Adam Diamond - Change Your Business, Change Your Life

Jason · 00:00Welcome to episode 206 of The Numbers Game. I'm Jase and I'm here with Nick as we have a special guest episode today. How are you, Nicko?

Nick · 00:07I'm feeling good. Feeling a little bit vulnerable, to be honest. No, uh, our fearless leader, Marty Vitikovic, not here. So hopefully we, um, hopefully we don't stuff this up.

Nick · 00:17Bit of pressure.

Jason · 00:18Yeah, always a bit of pressure to do Marty proud. He is our, you know, social media superstar. I think one of his reels is at about 400, 000 views at the moment. So the guys, uh, you know, he's, his head's getting quite large. So I've had to, you know, give him an episode off and give. Give you and I a chance to, uh, be the star, Nick.

Nick · 00:33Yeah, look, mate, it's becoming an issue in the office. He can't get through most of the doors, uh, because of his head. Um, I've had a few staff pull me aside and, you know, just have a word, um, about, you know, I guess the presence Marty's holding around the office. There's a bit of a strut that's, that's developed in the last couple of weeks, post those, um, little social media blow up.

Nick · 00:54So look, hopefully a week on the bench, you know, he reflects a little bit and,

Nick · 01:00um, comes back a bit more humble.

Jason · 01:01Uh,

Nick · 01:02a

Jason · 01:02hundred percent. Well, I'm, uh, excited for today's guest episode. It's always nice when we get guests on, um, this one's, uh, close to myself. Um, and then Nick, you've had the opportunity to meet, uh, the great man who we're bringing on.

Jason · 01:13Um, the, I'll jump straight to it. Adam Diamond from Juno advisory. Uh, he works closely with the future advisory team and has done so for a while. Um, the tagline of his business, you know, I jumped on the website, you know, did my prep about three minutes ago. It says change your business, change your life. So excited to unpack all things.

Jason · 01:31Adam Diamond, welcome to the show, mate. How are you?

Adam · 01:33Yeah, I'm good. Thanks guys. Thanks for having me. Great to, uh, be invited on a chat, so, uh, appreciate it.

Jason · 01:38I know. Very, very happy to have you on, mate. And, um, look, I think with a tagline like that, I've gone real hard and real high level. Change your business, change your life.

Jason · 01:46But mate, for those listening at home who don't know who Adam Diamond is, maybe, uh, take it back a bit of a background and a quick introduction to yourself, mate. Who, who is Adam?

Adam · 01:54Yeah, yeah. Perfect. Thanks, guys. Um, so gee, Adam Diamond, uh,

Adam · 02:00it's a, it's a, probably a long story and, uh, and too long for something like this, but yeah, you know, um, background, uh, in human resources, um, had a couple of businesses and probably, uh, You know, the moment that, um, that changed my business life was working for quite a large family office and, and having a look at the small to medium business space, um, struggling to grow and really struggling to reach, um, fundamentally what they wanted to succeed or what they wanted to get out of that, um, that, that small to medium business.

Adam · 02:34You know, from a couple of bits and pieces after that, I, um, I started, you know, advisory about three years ago, um, and also started a family about three years ago and also took on a big mortgage about three years ago. So, you know, just put it all into the big mixing pot and, um, and sort of, you know, made it, made it happen.

Adam · 02:52So yeah, been running Juno advisory. I've been running a family and been running my mortgage for the past three years and

Adam · 03:00it's, um, yeah, it's been, you know, like every business owner had, had, you know, internal struggles, but, um, but I suppose for us, it's really about, you know, we want to run our business, um, the best that we can and, and we, um, you know, we've got, we've got much, much, much better at it, um, since the days of just me and, um, you know, now we're a small team, um, you know, helping other business owners in the small medium business space, grow their businesses, right?

Adam · 03:25But grow their businesses successfully, and I suppose that success is something that is different for every person, um, and, you know, clarity around that, I think it goes a long way for what people are trying to achieve because it's not just about money, not just about work life balance, not just about flexibility.

Adam · 03:44It's probably a combination of those types of things. So, yeah, that's a little bit of a brief background intro on there.

Nick · 03:50Yeah. I just like everything you bring to the table because I think half the reason actually not, thank you. I appreciate that. Um, when I

Nick · 04:00say the reason we start, I was going to say the reason we started this podcast, but I think it's probably not the reason why we started, but what it morphed into was almost a venting session for myself, Jason, Marty around business.

Nick · 04:13And I guess when, when we realized that, Um, then we got to think that, okay, well, okay, we've gone from a small business to an SME. All these struggles that we've had, the journey we've been on, um, you know, we should be sharing that with small business owners because it's very hard to get that, uh, education anywhere else.

Nick · 04:34And I think, um, business coach has a, has a stigma to it where the common, the common thing you hear about business is. Oh, well, you know, someone's telling you what you should be doing, but they've possibly never done it themselves. Um, and what are you actually getting in return? And I think what you guys do, which is what I really like is you actually get in and get dirty.

Nick · 04:56And it's not just about, Hey, these are the things you should be doing. What

Nick · 05:00you guys do is you show people how to do it and you get involved with the implementation piece, which is the hardest piece. And then I really love what Jase just talked about. Change your business, change your life, because why, why are we in business?

Nick · 05:11Well, we're in business. To create a certain life for ourselves. And generally we get into business and we create the life that we didn't want. It's exactly opposite to what we're trying to achieve, which is. Choices, freedom, um, whatever else goes along those lines. And we get into business and we're like, well, this is what I thought it was because it's not easy.

Nick · 05:29So I like what you guys bring to the table. It's not just about how you need to be here and this is what you need to do, but this is how you do it. And we're going to help you do it to create the business that you want. And that's going to serve your purpose or what you want to achieve.

Adam · 05:41Yeah. I think it's, I think, you know, business coach.

Adam · 05:46It's a, it's a complicated, uh, it's a complicated word. Um, I think that there's, you know, we're trying to provide, I think back to your point, we're trying to provide really two things. We're trying to provide sound advice for the SM, small to medium

Adam · 06:00business sort of structure, and then we're helping them implement that advice.

Adam · 06:04And I think it's too easy for business advisors or whoever to sit there and go, this is what you should do. This is how you should do it type scenario, because they're not really standing behind that advice. And prepared to go into the business, prepared to work with the business to implement that advice and, and be supportive across that journey because there's, you're putting yourself in harm's way by doing that.

