Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Excuses.
[00:00:02] So, hi everyone and welcome to this week's Profit first podcast. So I want to talk about something that is resonated with me this year and it's actually going to form the basis and the foundation of my theme for 2026. So you, you might have heard me talk about this before, but I tend to have a theme for the year. And the reason I like having a theme for the year is it can be a lot more for, than having kind of short term goals and, and you know, having these spikes of excitement and dopamine by setting these resolutions and saying in 2026 I'm going to do X, Y and Z. Because the problem is your, your focus often gets lost as a business owner or challenges come your way you didn't expect. I'm not saying we shouldn't, shouldn't have goals. Absolutely we should. You know, we've got 10 year targets, three year targets, one year targets 90 day goals. But for a lot of business owners, they kind of lose sight of their goals within their to do list. They have so many things on their to do list, it just all blurs into the same big kind of list of things that needs to get done and, and you don't necessarily have a clear system to prioritize. So when I talk about having a theme for the year, it's something that can stay with you for the whole year. It's something that can give you energy, purpose, direction, clarity for the whole of the year. So my theme for 2025, you've probably heard me talk about less is more, less is more. And it links into lots of different things. It links into the 80:20 principle, which is absolutely one of my favorite philosophies for life and business out there. And you know, 20% of the things we do have, 80% of the impact. It's not about doing everything and being busy, busy, busy. That's not often going to get you where you need to in your life and your business. It's about doing less things, but doing them better. And 8020 principle really helps align that. And Steve Jobs, who's been a big inspiration for a lot of people in business, I appreciate most of us are not trying to create the next Apple. That's probably not possible because the world completely changed with the introduction of personal computers and Steve Jobs was the, probably created the concept of the visionary in business. But when Steve Jobs, if you've not followed his story, I think it's absolutely fascinating. There's an autobiography by, I think it's Walter Isaacson and basically I won't spoil the story. But he left Apple for. For reasons I won't go into today. And he returned to Apple several years later. In the meantime, he actually founded Pixar, become one of the biggest shareholders in Disney at that time, him and his family. But come back to Apple, and Apple was not in a good place. Apple had too much going on. They had too much complexity. There was far too much complexity in Apple. They tried to have 16 different computers that can be everything to everyone.
[00:03:01] And it was just hard to keep, you know, try imagine trying to have the production lines, keep all the parts, all the different marketing training, the sales staff. It just didn't really work. So when Steve Jobs came back to Apple, he said to truly focus, it's not what you say yes to, it's what you say no to. So that was part of my inspiration for Less is more for 2025. So what I want to talk about today, I want to talk about my theme for 2026. And I'm trying to coin something that probably sounds a little bit more exciting. I'm a little bit torn by how I'm describing it, but I know it's the right theme for me. So the theme is, we want business to be boring. Is this boring? If it's boring, good, you're doing something right. Now let me explain. You might be thinking that's not very inspirational, Steve. I'm not really excited by boring. I don't want a boring business. I don't want a boring life. I'm not saying you need to have a boring life. I'm not saying you need to bored personally. But what I've learned is a lot of business owners chase shiny new things. If you're the sort of person listening to this podcast, reading the newsletter, you, you're probably a learner. You've got a growth mindset, you like new content, you like learning new things. You know, most people will tell you, I have a chat with someone and they will walk away, walk away with five books to read. You know, their book cabinet is increasing every time they meet me. It's not about books, it's about learning. And I get that. But the problem is we channel this energy in a very unfocused way. We don't have clarity, you know, we don't have direction with this thirst and this passion to learn. So we end up chasing shiny new ideas, the new app. You know, we're not short of new ideas and new apps with AI. I'm a big AI technology fan myself. Whether it's ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Replit, Manus. You know, I love all these tools and these gadgets, and they're all AI tools I've just mentioned, by the way, or Sintra is another one. But the problem is sometimes we're just looking for a dopamine kick. Sometimes we're just looking to get away from the hard stuff in our business. And I'm that person with ten ideas a week. I find this more challenging than most people. I'm a typical visionary. I've got all the ideas, all the. All the visions. I'm very visual and conceptual in the way I describe things. Sometimes the team will be Steve, but what does that mean in practice? What does that mean in real life? And you might be that person who has all the ideas. We're going to do this, we're going to do that, we're going to have all these new products. We're going to introduce this new service again. That was me. But the best businesses in the world are boring. They are predictable, they are systemized, they are consistent. There's not many surprises if you get to the point. It's actually the holy grail in business. If you get to the point where it's business as usual and all the numbers are slowly moving in the right direction, you build in a fantastic business at McDonald's. Do you think they're excited when they go into work every day and say, oh, we're going to, you know, we've got