Business Mastermind Podcast

On this episode of The Business Mastermind Podcast, Gavin is joined by Kris Ward, the author of Win The Hour Win The Day which is packed with practical steps that cuts through the noise that you hear about so many different productivity and time management strategies and training to the stuff that works in a really simply and accessible way. More importantly, you'll be able to take away tips, tools and strategies from Kris that will help you improve your productivity  and help you win the hour, win the day.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• So many people think productivity is about being organised and is a constant race against time – that certainly used to be my answer to everything, to go faster and harder. The transition happened when it was pointed out to me that I was starting to lose some of my charm due to lack of sleep. I went from 16 hours a day to 6, which didn't happen overnight, but I was lucky that I had done that because my husband got diagnosed with cancer and I had to get pulled away from the business for about 2 years. When I returned after his passing my existing clients had no idea that I'd been absent. Then I started getting asked by people how to manage their productivity.
• It was shocking to me how much I was working against myself, it was shocking that my efficiency, my income, my joy for the job, my productivity all went up. When I think of productivity, I don't mean getting more done, I mean getting the next thing out: writing a book; starting a podcast; whatever the next thing is for you.
• Simply hiring someone to transcribe my meeting notes, my first hire years ago, was like taking a pebble out of my shoe, it relieved pain throughout my whole body. The burden it took off me was immense, and on the weeks I was using I was paying her $12, on the weeks I didn't use her I didn't pay her, all of a sudden I'm not misquoting people, getting stressed and staying later and later.
• SOPs (standard operating procedures) aren't usually written by the end user, they're used to cover reliability and they're static in nature. My Super Tool Kits are breathing documents and you can always improve them. It takes anything you do more than once systematised so you can move on and create the next thing. It means you can get stuff done quickly without having to make decisions which fatigues the brain.
• A to do list is an excellent tool if you just want to stress yourself out, it creates all sorts of anxiety and open loops in the brain. What you should do is use your calendar like a time bank account where the work is measured out and prioritised. Work backwards, like you do in your personal life. I'm Canadian, so my kids play hockey: You think about the time you need to be at the rink (2pm), what time do you need to leave – adding in time for bad weather, feeding the kids first… all of a sudden you're starting off at noon, meaning you've got to start getting organised at 11am. 

BEST MOMENTS

‘Your business is there to support your life, not consume it. You didn't start a business just to run a business.'

‘They say Eskimos have 40 words for snow. I could have easily given you 40 different symptoms or layers of being exhausted.'

‘All the best inventions in the history of mankind come from when you're in rest or play. That's how the brain works.'

‘We all agree McDonalds does not make great hamburgers, but it's the consistency that made them billionaires.'

‘70% of small business owners and entrepreneurs expect their business to provide for them in some capacity in retirement and 2% successfully do that, because they don't have the infrastructure.'

VALUABLE RESOURCES

On this episode of The Business Mastermind Podcast, Gavin is joined by Robin Waite, the founder of Fearless Business Coaching, to talk about how to avoid under-pricing/under-selling yourself.  How to double business revenue in 3-6 months and why charging by the hour is unethical.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Fearless isn't about being reckless. Fearless is about fearing the thing in business ever so slightly less that would ordinarily hold you back. Things like doing a 60 second pitch to a room full of strangers at a network meeting. Some people are terrified of doing that, but if you don't do it no one's ever going to know anything about you, and you won't be able to grow your business and sell stuff.
• Most business owners will only ever put their prices up once a year or two years, and even then just by 5-10%. They have a belief that if they put their prices up clients will leave. Actually that's not a bad thing. There are two different types of clients: your existing clients who will be anchored to a specific price point and are more price-sensitive, but you've also got prospective clients who haven't been exposed to your prices yet so aren't anchored, there's no tension, you can pitch whatever you want to them and if they feel that's a good value for money they'll go ahead.
• The money mindset that's been drilled into us by our parents between the age of 3-7 can be quite negative. The education system needs to talk about money and love more. These are two big questions in life: how do I find a partner to be with and how do I make more money? If you have a negative money mindset we seek evidence to back this up in our businesses. If you're always looking back at the past, you're always going to be looking at the blueprint that already exists. In order to change that you've got to look to the future; you can have abundance, you can charge more, you can have cash flowing through your business and you can create the opportunities that you want. This is something you can change in 30 days, maybe less.
• Too many business owners want to keep control over absolutely everything. But why would you hire someone just to look over their shoulder the whole time, then two people are doing the same job. It's pointless. Perhaps implement SOPs (standard operating procedures) and review them every month or two to make sure they work. I'll take family fit first, skills afterwards. They have to get on with the crew first, we can train them afterwards.
• In business there are only two things that can go wrong: Either you look a bit stupid, or you lose some money. That's it – unless you do something grossly negligent or nefarious. You can always come back from looking stupid and losing money.

