Business Performance Tuning – Part 1

SUMMARY:

ADHD: Understanding, Diagnosis, and Embracing It as a Superpower

This episode of the Being Comfortably Uncomfortable podcast, hosted by Anthony Perl, features Andrew Greenfield discussing ADHD and ADD. Greenfield explains the differences between ADHD and ADD, highlighting that ADHD can manifest in three subtypes: inattentive, hyperactive-impulsive, and a combined type. He emphasizes the importance of proper diagnosis following the DSM-5 criteria, involving child psychologists, pediatricians, or psychiatrists. Diagnosis criteria includes meeting six out of nine specific criteria, demonstrating symptoms across various environments, and confirming the consistency of symptoms from a young age. The conversation also covers the limitation of self-diagnosis and the importance of a comprehensive evaluation involving psychometric assessments and potentially other tools like the Continuous Performance Task. Treatment options, including medication and behavioral strategies, are discussed alongside the empowerment of embracing ADHD as a potential superpower, highlighting the positive aspects such as creativity and the ability to think outside the box. The podcast concludes with the importance of proper diagnosis and development of effective strategies to leverage ADHD’s unique qualities.

00:03 Introduction to ADHD: Understanding the Basics

00:22 ADHD vs. ADD: Clarifying the Confusion

02:21 The Complexities of Diagnosing ADHD

05:42 Navigating ADHD Diagnosis: What Comes Next?

06:57 Embracing ADHD: Strategies and Superpowers

13:29 The Importance of Proper Diagnosis and Strategy Development

14:56 Conclusion: Embracing the Journey of Being Comfortably Uncomfortable

TRANSCRIPT:

Anthony Perl: Welcome to Biz Bites brought to you by CommTogether, helping businesses like yours build their brand through telling amazing stories to engage and grow audiences on multiple platforms.

Well, hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Biz Bites. And well, I was, I was thinking about how I introduce my Next guest on the program, uh, supermind is one area of expertise. Uh, another is. The gift wrapped in sandpaper. Um, I think what we’re going to get out of the program today is a whole lot of insights.

And I know we were talking just before we started the recording. And part of that is it, it’s a different way of thinking. It’s trying to, um, I guess, expand your mind into ways. That you can achieve things that perhaps you hadn’t otherwise thought of. And I know one thing that we will talk about much later on in the podcast is around the six idea of a six week vacation, something that most business owners would like to take, but don’t know how to do it.

Uh, so without further ado, here is the, the man behind it all. Uh, Azeem Sahoo Khan. Thank you for joining us and being a guest on Biz Bites.

Azim Sahu Kahn: Oh, thanks very much for having me, Anthony. It’s always a pleasure to, to just talk, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s awesome.

Anthony Perl: I love it. And I know we’ve, uh, we’ve had a couple of chats already and, uh, I know we, we will, this is going to be something that, uh, I think the listeners are going to really enjoy.

So let’s start off with, I mean, I’ve given a bit of a basic introduction to it, but, um, it very, very broad, I think, give me a little bit more specific. How do you introduce what, what you

Azim Sahu Kahn: do? Okay, so there’s a, there’s a couple of things, Anthony, so maybe we should qualify a little bit where I got that moniker of the gift wrapped in sandpaper from.

And, one of the things that, one of the opening questions I will do with any business owner, so just to give you a bit of a background, I, I’m really a business success guide, um, I don’t call myself a coach or an advisor because a guide goes with you on the journey. So the best analogy is a travel agent.

They’ll, uh, find your hotel for you, book it for you, book your flights, do all that sort of thing, wave you goodbye, and if you’ve got a good agent, they’ll call you when you get back, right? But it is someone you can call in case of an emergency. Whereas the guide, Anthony, will come with you and say, Anthony, let’s go over here and look at this.