Adam · 06:25And, you know, for me, I've done that before, but really finding staff that were, have the competency to do that, but also the ability to manage the expectation relationships within the business in order to shift from A, you know, A to F we say. It was a, was a bit of a struggle at the start, but as you, I mean, you guys would know this, right, as, you know, as great business as yourselves, as you start to get the momentum, you attract the type of person that you're looking for.

Adam · 06:50And that's, that's a really important thing for us. So yeah, the implementation is definitely the hardest part, um, as you both would know. But, you know,

Adam · 07:00we talk a little bit about collective intelligence and sort of how we run our business, which is on a Monday, we actually internally have a day so obviously today we just finished up an internal meeting where we go through all our clients, we go through where they're at on their journey, we go through their struggles, we go through the things that we're implementing for them, how that's going, and we collectively provide feedback as experts, and that's it.

Adam · 07:23To each other to then go back and deliver back into the business. And we've sort of found that that's, that's the ability for us to take all our knowledge and expertise, to share it amongst the people that we work with, and then to deliver all that knowledge and expertise back into the business. With one direct client manager, we call them, which means that you're getting a single point of communication with your business, senior business advisor, and But you're getting all this expertise that sits behind them.

Adam · 07:50And that's been a real changing point for us delivering value to the business and allowing the businesses that we work with to be able to create that change management to, to

Adam · 08:00get what they're looking for

Jason · 08:01on that note. And it's actually just got things to kind of come back to mind when, when we started working together, Adam.

Jason · 08:05You know, you didn't have a brand, you didn't have a website, you were a relationships guy and you still are to this day, like obviously relationships and getting to know someone is obviously at the, at the heart of what you do and how you go about it, I'd love then, you know, to get your take on three years ago, Juno versus your business today.

Jason · 08:23You know, what, what, what were some of the biggest things that moved the needle for yourself? I mean, you turning a lens back in on your own business. Um, for the changes you've implemented, you know, and, and, you know, when you think back to business day, I wonder how it is now, you know, what, what kind of things are you really proud of that you've been able to do over that three year journey to date?

Adam · 08:40Yep. That's a, that's actually a really, really good question. Uh, but just as right now, Jason was actually one of my first clients, um, three years ago. So, um, There's a, there was a little bit of a leap of faith, I would say, um, um, back in, back in the day, um, to answer your question though, um, I think, um, the

Adam · 09:00business, the business three years ago was obviously just me.

Adam · 09:02Um, but we've got four staff members now. Um, and we, we, It was definitely around going in and creating a relationship and trust the business to allow them to change. And that still plays a huge part of us. I mean, obviously, I've had the expertise and experience to be able to deliver some of that advice.

Adam · 09:23Um, but what I realized was, and probably part of the change from then to what now is, is surrounding myself with exceptional staff members. And people to and a lot of people don't really know when they from the outside is that we don't have juniors in our business We only employ senior people who have been there and done that and we all sort of run our own admin We all run our own bits and pieces And so what that allows us to do is there's a there's a number one a huge responsibility for us You know senior advisor and number two is that you're not You're not getting, um, somebody signing off on your work

Adam · 10:00as such, like a legal firm, for example, you know, the partner talks to you and sends you the bill, which is fantastic, um, but really the majority of the work, because that's the structure and the way that those businesses are set up, which works for them.

Adam · 10:12We're trying to do a little bit of a different model, um, which is where you get a senior person as everything. They do everything with you. So I think, you know, that has grown since who we were or who I was three years ago to who we are now. So we're a group of people and we've started to bring in, and Jace could probably talk more about this, about my strengths and particularly my weaknesses, whereas we've become more of a rounded out type of solution.

Adam · 10:38So, um, um, Jason's obviously met Sharon, which is one of the directors and a business partner of mine. Um, she's an accountant by trade. She would never do any accounting work, but, you know, she really brings a, another lens to assisting businesses in the growth. Um, particularly from her expertise of taking, you know, business from 10 to sort of 100 mil

Adam · 11:00type scenarios.

Adam · 11:00So I think staff and surrounding myself, I think that there's also, I think businesses, they rest on their laurels a little bit after they've had a bit of success, much the same as what I did, which is had a bit of success, um, and then sort of focused a little bit less on driving leads and driving new business and relationships in.

Adam · 11:21And what happens is as you would know is that you get this. So you, you do some business development and then you deliver on it and then it goes down and you do some more business development and deliver on it. And then it goes down and you get into this cycle of lots of stress. And then not as much stress, then lots of stress.

Adam · 11:37And, you know, being very specific about and focused on where you drive opportunity from has been a really big lesson that we've learned. So we're, as you both would know, sort of stepping up and creating opportunities. Let's call them referral relationships with much larger businesses, um, that have a lot more clients than us and also focus on our client referrals.

Adam · 11:57So, you know, for us, the way in which

Adam · 12:00we go about finding opportunities has been pretty crucial. And then the third part is, you know, the progression of staff. You know, we're very specific about, um, reporting. Um, we're very specific about, um, you know, expectation of role, you know, being very clear and very concise with, you know, talking to our staff around, well, this is what we expect from you, but here we are, this is how we're going to help you get there.

Adam · 12:22So position descriptions, KPI, I mean, I know I can feel your eyes rolling in the back of your head, position descriptions, KPIs, frameworks, bonus structures, you know, all those kind of things. It's all well and good to have a position description on a piece of paper. Whether somebody actually engages with that is probably another big area that a lot of small to medium businesses struggle with.

Nick · 12:45Yeah. It's a real, like everything you were saying then hits home, but particularly, uh, around the BD, BD or business development implement, BD implement, and look, we even have the, have those discussions with our sales people on an employee

Nick · 13:00level. So how do you, the absolute top performers get those consistent numbers?

Nick · 13:04You know, and don't go, you know, up and down, up and down. Um, from all that and what you've just, so you've talked about your own business and I can relate that to my business, but going, when you go in to a new client, um, you know, looking at your, your past clients and your, your experience, what would you say is probably the, the, the quickest win or what's the thing where you go in there and you see most small businesses, um, Either number one, doing incorrectly or number two, not giving enough attention to like, is there something where you go in and you go, yep, that's the thing that's going to shift the needle the most?

