Latest / Smart Business Growth with Nicky Miklós / From Roadblocks to Opportunities: Insights from Michelle Gregory's 20 Years in Business

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From Roadblocks to Opportunities: Insights from Michelle Gregory's 20 Years in Business · Smart Business Growth with Nicky Miklós

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Thrive in Business Together with Nikki and Ness.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: We would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of country, the Yagara and Bannerong people of Brisbane and Melbourne respectively, where Nikki and I both work and live.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Hello beautiful listeners.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Nick, I often get excited about the amazing guest speakers that we have to join us on this podcast.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Today is no different, because I am looking at right now we have got on our body this week one of my most favorite business women that I have ever met, michelle.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: That's you, michelle Gregory, now Michelle.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: You've heard a little bit about Michelle, but one of the reasons we wanted to invite her along today to be able to chat with us and give you and us some really great pearls of wisdom and insights into business is because it's no main feat, it's not a small thing to have a business celebrating early 20 years, 20 plus years in business.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Let's just pause for a moment around that.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's just acknowledge that.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Well, there's so many stats out there that talk about the success rates of business.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Ness and I have been in business going on nine years and oh my gosh, the ups and downs and all the things that go along with it.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: That's why it was a no brainer to invite Michelle along.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Even just before we clicked record, we were joking about the great conversations that happened.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Before we hit record, michelle started to talk about even the life cycles of business versus having children the life cycles of children.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: I'm excited to see where this conversation would go.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Michelle, I'm going to hand over to you.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: I think what I'd love to know and what I'd love for you to share with our listeners throughout this conversation is just some insights on the biggest lessons that you've learned, or tips that you would say for us relative newbies in comparison to your business experience and success.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Even just in that intro, is there anything that came up for you as to where we can start this question Insights?
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: wisdom tips Over to you.
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: Thanks, nikki and Ness, thanks for the invitation to have me on.
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: Do you know what actually came up for me when you said 20 years and you said let's just have a minute there?
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: I sighed, I deep breath in and ah, because it is a thing to be celebrated and it is a thing to look back on.
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: But also, when we look back and we look back at where we started and where we are now, it is something that really is overwhelming when you try and contract it into a short space of time, because what I would say is I don't think we ever imagined that we would be quite where we are.
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: So a little bit of background about our business to start that off.
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: We sell branded merchandise, so we create great merch that connects companies to their people, whether they be internal or external.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: That amplifies their brand and if we do it well, we actually think we can do this with an environmental and with a planet in mind, so with a sustainability focus.
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: We're an online business.
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: That was a conscious decision right back at the start, but really, when we started it, I've heard that Phil Knight from Nike used to talk about oh, we'd sell the shoes out of the back of his car and one day he would own a real business.
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: They did this on the side while to learn, and then one day they would own a real business.
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: And, strangely, that's what my husband thought as well when he started the business I'll just do this, I'll learn a bit about business and then one day I'll start a real business.
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: And that side hustle, that thing grew and became a real business.
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: And I don't think we can, particularly if we're starting out on our own and we're not necessarily looking for partnerships and venture capitalists and people that are going to bring a lot to us, and I think some of us we don't start out thinking that we'll have a team of nearly 35 people between Australia and the Philippines that will and everything that entails.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: So that's one of the really big things in that the vision at the start and when you that's why I saw it when you look back, it's as well.
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: I didn't expect.
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: This is the first thing I would say, which I suppose comes down to the.
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: But what I do believe is that you do dream forward.
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: You do dream forward, you do plan forward and I call it.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: You put that next master across the horizon.
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: You can't really see it yet and you think so, if I take that back to Douglas was very determined that we would have a website, and this was our website.
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: There's a great thing on the internet called the Wayback Machine, so you can go and put a website address in there and you can see how long Google's been searching it.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: Our website first comes up on that in around 2005, 2007, somewhere in that window.
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: So we didn't.
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: We knew Google was important.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: You know, seo was just becoming a thing, all of that stuff.
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: It was important to us to have a website.
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: That was the master across the horizon.
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: And then it's the learning on the way.
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: How do we, how are we going to build?
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: It's the incremental little steps of so we want it to have products on it.
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: What do we want to call those products?
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: How are people going to find us if we do that?
