现在我住的那个地方买不到相应的配件
Then I found that foreign magazines contained plenty of advertisements of mail order companies, so I started buying spare parts and things that way and selling them on to my friends at a small profit. That was how my company, Manshee, was born. Four years later, Manshee was making a profit and had reached a turnover of six million pounds. We had four directors - myself and three of my friends - plus a staff of seventeen. The culture was young and the working environment didn't have any structure. The company just grew and grew with its own momentum, and everything we did seemed to strike lucky. If we needed to buy some equipment or redecorate the sales office, we decided yes or no in isolation, only taking the short term - usually the cash flow for that month - into account.
后来我发现很多外国杂志上都有很多支持邮件下单的品牌的广告,所以我就开始邮件下单买一些配件什么的,然后以比较优惠的价格卖给我的朋友
However, the market became increasingly cut throat, and that led to falling margins. We realised, rather unwillingly, that the time had come to structure our future, but we didn't really have much idea how to set about it. So we went to a firm of consultants who specialise in helping small businesses, and it proved a turning point. They insisted that we four directors sit down and rank our investments in order of importance for the coming years. It seems obvious now, but we'd never realised the value of doing it before.
然而,随着市场的竞争越来越激烈,我们的利润开始缩水了