Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Excuses. Here I am. So.
[00:00:07] Hi everyone and welcome to this week's Profit first podcast. If you've been an avid follower of the podcast over the last couple of years, I apolog apologize for not being as active more recently. But hopefully you can hear from me a lot more often in the coming weeks. So the topic of, of today's talk or discussion is all about playing the long game in business so often as business owners from a mindset perspective, from a mental perspective, and I'll link this down, link this back to profitability and cash because all these things are connected. When we're talking about profit first, we're talking about cash, talk about mindset. Often we're in our mind. We are not as far as long, far along as we feel we should be. We feel our revenue should be more, we feel we should have bigger office, a bigger shop, we feel we should have more team members, we should have newer vehicles or better equipment or better customers, better clients, you know, often bringing it down to cash. We feel we should have more money in the bank and we're judging our bank balance as a measure of success. And, and actually, you know, I'm a big fan of self development and you know, you know, the self help gurus out there and Jim Rohn, who is a mentor of Tony Robbins says that the bank balance is a great way of keeping score. And there is an element of truth in that, that ultimately your bank balance on many levels might be a reflection of the decisions, the strategies, the things you've done previously and it keeps score. However, as we know, bring it back to profit first.
[00:01:46] You know, turnover is vanity, profit, sanity. Just because you brought the revenue in doesn't mean it shows you the whole picture because actually our spending habits and, and how our relationship with money can be quite powerful. So it's not the only metric, but we will often look at that and, and you know, talking specifically about profit first in that ex. In that situation, profit first is a great way of keeping the score. I can log into my bank account, but what's in my vat pot, what's in my tax pot? Have I got a little bit of an extra buffer for my owner's pay? Have I got a profit pot? If I got a tax, a rainy day pot or you know, whatever it is. So it is a great way of keeping score. However, we kind of look at all these things, you know, cash in the bank, revenue team, all the stuff I talked about, and sometimes we can beat ourselves down, we can use it as a stick to beat ourselves down. We, we feel we're not quite as successful as we could or should be. And, but the, the problem is you're always looking forward into the sunset, the horizon, the ideal situation and the idea the challenge is. And Brenda Burchard talked about this in High Performance Habits. Fantastic book. I trained under Brenda Burchard as a high performance coach in the last couple of years. Really big fan of his. It's a kind of a side passion of mine.
[00:03:08] And he, he. He coaches high performers and so really successful female CEO in America. He was speaking to her and she seemed to have everything. She had a really nice house, she had the family, she had the business, she had the income.
[00:03:21] And she. But she didn't feel successful. She didn't feel successful in the slightest, actually. And he asked her, what was your success number?
[00:03:32] And she said, what do you mean? He said, well, what amount of income?
[00:03:36] And by the way, this doesn't have to be income. This could be any metric. It's just defining it. That's the point I'm making here. But what's your success number? What's your amount of income that you need to make you, you know, achieve what you want to. To give you the life you want? And, you know, that basically that is enough in many ways. And she said, I haven't got a number. And he said, well, of course you're going to feel unsatisfied because you've got a moving target. Can you, you know, when you're playing football, if you, if you're. Bear with me. If you're not football fans, I always use analogies. I'm a Manchester United supporter. A lot of you might stop listening right now, but whatever the sport is, you can have a league table and in football, Premier League can have a league table. And if you win a match, you're probably going to move up the table because you'll get him more points. And at some point, you might get to your target. Number four, get you into the Champions League. Or it could be five or six nowadays, or number one to win the league. But what if there was no table? What if you couldn't keep score? What if you just kept on winning games, but it was never enough? That's what success can feel like. If you do not define particularly that number, what is the number you need? That's one of the most powerful things you can do to give you what you want in your life and business. However, that I'm not talking about defining the number. That is a very powerful thing in itself. And there's strategies you can do to define that number. You can, you know, P and L your life. What's my ideal life look like? However, even if you're not hitting this number do. The problem is we beat ourselves down as I mentioned, you know, with the stick. In terms of the success stick. I've just made up that phrase the success stick is kind of feels like there's always more to do. But what I want you to, what I want to honor is kind of honor the struggle in many ways that if, if business. Tony Robbins says that business is full of obstacles and challenges.
[00:05:30] If you've got no. The day you've got no obstacles, the day you've got no problems, the day you've got no challenges, you're probably not going to be alive.
[00:05:36] And you know, unless you're a monk and you're a Buddhist and, and taking nothing away from that. I meditate and I read a lot of spiritual books and you know, the kind of people are enlightened by non materialistic things and non striving and there's a lot to be said with that. But for a lot of us, we, you know, we've got worldly aspirations for the right reasons, normally for holidays, for our family, you know, have an amazing space house where we can share memories, you know, being comfortable being able to do things we want to do and, and if we don't achieve all that straight away, it can feel like we're not successful. I want to honor the struggle with business because most businesses are struggling on some level. Even the huge businesses, they. But their struggles are just different. They're different types of struggles.
[00:06:27] It is not easy building a business. You know, if you're trying to scale a business with a team, we tend to work with people turning over at least £100,000. And you're looking to build a business that can run without you. That's why I released the book in 2023, how to Build a business that runs without you. Because I generally believe a business is a vehicle to give you the life you want. If you, if you've got a lifestyle business, it's just you, you're not looking to build a team. It's a slightly different game that you're playing, you know, but a lot of this is still be valid. But, but for those of you looking to build a team, looking to scale to some level, it's not easy finding the right team members, hiring and firing, learning as we go along. You know, we're going to make a lot of mistakes, we're going to we're going to make a lot of bets, we're going to gamble, we're going to make choices. We haven't got all the information for as a business owner, and we can read all the books in the world, we can listen to all the mentors, but ultimately we will learn more from our own experience because it will lock into our subconscious and it's that there forever. Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn, but we're looking to always kind of move forward.