Nick · 13:41Like, what, what's really common? Um, I know there's probably a lot, but what's, you know, is this,

Adam · 13:48I mean, it's another great question. We get, we get asked this a lot, but my answer is always so boring. Right, it's, it's not this silver bullet exciting test that it's just, hey, this is what you should do.

Adam · 14:00I think probably depends, I'm going to answer that in two things, probably depends on the size of the business.

Adam · 14:05So if you look at a business, I mean, we look at businesses from sort of zero to three mil turnover. Three to seven, seven to 15, 15 to 25 and 25 plus. So they're kind of like the categories that we would, businesses are slightly different in those categories, or they're trying to achieve slightly different things, but let's talk about a business from three to seven, because that's generally probably where we played most of our, um, or most of our clients here.

Adam · 14:31I would say in 99. 9 percent of the businesses that we deal with, the one thing to get right at the start is. People understanding what success looks like in their role. And that forms two front, two things. One is what exactly am I supposed to be doing in my role? And what does success look like? And that would sort of be a position description and a KPI framework that they understand.

Adam · 14:59I

Adam · 15:00think that that is, it's really brushed over and we talk about, um, you know, utilization in a professional services business. So hours on, I know that I need to hit 80 percent utilization. Okay, but what are the other things that sit around that? How do I hit that? What does that actually mean? So I think that there's, when we're talking businesses, we go in and we do, um, so if a client comes on, we do a half day unpack and we always do this big, you know, get all the skeletons out of the closet, blah, blah, blah, and inevitably, that doesn't happen.

Adam · 15:29So we find the skeletons as we go down. But um, but you know, doing the unpack and, and where we see is that there's a, but you're, you should know how to do that. You're a, you know, you're an account manager, you should know how to manage accounts. Well, there's, there's a couple more questions, you know, do we have a framework?

Adam · 15:48Do we have accounts that are more important to us? You know, that gold, silver, bronze, or ABC, well, what does managing a gold account versus a bronze account mean? Well,

Adam · 16:00okay, well, what, what, what, how to, how do we then grow from that? So I think that there's a real specification of that, but I think another one is reporting.

Adam · 16:08I mean, we go into so many businesses where it's, where it's, you know, they've got, you know, they've been successful, but they, the, the risk because they're growing is becoming too great for them to not have a really structured reporting. Um, and that's, um, both from a financial perspective. So Jace can, Jace can vouch for that, but also from an operational perspective, operational reporting is generally glazed over cause it's a little harder to, harder to do.

Adam · 16:34It's a little harder to find. It's a little harder to track. So, doing those kind of things are quite important and something that we, we feel is always missed. And below that is constant consistency.

Nick · 16:48Could you, um, could you give us a real easy example of operational reporting? So you did say it's, it's hard to track and can be missed, but give us a real clear example of what that would mean in a

Nick · 17:00service based business.

Adam · 17:01Yeah, so we do, we talk about cadence, right? Which is the, what types of meetings we have and those types of things. So we would consider operational reporting a meeting. So if you think of it like this, a senior leadership team meeting, which would be the heads of each of your, you know, your units or the people that would be your most senior people getting together and delivering the day to day or week to week operations of the business.

Adam · 17:24So when we our internal KPI framework or framework would be our expectation is, is that you attend 100 percent of the senior leadership team meetings, you come prepared with the pre work done, and you take away with the post post work done. So if you look at a great meeting, it should Did we, what are we, what did we say we were going to achieve last meeting?

Adam · 17:48And what are we going to achieve next meeting? And it creates this sort of 360 loop that means you're always achieving. The reporting on that would be the information you bring to the meeting

Adam · 18:00with you and actually having the meeting. I mean, there are so many businesses out there that if I actually talked once a week, For an hour with their senior leadership team meeting and they committed to delivering on what they said they were going to do last week and they put an action list of what they're going to do by the next meeting, which would be next week, they would be in a far, far better position than they currently were.

Adam · 18:21And that's because they, you know, something else more important becomes. And they book it over, you go, well, you know, and this is what I mean by this reporting right, this operational reporting, um, it is most, the most important thing is to have that meeting to communicate with your colleagues so that you understand what is going on by week by week.

Adam · 18:41I mean, you guys would be doing whips, you'd be doing sales meetings, you'd be doing X, you'd be doing Y, you'd be doing Z. It's not to say that we need to have all these meetings, but you know, you've got to create time for the business and the communication within the business to deliver that. Right.

Jason · 18:55So you talk about, uh, creating time for business.

Jason · 18:57That's a perfect, uh, segue

Jason · 19:00to going into what I was just thinking. You know, I, I, I work with business owners too. Great thing that we get to do a future advisory and, you know, same for Nick, you know, a lot of business clients that come next way when it comes to needing their finance audit or even their own personal super funds and insurances, all the rest, so, you know, we, we, we, we know the mindset of a business owner and we are one ourself.

Jason · 19:20It's creating time. How often is a business owner not working on the business? One of the, one of the challenges that you face is, is that a big one or am I kind of barking up the wrong tree there?

Adam · 19:31Every business, every conversation, it's the same. Every, every business owner, um, and to a lesser extent senior management, right?

Adam · 19:40Because they still get the, it's, it's all about time and everyone's always too busy. I mean, the biggest referral that we get is, um, we always say that we, when we talk about. things. It's like, you know, why would people come and talk to us? Are you working too many hours and not feeling like that you're getting the success that you're

Adam · 20:00getting from working all those hours?

Adam · 20:01I mean, people just prefer, you should talk to Juno advisory. And the reason is, is because it's, it's not necessarily about creating time. It's more about prioritization. of time. What's, what's the most important thing that you need to be doing on your business? Now, I would say working on your business holds a, uh, the greater priority than working in your business in most moments of time.

Adam · 20:30So I'll give you an example. Five people are sick in the business. You're like, no, I'm not going to do any work because I'm working on the business. Doesn't make sense, right? So there's obviously a reprioritization, you step back into the business and you deliver value for the business. But in the general sense, on the day-to-day running, you should be carving out weekly time to work on the business.

Adam · 20:50And that's kind of where we sort of come in, which is where we sort of force you because we see you weekly to work on the business in the time period that we sort of, you know, we sort of allocate with you.

Adam · 21:00Um, but it's challenging. And what people don't realize is you only have. Um, a certain amount of time.