BEST MOMENTS

‘We should try and bring in some of our core values into our business, it's much more authentic.'

‘The core belief you have to have is “I'm worth it”.'

‘Focus on your goals (how much you want to earn) and working backwards (what do you offer) is a good way of working out if you're charging your clients enough.'

‘Record all your sales calls and meetings (with the other person's permission) and listen back to them to see if you were communicating clearly and listening properly. Or do sales roleplay to increase your confidence.'

‘Delegate responsibly, don't delegate responsibility.'

VALUABLE RESOURCES

The Business Mastermind Podcast

On this episode of The Business Mastermind Podcast, Gavin is joined again after a long time by Jay Munoz to talk about metamorphosis after the title of Jay's best selling book ‘Property Metamorphosis' as well as talking about his own journey of metamorphosis. The conversation includes the thinking and the mindset involved in wanting to change your path and how you can feel confident, equipped and what you need to learn to be able to kickstart your own metamorphosis.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• I started investing in property as a hobby alongside my career as a chartered engineer. I was comfortable and getting pay rises, but in 2014 I read an article that said “if you don't like your job, quit it”. I didn't like my job and who I was so I decided to quit my job within a year and a year later I was a property developer. Last year, in 2020 I wrote my own book for others to read about my metamorphosis and hopefully they can see themselves going on the same journey.
• Every time you embark on a new journey I think about this quote: “In order to have the best life possible, you have to first know what the best decisions are and have the courage to make them.” I knew at the time that that was the time that I wanted to spend more time with my family and the people that I love rather than spending all my energy on commuting and doing my job. I now have the privilege and the flexibility to return home to Columbia to spend time with my parents, who aren't very well as well as spending more time with my family at home. 
• Hire a mentor. My mentor was the catalyst to get to where I am right now. But, make sure you do your due diligence on them and choose the one that will work best for your goals and that you share the same values. If you don't share the same values move on and find someone else.
• Once you have the right tools it's down to you to implement them until that becomes reality to you. Every single deal that I analysed before my first HMO – my first domino – got me closer and closer, I was getting quicker at analysing deals, there was another relationship I made with a new agent that got me closer to my goals.
• The biggest challenge for an entrepreneur is to balance your time efficiently, we only have 1440 minutes in a day, what we do with every single minute makes a difference. If you're not careful you give it away very easily; an hour of your time is 4.8% of your day – if you don't sleep. My AFL journal helps people with that, to write down smart goals, helps keep them accountable, helps people to review what they learn, helps with being grateful every single day because you need to write down at the beginning and end of every day what you're grateful for. This works not only for property development, but for life.

BEST MOMENTS

‘One of my key values is always to learn. Ignorance is very expensive.'

‘My courage came from the fact I wanted something different.'

‘Your goals need to be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound.'

‘Once the first domino is down, that creates the momentum for your to become unstoppable.'

‘You have to turn your failures into advantages and learn from them. You are not made in a crisi, you're revealed positive or negative. You've got to be relentless.'

VALUABLE RESOURCES

On this episode of The Business Mastermind Podcast, Gavin is joined by Tony Brooks to talk about leadership, specifically what leaders should be doing differently in SMEs and corporates and where thy need to be putting their focus and attention.

We've been through a mammoth period of disruption with remote working, people being on furlough, and we're now phasing back into the office, engaging with hybrid work patterns, there are people who have been on furlough for more than a year, some are reluctant to come back – much to the incredulities and frustration of business leaders. How do we get back to some form of normal and start to claw back the profits we were making 15 months ago?