Here’s a great place to eat. Anthony, don’t eat that because it will probably kill you, and just check the pillow for bed bugs before you go to bed. I’m in there with my, my, my clients because, um, and, and, and I guess his one leaning is, is, is a point of view I have. Um, I’m not on the podcast to be popular, Anthony, so, um, you’ll have to excuse me if I take a contrarian point of view.

Um, look, one of the whole, probably, I can’t think of a better word, is deficiencies of the whole coaching advisory, and to some degree, the consulting industries, is the fact that if I’ve qualified you well enough. in terms of you know what and what do I mean by qualified it means Anthony I can actually help you make a difference in your business it’s not about how much money you’ve got whether you fit the you know fit the demographic whatever it’s I know for me qualifying someone to work it means that I know that I can help them.

I can guide them to what it is that they say, that’s important, that they say they want, right? So, once that engagement happens, we start working together. It’s not always the same thing, Anthony. What they say they want and what, what they actually really want can, is quite often different. Um, but once I engage with somebody, once we start, decide to work together, to co create the solution, so to speak, my role then becomes Someone who won’t let you fail, right?

And you’ll hear coaches and advisors saying, Oh, Anthony, I can’t want it more than you. And I don’t know. And that’s basically cop out, right? So if I know that the result you’re seeking is within your business and within you. Then my role changes. It’s to support you and, uh, you know, uh, one of my good friends, which you’ve also had on the show, you know, Mr.

Simon Bowen, you know, he will say when you’re on a particular path, you tend not to fall off that path. Uh, we call it the green line. You will behave your way off that path. Right? So that gives you a bit of a, my point of view around the whole industry. So when I engage with people really, I have two points of view.

One is the first is. How will your life be better because you work with me? That’s, I guess, my guiding North Star, right? And I ask, I ask clients that. How will the lives of the people that you serve with your products and services be better because of you, right? It’s a tough question for a lot of people, right?

Um, and from my perspective, that’s the first thing. And the second thing is, is, is my role is not to let you fail. So one of my, and this is where the sandpaper thing comes from, because one of the first questions I’ll ask a business, right? And, you know, I would say you and I were looking at working together.

I’ll say, Anthony, lovely to meet you. Now, now tell me, Anthony, um, why isn’t your business twice the size that it is today? Okay. And that’s kind of the open issue. That’s the kind of opening thing. Because unless perhaps you’re Elon Musk or somebody like that, uh, who’s flying off to Mars, there’s a good chance that somebody else is doing something very similar to what you’re doing, and they’re twice your size.

So what that actually means, Anthony, is not that you’re no good at what you do, it just means there’s something you don’t know yet. Right? Yes. That sets the scene. Now, the second question, which is really the important question, and I’ll say this in keynotes and all the time, I say, so Anthony, what do you need to stop doing to allow your business to grow to the size that you want it to be?

And it’s usually like a little bit of a, you know, like you like the blue touch paper and stand well back, you know, the old thing on the fireworks and you can see this little fuse burning through people’s brains and all of a sudden it’s just like confessional Anthony, you know, Oh, I need to let go of more stuff.

I need to stop micromanaging. I need to stop procrastinating about this. I need to trust my team more and, and they’ll go all through these, this whole rant things. And I’ll just nod politely and all those sorts of things and take notes. And then at the end of it, we’ll usually find there’s three to five things in there, Anthony, that are the things that will really move your business forward.

And the third part, just to sum it up is, all right, let’s just do those things then, and you know, people will say all the time, you know, Zim, I don’t know what, I don’t know. And I’ll say, but that’s not the problem. The real problem is you don’t do what you do know. Yes.

Anthony Perl: It’s, it’s a really interesting take. I love that sort of spin on it.

And I’ve, I’ve often been challenged as well on that concept of what should you stop doing? And, um, and I think the interesting part about that is. Is, it’s almost a leading question in, in that for the majority of people, the answer is, is they’re the own. They’re, they’re often the block, right? Oh, sure. To, to the business going further than it,

Azim Sahu Kahn: than it has the bottleneck’s always at the top of the bottle.