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: And slowly that vision becomes larger and larger and bigger.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: As you're talking there, michelle.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: It reminds me of this.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: The great analogy around my brother does long distance walking, so people walk from Wahala in Victoria to Canberra.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: Oh wow yeah, we're talking very smelly.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: By the end of the trip you don't want to be in the car picking them up.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: But, I remember for his, his 40th birthday, he took us all up to Mount Hotham because that's where they often like to stay they do have an overnighter there and he took us to this like a little walk that we went up a hill which I was huffing and puffing by the end of it, like 30 minutes in.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: And he just pointed off to the left-hand side and he said as far as you can see into the distance, plus another week, that's Wahala.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: And then he pointed off in the other direction and he said as far as you can see into the distance, plus another I can't remember three weeks that's Canberra.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: And I remember almost having a meltdown at the thought of oh my God, imagine the blisters and the uncomfortable sleeping and the.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: And then I had to stop and remind myself actually you don't get here at this point without a lot of preparation, a lot of planning, the vision of where you're going to.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: It's the step, one, step after the other.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: And it got me thinking around something I'd heard early in my business, which is you cannot solve the problem Like we're trying to solve the problem at year eight in business when we year one in business.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: So I can imagine for you it's that whole.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: We want to get a website.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: Oh my God, I don't even know what hosting platform to put it on.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: Hang on a minute, let's just bring it right back.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: Let's just solve the next problem.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: Let's just take one step on this six week journey and then we will learn and understand what the next step is going to entail.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: And then the one after that, the idea of the vision in the future that my brother and his partner did not just rock up one day with new runners from Nike going.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: I'm going to do a six week hike.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: It's all the steps in preparation to get us to where we want to be.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: We just got to have a sense of direction, right?
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: I can't agree more with that.
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: And I like to hike as well.
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: Nikki and I have talked about because she's embarked on or is starting to embark on some of that as well, and hiking, and particularly hills.
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: I like your hill analogy.
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: Hills are hard and it doesn't.
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: They never get easy.
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: That's the truth in the matter.
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: But eventually you do get there and you do get there one step at a time.
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: And that's exactly the same thing within business.
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: You do get there.
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: It might be messy and hard and they might be swearing on the way, they might be vomit in the mouth, there might be tantrums, there's all of those things, but you do get to a point and then you look back and think, wow, I've done it and I learned a little bit on the way which you then store.
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: It becomes part of to carry on that analogy.
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: That goes into the toolkit, in the backpack or and you then pull it out for next time and it also gives you that confidence to think.
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: And again, the hill analogy.
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: You look then across at the next peak and you think, if I've got here, I can probably get to there.
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: And we like, but here's the tricky part we like to jump to there.
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: We forget that usually we've got to come down that hill.
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: And if you do hike and your brother might tell you, coming down a hill is actually harder than going up a hill.
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: So coming down and coming off and you're thinking I should be loving, this should be the easy bit.
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: Coming down that part is hard and then you go through a bit of a and then you start to go up again and the same things happen.
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: So it's exactly the same for all of our challenges in business, all of those little things that appear that and you do have to take them one like, one part at a time.
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: One day you'll need people, but there's no point having an employment contract ready for the people that you're going to employ in so many years time, because the laws change.
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: There's, there's lots of great software and platforms and things out there, but if you're not ready to use them, it's just an expense that you don't need.
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: So I would say, be that that's one of the other things is be very conscious in an intentional, in the choices that you make.
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: And that's actually one of the values that we have in our business is that we communicate and we act with intent.
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: So that means that we've made a decision and that's what we're going to stand by or act towards, and sometimes that decision is actually not to do anything right now.
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: Let's be clear that there's not always should we do X or Y, sometimes that we need to stay where we are at the moment and evaluate for a little bit more.
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: Sometimes a white is the right decision to make and I think for a lot of people to bring up the dreaded COVID again.
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: When COVID first came in to the world, a lot of people ourselves included we were looking and we were making decisions and thinking what do we do here?
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: Do we lay people off?
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: Do we keep people?
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: We?
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: A serious decision that we actually consciously looked at was what amount of expenditure are we prepared to make to keep the business going?
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: And if it goes beyond that point, we will close.
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: So we evaluated all of that.
