Sun Tzu 4 Small Business | Strategy and Tactics, Technology and Leadership, Management and Marketing for Small Business Owne

ChatGPT has been the biggest game changer for Small Business looking for productivity improvements.  There has been a lot of talk about what AI can and can't do and what you should and shouldn't do with AI. Last week I uploaded our P&L and Balance Sheet because I wanted to get some advice on how our company is going.  I think this will be something that ChatGPT should be really good at. This podcast discusses the results and what it will mean for the accounting industry in the short and medium term. Have a listen to the podcast to find out how what advice ChatGPT gave me when acting as an expert SME accountant. Check out the podcast show notes for more information on this podcast.

This week we look at productivity tips for your Small Business. Inflation is running wild around the world and Governments are looking for the best solutions to bring it back under control.  Increasing productivity is a great way to do this.  It means higher profits, higher wages and businesses have more resources to reinvest and grow their businesses. We look at a range of tools and tips that we use at www.extremenetworks.com.au to grow our productivity.  Some of these are cheap, even better many are free.  Some are tools, many are techniques that can pay off big time as you look to increase efficiency and run a leaner business.  This isn't about working harder, much more about how to work smarter!  Have a listen to the podcast to find out how this will impact your small or medium-sized business. Check out the podcast show notes for more information on this podcast.

Artificial Intelligence is going to be our Industrial Revolution.  Already there are huge technical advances - and it is only really beginning.   We detail the Top 10 AI tools that we are already using in our companies and how you can use them in your business. Have a listen to the podcast to find out how this will impact your small or medium-sized business. Check out the podcast show notes for more information on this podcast.

What is AI?  How will it affect your industry?  How can you improve productivity?  AI is going to be our generation's Industrial Revolution.  The changes from this are going to be huge, so all small business owners need to understand the threats and more importantly the opportunities that come from AI. Have a listen to the podcast to find out how this will impact your small or medium-sized business. Check out the podcast show notes for more information on this podcast. For Small and Medium sized Business IT Support visit our IT Company, Extreme Networks. For Small Business Strategy and Tactics, visit Sun Tzu 4 Small Business.

This week we look at the Message from Garcia, an article written in 1899. What was the message? Who carried it? Why him? Most importantly - how does this fit into your business? Finding someone who can take a message to Garcia, or more than one will make your life, as a business owner, a whole lot easier. We use the message to help us illustrate to our team what we are looking for.  You can too. Check out the show notes to download a copy of the essay.   For Small and Medium sized Business IT Support visit our IT Company, Extreme Networks. For Small Business Strategy and Tactics, visit Sun Tzu 4 Small Business.

How can small business owners manage the impacts of inflation? We look at the impact inflation will have and offer some tips on how to best manage running a business in a high inflation economy. For Small Business IT Support visit our IT Company, Extreme Networks. For Small Business Strategy and Tactics, visit Sun Tzu 4 Small Business.

Hiring today is a global issue for Small Businesses.  We look at some of the strategies that successful small businesses are using to be able to hire the right people as well as getting the most out of the team you have. For Small Business IT Support visit our IT Company, Extreme Networks. For Small Business Strategy and Tactics, visit Sun Tzu 4 Small Business.

What is the Great Resignation? How is it effecting Small and Medium Sized Businesses? What can you do to manage it? We discuss some of the facts and ideas to move forward in what is a very turbulent time for SMEs For Small Business IT Support visit our IT Company, Extreme Networks. For Small Business Strategy and Tactics, visit Sun Tzu 4 Small Business.

How can the Rockefeller Habits help your business grow? We discuss how we have gone implementing the Rockfeller Habits as we work towards scaling up. For Small Business IT Support visit our IT Company, Extreme Networks. For Small Business Strategy and Tactics, visit Sun Tzu 4 Small Business.

I am a huge fan of the Rockefeller Habits and Scaling Up books by Verne Harnish.  We discuss how we are going on our journey of implementing them in Extreme Networks. For Small Business IT Support visit our IT Company, Extreme Networks. For Small Business Strategy and Tactics, visit Sun Tzu 4 Small Business.

