The Single Most Important First Step in Profit First

[00:00:00] Excuses. Here I am. So. [00:00:07] Hi guys and welcome to this week's Profit first podcast. So as always, if you've been following me, follow me for Profit first tips and how to grow your business profitably and sustainably. So the, the core topic today is actually something I learned from Steve Jobs. Unfortunately not personally, but secondhand I've learned from Steve Jobs. He's a huge inspiration for me and probably a lot of other business own. [00:00:32] Not because we want to build the next Apple, but he was so driven, he was so ambitious and he kind of done things his own way. And I think in many ways all of us can, you know, draw upon our inner Steve Jobs. So I'm gonna share a huge business takeaway that Steven Bartlett has said has been one of the biggest game changers for him personally. So I think it's Kevin o' Leary was on the Diary of a of a CEO and he shared a story and he shared an insight from Steve Jobs that I think is a game changer changing. I'm going to come back to that. But for those of you listening to the podcast and you want some financial tips, I'm going to give you a really practical down to earth tip. I gave a new client of ours today, had a chat with him and I was talking about profit first. And we can go deep on profit first. We can talk about the advanced strategies, we can go beyond the book. However, sometimes it's the small things that can make the biggest difference. And if you've read the book or you're thinking about reading the book and you want to learn more about finances, if you're not doing this one thing, this could be the single biggest takeaway for you, definitely today, potentially this quarter, potentially this year. And it's so simple. If you already do this, great, you can wait until I share the insight from Steve Jobs and the Diary of a CEO in a second. So what is it? So basically, if you're not doing profit first or you're looking to start profit first, there's one thing you must do before everything else. It's the most important thing. Even if you don't know where to start, you know, you, you're wondering whether to work with a profit first expert, a profit first coach. And that's what we do. We coach people in the system, we give them accountability, we give them a path, we give them a roadmap. But if you're looking to just get started yourself in a small way but a really important way, I want you to create a separate pot for your VAT that Might sound so simple, but it is so fundamental, it's so important. You know, bear with me. If you're a bigger business and you've been doing this for a long time because you understand this is what proper businesses do. However, if you're running a business and you are not separating your VAT on at least a two weekly basis or at least a monthly basis, ideally even a weekly basis, then you're not running a mature finance function, you're not kind of taking your finances seriously. The VAT is not your money. If you are waiting for your VAT bill every three months and then you're acting like it's a surprise when it comes from your accountant and you've not been setting aside a pot of money every month, every two weeks, every week, then you need to look at yourself. So if you're looking to get started in profit first, please start with your vat, because it's not your money, it's the government's money. It's where I see most people go wrong in their business. It's where people get caught out, it's where they go out of business. And I don't want to sound negative, but it's non negotiable. I want you to start splitting your VAT and then from there, start with 1%, what's left? So take away the VAT. So let's pretend it was 12k and you took away 2k for VAT, got 10k left, start with 1%, that would be 100 pounds at 10k or whatever it means to your business, set that aside for profit. There's your starting point of your journey with profit first. But you know, it's not how you do profit first properly, but it's about getting started. But it's kind of like joining the gym or starting to get active. Get on your feet, burn some calories, build that habit. When we work with people, we do a proper profit first review. We review your numbers over the last two years and we go beyond the VAT part, beyond the profit part. We tell you exactly what to set aside for your tax, what to pay yourself. And when I say tax, your personal tax and your business tax, what to set aside for your vat, your owner's pay, your profit, which should build up every three months to reward you as the business owner and also your overheads. If you've got costs of goods, so you buy stock. We also help you figure out what to set aside. So there is a more detailed kind of proper way to do it. But if you're Looking to get started. Please make sure at the minimum, you set aside your V A T because I've seen so many business struggle. And you don't want to be part of the 80% of businesses struggling out there. You want to be top part of the top 20%. [00:04:43] So what is the biggest insight? So this is a game changer for most of you and it still gives me focus to this day. And a lot of business owners, there's two types. There's business owners out there who probably wouldn't even listen to a thing like this. They wouldn't read Profit first, they wouldn't listen to this podcast. [00:05:02] They're kind of head down, busy on the tools, doing the work, and that's fine. Now, that is, if you're happy doing that, you enjoy what you're doing. You're not looking to grow your business, you're not looking to get more out of your business, that's fine. However, if you're looking to grow your business, you're looking to scale your business, you're looking to make the most of the opportunities available to you, then you're going to have to free your time up to get off the tools. And then you start to work on the business, not just in the business, but on the business. [00:05:29] You're designing the business yourself. You're like an architect. You're designing the business to work for you. And then a lot of business owners start to spend more time on the business. And it might start with an hour a week, it might grow into half a day a week. But the next challenge is, what do you do with that time? How are you going to grow your business? What do you do when you work on your business? And a lot of business owners, they have too much choice in today's world. There's too much information. We've got more information at our fingertips, more distractions than we've ever had in the history of mankind. So it's very difficult to channel your energy. So many people have got an opinion. There's so much information out there, our attention is scattered. Our phones do not help. Social media does not help. So this is going to help you. If you feel your attention is scattered, you don't know what to do next to grow your business. I'm going to give you something that's going to give you more focus, more clarity than you've probably ever had ever in your business. And it's from Steve Jobs. So Kevin o' Leary shared a story from Steve Jobs. He said Steve Jobs was not a nice person. You know, From a work perspective, he was driven, he was ambitious, he was results driven at all costs. And he was very blunt when he used to speak to people and. But essentially he said he gives the same advice. And Kevin o' Leary's on Shark Tank in America. He's very successful himself. He gives the same advice to CEOs of S&P 500 companies in America. Steve Jobs had a simple way to say, what should you be doing with your time? So there's two types of activities and it links back into what I've been talking about for the last two years, which is the 8020 principle, the Pareto principle, that 20% of what we do has 80% of the impact. It links back into that, that not everything we do is equal. And Steve Jobs said, there's two ways to categorize the things we do. It's either a signal or it's noise. So signal is what matters. Signal is, is. Is head, is moving towards a goal, moving towards an outcome, moving towards your results, everything else. And Steve Jobs tried to spend 80% of his time on signal projects, on signal activities. So every day he said to himself, what's the signal? What's the stuff I should be working on and focusing on for the next 18 hours? So for day today, what should I be focusing on? So in the next kind of 18 hours, what are my most important priorities? What's the signal that's going to push me forward, to grow my business, move closer towards my goals? If you don't know, what are signal activities for, you start there. Ask yourself, what's really going to drive me forward? And once you've answered that question, try and get rid of the noise, try and get rid of the distractions. Your job. Forget productivity, apps and systems now. There's so many different apps out there. It's not about having a fancy calendar, it's not about having all these apps. It's about saying no to the things that do not move you forward. How can you spend more time on the signal, more time on the stuff that drives you forward? Trust me, that single thing is going to make a huge difference to your business. This in 2026. Have a great week, guys, and I'll speak to you soon. Excuses. Here I am so.