Adam · 21:07So what people do is they book out their diaries, right? And then things happen. So then they squish things into their diaries, which pushes other things out. And I think, um, Nick, we sort of talked about this when we caught up, which is you're better off to be doing a couple of things really well than many things really poorly.

Adam · 21:26And that kind of comes back to the prioritization of time. So I think that there's lots of different ways you can do it. I mean, you know, we'd look at smaller versions around time blocking or focusing on doing AM and PM type things, um, which is what we do, but you know, inevitably it's about, you have to de prioritize things to prioritize other things.

Adam · 21:46And that's the hard part. What a lot of business owners and senior management sort of struggle with is what can I. Get rid of in order to allow me time. And that really, I would say would be dependent on

Adam · 22:00what your goal is for the business. And one of the ways in order to do that is to get really great staff underneath you to take some of those things that you are deprioritizing, that they can then prioritize, which is where we always come back to.

Adam · 22:15We always sort of start off on an organizational sort of structuring sort of point of view, because, and part of the catchphrase is choose to work. And we put that in there very specifically because. You should, as a business owner, have a choice whether you work in the business or not, but the only way that you can do that, or the only way that you can exit a business owner out of that business operationally, is you create a structure underneath that business owner that facilitates the day to day operations of the business, which would be, from our perspective, a senior leadership team, And management team, some senior employees, some people that can take the work away from you or take the work that you deprioritize

Adam · 23:00and make it their priority.

Nick · 23:01Yeah, it's, it's, it's good stuff. Now I think it's where, again, I keep saying I can relate to this, but I can't because it's where we are now. Um, But we're, you know, we're at that stage now where we now need to level up. You know, we've got all of that structure there now. And now it's, we need to go to that next level, um, you know, to get an ROI on all of that structure.

Nick · 23:24So that's obviously the utopia, but I think, I think back to myself and also our industry and the conversations I have, and it's, it's so difficult to make a decision to bring that kind of structure in because the minute you do that And people only think about this. They think about the cost. Well, if I bring someone in underneath me, it's going to cost money.

Nick · 23:47Um, I'm pretty profitable at the moment, but I'm not that profitable. I'm not sure if I can invest in more people. How do you, how do you overcome that? Because we all, we all know that it's the right answer. The right answer is to

Nick · 24:00work on your business, bring people in to do other things, but it's such a hard thing.

Nick · 24:04Step to take and a hard decision to make to do it. How do you, how do you get business owners to overcome that decision and also get them ready? So whether, whether they might not have the cashflow straight away, like, how do you plan to get more cost into the business, I guess, is what I'm saying. And then number two, how do you convince them that it's the right thing to do?

Adam · 24:25Tough questions. Um, yeah, I mean, it's, it's something that we face every single day of every decade, I suppose. You know, I brought on a, my first employee, which was Sharon, who is now a business partner of mine. And she was paid substantially more than what I was paying myself as a first employee. And without disclosing, you know, how much we pay each other, but, you know, we pay each other exceptionally well.

Adam · 24:55And ironically, we all pay each other the same amount. We're all paid, including myself, you know,

Adam · 25:00I'm a little bit lucky I get to take dividends too. But from a perception of, I went the complete opposite way. I hired my CEO as my first employee. Now that took huge sacrifice to me. However, I also know what's coming.

Adam · 25:15And I know, well, having a senior person there right at the start can help shape and take a lot of workload off me to be able to focus on growing the business. But that's probably a little bit different. The question that you're really asking from my perspective is, how do we, You always have to keep growing your business to about to afford the growth of the costs that are associated with that.

Adam · 25:40And I'd probably say if you're trying to grow your business and become what would be the utopia of freedom or flexibility or whatever the magic phrase is at the moment, you inevitably have to grow your business, grow the revenue and grow the profitability in order to afford those people. So with

Adam · 26:00your plan has to be growth.

Adam · 26:02If you want to employ those senior people to take that work off you. If your plan isn't great, you can't really do that. Otherwise, you will just eat into the costs of the business. So One would be what is the your actual plan of the business? And let's just assume it is growth and we're preparing one of our business owners to spend big on a role But I sort of look at it like this If a really great person was 150 grand and an average person was 100 grand Right, and they're saying 150 grand is a lot of money.

Adam · 26:38I would be saying you're going to have to pay 100 grand anyway because you need to fill a role. What you're actually talking about is an additional 50, 000. So I always talk about the additional amount you're having to pay for a senior person as opposed to a person that you would need to recruit anyway.

Adam · 26:56And then you go, okay, well, is 50 grand worth,

Adam · 27:00you know, me having one day off a week? Is 50, 000 worth me pushing all this work down to somebody else? Is 50, 000, so you sort of, it's, yes, I understand it's 150, 000, but you're going to have to recruit someone anyway. If you're growing so it's not really 150.

Adam · 27:19It's an additional 50 000 When you start to look at it like that, which I believe that's the way that you should be looking at it You go. Well, hang on a minute. It's only 50 000 And i'd love to have a friday a week and i'd love to have somebody that could be accountable for these aspects of the business And i'd love to bring in someone with the skill set of Leadership so that they can run the team.

Adam · 27:41So I don't have to run the team. I don't have to do those senior leadership team meetings. I don't have to do those utilization meetings. And then all of a sudden you go, Hey, it's 50 grand. I'm going to find that that's four clients. And then off you go.

Nick · 27:54Yeah. And it's, you know, it's. It's not necessarily 50.

Nick · 27:57I think the way that we trying to convince a

Nick · 28:00really good sales people to bring support in is, well, it's a three to six month investment. If you've got the right person, you're going to know it's the right person. So the worst thing is, you know, if you look at three months at 50 grand, I don't know what that is, but you know, you might be waxing, you know, 15 grand if you've made the wrong decision.

Nick · 28:17If you've made the right decision, you'll quickly, You'll quickly get value on that 15 and you won't even think about it. So yeah, I, I was just interested, you know, how do you convince people to take that step? Cause it is, it is difficult and I understand why it is and we all do as business owners, but you gotta get people to take a leap of faith, really.

Adam · 28:39You do, but they're business owners for a reason, right? There is some risk profile that sits in them. There's there's something that's gone I want to I want to give this a go And I would say that's right for 99 percent of the people. So as long as you you know, you create a a a Um, reasonable expectation with

Adam · 29:00them and you talk logically about, you know, A equals B equals C.