Firing employees is a really difficult process for everyone - the business owner or manager, and the employee.   We discuss some of the mistakes we've made, how to avoid it, and if it absolutely has to be done, the process that we use. Obviously employment law differs around the world, so get legal advice first, but this process focuses on minimising the firings you need to do and ensuring they are as fair and painless as possible for all concerned. For Small Business IT Support visit our IT Company, Extreme Networks. For Small Business Strategy and Tactics, visit Sun Tzu 4 Small Business.

We discuss the Martech - Marketing Technology - that we use to run our marketing campaigns.  Mostly free and easy to use, these are the tools you should be looking at to see if they fit into your marketing plan, so that it can achieve the goals set out by your business plan and personal plan. For Small Business IT Support visit our IT Company, Extreme Networks. For Small Business Strategy and Tactics, visit Sun Tzu 4 Small Business.

We discuss free and easy to use marketing technology that small business owners need to at least know about, if not use, to market their businesses successully. For Small Business IT Support visit our IT Company, Extreme Networks. For Small Business Strategy and Tactics, visit Sun Tzu 4 Small Business.   Let us know what you thought of the podcast on Linkedin or Facebook.

This is Part    For Small Business IT Support visit our IT Company, Extreme Networks. For Small Business Strategy and Tactics, visit Sun Tzu 4 Small Business.   Let us know what you thought of the podcast on Linkedin or Facebook.

This episode covers the latest ACSC Cyber Threat report.  We marry this up with some real-life hackings that we have seen in local businesses and we cover how you can secure your business. Have a listen to the podcast and do some marketing to get those customers in. Let us know what you thought of the podcast on Linkedin or Facebook.

This special COVID 19 Podcast looks at Leadership, Runway and pivoting for small businesses in the face of COVID. Business has changed massively and runway is now key.  Businesses need to cut expenses very quickly but they are also looking for new ways to grow their revenues as the business and consumer worlds are changed massively. To help you through the crisis, we have our Free Restaurant Tools, and if you need more help, contact the team about our special marketing assistance program during the Coronavirus outbreak. Have a listen to the podcast and do some marketing to get those customers in. Let us know what you thought of the podcast on Linkedin or Facebook.

This podcast looks at some of the tactics you can use to manage your business better with the Coronavirus / COVID 19.  We look at suppliers, customers, your team and your cashflow with some ideas to help you get through it all. We have some tips that will definitely help with business continuity and cash flow for Small Businesses. Check out our show notes for more details on this podcast.

This podcast looks at Small Business Leadership. Your team will perform better with better Leadership, but for many small business owners, they never get any formal training in Leadership.  What is it and how do you do it? Check out our show notes for more details on this podcast.

Comms is one of the big tech disruptors in Small Business - have a listen to our latest podcast and get some ideas about how you can drive growth in your business with better communications. Check out our show notes for more details on this podcast.  

I recently received a scary email involving my PORN BROWSING HABITS!?!?  The email threatened me with everyone in my contacts getting a picture of me along with my browsing habits.  WHAT SHOULD I DO? We break down what these email means and how they can start to generate emails that can be really scary and fool people into paying Bitcoin with these emails. One step in looking at these emails is Have I Been Pwned. This shows you some of the passwords that have been breached. There are 3 layers of defence that youcan use to protect your email. Firstly, a cloud based email system will check for viruses, malware and phishing emails.  This means that dodgy emails don't even get to your network. Secondly, a firewall that also checks for viruses and malware.  A great firewall means that a lot less viruses and malware emails will get into your network. Lastly, make sure you have a decent antivirus system.  We use and recommend Webroot.  We would be protecting thousands of desktops, servers and laptops with Webroot. These technologies work well and can dramatically decrease the number of issues that you will have, but they don't stop all of them. We discuss some of the impacts of these emails, loss of productivity, loss of profit, but also the impact on the person who has clicked on a link that they shouldn't have. We created a video with 7 real life examples that I have received in my inbox and we discuss the tricks of the trade to learn if an email is legitimate or not. We also have a system that sends a phishing email to our customers which records who clicks on it and who doesn't and for those that do, they are sent to a web page that goes through some of the training to ensure that they are better equipped to avoid clicking on those nasty emails. If you do click on an email, turn the PC off immediately and call your IT support.  Depending on the type of email, the quicker you act, the less the impact will be. When in don't call the sender and verify the email. Lastly, ensure that you have proper back ups and that they have been tested.  You need to have confidence with your back ups. If you liked todays Podcast, please rate it and leave a review on iTunes. Don't forget to visit the http://suntzu4smallbusiness.com website and Join the Sun Tzu Army to get the latest tips on building a fast growing company.

