About

Happiness has to be the number one importance. Otherwise, what’s the point? What’s the point in being unhappy in running a business where you gain no enjoyment or fulfilment for the work you do?

We believe happier business owners = happier staff = happier clients & customers.

So we need to fix the first part of the equation to make a bigger and better difference to all involved.

First, stop the bleeding.

When helping any small business, we must first understand what (if anything) is causing ‘severe bleeding’ in the business. We need to fix the extremely urgent items to give us the breathing room to work on the important items.

Be truthful when we’re not helping by helping.

Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should. We should really understand that if we have a hammer at our disposal it doesn’t mean that everything is a nail because most of the time it’s not.

We’re not one time fixers, we’re partners. We all know there’s no such thing as an instant or one-solution fix, so why should we provide a service in this manner.

We observe businesses too often have the tendency to jump on the latest craze, the latest gadget, the latest process – only to turn out that it doesn’t deliver what we think it will, because it’s a tactical one-off decision rather than fitting in with the bigger picture and principles of the business.

Transparency

Life’s too short for smoke & mirrors. Don’t sell the sizzle if there’s no steak. Some people can live like this, we don’t. Let’s be real with ourselves, each other, & our clients. When your intent is right, you don’t need to worry about anything.

“You can have anything you want, you just can’t have everything you want.”

– Ray Dalio

Following on from our Transparency Principle, let’s be honest on what goes in the Needs or Wants column & always have the plan to address the Needs column first.

“It’s your fault. If you don’t like where you are, move. You’re not a tree.”

Understand that recognising mistakes & problems isn’t a blame game. There’s no long term benefit in hiding the truths. The sooner we can recognise the issues, the sooner we can address them and even turn them into opportunities.

Systems & processes are fundamental in business and life. It addresses:

1. Standards
2. Scale
3. Innovation

Standards
Having documented systems ensures there’s a standard to adhere to – there’s no second guessing what the standards are. This enables the best experiences for the end user. There’s a reason why McDonalds for a long time has long been regarded as the king of systems – what other business employs near 2 million people, many of which are teenagers to produce an almost identical experience around the world.

Scale
There’s a lot to do in business. Most of the time, it starts out with just you, the business owner doing all the work. The vast majority of businesses grow by hiring the next team member hoping they know what to do and how to do their work. With a lot of time & effort in training your hires, so much of it relies on the memory & experience of the manager and the staff to continue on delivering the standard – with no repeatable system, no training manual, no fall back solution.

Having documented systems & processes help fix this issue and enable repeatable and a far more predictable experience in scaling the business.

Innovation
Having a baseline, a standard to uphold allows you to see where the bar is and potential areas in how you can improve it. If you’re “fully bespoke” and doing different processes & methods every time, how do you not only ensure consistency, but improve on what you did last time?

Or as we put it:

Ideas to the power of Implementation. I to the i.

No matter how great the idea, zero implementation means it’s worth almost nothing. Whereas even an average idea well implemented is worth a lot.

We’re true believers of implementation; action, speed, & group learning. Great opportunities come every day & we want to be in the position to seize them with our clients.

Ideas are cheap. Everyone has them.