Anthony funny about that, bloody about that, you know,

Anthony Perl: and it’s a, and but it’s an important one, isn’t it? It’s and, and I think. The challenge with that is it’s one thing to recognize that it’s another thing to be able to implement it, isn’t it? It’s, it’s, it’s easy to say, well, I should stop procrastinating, um, over, over certain things, but how do you actually change that behavior?

Correct.

Azim Sahu Kahn: I mean, look, the first thing is realizing that that’s part of the problem. Then the second thing is, because like, you know, a lot of the work I do is helping people, um, with the systems in their business, not, not the software, but the actual systems in their business. And, and, and the truth of the matter is that most businesses are collections of habits.

Rather than systems, and they usually own his habits, and not all of them are good, Anthony, trust me. Okay? Okay. So, so really business, here’s the business, but it’s really a collection of habits, and it’s also the habits of the people working there. When I was starting out, well, over, well over a decade ago, uh, in the consulting game, you know, I would often do a secret shop of the reception, before I went to see a prospect who’d never spoken to me before.

So then I actually had their customer experience of being someone touching their business for the first time, because really your brand promises how I feel when I interact with you. Not, not what you say, you know, Maya Angelou said it best. They’ll forget what you said, but they’ll remember how you made them feel.

So I would often go into a business and say, so, you know, um, um, miss CEO, CEO there, um, you know, well, what’s the process, you know, what happens when somebody rings and, and, and speaks to you? Oh, well, they come to our reception and their reception says this, this, and this, and I said, you know what, that’s actually not what happens and they’ll go, what do you mean?

And then in the early days, I used to actually keep a recording of the call, which I didn’t distribute because it was illegal, but I would play it to them and say, This is what happens. And they went, Oh my goodness. I actually had one guy basically almost leap over the desk wanting to throttle his receptionist, but I averted that, which is good.

So the first part, when you’re talking about procrastinating is, you know, Let’s just find out what is actually happening, what is happening, right? And then, what then, then we can drill down to why that procrastination happens. And often, often it’s, you know, and I don’t want to get into the woo woo side of things, but at the end of the day, it does boil down to some of your subconscious thinking, right?

So you procrastinate normally. Think about yourself, Anthony, like the things you would normally procrastinate on, I think you’d actually don’t want to do that. I’m like, Oh yes. Doing your best return. Doesn’t light anybody up except for your account. Oh, no.

Anthony Perl: Yes. Yes. That’s why I have a bookkeeper and accountant.

That was when I was a bit, when I started out in the business, that was. Absolutely. The number one thing that I was, uh, procrastinating over. Um, exactly that, because you summed it up beautifully. It’s, it is more often than not the task that you do not want to do. Correct.

Azim Sahu Kahn: Correct. And, you know, and, and, and we will be sharing an exercise later that I do with many clients, uh, when on their way to the six week vacation, but procrastination is, um, that’s one of the things it’s, it’s usually out of alignment.

to what you want to do. And if everybody just thinks for a little while and say, you know, there’s a point in the day, not every day, but, um, there’s a point in the day where you, where you just like, don’t feel great, right. About something that you’re about to do, or you have to do. And then you just say, what would make me happy right now?

And even the thought of what would make you happy right now, usually fixes you not feeling so good at that time. Now I had a client just, um, two weeks ago, um, as part of the, the supermind that I run. And she’s a great marketer. In fact, she’s got a marketing agency, right? She’s a great marketer, um, doing great sales, uh, but she hates doing the sale.

She can do them, because obviously they’ve got good revenue, but she hates doing that part of it. She generates the leads beautifully, great warm leads, I should hope so, she’s a marketing agent, right? Great, but when she does the selling, it doesn’t light her up at all. And then we were having a one on one together and going through these things because we had to, um, we wanted to extract her out of the operation of the business, which obviously includes sales, right?