Firstly we looked at some of the equipment we use for doing our podcasts. We use the Audio-Technica ATR - 2100 USB.  This is a great directional microphone that cuts down  Mackie 802 VLZ4 - We use this mixer to be able to do a mix minus setup to be able to record Skype interviews.  It is a little technical and I am no expert in it, but I tried software like Pamela recording and it didn't produce great audio quality.  We have 2 sound cards in my PC and I find the call quality is a lot better now. Audacity is the software that we use to record our podcasts.  It is great software and best of all it is free. We use Libsyn for our podcast hosting.  These guys do a great job of the hosting and statistics that we need to see how many people are downloading the podcast. We then discuss itunes podcast connect statistics.  The iTunes data covers only some of your listeners, but it gives you some very powerful statistics that you can use to understand what your listeners are interested in. The iTunes podcasts statistics are really important.  It shows how much of a big deal it is to get your Apple listeners to subscribe to your podcast and it gives you the amount of time that each person has listened to each episode.  This gives you feedback about how interesting it is for each of your listeners. We then talk about Castbox.  This is an app that gives you rough indications of comparative analytics because you can see the data from all of the podcasts out there.  In general, 2% of listens are on Castbox, so it is a rough indication of how popular your podcast is.  One important thing to remember is that iTunes is country specific as opposed to Castbox which is total audience.  We see this with Podcasts that may have a large global audience which does not rate well in iTunes because, for example, Secret Sauce has listeners around the world, so we don't often appear in the Top 100 podcasts because that looks at listens in just 1 country. If you liked todays Podcast, please rate it and leave a review on iTunes. Don't forget to visit the http://suntzu4smallbusiness.com website and Join the Sun Tzu Army to get the latest tips on building a fast growing company.

It can be really difficult to understand how effective your podcast is going.  Podcast statistics are a bit of an arcane art, and it is difficult to understand the relative difference in downloads between podcasts and also there are some great ways that you can find out which parts of your podcast resonate with your audience. We look at what you can find out about your podcast from iTunes.  How important is it to get into the new and noteworthy podcasts?  What about Whats Hot? How about getting into the Top Podcasts in iTunes.  What is the algorithm that Apple uses to create these rankings?   How important are ratings?   Libsyn statistics - what can you learn from your hosting provider?  How does Spotify impact your Libsyn statistics? What does the breakdown of geography for your podcast mean?  How can this help you with the marketing for your podcast? How important is the title of your podcast and how can it help you to create content that is more interesting and compelling for your podcast audience? Have a listen to The Feed - a podcast by Rob Walch and Elsie Escobar.  They often update the stats that Libsyn see.  We use Libsyn for all of our podcasts, like many, many, many podcasters do and so they have some access to very cool statistics for podcasts. f you liked todays Podcast, please rate it and leave a review on iTunes. Don't forget to visit the http://suntzu4smallbusiness.com website and Join the Sun Tzu Army to get the latest tips on building a fast growing company.    