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: We had these questions and then it became okay.
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: What we need to do now is wait.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: Let's see how this COVID plays out, and for us it was one quarter.
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: That was really difficult.
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: So it happened in the March, through April, then the July.
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: Sorry, someone's trying to see me.
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: I can't see that.
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: Dom, I've got a message.
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: What would you like for lunch?
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: I think it says I'm all good, thank you.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: You don't need to do that.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: No conversations, real life.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Food's important also yeah.
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: So I think that is an example of where we'd done some planning, but then it was a watch and wait, and then it's okay.
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: Now we've got new information with some more time, now we make different decisions.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: So that's, I think, and that's the important of having the longer term vision.
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: Where do we wanna go?
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: Can we do, do we have to act now?
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but this wait is still a step on that way, and there we go, and it's like we said it.
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: Nikki, you asked last time we were at a dinner what's one of the most important things we've learned over years in business, and I think I said this too shall pass.
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: A new decision point comes up you can't wallow for too long.
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: We get things wrong, but we can't wallow.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's a real sense of like it's not rushing.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Calm maybe the right word.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: It may not be, I'm sure that there's moments where it's not calm, but it's this.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: I think there's a tendency, when we're feeling stressed or worried or anxious about the future, we're trying to solve the problems that haven't even happened yet that we're creating in our mind, and then there's a panic.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: And then the panic there's decisions that are made that are potentially not great decisions, and even it's the power in the pause is what I'm hearing To be able to stop, to be able to just go.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: Actually, everything in my body may be saying go, rush, change, but just hold.
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: Just hold.
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: We had a completely different example of that the other day.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: My husband and I were.
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: We bought a beach house.
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: It's got really narrow stairs in it.
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: We bought a fridge to put into the beach house.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: But we got there and were like, oh my God, this is gonna be a logistical nightmare to get this thing up here.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: So we left it sit on the floor overnight.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: The next morning we got up, we looked at it, we measured this and my husband is very much, as he always says, get rubber on the road.
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: He's a rubber on the road type of person which is a great driver within business.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: And I'm more deliberative, I'm more.
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: Let's look at this.
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: Another analogy would be IKEA furniture.
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: He's tipped out and start build.
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: I'm.
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: Can we have a look and make sure we've got everything?
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: Can we read the instructions?
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: He's meanwhile wanting to shoot me.
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: I'm wanting to shoot him because this is going on and then if we were to have a competition chances, I would finish it about the same time.
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, doing these things.
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: And back to the fridge story.
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: What we did was we looked at it a bit more in the morning.
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: We had a bit of a hum, hum, hum, hum.
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: Then we went for a walk on the beach, then we had breakfast.
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: Then we came home Then we were like I think this is what we need to do.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: Without a hitch, more remarkably, without a fight.
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: Well, that's another example of sometimes you slow down, to speed up, to get through.
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Yes, and even if we bring the also just side note, I can't believe you bought a long distance walking, aka hiking analogy to this conversation, because Michelle and I have had many conversations around these, so that was like wow, amazing.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: The other way I look at that as well is thinking you can look at that next peak and we don't know what the ground is going to be like.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: We don't know the storms that we'll have to weather.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Well, we won't know.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: There's going to be times where you do have to push a little harder or knowing when to pull back or when to hold and take cover, and sometimes we get it wrong, and that's okay, and it's not about that, because that's going to happen.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: Let's face it.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's going to happen.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: How do we respond to that?
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, are you stuck in the busy trap or on Juggle Street, being all things to all people despite having a team?
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: Or perhaps your business is feeling chaotic?
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: Do the mini business health check to get 10 strategies in under 10 minutes so you can get time, freedom back, experience peak performance and finally leverage smart growth in your business.
• 16:19
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• 16:27
  Speaker 1: Email us at hello at businesstogethercomau, and we'll set up a time to chat.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: So I would love to know then, with this in mind, with this knowing when to push, when to pull back, the power of the pause.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: I love that you went for a beach walk.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: The fridge analogy is so perfect.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: How do you know what's your thoughts around, or insights around?
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: How do you intuitively or is it intuitively know, how do we know when to push and how do we know when to pause?
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: It's really interesting because sometimes, sometimes, there is an instinct in it.