And I just said, well, Just don’t do them then. And we put together a plan to give a commission only salesperson and how that would work and how it worked really well. And she just like sat back. I could see the weight coming off her and she went, that’s amazing. She goes, you’re the first business advisor.

Everyone else is, Oh, you could try this. You can try this technique and tactics. And this goes back to what I call the, the coach advisory machine, right? They’re just popping out coaches that advise left, right, and center. And, and then that realization just in itself was, I can do that. I feel like I’ve got permission to do that.

Of course you can do that. Right. And, and, and that’s often what causes the bottleneck in the business. Is that the owner feels that they need to be doing something that, you know, what just doesn’t line them up.

Anthony Perl: Yeah. And it’s, and it is a really difficult thing because, you know, most businesses start off with one person and, uh, so you are doing everything.

So that idea of letting go, first of all, there’s a difficult, uh, a difficult one. And then. You know, it’s, and it’s that there are certain things that you go, okay, like you said, we can get rid of the, the bookkeeping part of it. That’s fine. We can kind of get our heads around that, but then you might get around some of the admin part where you go, okay, well, that’s admin.

It’s not so precious, but when you start getting into the things that really make the business tick, the sales and marketing area, uh, those are difficult ones for many. To get rid of because they believe they’re the only person that can do it. Right. And, uh, it’s, it’s a real. That mindset and changing, shifting that.

And as you say, getting the permission to be able to do it is half the battle.

Azim Sahu Kahn: Oh, absolutely. And, you know, um, I was speaking to a, um, a client not that long ago, um, very large company, um, and couldn’t understand. Why he wouldn’t let go of some of the stuff he was doing as CEO. Big team, right? He had like three other people at his C level, if you like, right?

And there was just some things that he really shouldn’t, should have let go of. And to the point where some of it became meddling in other people’s responsibilities, right? But not on purpose, it just happened that way. Anyway, so I broke the whole pattern while we were talking and I said, by the way, and, uh, let’s just call him Andrew for the sake of this call, right?

I said, by the way, Andrew, um, do you have any brothers and sisters? And he went, yeah, actually, I’m, I’m the youngest of five. And I said, well, that’s awesome. I said, I’m the youngest of six. I said, well, I’m the youngest of five. And, and, and here, Anthony, this is what happened. It turned out Andrew has, um, one sister and five brothers.

And he’s the youngest and when he was getting, so the guys in his fifties now, right? When he was a kid, if he put in, and he said, Oh, you know, he used to have all my toys in my little backpack, which I used to carry everywhere. And that clued me up. I said, so why don’t you carry your toys everywhere in your backpack, Andrew?

And he said, because if I put them down, my brothers would take them.

And I said, you’re doing that right now in your business. And he looked at me and he just like the realization of just came across his face was, I’m doing that right now and I said, yeah, let the toys go.

Anthony Perl: But isn’t it, I love how, um, you know, maybe, maybe we maybe as consultants sometimes where this frustrated psychologist. Yeah, they’re delving deeper into these, into these stories and understanding it. And look at, I know. Uh, I know for my, for myself that I look at things and I go, yeah, that’s a product of my upbringing and, uh, and having to, to change that.

And I know it’s one of the, one of the things that I love doing in this. And so I’m going to, I’m going to deliberately do it because you’ve given me a beautiful lead in, uh, and to change tech just a little bit for a little while, because I want to understand how you got here. So what was, what was, when you go back to the little version of you.

So what was the, what was the dream? What did you want to be when

Azim Sahu Kahn: you grew up? Oh, okay. I wanted to be a number of things when I grew up, right? Um, I wanted to be, at one point I wanted to be a racing driver. Um, another point I wanted to be a fighter pilot, um, somewhere in there I actually wanted to be prime minister, but, but, you know, it was a very tiny, it was only a momentary lapse in, I think I bumped my head or something, right?