Steve Hui, the Points Whisperer, is the owner of I fly flat.   We talk about what the tricks are to using points in your business to be able to fly business class.  Business owners have a huge advantage when it comes to Frequent Flyer Points.   We recently talked about "How to take a holiday as a business owner."  I think it is really important to travel, partially to unwind and destress from your business and partially to be inspired and be more creative in the strategy and tactics that you have in your business.  If you are going to travel, you might as well travel in style! There are a lot of ways that you can maximise the points that you have available to you, as well as some traps to avoid. One of the big mistakes that we were making was that our main credit card was limited to 3,000 points per month.  We applied for a card that was uncapped, which has dramatically increased the number of points that we have been able to accrue. What is the value of a points upgrade and what is the best way to spend them? Have a think about how much you have going through your credit cards.  Can you increase that amount?  It is really important to make sure that you are paying off your credit cards every month, otherwise those points that you accrue are really expensive. Some credit cards will allow you earn points on government payments, like tax bills.  This can dramatically increase the points that you earn. As a business owner, flying Business Class is pretty important because: It allows you to work a lot easier while flying. It allows you to land refreshed after the flight and adjust to the time zone a lot quicker. You deserve it! I have been lucky to fly Qantas business class a few times now and it is a very civilised way to travel and I find I am very productive when relaxing in the nice comfy seat, a glass a whisky and the Laptop set up.  There are no distractions from the internet or the phone and I can concentrate on the big strategic questions in our businesses. I was recently able to reach Platinum with Qantas and one of the great advantages is access to Platinum lounges.  These are a fantastic experience, a great place to relax and do a little work. Keep an eye out for the best credit cards and the Double Status credits promotions that airlines run.  These can make a big difference to the way that you travel. Contact Steve at I Fly Flat for more information on how to fly like a boss! Don't forget to send us a photo of you on holidays if you've used any tips from the podcast to take a holiday!

Meeting effectiveness is a problem in businesses large and small so we tried a new approach to improve the productivity to come out of our meetings. We look at Slack.  This is an awesome communications tool, which has a free plan (that is the plan we use).  It helps decrease our huddle meeting time, provides an easy way to get information quickly and bring the team closer.  It is especially important when you are building teams in different locations. We detailed in experience with the Amazon 6 pager memo before, and we included a sample of the memo that we've used in one of our meetings. The big issue with the 6 pager memo is the creation of the memo.  The amount of work in creating the memo is not a small task and a lot of work and skill is required in creating the memo.  The memo was 2,700 words in length and a lot of time and effort, along with research was required to create the memo. We found that the memo format was great from the point of view of getting input from everyone.  All of the team members contributed and some of the insights and ideas came from team members who usually don't speak a lot in meetings.  For a cross functional team point of view, this was really important. We released the memo at the start of the meeting and gave everyone 30 minutes to read the memo.  This meant that everyone read it all and understood what was required from them in the meeting.   We discovered some of team had differing levels of insight into the problem.   We had 13 people in the team and the meeting went for 2.5 hours.  We had a lot of insights that we normally don't have from our meetings and there was a lot of insights as well that were more useful than we normally get.  The challenge would be getting other people with the capabilities to write the memo.  There is probably 8 hours or more involved in writing the memo.  The number of people in the meeting was too many and that is why the meeting took so long.  We had a lot of great action items coming out of the meeting, so we started putting those action items into the  Our quote for the episode is from Carl von Clausewitz.  "Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is very difficult."  That sounds exactly like running a small business!

Creating bespoke software for your small business has never been easier or cheaper than it is today and it can make a fundamental difference to the productivity and profitability of your business. We look at Google Analytics.  Do you know how to use Google Analytics?  It tells you some key metrics for your website. Most small business websites get around 500 to 1,000 visits a month.  Where are they coming from?  What are they looking for?  Is the site mobile optimised?  What content do they look at? For App Dev, we use a cut down version of agile development.  We look to build a series of minimum viable products.  This is something that you can get in front of customers. We look at inputs, outputs and processes. Inputs.  How does information get in? Outputs.  How is information displayed in the app?  What are the reports? Processes.  What are the business processes in the application. We like to think about these for long enough so that people really understand the inputs/outputs and processes for an app.  We will often do this on butcher's paper, or in excel.  These are easy to do and through away as you realise that you have made a mistake. The more time that you spend with this before coding, the cheaper the application will be to make and the quicker it will be to create. Applications can be great at bringing together silos of data and cutting down on double and triple handling of data.  I hate human interaction with data because it can introduce human errors into the system.  Apps can make these processes in your business faster and more accurate.   We talk about getting the data that you have in your business and creating data Komodos.   We discuss the agile manifesto and how it works with application development and the minimum viable product. The application development process is often a journey and building smaller iterations enables an organisation to learn during the process and this makes a better final product.  

