Wouldn’t it be great if you could only work with A-grade clients?

These are the clients that you enjoy working with, that really value your opinion and the work you do and they respect you and your team.

On top of that, they are willing to pay you what you’re worth because they see and get the value you bring to their projects. 

Then, on the other hand you have the clients that you dread working with. 

These are the clients that are difficult, needy, hard to get along with and are constantly asking you to lower your fees on their projects.

Right now, you have an amazing opportunity while the market is buoyant and there is plenty of work on, to make a plan to let go of all your C and D-grade clients. This will allow you to focus on working only with your A-grade clients who are a pleasure to work with and who you want to be working with for many years to come. 

Why would you do this?

For one, A-grade clients are far more likely to keep giving you good quality repeat work. We all ...

I can’t stand the hustle and grind culture. It doesn’t work and it’s detrimental to business success, relationships and our own zest for life. 

Work isn’t everything – and if we make it everything, everything else suffers.

Comparison is the thief of joy. 

When we compare ourselves to others & their success – we end up beating ourselves up. We don’t know where that other person started, what their background was, what their circumstances were, and so on. But yet, we compare ourselves to them, and we’re usually the ones trying to catch up. The result - feeling dissatisfied, and unworthy.

Remember, we all tread our own unique path in life (business, too). So, that’s why I need you to ask yourself this question:

What’s important to you?

The most common reason behind a business owners’ decisions to start their own business is to do things their own way, and to make more time for the things in life that matter to them.

However, if your business is your top priority, you will end up be...

Let’s be honest, business growth is far from a linear process. 

There are ups and downs, highs and lows. 

There are periods of rapid growth, then periods of slow growth. 

It’s all normal and all part of the business-building process. 

And although rapid growth may seem like a dream come true and something you’re constantly striving for - it essentially poses quite a lot of challenges. 

Rapid growth means that you’re constantly needing to cater for all the expansion by strengthening your technical & admin support as well as business workflows. You’ll find that you need to heavily invest in things such as more staff, followed by training and development, additional support systems, more office space etc etc. 

It can be A LOT. 

This is where the benefits of reaching a plateau (a sort of a standstill) in your business growth come into play. Because after a heavy period of growth, a business usually reaches a plateau which is characterised by slower growth.

These periods on your bus...

It’s fair to say that business owners are always busy. However, there are different kinds of busy from what I’ve seen in my experience. And those different kinds of busy result in two outcomes for the business: growth or standstill.

We all like to tick things off our to-do lists, and this can actually sometimes get in the way of planning our time well. Automatically doing the next thing on our list can drag you into doing activities that could actually easily be delegated or outsourced.

Yes, you get immediate satisfaction (or reward) as you tick action items off, but is that actually what you are meant to be doing with your time?

Let’s put it this way: Doing one task takes you away from doing another. 

So, what kinds of tasks fill your working hours? Are you clear on where you're spending your time?

As time is finite, there’s an absolute need to use the time that you have well.

Take small breaks every now and then to look at your to-do list, and think about which activities can b...

Business Development (BD) is a critical part of your strategy for growing your business and reaching new revenue levels. BD is all about creating and then converting opportunities.

But the question is, if you have people on your team with a BD component to their role - how do you incentivise them to perform better, and also, what’s the best way to remunerate them?

If you’re thinking about offering them an incentive based remuneration model, I want you to think through the whole process first and consider the pros & cons – before you offer this to them.

There are always upsides and downsides to every incentive based remuneration model, so finding the best model for incentivising your BD team is crucial. It can prevent issues and challenges down the track and more importantly prevent poor culture & loss of staff (worst case).

The main model that most would be familiar with is rewarding your BD person or team with a certain percentage of the new deals that they bring in. However, ther...

Having shareholders in your business is what fosters and nurtures business growth. 

However, it’s not only making it attractive for shareholders to buy in that matters. It’s also extremely important to plan for shareholder exits as well. 

Shareholders will eventually put their shares on the table at some point in your business journey. It could be because the shareholder would like to move on, retire or maybe just reduce their percentage of shares.

And, when that happens, you don’t want it to be a surprise. This can be a very hard situation to navigate for many reasons if you’re not prepared for it.

Imagine you haven’t anticipated someone wanting to sell their shares. Nobody in the company has the funds to buy them out, so the person ends up leaving the company (retiring or just resigning) but remains a shareholder. Even worse, they change jobs and start working for a competitor.

So, planning for shareholder exits now will ensure that you don’t find yourself in a difficult situati...

If you run your own business, one of your aspirations will be business growth. Getting a solid customer/client base, good cash flow and profit are some of the obvious things you’ll want to achieve on your business journey. 

Some business owners have the added motivation to grow their business because their end goal is to eventually sell the business and enjoy time with their family, pursuing other projects & enjoying the fruits of their hard work.

If you are looking to head down that path, then you might be interested in finding out what specific things will give your business a higher valuation when the time comes to sell. 

How can you increase your business sale multiple?

There are several factors that affect your sale valuation multiple. The first one being - your revenue. The higher your revenue, the higher the multiple.

But, it’s not just your revenue. There are many other things that really influence how your business looks to prospective buyers.

Other key factors are:

1. P...

A 12-month business plan is one of the key essentials to have and to refer to regularly. It’s an accountability tool that will keep you on track for the year ahead. You’ll use it to measure your performance against it and see how well you’re doing.

How do you create a 12-month business plan?

• Be clear on your business vision and where you’re taking your business long term. 
• Do your planning and know what you want to achieve in your business in the next 12 months. 
• Break it down into smaller segments – quarters – so the action list doesn’t seem so daunting. 

Business Vision

Before you start creating your 12-month business plan, you need to get really clear on your longer-term business vision. Where are you going as a business and why? What’s meaningful for you to create as the business owner?

Plan

You’ll then want to do your year ahead planning by having a look at several key categories that you need to consider as you move your business forward:

1. Clients - Think about who ...

I’m so busy, I can’t even think about taking a break - let alone do some planning or business growth activities.

I’m so buried in work; I just try to churn out what my clients need and meet all their deadlines.

Is this you? Do you have these moments or is it a constant feeling?

What would you say if I told you that there is a way round this?

The key word in this game is PRIORITIES.

If you feel like you are too busy all the time (meeting your clients’ needs) then you’re putting their priorities first.

That is what actually feeds the feeling (aka monster) of ‘I’m too busy’. And it promotes a reactive way of doing business. You respond to every message at any time, no matter what you’re doing. Maybe you don’t do it immediately, but you do it just after you finish an ongoing task. 

So, you get caught up in this servant like manner of doing business that you eventually forget about your business plans and goals. Or you might say that you’re ‘too busy’ to focus on that at the moment. ...

Is your business completely dependent on you as the business owner? What happens if you decide to step away or take a holiday? What happens when you want to retire or go and do something else?

Most business owners can’t step away from their businesses – even for a week! And most definitely haven’t thought about the end game and what happens when they want to exit the business.   

So how can you maximise business growth and how can you put a plan in place, so when it’s time to exit – the business keeps going and you reap the benefits of all of your years of hard work. 

One strategy is to bring on a next generation of shareholders into your business. 

A key benefit of having additional shareholders in your business is that you have more people around you, incentivised and motivated to build the business alongside you. It’s a fantastic way to leverage more people around you – helping you grow the business faster. 

Another benefit is - legacy. When it’s time for you to exit the busine...