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: But one of the best ways that I like to look at it too is if we look at a decision, it's not pros and cons, it is.
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: It's what's the?
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: What are the outcomes here?
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: Positive or negative?
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: And if we make that decision, this is what could happen.
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: If we make another decision, this is what could happen.
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: And it really comes down to there's going to be some downside.
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: There usually is some downside for most things and it's about saying then, am I prepared to accept that downside?
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: Which downside do I want to accept more?
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: Or is this upside more than compensates for that downside?
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: And then, once we're comfortable with that, it's okay, we've got everything in a row, let's it's time to move.
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: We have to do something so different to go on another, I'd like to tell lots of stories.
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: When we decided a number of years back to move overseas for 12 months, we had it was 2016, we decided in 2015.
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: Or we had this silly idea of what would happen if we wanted to go and live overseas.
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: We think we might do it.
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: And then, of course, the brain says, no, that's ridiculous, you can't do that.
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: You've got a business, you've got kids, you've got that.
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: All of it starts to list the things.
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: And so what we did with that was we said, okay, what we, what's smart to do here, is to find the absolute.
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: We agree, it's a silly idea.
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: You don't take your kids out of school and leave your business for 12 months.
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: That's absolutely ridiculous.
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: So let's go and find the big roadblock that's gonna stop us, because at some point later we're gonna look back and say I wonder if we'd done that and if we can say do you know what?
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: It wasn't possible because we couldn't get a visa or we couldn't run the business, or we couldn't get the kids into, whatever it was gonna be.
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: Once we found that big roadblock that was insurmountable, we could say, excellent, we don't need to do it.
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: Well, every potential roadblock fell away.
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: And so then you're left with you have to do.
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: You've put this, you have to do this now or you don't.
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: But be prepared to live with the wondering.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: So in our case, we did it.
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: So that's it.
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: That tends to be a lot of how we will work things, and we are and I'll talk in for Douglas and I quite a lot, and we, because we are, we use our gallop strengths here.
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: So Douglas is strategic and futuristic.
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: His top two communication is one of his as well.
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: Empathy is also one of his.
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: Discipline is one of his.
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: So you can see he's, he will see something.
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: The idea I'll have a business, I'll have a website.
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: He's got the discipline to do the work.
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: He's also able to develop a strategy to do that, whereas mine.
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: I see connections in things.
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: I'm deliberative, so I assess the risk more likely around things I also have related.
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: So that means I would prefer to have fewer deeper relationships.
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: So I won't walk into a party and meet everybody Just not going to happen.
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: I will meet maybe one or two people and try and strengthen those relationships, which I think is good for building team and having people here.
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: I also have maximiser, and maximiser is I look at.
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: So Douglas might have a strategic, futuristic idea and I'll say do you know what, if we had this, they had to make it brilliant.
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: So that's another one of mine and mine's also responsibility.
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: So if I accept that it's my role to do something, that's where I take ownership and then I do it.
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: So we each use our strengths as well to try and choose and get things done.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: What I love about that is the ability to understand the strengths and, rather than looking at the gaps, rather than trying to be something you're not, it's about stopping, reflecting and saying how can we work together in order to get the best out of both of us?
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: And I really I see that so often with business owners and teams that we work with the amount of owners of businesses that perhaps haven't any kind of profiling whether it be the strengths finder, whether it be disk, whether it be MBTI all there's so many out there but understand what drives you, what makes you tick and how you contribute to the business and in that, for you running your business, if Douglas was not in it, how would you bring in those skill sets in order to be able to make it that balance work really well?
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: Nikki and I complete opposite in disk profiling.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: We bring different strengths to the business.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: So that was one thing that I would love business owners to be taking away from this conversation what do I understand about what makes me tick and how can I play to my strengths?
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: And the other thing that came up, michelle, when you were talking, was this whole concept of slowing down, going on the beachwalk, having lunch, whatever it is, it's stepping away from what you're saying.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: The clarity comes from being out of the business, from being away, from just getting out of the weeds of it in order to be able to make those decisions and analyze and work out the strategy and all of that kind of thing.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: And I just see many leaders and business owners getting sucked into the vortex of the daily the next step or that big mountain over there and the one over there that I've got to go and climb, and this and then that, and not realizing.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: Actually, coming back around to what my brother does, they do weeks of preparation in the lead up to their walks.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: They don't do food drops in advance, knowing that they're going to be somewhere in six weeks time, that they're buying the best gear that's lighter and lighter every walk they go on.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: So the time they spend in getting ready to do a really big walk like that is just as important as the time on the walk, absolutely absolutely, and also the recovery time afterwards.
