Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Excuses. Here I am. So.
[00:00:07] Hi, guys, and welcome to this week's Profit first podcast. I'm Stephen Edwards, the founder of Grow Profit First Accountants. So I want to talk about how you need to have a plan, but not a business plan, a plan for you personally when it comes to your life, when it comes to your business.
[00:00:28] So I've had quite a few interesting conversations in terms of the challenges with business owners and yes, cash flow, profitability, you know, having enough money to really kind of pay ourselves what we deserve, and that's what Profit first is all about, is super important.
[00:00:44] However, a lot of people are kind of busy, busy, busy doing the stuff in their business. And I get it. You know, we, we, we understand more than the team. We started the business. They haven't got our knowledge. You know, I don't. Maybe they haven't got our skills and our experience, but the problem is if we're going to be the people that do it all the time, is that sustainable and is it scalable and is that going to give me the life I want?
[00:01:12] So if, you know, you know, businesses like Seasons, there will be times where you're running around working 60 hours, hours a week, 70 hours a week, you will be doing absolutely everything.
[00:01:21] And I've had a few conversations with people where they are stuck doing certain things and often it's around maybe bills, payments, invoicing, quotes, ordering certain materials. And I get that, that we, we've got the skill set, we've got the experience, but we will become a slave to our business if we think we are the only person that can do that.
[00:01:44] If we have that mentality of it has to be us, it will always be us. So the question I want to ask you, and I'll link this back to Profit first and how to generate healthy profit in your business in a second. But what needs to change in the next three years for that not to be you? If it can happen sooner, brilliant. But three years is a nice time frame because there's almost no excuses, you know, in three years time, what needs to happen. So I'm not the person running around like a busy fool doing all that stuff. I'm not the one making all the orders, paying all the bills, manually entering everything on the system, doing every single quote, whether it's a big customer or small customer, what needs to happen. And that's not for me to answer, for you to answer. You know, I'd probably get a pen and paper and think about that, actually.
[00:02:29] And I want to relate it to a personal insight and a Personal story. This isn't just me and my high, high and mighty horse giving people advice. You know, I did literally write the book how to build a business that runs without you. But I choose to work in my business and there's always going to. You've got to pick your fights. If you're doing the same thing over and over, you're repeating the same year again and again and you don't want to be doing that stuff. Something's not quite right and something needs to change. But my personal insight recently is we have been running live events, webinars and we've been getting quite a few people sign up and we've been teaching them the three pillars of the grow profit system. And we take profit first and we expand on it because we think profit first is an important part. It's probably the central part of everything. But there's some important things to focus on as well as profit first. And we've been teaching that to people in an online session we've been running every single week. If you go into our website, click on Resources, it's the, the 5K a month webinar, you can sign up for it. But that's not why I'm here talking about this. But essentially this has made me very, very busy.
[00:03:43] We are getting quite a lot of traction. We're having a lot of conversations, I'm helping a lot of people.
[00:03:49] I'm running these events most weeks, probably going to turn into every two weeks.
[00:03:53] And I'm really busy. So I don't speak from this, you know, this academic kind of, you know, I'm out of touch with everything.
[00:04:03] I'm, I'm busy doing hands on stuff myself right now. Yes, it's marketing, yes, it's sales, yes, it's growing the business.
[00:04:10] Yes, it's, you know, helping more people. But the reason I want to share this is I know that's not sustainable forever.
[00:04:18] I'm going to make sure I optimize it, I make sure it works as well as it can work and then eventually someone else would be a key part of that process. Because I've had that mentality from day one. I don't mind being busy, I don't mind getting my hands dirty, don't mind putting the hours in. But I need to ask the question, should this be me forever? Am I the right person to be doing this forever? Doing it now is not the same as doing it in three years time. So I want you to ask yourself what needs to change for you not to be that person doing that Anymore. And let's bring it back to profit first because I can promise you, in a lot of cases it comes down to people. You know, it comes down to we can have a whole session talking about people, how to find the right people, hire the right people, fire the right people.
[00:05:10] And ultimately you need to get clear on your own values of what sort of person you hire.
[00:05:15] But the problem is we don't often have the cash flow or the money to hire the right people. And that's why profit first is important. It's not just about profit first. To pay yourself more money. Yes. You need to have a very clear vision of what you want your life to look like in the future. What are you trying to build your business for? Because it's for you and your family. Is it that second, second holiday home?
[00:05:40] Is it that first mortgage because you're renting at the moment? Is it to work four days a week or three days a week? No. What. Whatever it is, it's gonna be very personal for you. Yes. You need to get crystal clear on that. And that's one reason to make the profit. It's the main reason to make the profit in your business and make it profitable. But the other reason is we need to buy back our time. And it costs profit to buy back our time.
[00:06:04] It's an investment. If you're making X amount of profit, at some point you're going to need to sacrifice some of that profit and to buy back your time so you are not the person doing that thing.
[00:06:16] So ultimately, profit first is key to your, not just your money freedom, but your time freedom. And I'll go even further to say, sorry, your money freedom, your time freedom and your mind freedom, your freedom of mind. Because once you've got the profit can hire the right team members, it can give you some white space in your diary so you're not running around like a busy fool trying to do everything yourself.
[00:06:42] But I want to bring it back to what needs to change in your business in the next three years. So as I said, I've been super busy, really involved in the marketing, in the sales, more so in the last few weeks. But I am building the processes, I am planning for the future because I cannot be the person who does everything that I'm doing right now in this particular part of my business in three years time. And actually it won't take three years, it will probably take six months. But. But I give you three years because if I tell you you need to take yourself out of part of your business in six months, we will make loads of obstacles, we will make loads of excuses and reasons why we cannot do that thing.
[00:07:20] If I give you three years, that is a long time to get yourself sorted. And one of the things I talk about in our the 5K a month webinar is if you put the three pillars together of the grow system, them. So profit first is key. That's number two. But number one is strong foundations.
[00:07:38] I've been speaking to business owners recently and they're behind on, you know, certain things in the business. We need to make sure we're on an even keel. We've got up to date numbers. It's done every single week. There's no surprises hiding in the, the wardrobe. I nearly said closet because I watch a lot of Americans on YouTube. There's no surprises, it's up to date, it's real time.
[00:07:59] The vat's done on time, the tax returns are done on time, the bookkeeping towels. The right story is accurate.
[00:08:05] That is number one. That is the foundations. When we do that, we can focus on profitability, we can focus on profit first. We can also focus on really understanding your figures and your numbers and the key drivers creating a scorecard that pushes your business forward. That is profit improvement. That's pillar number two. Pillar number three, and I have lots of interesting conversations with people about this is wealth maximization.
[00:08:29] You know, when was the last time you had a proper deep dive tax review? There's 33 ways to save tax. Are you optimizing all of the 33 ways in your business?
[00:08:39] And also are you thinking long term when it comes to your retirement, your pensions, making the most of your, your, your business over the long term, you know, that might be maximizing the value of your business. It might be buying a second property, but you need to be thinking of how to maximize your wealth in the long term as well as save tax in the short term. So that is the three things. If you do all three things, it's going to help you generate that extra cash, that extra profit so you can start freeing yourself up from your business. Hopefully that's useful. Guys, reach out as always, if you've got any questions at all and have a great week, week or weekend, depending when you're listening to this excuses. Here I am. So.