to find new ways to flip the burgers. And if you notice, McDonald's doesn't mess around and get too involved with having 12 different ways to make the fries with all these different flavors and toppings. And the same with the chicken. I know they, you know, they've kind of been increasing the product range and they have seasonality and everything. But generally speaking, probably two thirds of the McDonald's menu is completely consistent, and it's pretty much the same thing. And even if they do make it seasonal, it's small tweaks to the sources, to the packaging, to the way it's presented. So I talk about McDonald's because it's the holy grail for a turnkey operation business, one where it's systemized, it's process driven, it's predictable. How can you make your business more boring in 2026 to ask that question when you have all the shiny new ideas, when there's a million things going on? Is this making my business more boring? Or is. Or is it. Is it making it too exciting? Because if it's too exciting. There's probably too much change. So the best businesses are predictable, they're consistent, they're relia. Reliable. Reliable. And that gives you consistent cash flow. That means you could predict what's going to happen in the next quarter. And I just want to flip that on its head. Does that mean I'm against innovation? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I love new ideas. You will never stop me having new ideas. I love thinking into the future. We're in two businesses. We're in the business of the present, we're in the business of the future. It sounds like a Christmas carol, I'm saying, doesn't it? But we're in the business of the present and we're in the business of the future. So you want your present business to be as boring as possible, but it doesn't mean you should ignore your future business. So, for example, AI is changing the world. AI is going to change business. The business landscape is going to change dramatically. You will be probably a fool to ignore and not think about how is this going to have an impact on your business. Your customers needs are going to change. The way you produce your product or service is going to change. The way we employ people is going to change. So you do need to think of the future. You do need to innovate. However, most of your time should be on what's working right now. You want it to be boring. You don't want too much change. Because too much change actually kills progress, actually kills that consistency that we're looking. And a lot of businesses hit a ceiling of complexity. A ceiling of complexity is when you've, I don't know, let's say you've gone from a 2K business to a business, but now you've hit a ceiling. You're struggling to get to beyond that 500k. In some cases it might be as simple as we need more capacity. You know, if you're, if you're a coffee shop, it might be you've gone from one shops to two shops. To get to 500k, you might need a third shop. It might be that simple. But for a lot of businesses, it's not that simple. We hit a ceiling of complexity. And one of the ways we can make that easier to break through the system of complexity.
[00:08:56] There's different ways we can break through the ceiling. One is to systemize, one is to restructure the business, one is to simplify, and another one is to make our business more predictable. The more predictable your business is, the more we can, we can, we can plan things we can stay ahead of the game. We can avoid surprises. We can provide a better service, we can manage our cash flow. So predictability is one of the key things, along with simplification, systemization, and structure, to break through that ceiling of complexity. So I'm just going to leave you, finally, before I stop talking, for this week's Profit first podcast, I want to leave you with a little bit of an analogy to compare this to. So I went on holiday in the summer. I went to Florida for three weeks. I took a month out my business, which I try to do at least every couple of years, and my son and I was playing table tennis pretty much on a daily basis, multiple times a day when we were not out.
[00:09:48] And we're quite competitive. I've, I've, you know, brought my son out to be very competitive, and actually it's kind of worked out quite good. He's super sporty. He's. He was in the top 21 fastest kids in the country for his age, under 15s. Plays football, does athletics, does weightlifting. You know, super sporty and competitive. We're playing table tennis on a daily basis. It was getting quite competitive and, And I started researching on YouTube, fancy serves and how to do all these special shots. And I caught my son doing the same as well. That's how competitive we are. But then I, I started playing worse. I actually started making more mistakes. I started dropping the ball, so to speak, you know, just making unforced errors. And then I took it back to basics and I relied more on my backhand, and I focused on just returning the ball instead of going for the winner all the time, playing safe, playing steady, being consistent, staying in the game. And I started winning more. And I, and I added in a little bit of variety and a splash of a strong forehand and a little bit of spin and all the different things into my game as well. But the core of my game was keeping it simple, going back to basics, and I was more successful playing my serm. It's the same with business. Are you trying to go for the, you know, the backhand smash? Are you trying to do all these spin shots? Are you trying to look for fancy new things when the backhand is probably going to get you through it 80 of the time? So you need that consistency. You need to make it boring. The backhand might be boring, but it works. But it's consistent. How can you apply that thinking to your business? So hopefully that's useful. Guys, I wish everybody merry Christmas and I hope you have an amazing start to the New Year, I'm excited to say. In January we will be doing the business planning workshop I've talked about previously, so details will be released and I hope you have a great time in between. Speak to you soon. Excuses. Here I am. So.