If you can work for 1 or 2 hours a day every couple of days, you can spend a lot longer away from your business. We look at the technologies that we have within our companies so that we can work from anywhere, anytime. Firstly, with have a Microsoft Windows Terminal Server.  That gives us access to our accounting system, internal files, and all of our internal applications. Confluence - confluence is remotely available which means that we can access workflows and projects. We used to use Skype all the time, but a lot of our comms now is done through Zoom.   Slack - This cuts down on emails, and enables us to have conversations.  It may be between 1 person or between a team.  We have a HotLeads channel which our sales and marketing team work in.  We have built workflows within the teams around slack communication. IP Cameras - some of our customers use their cameras to monitor their staff.  There are privacy issues that need to be worked through and it can be really useful for some companies to be able to see what people are doing in the company. Telstra Roaming.  This is a really good way to get access in the countries that you are travelling in.  We visited 5 countries on our holiday, and we were able to get data in every country.  This meant we could get an Uber or a Grab very easily.  Google maps worked and we had access to emails. Digital Dashboards - these give us the ability to monitor progress for the team, some of it in real time.  This enhances accountability, performance and execution. Power BI.  We use Microsoft Power BI to grab data out of some of our line of business applications and present it to the team.  Everyone has access to it and we it really helps us to drive performance. These technologies underpin our 3P Approach to taking a holiday.  Process, Profits and People.  Get these 3 right and you can take a holiday.  Set the goal to take a holiday and work on the 3Ps so that you can take the holiday that you always wanted to. :)  

We discuss why it is important for business owners to take a holiday. It is pretty important for you to get out of the business to recharge your batteries and make sure that you aren't burning out.  It is also important to get out of the business to reflect on the business. What do you need to do in your business to be able to take a holiday? We look at People, Processes and Profit.  The 3Ps for holidays for small business owners. Profit - you need the money to pay for the holiday and to be able to take time out of the business. People - you need great people able to run the company while you are away. Processes - the key tasks are clearly documented so that they can be done without the owners input. Quote - Winston Churchill "It is no use saying we are doing our best.  you have got to succeed in doing what is necessary."

Call routing has made it a lot easier for small business to be able to offshore. Logitech Web cams - we talk about the C930 webcam.  This is a really cool and simple piece of tech that I use for video conferencing as well as the Facebook lives that I do.  It natively supports green screen which is pretty cool.  Webcams make a big difference when you are teleconferencing and this one works really well. Everyone should look at offshoring - it isn't right for everyone, but everyone should have a look it. Most companies are offshoring now, it is just whether they are a primary or secondary offshoring.  Secondary offshoring is where you use a company that is offshoring.  Primary offshoring is where you directly control a person or team offshore. Benefits: Decreased costs. Flexible workplace laws. Flexibility to scale up your team. Well trained work force. We have found that in the Philippines we have found the best English language skills and that is why we have focused on hiring there. Concerns: Customer service. Data sovereignty.   Control of your staff. We look at the processes that we have move to the Philippines. We talk about what it was that has driven us to start offshoring and the issues that can occur when you run a Small Business in Australia and how offshoring can mitigate some of those risks. Quote:  Suvorov - Train Hard, Fight Easy.      

In Tech Focus we look at Microsoft Power BI.  We have been using Power BI to pull information from line of business application.  At Extreme we can see who has been entering their timesheets, who has been working with which customers and what billings each engineer has.  This updates in real time and display it on one of our monitors that is mounted on the wall.  This means that everyone can see how the team and each individual is performing. We look at the processes we use for both developing applications internal and for our customers.  The costs of software development have dramatically decreased and enable completely different business models to thrive because investments are so much lower. The process involves: Off the shelf vs custom built - Of the shelf is generally cheaper but it will have functionality for a whole range of business and some of your business process will need to change to match the off the shelf software.  Custom built or bespoke software will match exactly your business processes. Phone apps - are they worth the effort.  A lot of consumers have app fatigue.  They may find it in the appstore and install it, but a lot of apps get used once and the app is never opened again. Middleware - Breaking down the silos between your databases.  Your customer database, marketing database, financial database.  It can be very power taking data from one type of software and putting it into another. Business Process apps - taking the way that you run your business and putting it in the app.  This automates things, cuts down on user error and allows for automatic reporting.  These are some of the most powerful apps that small businesses build.  If you have great processes, you can sell your application with your IP.  For a plumber, they may service a 25km radius.  If you sell plumbing company software, it could be a global opportunity. Failure in app development. Not being sure of what you want or what your business processes are. Look at the track record of your developer.  They should have shipped decent sized processes.  We have built a booking system for Restaurants that is used in 11 countries and taken over $25,000,000 in bookings.  That gives our customers a bit more confidence that we can do what we are saying we can do. Make sure the application is made by a team, business analysis, design and development. Who can build the application for you: Fiverr - get a dev for just the process. Insource a developer - hire them for your team.  If you have only 1 developer and little experience in app dev, it is hard to manage your application development team. Hire a development team.  Either onshore or offshored, get the skills and the resources you need for the project. Look at the risk and the size of the project to see which path is right for you.  If your company relies heavily on IT it might be worthwhile to building a team. App Dev can help you to fundamentally change the way that you work and the profitability of your company. Some companies develop software and end up making more money by selling their application than out of their original business. It is a great way of monetising your intellectual property. Quote - Patton - Never tell people how to do things  Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