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: Yes, so that comes to the evaluation piece.
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: The other thing I would say about strengths is it's also knowing your strengths and what you bring, but it's also knowing sometimes how those strengths can be challenging for other people, and knowing so if I use my ones again as an example, that maximize a part.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: One of the things that I need to be conscious of is someone will come to me and say, hey, I've got an idea and maybe all they want from me is excellent, well done, I'm very hard.
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: I was just about to say have you thought about XYZ, bought in the deliberative and could you do it's using that?
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: All they want is excellent.
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: That's a great idea.
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: They don't want my.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: Have you thought about all the other options?
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: Could you do it better?
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: Sometimes it's just an acknowledgement and it can make people feel, even though I'm thinking all that's lovely and positive, to give that feedback and ask them if they've thought this and if they've that, they're walking away thinking, oh, I thought that I just wanted something different from you.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: So it's also being aware of the other sides and what that can be received as from for other people is a big, important one, I think.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that impact on people.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: Now I have to close the loop on the story you were talking about as well, about living overseas for 12 months.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: So all the roadblocks were removed, and even there's so much in that, just that first roadblock.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: Focus on that one thing and then you get the answer as to whether is this the right thing or not for you Fill us in.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: You went overseas.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: You live in Spain 12 months.
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, 12 months.
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: We lived in Bernada in the south of Spain for 12 months.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: I homeschooled.
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: I didn't.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: I'm shaking my head with very loose use.
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: So the children were out of school, we travelled around, we were able to communicate as much as we could in terms of we didn't, we weren't thirsty and we didn't go without meals.
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: We could order food and drink and enough to be understood.
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: We had lovely friends, we travelled, we experienced, we really enjoyed that.
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: The business at that particular time Douglas did two trips back to Australia to check in.
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: We probably did about eight hours a week between us remotely checking in and keeping things going.
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: The business grew in that particular space of time.
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: We went with the philosophy and, as I talked to the team, I would just said to them this is and we would talked about them in that, talked to the team about it in the really early planning phases as well as just this is an idea, we think we're going to do it.
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: So, as they knew it was coming for more than six months before it actually happened, but we did also just say to them you can't, you can't break this.
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: It's set up in a way that you can't break it.
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: Make the best decisions you know how to make and we'll evaluate afterwards.
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: So this is the recovery will evaluate afterwards and if we learn in the evaluation that something could be different, we'll do it different next time.
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: It's not about punishment for a bad mistake.
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: So we were away the full 12 months, just over, and then came back.
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: I think it was brilliant for us.
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: I think it was good for the team that were here at the time.
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: It gives them some autonomy and authority and they learn that they can do things.
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: And going back to the slow down, speed up, making decisions analogy when, if they were going to, if they had a question or something, and they had to send it through to us on email or whatever because of the time difference, we didn't talk every day.
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: Sometimes they that meant that people made decisions or they didn't slow down and it turned out that what was a big issue yesterday afternoon is not a big issue today or those types of things.
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: It was a brilliant experience, really glad that we've done it.
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: I think it was great from a family perspective in terms of we didn't know anybody, we didn't speak the language, so we had to become a strong gang unit from that perspective, which then also translated into the business for the group that were here working.
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: They had to become that strong unit working together for that.
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: And then, yeah, I think it's a good part.
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: It's a good part of the evolution of our family and our business.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, amazing, and it had a really positive effect.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: So something or impact on the business and your life and something that seemed like I can't remember verbatim what you said, a crazy idea or silly idea or something to actually turned out to be something really quiet, momentous for the business by the sounds of it and for your personal.
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: It was after that, so we'd been in business late 2016.
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: So we're talking about 14, 15, 16 years thereabouts.
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: At that point, it was at the end of that year, 2016, that we decided to write a business plan.
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, wow.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: Our first one Proper one, and you do continue to do that now, don't you?