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• It's become complex recently and a lot of leaders and companies, to some extent have been in a more reactive mode over that last 15-16 months. Now is a really important time to shift back to being more proactive. But, be ready, willing and able to take feedback from their people, those on the frontline who have seen shifts and changes and engaging with customers and ask them what they think.
• It was – and still is – an unpredictable environment, going into and out of a recession. I believe that the majority of us and the majority of businesses get way too busy with their heads down doing the do. Without standing back from things and examining how you're thinking about your world, your people, yourself and your marketplace, you will not change the way you see things and you'll continue to do things in a similar way. That's a truism for life as well as business.
• How do we adapt our culture to a world that has, potentially, changed forever? How do we need to lead people differently to get the best out of them in this new world? We'll never go back to how it was 15 months ago. Use HR expertise to advise, in terms of how to handle things sensitively and the terms and conditions because it's going to be choppy waters to navigate through to deal with people's anxieties and the few people who are using it as an excuse. 
• We are fundamentally quite tribal people and we like having leaders, rather than being solitary creatures. Even if you plan to have your staff working from home for good, have a physical meeting with them all at least once a month, bring everybody together. Start thinking about a social event in the second half of the year and perhaps make it a more regular thing. Think about how you're going to employ people, because they won't be able to get a feel for the role as they won't see a busy office and may not feel a part of a team.
• Companies need to remember that one of the things that retains people is that they have friends that they've made in the company, not just colleagues and the longer they're at a company the more friends they make and the less likely they are to leave. Keep wellbeing practices up, we're social creatures and it's risky not to take that on board.

BEST MOMENTS

‘Some companies have had a rougher time than others, but now's a good time to stand back and see it's a different climate out there, where are you going to take you business?'

‘Recalibration could lead you back to the same place, but there could be some really important shifts in thinking and strategy.

‘We have to appreciate that people's anxiety levels are all different. Leaders need to be sensitive to that fact. There needs to be a sensitivity, but a line has to be drawn.'

‘Zoom has been amazing for communication, but you miss certain subtleties in body language and energy that's there in the room. Perhaps, going forwards, it makes sense to have an initial sales meeting over Zoom to assess whether it's worth sending salespeople across the country.'

‘People, for the most part can be trusted to get on a do the things they need to do and balance their work. But we need to be careful that it doesn't swing too far the other way permanently.'

VALUABLE RESOURCES

On this episode of The Business Mastermind Podcast, Gavin is joined by David Taylor and Clair Carpenter, the co-authors of the book ‘BLISS: How to Be Truly Happy For the Rest of Your Life', to talk about happiness.

David and Clair come at the world from very different points of view, David sees it through the lens of possibility, potential and purpose, Clair sees it through the rigour of science and robust research. But, both are looking for what we should be focussing on to find happiness.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• It's time to put aside people's differences on psychology and psychiatry and focus on find out what works for individual people. The biggest parallel virus to Covid is mental health and we're absolutely dedicated to getting people to living the rest of their lives pretty happy.
• Western schooling systems are all set up to test you against a completely fictional thing that you're meant to have achieved and then you're made to focus on the bits you're not so good at. This entire way that our society is engendered and hard wired impacts the way individuals see things, and it filters into science and psychiatry. There's nothing ‘wrong' with individuals you're trying to ‘fix', it's all about playing to their strengths.
• We judge things from our experience, education and imagination and because we don't immediately remember everything that's happened in our lives, imagination plays a big part, and if there's a 50/50 leaning on something we tend to lean to the negativity for the protection of ourselves. It's very difficult to switch it the other way, but Clair has given a working EMBR (event, meaning, behaviour, reaction) model that gives a level playing field for real life, real people in real life situations that they can apply a gap of infinite possibility: is this definition you're giving going to help you and other people, or is it not?
• When we feel in the thick of a very powerful emotion, sometimes we become that emotion, rather than feel it, acknowledge it, put it to one side and take a step back and time to breathe. What if it didn't have this meaning? What if I could interpret id differently? What if I stepped into somebody else's shoes and saw this information from a different point of view? I thin those two things can really help recast and reattribute meaning.
• What we've all learned through lockdown is the magic of human connection, and we've all been missing that. It's enabled me to get to a point where I really value that rather than take it for granted. Rather than looking back over the last 18 months and thing “haven't I missed a lot?”, I'm coming forward from today and thinking “I've really gained a lot”. The mind is everything, what you think you do become.

BEST MOMENTS

‘Psychology is a lot of the answer that we can make life extremely happy and blissful.'

‘No event has any meaning other than the meaning you choose to give it.'

‘One of the most powerful questions we can ask ourselves if “what if?” Go and make a cup of tea.'

‘If you address the happiness of those who need help first, that's when other things happen, especially in corporate environments.'

‘We achieve success every single day, if people recorded their successes from the moment the woke up, you'd get into an abundance mindset. Celebrate everything you do.'

VALUABLE RESOURCES