Do you get to the end of each day, not really quite sure what you achieved? Do you feel like you did a whole bunch of ‘stuff’ that were other people's priorities, but spent no time moving things forward and working on your high-priority business actions? 

If your days are similar to the above, then you have a problem with owning your time.

Now wasting time is akin to sleeping on a pile of gold. It is so precious and you can never get it back. 

It is so important that you take ownership of your time. You need to be able to use it wisely to grow and to keep your business moving forward.

When you get interrupted, it takes 20 minutes or more to regain focus. If you allow constant interruptions, such as last-minute requests and meetings, email notifications or messages, etc., your productivity will plummet. You get out of the ‘zone’, and your mind gets burdened with other things at the same time.

A good first step to removing distractions and increasing...

Team performance is something that is crucial for every company. When your team are able, willing and inspired to go above and beyond on projects, the benefits are immense. 

The work that your staff do is not just about ticking off tasks from their to-do lists. It’s about creating positive client relationships who are happy with the project outcome and keep giving you good quality, repeat work that you can build a solid pipeline with.   

That’s why it’s important to make sure that your team does an outstanding job, every time, on every project instead of just a satisfactory one.

But how?

Give them CONTEXT.

Let me explain. 

When you stop, slow down and take the time to explain the significance of each step in the process of a project, your team member will understand the consequences of either doing the task well or doing it poorly. 

By doing so, you’re actually giving each step in the process (or project) an equal portion of...

When you focus on building a business around you and your strengths – your growth potential is incredible.  

Why?

When you do what you are naturally good at & enjoy:

• It is easier i.e. it doesn’t feel like work.
• You get better results, simply because you’re confident and you’re good at what you do. 
• You are much more motivated because you look forward to doing the work & it comes easily to you. 

So as you grow, I want you to focus on building a business around your strengths.

Hold onto and continue doing the high-value activities that you’re good at and come naturally to you. Then make a plan to delegate and get some help with (as soon as you can and revenue allows it) the things that you aren’t good at or don’t come naturally to you

Why?

Because the more you stay in and own the areas of the business that you’re really good at and then bring on team that are exceptional in the areas that you’re not -...

Too many business owners are fixated and focused on revenue and revenue growth – but have no idea what their profit margins are and whether their business is actually making any money or not. 

Revenue growth is great – and is definitely a metric that we measure with our clients. But your profit margins are the lifeblood of your business. 

Your profit margins tell you how your business is performing and whether anything is broken or needs attention. 

If your revenue growth is good – but your profit margins are poor – that’s an indication that your delivery, systems & operations needs work & attention. 

There may be an issue with your team delivering the projects or maybe it’s something as simple as an internal comms issue. 

But without tracking the profitability of your business – you wouldn’t even know that something is wrong. 

In order to maintain a healthy and successful business, you should be...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...