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Chartered Accountants &
Business Advisors

Working with you to design a business you love so you can reach your definition of success.

Chartered Accountants &
Business Advisors

PHONEICONS-02+ 04 910 3340
WELLINGTON

PHONEICONS-02+ 04 910 3340
WELLINGTON

Rockstars vs. Superstars: Get the Right Bums in the Right Seats

4 Dec 2020 | Team

We’ve learned a few things this past year:

  • No matter how well thought out your plans are, you can never account for everything life throws at you – who would have thought at the start of 2020 that the world would be turned upside-down by covid-craziness?
  • We’re more resilient than what we thought we were. Despite the craziness, we’ve survived – some even thrived – and we’re stronger than ever before.
  • It’s vital to have the right bums in the right seats in your business. With the right team, you can adjust and come up with new ideas quickly when things don’t go according to plan, while still maintaining quality.

But how do you choose the right bums?

 

Rockstars vs. Superstars

There are two types of employees you want on your team: Rockstars, and Superstars.

Your superstars are the ambitious, growth-seekers. They’re the ones that want to be in leadership positions, who will push the envelope, and come up with innovative ideas.

On the other hand, your rockstars want to pretty much stay where they are, but become better at it. They want to perfect their craft and be the best they could possibly be in their role. They love stability.

We often try to turn rockstars into superstars, but that’s a recipe for failure. How many times have you promoted someone just because they’re dependable and excellent at what they do, without considering whether the promotion is actually what they want?

In Radical Candor, author Kim Scott describes these two types of employees as follows:

“Rockstars are solid as a rock. Think the Rock of Gibraltar, not Bruce Springsteen. The rockstars love their work. They have found their groove. They don’t want the next job if it will take them away from their craft. Not all artists want to own a gallery; in fact, most don’t. If you honour and reward the rockstars, they’ll become the people you most rely on. If you promote them into roles they don’t want or aren’t suited for, however, you’ll lose them — or, even worse, wind up firing them.

Superstars, on the other hand, need to be challenged and given new opportunities to grow constantly.”

Putting the Right Bums in the Right Seats

Being the one or the other isn’t good or bad. It just is. We need to respect what others want out of their lives. Most importantly, we need both in our businesses and we need to learn how to use their strengths and ambitions to the betterment of the firm. You need the people who would go deep, who’d produce the same quality over and over again, and who you know you can count on. You also need the people who would lead and inspire and innovate.

So, when you do your planning for next year, do a deep dive into your team:

  1. Identify your rockstars and your superstars. And yes, they may not all be stars yet, but that brings us to the next point.
  2. Determine what you need to do to help each person to develop into their chosen stardom. Maybe you need to restructure your team, send people on training, or assign mentors to juniors.

Your team doesn’t always have to be full-time employees. For smaller or unique functions, consider hiring a contractor or professional to help. For instance, if you have a small business,  instead of hiring an expensive CFO, think about hiring us to fulfil that function for you. It’s always good to have someone from the outside to listen to your challenges and give you unbiased advice. 

The Dance for Trust

13 Nov 2020 | Relationships

Imagine this. You’re on your first date with someone you’ve just met. You like what you see – they’re easy on the eye, the conversations are interesting, and you find that you have a lot in common (as much as you can figure out in a few hours). All in all, it’s an excellent date.

Are you ready to tie the knot, though? Of course not. You don’t know know this person yet. You don’t know which secrets they have hidden away.

You don’t trust this person yet.

And without trust, the only place this thing is going is a casual fling.

It’s the same in business. You may like the look of a product, their proposal is well put together, or their ad makes you feel good. You’ll try it out, but you’re not going to commit for life to this one brand yet. As soon as something better comes along, you’re jumping ship.

Trust is not something you just get overnight. Trust is a result – the result of taking lots of small risks, from sharing personal information, from making someone feel safe. Building trust is a dance – give and take, give and take – until one day, you just know you can trust someone completely. 

 

ROR: The Most Important Metric

You’re familiar with Return on Investment (ROI), right? But have you heard about ROR – Return on Relationship? We’d like to offer that ROR is more important than ROI. “But wait, I’m in business to make money,” you may say.

