Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Excuses. Here I am. So hi guys and welcome to this week's Profit first podcast. I'm Stephen Edwards, the founder of Grow Profit First Accountants. We are entrepreneurial accountants that help people make more profit, more cash so you can build a better business and ultimately live a better life. And one of the ways we do that is through coaching you and educating you around Profit First. We love Profit First. It gives us the blueprint, the tool set, the the resources, the roadmap to, to to be able to build this business that gives you all the things I've said previously. But we also dive into other topics. If you're a client of ours, you get access to loads of Profit first resources. If you're not a client of ours, please reach out. There's anything you need. If you've got a Profit first question, please reach out to me personally.
[00:00:51] It's Stephen with a ph at Choutnam. C H E L T E N h a m taxaccountants.co.uk I know it's a long email Y We are changing it because our website address is simply we are grow without the w.co.uk and we can share those resources with you. So we've got lots of content around resources Profit First. We, we walk people and implement Profit first on a one to one basis. But if you've been listening to this podcast for some time, you will have re have realized we do, we should share anything that's ultimately going to help you build a better business. And, and this is week three of a mini series I've been doing and it's all from my personal book, how to build a business that runs without you using the Entrepreneurial Freedom System, which is my 10 step system that's enabled, enabled me to be in Florida. As you listen to this or as you read this in, you know, August, September 25th this year I've decided to take a month off. I'm in Florida for three weeks. I, I know I've got a few listeners in the US if you're listening to this in the us, hi, maybe I've even bumped into you. So you know, we're doing the whole universal thing, we're doing Disney. But the reason I've been able to build this type of business is because I've had intention from day one and I'm sharing what worked for me. Have I got all the answers? Is my business perfect in every way? No. And you know, none of us, that shouldn't be the case for any of us. We should always be learning and improving. But But I have done, you know, I'm sharing my 15 years of running my own business so hopefully you can get there quicker in, in your own way. And you can find the book on Amazon, how to Build a Business that Runs without yout by Stephen Edwards. So this week we are talking about step three to build this dream business that can run without you.
[00:02:39] Step one, which was how to create a vision. And it was a personal vision and a business vision. I won't go into that in detail. You can go back and listen to that podcast or read that newsletter.
[00:02:50] Step two was creating a very simple high level numbers plan. So you're clear on does the numbers work? Is this going to get me to where I need it to get me? Is it going to deliver on my dreams for me and my family? Step three is all about values. And some people think core values is wishy washy or it's stuff that is belongs in big corporate businesses. And, and the truth is if you, if you think it belongs in a big corporate business, then maybe they're not for you. But what I would ask you to do is think about what do you personally value in your business? What do you value in terms of how you create results for your customers?
[00:03:30] What do you value in terms of the sort of team members you hire? Maybe you've had a team member who's worked with you for a long time. What characteristics do you value about that person? Why are they still around? There's a reason. What makes a good hire, what makes a bad hire, what makes reverse engineer that and you will probably get clear on what do your values look like already.
[00:03:51] You know, and you probably, it probably comes up in conversations with your customers in terms of what makes you different because that's part of your values.
[00:03:58] And there is a way of doing this. There is a workshop I've mentioned in previous weeks. We are launching Grow Academy. So if anyone's a client, you get access for free. If you're not a client, reach out to me and we can talk about how that works. It's a very low cost monthly fee but and we talk about how to build your own business plan, how to create your own numbers plan, also how to create your own core values. It's all going to be in the academy but I'm going to explain a little bit about our process and our journey around core values.
[00:04:26] So let you know. Apple Steve Jobs gets talked about as an example by many different people just because it's quite a famous story and it's inspired so many people and it Took quite a long time to get there with the marketing efforts and the branding. But Apple, after many years, landed on the slogan think different.
[00:04:46] And those two words summarized everything that Apple is about. We know Apple and you might be a Samsung user, an Android user, and it doesn't really matter. But I'm sure you can relate to the fact that you know, whether you like the company or not, it's generally considered to be high quality products, materials, they're slower to deliver innovations than competitors because they want to make sure it's perfect before it gets released. So quality premium user experience is at the core. The values. But think different kind of summarized it and I just want to share that because maybe it gets you thinking, you know, how does that relate to you and your business?