And uh, and as I got a little bit older, you know, I wanted to be a, uh, a musician, right? And play on stage and all that sort of thing. Now, the good thing is. I’ve actually done all three of those except for being a fighter pilot. I have flown and I did many, many years ago, have an attempt on, I flew gliders and I had an attempt on the Australian, um, altitude record, uh, back down at Jindabyne and, and so being over 20, 000 feet in a plane with no engine, um, is a great experience, right?

So. So to answer your question, Adrenaline

Anthony Perl: junkie a little bit

Azim Sahu Kahn: there. Maybe a little bit. Yeah. And, uh, and I’ve, and I’ve raced cars still, um, not that long ago and very successfully. And I actually have a Facebook group, uh, of motorsport enthusiasts, uh, not enthusiasts, I’ve actually worked in the industry.

I’ve got some people from Formula One teams and drivers, about 1200 people. So I’m still very heavily involved. So that’s been a passion. So I’m very grateful that the things I thought I wanted to do, I’ve actually been able to do. So how did I end up here? Did I ever dream that I would be a, um, uh, you know, a business success consultant?

Um, no, right? Have I always been an entrepreneur? Yes. But it only was recently where I actually backtracked and looked at it and I thought, you know what, you were always like this, okay? Um, so like, you know, when I was in primary school, so I would have been the ripe old age of about eight, I think, I, um, went home and I, Got a bucket of sand and, and I, uh, put a bowl in the sand and pulled the bowl out and put shells and, and driftwood in there and then poured it full of wax and put a, put a wick in it and, and I made this whole stock of driftwood candles and took them to school and all the teachers bought them and I thought, you know what, that was actually entrepreneurship.

Right? And, uh, well, they bought them off me because I was just, you know, it was to humor me. It doesn’t matter. I made them, I sold them at a profit, right? So it was all good. So I’ve been doing that sort of thing since I was very young. And, you know, I’ve had, um, uh, we’ve had a number of cafes, a number of businesses along the way.

Um, and so after all of that, I did this exercise, which I actually do now. And it’s actually an exercise the listeners If you set yourself a little timer of about 10 minutes and If you had, if money and time were no objects, right, were no, no obstructions to you, what would you do? What would you see? And what would you have, right?

And you spend 10 minutes just down there, you know, I want to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, you know, I want to have that Ferrari, I want to have that beach house, you know, somebody may just want to have a decent set of clothes and be able to eat out five times a week, doesn’t matter, right? And you just pump it out, you just pump it out.

And after 10 minutes. When the timer goes off, you stop, and then you think, and then you ask yourself this question, what would you do now?

And I did that exercise probably about 15 years ago now, and what came up for me was that I would, I wanted to help people be the best they could be. And I’ve really been advising and even my staff over the years, you know, really coaching the staff into, you know, into, to how they could get to where they wanted to get.

I was a senior, senior, um, uh, manager at Microsoft managing the whole regional support center many, many years ago in the nineties, you know, I had a crew of 30. And I was always interested in, even if what they want to do didn’t keep them in the company, I would help them find that job outside of the company.

If that was what, not because they’re a bad performer. A great performer was a job, right? And, you know, and that’s a really thing because there’s a segue from that, Anthony. So this is a bit like a tennis match. You segue and I’m segueing back, you know, it’s a bit like the old, right? Tennis match, right? Um, so, um, by the way, this is, that was my sound effect, not Anthony’s, right?

Anyway, anyway, so, uh, So here’s the interesting thing. I had a, I have a, uh, an old client and in New Zealand, see, one of the things we talk about is extracting the owner from the operation of the business. So they can lean into the 10 percent of the magic that is them. Everybody’s out there saying, Oh, you know, scale your business, do this and have it run without you, which is fine.