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that is something that's stuck.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: Look, that is absolutely.
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: What I will say is a more thorough business plan, whereas previously what we'd done is.
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: I remember one time early, right early, and it was just Douglas and myself and maybe one other, and we thought things are slowing down, we're not sure where the world's at, just trying to think, and we thought, okay, so what we worked out then was the amount we needed to sell to cover our costs.
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: This was our break even point.
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: And then we were like, oh, we can break even at that.
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: Excellent, that's good.
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: And I remember saying to Doug at the time, because we know we can do that I don't want this to be a self-limiting prophecy.
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: Now We've got to put that in a draw.
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: We know we can do it, so now let's just go and do it and see where we come.
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: So there's that other part, I think, of planning, because we write things down and it's amazing to look back and say, look, we've ticked all of these things off.
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: But sometimes if you tick them off ahead of time or you're doing better, that doesn't mean that this is the place that we stop and stay either.
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: You don't want to limit it there.
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: You want to say where do we go on?
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: So we did have plans before, but nothing that was really sort of a grown up plan?
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, not a grown up plan.
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: No Amazing.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: I feel like we could chat all day.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: You've just sharing some wonderful stories and really helping for me anyway.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: Align that into looking at business as a long term and reminding myself that sometimes you get stuck in the weeds of it and remember that this too shall pass and things just look at it from a different perspective.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: Step back.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: So I think my wrap up question for you to help with our listeners today to do there something actionable within the next 24 hours.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: We love to give that takeaway for them.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: If someone is listening and feeling quite inspired by what you're talking about but still feel stuck in the weeds like how do I slow down to speed up?
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: What would be something practical and tangible that you would say that they could actually do, even if they're feeling like it feels like too big and impossible to just have that luxury of going to the beach for a walk, what would be some mindset shift or just a practicality that they could do in the next 24 hours?
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: Michelle.
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: That's really interesting.
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: The thing that comes to mind and it was a real shift changer for me too was to not think about the business in terms of even we're a family business, even just myself and Douglas and now, and even to think one day, in a state planning out, kids will inherit XYZ.
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: This is not an inheritance, this is the potential for opportunity and intergenerational opportunity.
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: It's that, what's the opportunities here for me.
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: What are the opportunities in this moment, in this question, in this decision, in this challenge, and think of them and think of them beyond now, with that knowledge that you will come through, I would say then look at that.
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: Am I prepared for the consequences I'm prepared to accept?
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that so much.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: What are the opportunities out of this situation?
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: Once you've landed on that, what is it that I'm prepared to accept?
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: Amazing, thank you so much for sharing your insights.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: I know Nikki wants to say thank you and all of that kind of stuff, so I'll throw it to you, nick, before we wrap up.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: Yes, of course I have to, because, again, you do have a real gift of storytelling.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: And then within there, there's like we opened these pearls of wisdom and insights Even at the very beginning, when you said to dream forward, plan it forward.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: And that's that balance of knowing where you want to go, but not over planning it, or which can help you feel stuck.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Honestly, I can't wait to listen back.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: There's just so many great insights and I can't wait for our next conversation, because, luckily, we get to just talk to you all the time.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: So, wow, we've got lunch tomorrow, so I can't wait to continue this conversation then.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us, and I know that if you're listening, you would have taken so much value, so I encourage you also to listen back to this one again.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: Get your notebooks out or think about what's the one thing that I really take from here, and you've got your action.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us today.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: We'll see you next week.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, bye.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to today's app.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: If you've loved what you heard, find us on LinkedIn and let us know what you enjoyed.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: Also, don't forget to rate and review and, of course, share this episode with your bizvesties.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: Ness and I are obsessed with helping you break through your business and life barriers to get you to your next frontier of growth.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: We bring two business minds and two perspectives into your business.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: As the magician, I help connect the dots, see the possibilities and the hidden potential, and as the architect Ness turns those possibilities into practice, implementing plans and frameworks.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: Because, let's face it, every vision needs a practical pathway to success.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: We offer business health checks, taking you from chaos to clarity in just 30 days.
• 34:07
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• 34:10
  Speaker 1: Send us an email or go old school and give us a call.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: All our details are in the show notes and on our website.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: Until next time, happy listening and here's to thriving in business and life.