Adam · 29:03You know, they, they generally kind of understand because they've been there before. I think one of the harder things is when they've, they've tried it three or four times and they've failed. You know, recruiting a GM, we say, or recruiting a CEO, we say this all the time, right? And oh, you know, it didn't work, it doesn't work.

Adam · 29:20My business is different, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, well, you know. And did you set them up for, and you start to unpack how they've recruited a CEO or a GM or even a senior leadership team and you start unpicking, but you go, well, you know, you kind of just said, Hey, you do it. You didn't really set them up for success, really give them, um, specific direction about how you wanted them doing it.

Adam · 29:45You didn't really support them with a, you know, a handover process and all of a sudden, well, yes, you did recruit a CEO, but You know, maybe we can find a way to recruit a CEO and better implement that CEO within your

Adam · 30:00business. So I think that there's lots of different ways you can look at that. And a business owner like I am as well, we're limited to our own, you know, our own bubble of expertise and experience and knowledge.

Adam · 30:12And, you know, that's why I always say support yourself with some great people, whether it be staff, whether it be. Mentors, whether it be friends. I mean, Jason, I talk a lot about business and, you know, both ways. And, and, you know, that's really important to, to drive your business forward. You can't, or you can, it's very difficult to do it by yourself.

Adam · 30:32And it's probably part of the reason why we have such a successful business is we are that sort of, Um, link, if you want to talk about between the advice and the implementation and their skill set and the knowledge and the expertise to help support those businesses on their growth journey.

Jason · 30:51And, uh, look at them, you know, obviously I know, uh, firsthand and in great detail the process, you know, when it comes to your half day unpack and then the meetings you guys have internally where

Jason · 31:00you get all the expertise of your team, you know, I look at and go.

Jason · 31:03Business owners, you know, so many businesses fail, you know, so, so we've got that, you know, four in every five businesses after three, four, five years, they're gone, they don't make it. So it'd be the importance of accountability. So, you know, you've structured your business in a certain way that, you know, if, if somebody wants to work with you, they have to commit to a certain amount of meetings, you know, weekly, fortnightly, monthly, I guess, did you do that in a sense that, cause you knew that accountability was what was going to set Um, and then, uh, you know, then beyond that, what do you see then as the most common mistakes business owners make?

Adam · 31:38Um, accountability is a huge one and Jace says first hand that when we had our first meeting, I said, you have to commit to X. And he was like, what?

Jason · 31:48And I'll jump in like that. That was confronting, you know, I was notorious for being late to meetings. Um, and this was a maturity thing too, where, where I copped the, the big whack up front

Jason · 32:00was, you know, I said, Hey, let's, let's work together.

Jason · 32:02We need help. You know, we're, we're growing, scaling, you know, I think we went from a team of 12 to a team of 28 when future advisory started a couple of years ago. Um, kind of like our rebirth and we grew so fast and it was. It was carnage and, and we said, you know, you and I were doing our walks of the tan or, you know, in that holding hands, flirting stage, getting to know each other.

Jason · 32:22And, you know, and, and then, yeah, you know, and that, that first meeting, we said, you smacked, you, you hit me straight between the eyes and said, if you want to work with me, we'll meet weekly for this many hours and you have to be there, like, and you know, I looked at my calendar and was like, how can I commit to working on the business as many hours?

Jason · 32:40Like, how can I commit to, Being at that meeting at, you know, 11 a. m. To 1 p. m. Like every Wednesday. And, and you said, well, if you don't do it, we can't work together. And it was just so like, it was such a lesson in, in knowing what you stand for and why it's important. And I sat there and went, okay, shit.

Jason · 32:56Like, all right, I've got to change my ways. And, and, you know, that

Jason · 33:00change as a business owner to change me, to get me to do things, you know. It's obviously been a great journey, but yeah, it's, you know, just wanted to cut in and say, you know, that was a big moment for me and I remember it three years ago. Go and click.

Adam · 33:11Yeah. I mean, I think that accountability stuff, if you're a business that can't carve out a certain amount of hours, not substantial, a week, there's bigger problems. Right. And it's not to say that we're not prepared to, to tackle those bigger problems. It just puts, um, it, it sort of, it, it re refocuses or restructures how we're going to approach that versus the client.

Adam · 33:35We, you know, again, people like, Oh, you know, we, we only, you know, we, we, we don't know anyone that's, you know, doesn't have a good business that you could support. I mean, we don't actually, the businesses that we generally support, uh, are, you know, successful businesses that have either grown far too quickly or that they've kind of hit a bit of a ceiling and they can't quite top out, they can't quite get to that next level of growth.

Adam · 33:58So one of the things that

Adam · 34:00we always do with a, with a potential client is say, this is the commit, our expectation on you is X, the commitment to the time and to prioritize that. I mean, it's, you know, we're going back to that sort of prioritised conversation. So one is that accountability is huge. I think, um, also business owners and business leaders struggle with that.

Adam · 34:23They get so busy and they sort of, you know, bat off the accountability knowing that it'll probably get caught somewhere else in the business. You know, that's probably really touching, touching on leadership. You know, the business accountability is huge. From my perspective anyway, part of leadership, you know, if I say I'm going to be at that meeting at 12 o'clock, I'm at that meeting at 12 o'clock, you know, it sets the, it sets the tone.

Adam · 34:46It sets the expectation, Hey, Adam's really reliable. You know, my boss, Johnny's really reliable. You know, I can, I can get in, I can blah, blah, blah. So accountability is huge. I

Adam · 35:00think though, you've got to, there's other, there's metrics around accountability. You know, one's time, you know, one is success, you know, one is, um, no delivering, but you don't always have to be successful, but you've always going to be delivering it.

Adam · 35:17That kind of makes sense. You know, there's, there's aspects of that and, you know, for me and, and Jace knows me pretty well, it's around, you know, I'm very, very rarely late. But not to say that people that are late to meetings are unaccountable, but that's something that I hold myself. whole pride around is that I can be relied upon to be there and to deliver what I need to deliver.

Adam · 35:39Um, and like what you said, we're pretty, um, from an internal perspective, we're very accountable, but we do it that way because, you know, we're dealing with, we're dealing with people's lives and livelihoods, and that is nothing to be sneezed at. That's why sometimes I have a problem with people, um,

Adam · 36:00just giving advice.