[00:07:31] So as a business owner, you know, you've got the. The trying to grow a team, you've got trying to grow your revenue. How do you do that? You need to learn about marketing, you need to get strategic partnerships, you need to keep your customers happy. You need the right team to keep your customers happy. As you're growing, you're going to need to change the structure, probably of your business. We've had to do that three times.
[00:07:50] And actually, one of the reasons that inspired me to do today's podcast was we have lost some clients over the last two years because the business has changed. We have had growing problems. We've had certain team members, particularly client managers, that were not a good fit. We hoped they'd be a good fit, they weren't a good fit, so they had to move on and, and they moved on. And we've ended up finding team members that do fit our core values, that do fit our ethos, but these are kind of growing pains that we need to go through. Again. If you think of football, you can't get the ideal dream team straight away, but what you can do, slowly build that dream team. Some of the team members you hire will not be a good fit. Some of them will. But you just need to keep on making that net progress and zoom out. Don't judge yourself every single year because the climate is quite difficult at the moment. And yes, we'd like to think we make progress every single year, but if you look back since COVID you've probably made progress in a lot of areas in your life and your business that you don't give yourself the credit for. It doesn't always need to be revenue. It could be the learnings you've made, it could be your lifestyle, it could be the, the people you work with. It could be one key team member. It. You know, I'm sure there will be green shoots when you zoom out, a wider kind of time, spam. And don't just judge yourself this month, this quarter, this year, and obviously we can only, you know, if you win the day, you can win the week, you can win the month, you can win the court and you can win the year. That is true. But to sum up, we got to play the long game as business owners.
[00:09:24] Perseverance is one of the most underrated characteristics in business. You can read every single book, you can do all these shiny new things. But I think it's, I don't know if I pronounce his name correctly. Wayne Groutski. Wayne. Wayne Gretzky, the famous hockey player in America. I'm English, so obviously we hear about these things from the uk, but he was, was, I believe the most prolific go scorer in hockey history. And they asked him what was your key to success?
[00:09:57] And he said, I take more shots than other people.
[00:10:01] If you do not take the risk, if you do not try new things, if you don't stay in the game, you can't improve and you certainly can't win it. So I want you to play the long game. And I've, I think I mentioned this before. We've just put a tortoise in the corner of our garden. We've got a nice little Mediterranean kind of gravel area with an olive tree and a table.
[00:10:22] And I put a tortoise in the corner. And it just reminds me sometimes to slow down, to take it easy, don't kind of wish your life away, don't sort of rush through and think you need to solve all the problems overnight. And I'm not saying we should procrastinate, we should avoid the hard things, but certainly we take this mindset that there's a, there's a bigger game to be played and do not sacrifice ultimately enjoying your life, being present for your family.
[00:10:48] You know, we started a business to give us more freedom, often financially and time wise, but we end up working for less money and working more hours. Anything you can do this weekend to switch off, you know, tap yourself on the back, acknowledge the, the struggle, acknowledge you're making progress, I think can be quite powerful. And then you can have a nice, fresh, clear, strategic start to next week. As always, guys, if you want any specific help or guidance, feel free to reach out to me.
[00:11:19] So as I said, I'm the founder, a lot of you already know me, the founder of Grow Profit first accountant. So one of the big initiatives we've been doing with business owners recently, which I will be talking more about, is what we call a tax diagnostic. So going off talking about tax and talking about finances, most business owners in my experience, when we take them on as a client, their tax situation has changed. So when they started the business a year ago, three years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago, they've probably got a different type of business. The numbers are different, the team's different, the family's different.
[00:11:54] So your tax strategy often needs to change and, and most, and I learned this probably about three years ago, a lot of accountants are kind of ticking the boxes on many levels, submitting the taxes at the end of the year. And there's nothing wrong with that.
[00:12:10] We look after that and sort that out for a lot of our clients. But every now and again, if you've not had it for three years, often you can benefit from a deeper tax review. There's actually 33 ways to save tax. We've got them all. You can go onto the website, go on to services, go into Tax MOT, you can literally download the 33 Ways to Save tax. No catch. Read it. If you've really got an accountant, speak to them, say, why are you not doing this? Or can we talk about this?
[00:12:38] But when we do the tax diagnostic with people, we charge a one off fee.
[00:12:43] And if we do not save you at least £2,000 in tax. Who's this for, by the way? Typically you will be a business owner turning over more than 100k. You'll be a limited company and you will be profitable because that means you've got a tax bill. And if we don't save you at least £2,000 in tax, we do not charge you a penny.
[00:13:01] For the record, on average we save people anywhere between 5 and 10k. The most we've ever saved someone is just over £49,000. So if you do, you know, if you feel you've not had this review for some time or something's changed in your business or your children are getting older or your wife's maybe not part of the setup, feel free to reach out and we can see if you qualify for the tax diagnostic. So you can go onto the website. We are grow.
[00:13:28] Grow without W. We are grow. No W.co.uk go on to services and go into tax MOT and you can book a free call. Any other questions about profit first mindset or if you just want to chat and there's any way I can help you, feel free to reach out excuses.
[00:13:50] So.