    In Tech Focus we look at our new Acer Acer Veriton M6640G.  Straight out of the box it supports the 4 monitors that I need to drive.  Pretty much silent and driven by a super power Core i7 CPU bringing a lot more power for the video editing and other work that I do. Public Relations - we look at some strategies that you can use to work better with journalists to help get some public relations.   Redefining your marketing strategy.  We think IT services are boring and hard to market, so we market different things that we do.  We talk about how you can redefine the stories that you tell potential customers.  We use Ice Cream trucks, Ferraris and drones as a part of the way that we have redefined our story. We talk about ways you can market your business in 2018 - you could do a podcast.  That is a lot of effort, but the next speed back is Facebook Live video.  It is live and scary.   Facebook advertising - We using targeting to create really tightly targeted ads.  It can be very powerful in reaching the right people. SEO and your website.  Google Analytics makes SEO a lot easier than it ever used to be.  We discuss the secret to SEO and why you really need to understand it and how you can use it to your benefit. Networking - Old fashioned network in conjunction with your new exciting online methods can make a big difference.  It reinforces what people have seen online and gives them an opportunity to talk to you.  We use Social Media as a conversation starter as well as one trick I use to stand out in a crowd.   Marketing Automation - We look at automatic ways that you can do online marketing. This is really powerful because it is marketing that happens 24 hours a day without any work for you.  What data do you have and how are you surfacing that with your customers? Test and Measure your marketing.  You can learn so much just by looking at reports in Facebook and Google Analytics about your customers.  This makes it a lot easier to craft a story that resonates with prospects. We finish with a quote from Jim Barksdale.  If we have data, let's look at the data.  If all we have is opinions, let's go with mine.  

We look at modern marketing and some of the tactics that we have used to be able to grow our business. In Tech Focus, we look at my new Acer Great Wall of Data.  I've put 4 x 27" Acer monitors, with a special monitor stand.  This has enabled me to create content a lot quicker because I can not only have multiple windows open, but I can see the windows I need with the information that I need.  It is also great for customer meetings, being able to have all the data that we are talking about at the one time. When we started this podcast we had 15 staff and we have now just hit 25 people.  How have we been able to scale this business?  One part of that is finding the new customers to allow us to scale up.  There are a lot of tools available these days, but a lot of Small Business Owners are running 'boring' businesses.  I view Extreme as one of those.  A boring IT business which people don't want to see in their Facebook feed, so what kind of marketing is it that we have done. Yellow Pages is dead now, (well practically dead.)  We used to spend $19,000 a year on Yellow Pages advertising, but it slowly started to become less effective.  Business owners have had to work a lot harder to work out how you can market and scale your business.  Too many now rely on Word of Mouth marketing, but this doesn't scale and it can't be controlled by you, you can't double the number of word of mouth leads a month. We talk about the interesting ways that you can tell the story of what you do and how you tell that story. We created a video using Prism images.  The video was then posted on Facebook and we ran an add to it.  This went really well. We also use time lapse images.  Time Lapse can make a lot of boring stuff look really interesting.  We've done this with training seminars, our new sign being put up and even just the sign rising! We like to tell the story of our customers.  Too many businesses have a lot of great customers, but don't tell prospective customers about those customers.  When you talk about your customers Your suppliers.  Too many people look down the value chain at their customers and ignore their suppliers.  We got a new sign and tagged the guys at Signarama Frankston in on that.  We created a time lapse video with a Go Pro.  This was then shared by the the sign company and increased greater traction with the marketing. The next thing to do is to create conversions with your customers about topics that they want to have.  We talk to prospective customers about our online marketing skills.  (We don't do a lot of marketing for our customers, most of our marketing team specialises in marketing for us, but we share the insights we have, mistakes we've made and wins that we've had and that creates that first conversion with our customers.  It is a lot easier than trying to talk about disaster recovery or server upgrades. W Edwards Demings quote - "In God we trust, everyone else bring data."      