Adam · 36:01I think that that can be. challenging at times for me when I see that or when I hear that, um, because, you know, there's, there's a real responsibility when you're advising people and their businesses that support their families and support multiple people's families that you're not doing it from a, a whimsical kind of, you know, this is what I think should work.

Adam · 36:22You've really got some expertise, track record and experience to be able to deliver that advice and to be able to help them implement it. So, you know, it is. You know, going through the stages of recruiting at the moment, another staff member, which is challenging because we're looking for someone quite specific.

Adam · 36:38Really using, um, you know, uh, curiosity is a big thing that we look for. And, and the other thing is, is, um, what do we call it? Sort of this, Real care factor. You really care about it. As a business owner, you've got to, you know, care for the businesses like they're yourself. That's an easy value to put

Adam · 37:00up on your, on your wall.

Adam · 37:01And, you know, we care for our clients, but to actually enact that through behavior is really complicated to find. People that really care, that really want to help, um, and you know, there's a lot of whip service. You guys would see this all the time, so you know, that type of scenario, but that comes with accountability and it's sort of, this sort of molds everything together that we've been talking about.

Nick · 37:22Yeah. And, but I guess that's why I opened the conversation with, I really like, you know, The implementation piece, because you talk about advice. You can go anywhere these days and get information on what you should be doing in your business. But to what we were just talking about, when you get busy, it's the first thing that gets pushed aside because you're busy or when cashflow is tight, you push that aside because they can't afford it.

Nick · 37:43The thing that everyone needs help with is getting shit done, not what you should be doing. You can easily find out what you should be doing. It's everywhere. It's how do I do it? And. Um, and that's why I think you guys are unique in what you do. Um, and I know

Nick · 38:00within our own business, we, we keep each other accountable.

Nick · 38:03And I think we're lucky, uh, in that regard that we've got numerous business owners, I actually really enjoy it because I think prior to having partners in the business, I probably wasn't that accountable or definitely no, I wasn't accountable to anyone else. Now I am accountable and I can actually see my own performance go up a level because I've got other people that, I'm not judging me, but I've got other people that I need to be accountable to.

Nick · 38:26So I think if you are a one or two person band and the accountability piece is not there, then it's very hard to get things done. Um, because you always just go back into old ways or go to something that you think is more important or that's going to bring, you know, a thousand bucks into the business next week.

Nick · 38:42So I'm going to work on that. So yeah, it's the, I really like the, the implementation and the accountability piece as well. Um, really resonates.

Jason · 38:52Uh, on that, you know, Following on from that, why, why do you think business owners find it so hard to embrace change?

Jason · 39:00And that's, that's, that's, that's a big question.

Jason · 39:02And I'm sure, you know, maybe something comes to mind, but, you know, cause I know, I know personally, again, that being busy being in the zone and, you know, on from the implementation thing, you know, you said, Oh, we need a Jace Greg, we need, we need a structure or chart. But instead of then like adding it to our homework list, you actually built version one of it.

Jason · 39:20Cause you, you got to know our business. You knew all the moving pieces, you got all the names and you built it on a Google stocking or Google slide thing. And then said, Jace, Greg, let's jump in and finish it off. So working together as a team, you know, you're not just somebody telling us what to do. And then a week later, you know, busting our ass if we didn't do it, there's a fair bit of, you know, making it feel like you're in with us.

Jason · 39:43Um, you know, so that, that change works really well for us, but there's also stuff that, you know, Greg and I probably meant to have done that we've struggled to, to get through. So on that, you know, to reframe that question again, you know, change, what, why do people struggle with it so much?

Adam · 39:56Probably millions and millions of different reasons.

Adam · 39:59I

Adam · 40:00think, you know, I'm really lucky because I come from a, an HR background, right? So change management is, is one of the one and you know, it's, it's my belief that really Change, in order to enact change, you need to be consistent and you need to trust the person who's enacting that change with you. So, it's like, you know, we're going to change and we're going to, we're going to have a, we're going to have a management meeting once a week and then you have it once and then you don't do it.

Adam · 40:24It's like, well, okay, it's probably not going to work. To answer your question though, why business owners find it hard to change, they don't know any other way. I mean, you know, there's a manufacturing client of ours, an unbelievable, been doing the same thing for 25 years, what, you know, and it's working for him.

Adam · 40:46And I go, okay, but it's, it's working for you, but it's not achieving the goals that you're saying to me that you want to achieve. So we would say, if you want a different outcome. You got to change what you're doing today.

Adam · 41:00And if you don't want a different outcome, then fundamentally you don't have to change, but as a business owner, you always want to see growth and you want to see bits and pieces.

Adam · 41:08What they don't know or what we feel business owners struggle with is they don't know what to change. They don't know how to change and because they don't know those two, they can't put that change together and link that to a different outcome. So what they do is they fall back and they do what they're comfortable with.

Adam · 41:28Which is getting to the day to day and that's what we see and it's about, you know, Sharon's a, Sharon's a great example and she won't, she won't, uh, she won't be mad at me for saying this is that Sharon is, um, you know, probably not as outgoing as I am and probably doesn't enjoy the networking and the relationship driving as, as much as I do.

Adam · 41:50Mind you, she's very, very good at it. And so whenever there's something, whether it's, you know, go out and, and, you know, network and have a networking meeting

Adam · 42:00or focus on driving value to the clients and doing the spreadsheets and the this and the that, she will always revert back to the thing she's comfortable with and much the same as me.

Jason · 42:08Yeah. I'll say, unless it's at the bowls and bubbles party where she's trying to put, she's trying to poach all of your clients into her book. Um, I'm still waiting for the call, Sharon. So, uh, when you hear this. Um, you know, we're ready to jump ship. Uh, I've been waiting for the call since last year's Christmas party.

Jason · 42:24So correct. Correct. She

Adam · 42:26has, she does try and do that. So I think, um, you know, it's about consistency creating that change and it's about having a trusted partner to drive that change and, and that's kind of what we provide. But when you ask me these things, These aren't the silver bullet answers. These are, these are, these are complicated questions that you guys are asking and they're complicating, they're complicated problems in the small to medium business space because they're not easy to solve and they don't, it requires multiple things happening at the same time in order to create that change or create that priority or create that growth.