And you’re right. However, the better your ROR is, the better your ROI would be. The stronger the relationships are that you have with your clients, the more they will buy from you and the longer they’ll come to you for your services.

“ROR (Return on Relationship) is the value accrued by a person or a brand due to nurturing a relationship. ROI (Return on Investment) is simple dollars and cents. ROR is the value (perceived and real) that will accrue over time through loyalty, recommendations, and sharing.” – Ted Rubin

ROR is calculated by measuring referrals or repeat business compared to total clients you’ve helped over the last 12 months. For instance, if you’ve helped 1,000 people over the last year of which 200 are referrals or repeat customers, your ROR would be 20%.

 

How Do You Foster Great Relationships with Clients?

There are several ways to nurture relationships. For instance, you can share behind-the-scenes stories of what you’re up to. Or you can call one client a week just to catch up and hear how they’re doing. You can respond quickly to queries, ask for feedback, or host events for your most loyal clients.

These are just some ideas, and what would work for someone else may not work for you and your business. Figuring out your own relationship-building strategies is the fun part, especially if you do it hand-in-hand with your clients.

Our challenge to you – and ourselves – is to figure out how to best build relationships in the business, and to dance the dance for trust.

A Case for a Family-Based Approach to Your Team

16 Oct 2020 | Team

Some of the most successful small and medium-sized businesses treat their team members like valued family members. While many business gurus would argue that this may be bad for business, there’s something to be said for a family-based approach.

 

Benefits of a Family-Based Approach 

Let’s look at why this approach may be a good idea for you. 

1. Higher work satisfaction = better productivity: According to Gallup, people with a best friend at work are seven times more likely to be fully engaged in their work. Your staff spends an average of 40 hours on the job each week and sees their colleagues more than their own family. We all crave human interaction, and when we have great relationships at work, we not only enjoy our work, but we’re also more productive and the quality of our work shoots up.

2. A great culture attracts great talent: For many, it’s not just about the money. Talented people often take lower-paying jobs if they could work in the right environment. Small and medium-sized businesses can’t always compete with big corporations when it comes to salaries; to attract the best, your culture needs to be the best.

3. Turnover is expensive: Every time an employee leaves, you lose money. Think about training new employees, delays, lost productivity, etc. People who are happy at work are less likely to leave.

 

How Do You Create a Family-Based Team Culture? 

Every family is different, and of course, not every type of family culture would work in the business. An absent parent (or boss) whose only form of communication is shouting when something’s not going according to plan, is not exactly a great recipe for success. 

So, which traits would create a great family culture at work?

 

Open Communication 

If your team believes they’re in the know, they’ll feel valued and they’d be willing to walk through fires for you (don’t let them do it, though!). 

Don’t be afraid to share bad news, either. If the business is going through a tough time – very common now thanks to the pandemic – there’s no reason to try and hide it. News flash: they already know things aren’t going too great. You don’t need to share every little detail, but if you take them into your confidence, they’ll do everything they can to help you, the company, and the rest of the team through hard times.

 

Invest in Their Growth 

When we invest in the personal and professional development of the team, we see them make increasingly better contributions to the success of the business. 

The more you invest in them, the more they’ll come up with fresh ideas and perspectives.

 

Family Time a.k.a. Team Building 

Many people are exhausted right now. We’ve had a few hard months behind us, and maybe more to come, and many people are concerned about the future. Your team may be frustrated with things they can’t get done or work they’ve done pre-covid that may seem gone to waste. Whatever the case, everybody needs a break away from the job – either as a team-building exercise or a few days off. 

A couple of months ago we took the team to the Fear Factory, where everybody could scream their frustrations out. Like the saying (which we’ve totally made up) says: “A team that screams together, stays together.”

 

Is a Family-Based Team Approach for You? 

You may not want your team to call you ‘Mum’ or ‘Dad’, but making a few tweaks to the way you treat your team may just create the culture you need for your business to thrive.  

Do you think it’s a good idea to treat your team like family? What else are you doing to create the right culture?

The One Thing That Drives Your Business Forward

2 Oct 2020 | Biz Strategy

Every minute you spend in your business must be an investment.

How many times have you been super-busy, but at the end of the day you’re wondering what you have done with your time; what you really achieved that day? That means your time was not an investment.