In Tech Focus we look at Trello.  This is a great piece of freemium software, that helps you to keep track of your goals. For annual business planning we look at the process that we use. We look at the plan that we had for the last year and how we did with those. We look at the problems within each company within the group and we also look at the 5 year plan and where are we with that?  (How long does it take to execute a 5 year plan?) We look at the process for setting KPIs and goals within the company. We look at how to integrate those with your personal goals.  The personal goals are really important in the business plan, because as the business owner, you will normally be working harder with more stress - if you don't align your business and personal goals, you will burn out a lot quicker. We look at your 90 day goals, how they work with your plans and how to come up with them. Alignment with your team and your culture - these make the plans a lot easier to execute on. Our quote from Verne Harnish, the author of the Rockefeller Habits: "The main thing is to keep the main thing, the Main Thing.  

    In Tech Focus, we talk about Zoom.  Zoom is the tool that we use for our Teams to communicate.  We have found it to be more reliable than Skype and a better tool to communicate with less of the hassles. We introduce you to the Business Model Canvas.  This is a really neat tool to help you visualise the way that your business can grow and interact with the other parts of the business ecosystem.  Overlay this with the new technology that you have coming out in your industry and you can have a really powerful way to change the way that you do business and maybe even create some disruption. Before you start with this - the challenge is to open your minds and get rid of all of the sacred cows that you have in the way that you think about your business. As far as the BMC goes, we look at Customers.  Who are your customers and we look at a case study where a big company completely missed the understanding of who their customers where. What sort of Channels do you have for your business?   What are your customer relationships like?  How do you cut costs?  How do you increase value? What are the revenue streams that you have?  How are they structured and are you maximising the revenue that you can make. A great quote from General George S Patton Jr - "A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week."  We talk about how important it is for us in executing on our business plan.

Nick Sarillo is an expert in building a great culture.  He run's Nick's Pizza and Pub in Chicago.  It is America's third largest independent pizza Restaurant. Nick was a building by trade (he built the restaurant!) and he has taken the skills from his building business in managing a team across to his Pizza business.  Nick is an expert in building culture.  I was lucky enough to eat at Nick's and it is a great experience.  His staff have a very low turnover, love working at the Restaurant, truly believe in the values of the business. Nick practices open book accounting.  Unlike a lot of businesses that talk about it, Nick really does do it.  I've seen it!  I have seen the P+L up on the wall for all to see. Have a listen to this podcast and have a think about your approach to hiring and managing a team.   In Tech Focus, we look at Canva, a great tool to help you put text and create Social Media content quickly and easily. We finish off with a quote from Sun Tzu.

We look at building a KPI dashboard and displaying them with the 4K Kogan TVs. In this episode, we interview Ray Strongman, who is a business coach and is an expert on DISC profiling.  Ray has been doing DISC training for years and does the DISC training for our customers. We use DISC profiling to help with communication and performance within team and also use it to help with the way that we communicate with our customers. We discuss what it is and how you can use it too in your team.  Even if you don't have employees, this will help with your customers and suppliers. We talk about how we have implemented DISC profiling in our hiring processes. We also discuss the relationship between Wonder Woman and DISC profiling - who knew! We also look at one of Winston Churchilll's most important quotes and how it relates to your business.  