Adam · 42:58So

Adam · 43:00it's, it's really a combined approach doing multiple things at the same time in order to. To help with that.

Jason · 43:06Yeah. I'd also then add onto that, you know, the word consistency or consistent hits home hard. I know that, you know, Greg and I probably, you know, through this with you, we set that as a theme for our 23 or 24 financial year.

Jason · 43:20Sorry. And we said, we want to be consistent. You know, we were coming off a really bad year in 23. We wanted our 2024 year just to be consistent. We didn't need to grow huge numbers. You know, we'd put the foundations and the groundwork in. We just wanted consistent, good efforts from our team and care factor.

Jason · 43:37Uh, we had a lot of C's we were throwing around. So, and then after a year of consistency, we, we had a great 2024. And rolling into 2025, we continue with the same kind of theme that we just want consistency again. It wasn't an overnight thing though. It was a year of a year of building the foundations, making small changes, the little daily one percenters that we had to

Jason · 44:00do consistently over a long period of time.

Jason · 44:03To get some big results. And I think that was the bit that, you know, maybe after three months, you know, it might've been easy to quit and say, Oh, well, we haven't had any major success. You know, let's, let's stop doing this. Um, but you know, that part of that whole idea of knowing what goes back right to what you said at the start, you know, what am I meant to do?

Jason · 44:20What is success? You know, and if you know what success looks like, you've got that kind of goal to work towards. But I'd also go and say it's, it's ongoing work. I mean, it's a work in progress, you know, we want our businesses to continue to, to grow and get better all the time. And I don't think, you know, as an entrepreneur or a business owner, I don't think we ever kind of get, maybe, maybe, you know, unless you're going towards an acquisition or a merger or some kind of.

Jason · 44:43Ending point, you know, I'm enjoying the journey. It's a journey that, that I continue to love being on. And, um, yeah, I'm, I'm kind of really, really happy with how it's all going.

Adam · 44:52I think the other thing is, is though, and I think business owners are pretty hard on themselves and I know the three of us through our conversations, you know, failing or not getting it right.

Adam · 45:00It's part of the process, right? And you're better off to fail. Not get it right then. Never give it a go. And, and I mean, it, it's a very unique thing around business, right? So, you know, that whole concept of I've already hired A CEO, it didn't work out. I'm okay, well, you know, it didn't work out that time, but maybe we can try it again and maybe we'll do it a different way.

Adam · 45:19And we mitigate the risk of it failing this time. And I think, you know, and I know I'm, you know, Jason and I have spoken about this a lot. I'm super hard on myself. I have super high expectations. But, that's just the way I am and with those high expectations comes failure. Yeah. I don't always hit them and that really puts me, puts me in a, uh, in a tizz.

Adam · 45:41I think the reality of that is, and you know, you talked about this and I know Greg is there for you, is that sort of support, it's okay. As long as you've got the direction and you keep doing the activity or the efforts or whatever you call them in order to get there, that's the most important part, consistently

Adam · 46:00delivering that.

Adam · 46:00Yes, you're going to hit some failures and some speed bumps and some problems along the way, but if you've got the direction and you keep persevering and going towards it, it's going to be very hard to not grow and not get closer to that elusive success that everyone is driving towards.

Nick · 46:16Elusive success.

Nick · 46:18And I guess it looks different for everyone too. And I, um, I guess that's the other thing we need to remember. I'm just thinking there's obviously a lot of good stuff, um, that we're talking about and I'm just, this is something that come through from Marty. And as we know, he couldn't be here. He's, I think he's out signing autographs as, as, as we speak, but.

Nick · 46:38If you look at the different levels in business, and I don't just mean sort of small business to, to medium size, but you know, someone starting out versus someone who's got some staff, um, versus someone who may be trying to scale, um, what, what do you think some key, What's, what's more important at each

Nick · 47:00stage?

Nick · 47:00So there's all these things you've got to think about as a business owner. Okay. Structures, you talked about KPIs for staff. In your case, you went CEO first. I actually love that idea because that means all the stuff that you, that would drag you down. Is now sorted and you can purely focus on business growth.

Nick · 47:17So I've never heard that before. That's actually really intelligent, but you know, if you look at the different sizes of business, because you know, some of our listeners could be one or two people bands, some could have 10 staff. Is this, is there an order of importance that you would put, um, against these different things that people should be thinking about based on where they're at in business?

Nick · 47:39Yeah, I

Adam · 47:39think, I mean, we have to talk pretty generally. I think that when, when I look at a business, and I've had a couple of businesses in the past, I think it's been more so around, you've got to sort of prove something. So you've got to prove the concept, prove the product, prove the system or process or whatever.

Adam · 47:55And I think people think about scaling a little too early. I think there

Adam · 48:00is, and I hate to say this, there's just a grind, right? You just go get in, you got to prove it, you got to change it. And you've got to, and we always say, get to that 500 million buck turnover to, to actually go, okay, we've now got something here.

Adam · 48:16Right. That's, that's a grind. There's no, there's no getting around that. There's no employing a sales person or what, you know, you've just got to grind it out and make that happen. That's different for different industries. And that's why we say sort of 500 to a million. You've got to create something that says I've got something and I can charge for it and I can do it consistently.

Adam · 48:36I would say if not, that's like a stage one, right? Then we go, okay, now that we've got something, what do we do with that? Right. That we grow that and generally, there's probably different styles of clients or different ways that you can get opportunities and leads in. There's bringing people into the mix and dare I say it, management structures into the mix and then you go, okay, well, we're not just

Adam · 49:00two or three mates that have created something that we've turned over 400 grand and we've kind of got something here.

Adam · 49:05It's like, okay, well, let's be more specific about what we're doing. What is my role responsible, accountable for? And what is the outcome? And then you start sort of bringing in stuff, which is always a hard part. You know, not a lot of people are great leaders, so you have to, um, understand what leadership is and do it your way, but do it well.

Adam · 49:27You need to support, you need to give clear direction and you need to make it achievable. Right. That's been very simple, very basic. And then you get, and then you start to grow, right? Because you're getting, you've got your consistency of, you know, lead gen coming in and you've got your consistency of staff coming in.

Adam · 49:44I mean, I say this and I don't want to make it sound like business is easy, but you know, from a logic, logical perspective, business is finding somebody to sell to or whatever it is, or finding a client, having staff members deliver that and then delivering value to

Adam · 50:00client and profitability to your business.