[00:05:21] So our core values in the book, and they've actually evolved since then, in the book we had an acronym and I. Acronyms are really good with core values because it means you can remember them. If you don't have an acronym or a system to remember it, it can be quite difficult. So I do recommend having an acronym. It used to be packed P A K K T T. Okay, packed, spat. Bit funny, but I remembered it and the team remembered it. So our core values first and foremost were person first. And I'll just read out a little bit of an abstract from the book so you can just articulate clearly what it's all about. So we put people at the heart of everything we do, whether it's our clients, our team members or our community.
[00:06:06] We prioritize human connections to ensure that our actions reflect care, respect and empathy. Our relationships are built on trust and we always consider the person behind every decision.
[00:06:20] And I've sacked people, guys, I have sacked people if they do not have a person first attitude. Yes, we are accountants. Yes, we can do your accounts. Yes, we try and grow your business. But why are we doing that? Why we are doing that to help a person, to help a family. We are genuinely trying to help you live your best life and the way we do that is helping you with everything else. But we've got to put the person first in everything we do. The next one is above the line thinking, also known as orbed. Another acronym, sorry, for all the acronyms. Oar, B, E, D.
[00:06:51] So above the line is oar or you're moving and it's about taking ownership, it's taking accountability, responsibility for your actions. If you're below the line, it's bed, it's blame, it's excuses and it's denial. And I'm sure you can relate to team members or people, you know, whether they take ownership, accountability and responsibility for everything they do, or you've probably come across people that they've got blame. There's excuses and there's denial. That's such a core value of what we do.
[00:07:22] We've also got Kaizen, which is continuous improvement. And it's a Japanese philosophy. I think it's around maybe around the 60s and is, how can we be 1% better consistently? How can we constantly improve? Everybody in the business needs to be growing. The other K is keep it simple, kiss Keep it simple, stupid. Don't overcomplicate, complicate things. Particularly in our industry. Accountants have a habit of overcomplicating stuff. We do not want that in our business. We keep it simple being a team player and also a little bit of tough love every now and again, just saying what needs to be said. So that was how our core value started and it took me probably about 10 years to come up with those. However, less is more. So we've actually refined it to three things now and the new acronym is Kan K A N. And if you've got can as a team member, you've got a can do attitude. So we've still got Kaizen. We still got above the line and the final N. And I don't know if you've ever watched Winnie Winnie the Pooh before Winnie the Pooh, but we have a no EOR policy. So Eeyore is a character from Winnie the Pooh and he's just basically doom and gloom. Everything's negative. The days about a horrible day, you know when people ask Eeyore, how you doing? Not very good. Pooh bear today's and you know, it's a cloudy day. I'm not very good at anything. And that's his attitude. So we don't want eels in our business.
[00:08:48] You know, maybe we want tiggers. We want people that bring in the energy. We don't want. What's the word? Toxic positivity. We don't want fake being positive, but we don't want people draining our energy. So there's two types of people in life. There's energizers and there's drainers. And you want people around you that give you energy. They don't drain your energy. That is one of the biggest decisions I made in my business is to surround myself with people that give me energy.
[00:09:16] So that is my core values. And I'm sharing that with you because I want you to think about what's important for you and when you have values. And you could also have personal values, by the way. You could have values in terms of what you value in terms of friendships, family. That's kind of a level above. I don't think that belongs to this podcast today. I am big on that. I really believe in that. It's your compass for life. It links into your personal purpose what kind of gets you out of bed. But start with your business.
[00:09:43] And how could you do this? Well, one of the workshops we did was we got the team to share what do they think is important for your business and we all kind of put post it notes on a board and we shared, brainstormed what everyone believe is important. And then we narrowed that list down. We cut that list. Keep or kill. We cut that list until it only got down to a handful. So that's one of the mechanisms you can do. You know, I can help facilitate those workshops. Reach out to me. As I said, Grow Academy can also teach you how to do it yourself. If you've got any questions on core values, please reach out. Guys, but this is super important. Please do not skip this. Please don't. Do not question and wonder, what does this have to do with profit first? What does this have to do with my cash flow?
[00:10:27] This has to do everything to do with all of those things because you cannot build a business without a team and you cannot build a healthy team without core values. So this is the heart, this is the foundation. This is at the core. That's what's core values. Everything you are going to do in your business, hopefully you found that useful. Guys, reach out to me if you've got any questions, questions and I'll see you soon. Excuses. Here I am. So.