And you’re not alone in this. We’re all guilty of spending our time on the wrong things – sometimes knowingly, other times not.

 

Not All Tasks Are Equal

The biggest mistake we tend to make is treating every task as if they all matter equally. Instead, if you want to achieve extraordinary results and want every minute to count, you need to find out what is the one, most important thing you need to do that would make the biggest impact to drive you and the business to your desired goal. 

And you need to spend 80% of your time on that, and only once that’s done can you focus on other things.

For instance, if you’re in sales, the most important thing you need to do is picking up the phone and calling people, or meeting with potential clients.

 

Finding Your One Thing

So, how do you find out what your core focus should be?

It’s not just about choosing things you enjoy doing. Rather, it’s about finding the things that you’re innately good at.

Ask yourself these questions:

  • What comes easy to me? What am I naturally good at?
  • What do I really enjoy doing?
  • What, if I only did that every day, would move the business forward?

And this is not only for you – every person on the team needs to find that core thing for them. Imagine if everybody in the business spends 80% of their time on their one thing? How quickly would that drive the business forward? How quickly would you achieve your goals?

It’s often difficult to look at yourself critically and see what you’re really good at. You may be brilliant at something, but because it comes easy to you, you don’t realise how unique and valuable that skill is.  Or you may know what your one thing is, but you’re not sure how it would benefit the business.

We’d love to be your sounding board. Let’s get together for a brainstorm and we’ll help you test your ideas.

Your business, your dream is worth it.

What Does Success Look Like for You?

11 Sep 2020 | Biz Strategy

‘Success’ is such a fuzzy word. Does it mean buckets full of money, fancy titles, public recognition? For most people, their definition of success is quite different. 

 

When it comes to business, we’ve found that for most people, the typical “growing your business” is not an accurate goal or means by which they want to measure their success. Not every business owner wants their business to grow exponentially and make loads of money. 

For some, lifestyle is more important than anything else. Instead of a rapidly-increasing bank account, they’d prefer a well-oiled machine that allows them to have more time to spend with their family, especially those with young kids. Or maybe they want to have more time to travel and just need a business that can sustain that type of lifestyle. 

The more entrepreneurial types may want their business to grow aggressively – from idea-stage to taking the world by storm in a couple of years – before they move on to the next thing. They may want to sell the business after they’ve created a money-making machine, or just live off the dividends while they’re working on their next big idea. 

Others want to create a legacy. Maybe that means creating a product that becomes a household name, or a steady business that their kids can take over one day, or they want to become known as one of the best places to work for. These businesses may want to grow steadily, but not too aggressively. 

For others, impact is their measuring stick: The difference they make in the community, their industry, the environment, or in the lives of others, that’s what drives them. This may be through their involvement in charities, i.e. using their profits to invest in good causes, or through building a social enterprise where impact is ingrained into everything they do. 

There are broadly four success-categories most businesses fall into: 

  • Income
  • Lifestyle
  • Impact
  • Personal achievement

So, to get back to our initial question, what does success look like for you?

Get Clarity on What Success Means to You

To help you avoid cookie-cutter statements that sound good when someone else says it, here are a few questions to ask yourself to figure out what success means to you. 

1. How much money do I want to take home?

2. How much time do I want to spend at work?

3. What do I want to spend my time on?

4. How flexible do I want to be with both my time and the tasks I perform in the business?

5. Do I want to be involved in every day-to-day decision, or do I want to let other (maybe more qualified) people take over the reins?

6. What excites me? Is it…

  • Inventing new products or services?
  • Talking to clients?
  • Negotiating and making deals?
  • Improving systems and getting the best out of employees?
  • Making a difference in others’ lives?
  • Something else?

7. What causes do I feel strongly about?

8. What is the legacy I want to leave behind?

 

Set Your Business on the Right Path

Defining success and personalising it to fit you like a glove is the first – very crucial – step in building a business you love. It becomes easy to not only set goals but also to reach them.

Once you’ve clarified your success-parameters, come chat to us about the next steps and how we can help you to set your business on the right path. And, if you’re torn between different ideals and you need someone to bounce your ideas off, we’d love to be your sounding board.