We talk about Culture and I go through the huge mistake that I made at Extreme Networks by not focusing on growing a great culture at the company.  Our company was going along brilliantly, was featured in the BRW Fast 100.  After that, I defocused and my laissez faire leadership style meant that stronger personalities in the team were able to mould the culture of our company.  Customer feedback was really bad and I got to the point where I didn't want to go to work.  Poor culture makes it harder to bring in great team members, harder to retain them, harder to retain great staff, so getting the culture right is critical to growing your small business. In Tech Focus we talk about Wordpress.  For 99% of small businesses, Wordpress is perfect for their website.  We look at why you should be using Wordpress for your website and more importantly, why YOU as a business owner should be able to use your Wordpress website. We talk about how Wordpress compares with Wix and why Wix may not be great for your business. We talk about King Leonidas and his great quote from Thermopylae and why he said, "Then we will fight in the shade".  Tina and I often say this when we have a bad day at the office.  

The two top tools that I use to cut the time I spend on Facebook marketing are Facebook Pages Manager and Ads Manager.  We look at what they are and how you can use these powerful tools to conduct great marketing on your phone. Hiring can be a huge gamble so in this Podcast we discuss some of the mistakes that we have made, and how we have evolved our processes to increase the chances of hiring the right person for your company. There are two mistakes you can make when hiring - Hiring the wrong person and not hiring the right person.  How can you minimise these mistakes. We talk about the importance of Reference checking.  This scary story about how reference checking saved us from making a terrible mistake. Reference check!!! Hire slowly, Fire quickly.  We discuss this great quote and how we have evolved to practice this philosophy.  

Tech Focus - Prisma - This is an amazing app that allows you to create some great images from your photos.  Check out the video we've made using Camtasia and Prisma to build a very effective social media video. https://www.facebook.com/veryextremenetworks/ What are the goals in your business?  Do you have them written down?  Should you? We look at how goal setting can make a big difference in your company. We break down how we use goals within our company and how they have helped us to increase revenue. How does a 5 year goal articulate with your annual, quarterly and weekly goals and how does that drive your business. We look at SMART Goals Specific Measurable Assignable Realistic Time Based I discuss the work of Ivy Lee and the work that he did at Bethlehem Steel for Charles M Scwab.  Schwab paid him the equivalent of $400,000.  What was that advice and how did it change his company. We look at Dwight D Eisenhowers quote "Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."

Tech Focus:  We look at GoPros and how you can use them in your business - we use them in our IT business to grow our business.  We discuss how to use them in how you market your business and it can help to market boring companies IT companies and other professional services business. Culture starts from hiring and moves through reviews, daily routines and all the way through to firing.  How do you embed your culture into the hiring process? Where does culture fit in with your BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal), Mission, Values, 5 Year Plan, Annual plan all the way through to daily routines. What is the intersection between technology and culture?  How can technology help you to grow your culture. How can you use your culture to help create alignment in your organisation?  How does it fit into rewards and bonuses with your team? We talk about a powerful story about a janitor and how we related his job to the mission of his employer  and what his part in that mission was. We look at one interesting way that the Army uses to build a really strong culture. Have you read the eMyth?  That is the first step in migrating from worker to leader in your business. What is the role of the leader in building a culture. Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.  

Tech Focus: We look at Confluence.  Some great software, written by Atlassian, that enables team to create, store and discussion information. 1.  Self Driving Cars.  The changes in Road injury and death, as well as better road usage will mean that the introduction of self driving cars will be a lot quicker than many people expect.  Uber has already started with self driving cars on the vehicles. 2. Marketing.  Small Business owners now have access to the kind of marketing tools that only companies like Coke had access to 10 years ago.  By harnessing these tools, you can dramatically grow your company a lot quicker. 3.  Software as a Service.  Office 365, Xero and a range of other software packages are now available for a (sometimes low) monthly fee.  This great expands the types of software you can use and the price you pay for it. 3.  Automation.  There are a lot of amazing software solutions that are now available, making it a lot easier for small businesses to dramatically increase productivity.  We use Ontraport, and detail the powerful marketing campaigns that can be automated using software like this. 5.  Drones.  Drone deliveries are going to make big difference for local small businesses.  Dominoes has already tested drone delivery and it will arrive very quickly. 6.  Big Data.  What is Big Data and how did Target use it to identify women in the first trimester of pregnancy.  What does this mean for small business owners and how can you harness the power of big data? 7.  Internet of Things.  How will your industry be affected by the Internet of Things?  What are the risks and what are the opportunities? We look at a great Sun Tzu that will enable you to win every one of a hundred battles that you my face.