Adam · 50:03You know, that is so such a simplification of such a complicated thing. But when you look at it like that, going through the stages, it becomes a little easier. Create something that people want to buy. it and then fundamentally build it out. And that's kind of, you know, to Joseph's point, huge growth and we call it a tidal wave, right?

Adam · 50:24You've got this sort of tidal wave coming after you and then it engulfs your business once it catches up and then you need to restructure it a little bit and go again.

Nick · 50:32Yeah. Uh, I love what you said about clear directions. I think it's probably. Being my single biggest learning, I've had a lot. Um, uh, if I'm talking in recent times, it's giving clear direction because like, I guess as a, as a lady, you've, you've hired people for a reason.

Nick · 50:53So more often than not, you've hired the right person or the right people. And you

Nick · 51:00know, all these things that you talk about, you know, profitability, delivering a good product or service, you know, being efficient, whatever it is. You've got people in your business that can, that can do those things. So the thing that I've realized is giving that clear direction and saying, you know what, these are, these are our two, two or three muster chiefs, um, whether it's this year or long term or ongoing, the people in your business will just get it done.

Nick · 51:24So, but if you don't give them that clear direction on where you're trying to get to, they can kind of be in no man's land where they think they're doing the right thing. Um, but they're not really sure how that links in with what, what you want to achieve. And to be transparent for us, it was, you know, we come up with five, five metrics that we're going to determine whether or not we were successful on a business.

Nick · 51:48And those metrics were around profitability, growth, um, customer value, um, our, um, staff retention, what, what that looked like from a percentage point of view. Um, and there was one other,

Nick · 52:00but it slipped my mind off. I think it was cost, um, cost to acquire clients. So the minute I got, yeah, the minute I got the leadership team across that, every decision they made was linking back to those metrics.

Nick · 52:14Is that going to help? Help my unit and the overall business achieve those metrics. And that's, that's almost been like a, um, a game changer for us because now the leaders know exactly where we're heading and they make decisions purely in line with those metrics, which then determine whether or not we're successful as a business.

Nick · 52:33And we never used to do that. It was always just about doing more, uh, writing more business, you know? But it's not, it's not about that. So.

Adam · 52:40A hundred, like, that's, that's incredible. I, I think that, you know, that's definitely a, that is a, that is a tough one. I think the other, and I was thinking about this as you were saying that, you employ a really senior person and then you tell them how to do their job.

Adam · 52:57If you're paying the money to get someone really

Adam · 53:00amazing, you can give them direction about how you want that delivered, but you're paying someone exceptional to do it, let them do it. Right? That's why you pay them. Right. You know, or, or, you know, we see this, and I say this a lot, particularly CEOs, right?

Adam · 53:14When we go into a business and maybe that there's a, there's business owners, oh, the CEO's not doing what we need them to do and the CEO's, well, the business owner's not letting me do anything, you know, and you look at that and you go, you know, these people are on, you know, some, sometimes they're on really big money and sometimes they're on relative money.

Adam · 53:30But you know, part of that is exactly what you just said is The clarity. Have you had a conversation and told John exactly what you want them to do? Yeah, like have you? What exactly do you want him to do? Okay, so if I went and asked that to John, would he say exactly that? Oh, no, maybe not. You go, okay. Yeah, and then you go, well, how often should you be catching up with John?

Adam · 53:55person's running your business. Okay. Well, and we catch up every six months,

Adam · 54:00maybe, you know, we need to do it a little bit. And what do you talk about when you catch up? And all of a sudden you start to unpack, you know, we call that cadence or whatever, you know, all those kinds of things that sort of come together.

Adam · 54:09And, and I'm so glad to hear that you've got, you know, that's, that's an impressive feat to get to, whereas you've got some clear, you've clearly defined. what business success looks like and you're able to link each person's role into how they actually can impact that business success. That's, that's, hats off.

Adam · 54:30That's a, that's a, a very forward, um, forward type of business and a lot of the stuff that we do is helping business owners get there faster than what they could do it themselves because we come with a whole set of sort of expertise.

Nick · 54:46Yeah. And to, to give you some comfort, we got some external help in, uh, that made us aware that that's what we needed to do.

Nick · 54:53So again, it just goes back to why you're on here and, and the value that external people can, can bring into your business.

Jason · 55:00And uh, on that note, this is where as a timekeeper, sometimes these conversations keep on going and keep on going and we could be here for hours if we, uh, had that kind of platform.

Jason · 55:09Um, I do want to give this opportunity to say, you know, if you're a business that does want to get there faster and, you know, we've talked about some pretty epic things, um, you know, straight off started with change your business, change your life, which is a big kind of, uh, a big sentence and a big statement, but you know, I'm Greg and I are proof in the pudding that we work with you, Adam, and we know what that's like over the journey and the years.

Jason · 55:29Um, if people do want to get in touch with yourself, Adam or Juno advisory, what's the best place to find you?

Adam · 55:35Just on the website, I mean, that's all LinkedIn and or however it is. I mean, we're, we're, we're definitely there. The easiest thing is, is to shoot, shoot out, say, Hey, I'd love to catch up, have a coffee, have a chat, understand.

Adam · 55:46I mean, we don't charge for any of that, of course, but, um, we're always happy to have conversations as the, both of, you know, always happy to catch up, maybe a little coffee, maybe a beer or wine or something like that, but always happy to catch up. Have a chat. And you know,

Adam · 56:00if we're not right for each other, we'll try to direct you into, into something that would work for you because for us, we're here to help businesses as you two are.

Adam · 56:08So, you know, it doesn't have to be a signed contract for us. It just has to be, give them the advice, help them along their way. If it goes around, comes around great, if it doesn't, that's also fine for us.

Jason · 56:19Ah, beautiful, Adam. Uh, so if you have, uh, enjoyed the show, as always, please Like, subscribe, review, send it to a friend.

Jason · 56:26We obviously here as all three of us that are on here right now, love helping business owners and people in general get to a better place in their futures and their lives. So, uh, thank you for joining us again. Until next time,

Nick · 56:36if you change your business, you'll change your life.

Jason · 56:41This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. The conversations are of a general nature and do not qualify as financial or tax advice. We recommend before you make any financial decisions, you consult a licensed professional. Individuals on the podcast may hold positions in the companies discussed. ---