And sit on the beach and do nothing. Nobody actually wants to really do that. If, if they’re in alignment with what their business is about, right? So that’s part of this whole six week vacation and most of the work I do. So when I was, I was helping my client purchase a new business. So he’d finished where he was and, uh, uh, we were purchasing business and we, we spoke to like, um, a number of different manufacturing, um, founder, like you said, before the founder started them, been in the business 20 or 30 years or so right now getting ready to exit their business, which everybody has, Hey, you know, you need to exit your business, which also by the way, can be incorrect, but, uh, we’ll talk about that later.

Um, so what they, um, What we did was one of them actually had, um, some health problems, right? So take him off the board, but all of the others. had some version of, if you buy my business, I’d be happy to come back and work as part of the team for as long as you need me. This wasn’t an earn out. They just wanted to go back and do that thing without having to worry about the bookkeeping, without having to worry about the staff and who didn’t turn up for work today and ordering and supply.

They just wanted to go back to being that single person doing the thing. But my, my, my, um, perspective and my point of view is see. We’re living a lot longer than we’re used to, Anthony, right? So the reality is, and here’s a fun fact for you, since 1840 up until recently, um, our average life expectancy worldwide has gone up by three months every year.

Yep. So for every four years, you get a bonus year in, okay, and, and I, I never like to say how old I am. I say I’ve, I’ve hit now, I’m happy to share it on the show. You know, I’ve hit level 61 in this great game of life, right? And for every four years I go, I get a bonus year, right? So when you gamify it, you’re not 61 years old.

I’m not, I’m, I’m, I’m a level 61. My mom’s at level 97 man, right? And she’s still going hard. Okay. So. But here’s the interesting thing. As you

Anthony Perl: like to say, you’re here for a long time and a good time. That’s

Azim Sahu Kahn: it. That’s it. There’s no reason. But here’s the important part. We used to retire at 60. Because we generally didn’t live past 65, right?

Yeah. And this is the first time in history, in history, Anthony, that we’ve had five generations in the workforce at the same time. There are 80 year olds still working. So here’s the problem with the old, and I’m happy to say it, the old way of thinking of Build your business, get it ready to exit your business, put your system in it, sell it and exit it.

Well, first of all, you’ve just capped the value at that point in time, right? And the other thing is the money stops coming in flowing at that. Of course, people have other businesses, other investments, I get all that, but we’re just talking about a single business, right? Which a lot of people have, because they’ve spent, you know, 30 years slaving away at this business and the saying goes, you know, I’ve worked hard to work this hard, Anthony, right?

Okay. So, you know, you go through that. Okay. So. My, uh, my point of view around business is let’s capture the habits, turn them into systems, have your business work automatically so you can go out and do the thing that you really love and create an ATM into your future, right? So if you’ve got a business that’s throwing off 80, 000 or 100, 000 a year to you, Anthony, for turning up for maybe at worst 12 meetings a year, maybe four meetings a year, that’s a really good life, isn’t it?

Because, think about it, when I have conversations with people saying, Oh, you know, I want to do this, and I want to exit my business as in, and I say, look, that’s fantastic. Um, so what are you going to do with the money? Right? And they say, okay, well, they always feel they’ve got to, um, they say, well, we’re going to pay off the kid’s mortgage, and all these wonderful things.

But somewhere they feel responsible and say, you know, well, I’m going to invest some of it as in. Okay, that’s great. What are you going to invest it in? And then somewhere in that, They will say something that looks like shares or stocks us and I’ll do the, you may not be old enough to remember Colombo, Anthony, like he used to do.

Oh, I do. I do remember. So I used to do that thing just before we got to the door and turn around. Right. And I’ll do that. I’ll just scratch my head and I’ll go, okay, so Anthony, let’s use your reason. So Anthony, you’re going to sell your business. and which is a point in time and you’re going to take that money and you’ve got it that’s generating you this money all the time has been funding your lifestyle and you’re going to take some of that money and you’re in 100 percent of control and you take some of that money and put it in another business that you’ve got very small Shareholding in, you’re not gonna have any control over what happens and hope you get a return.

How does that work? You know, if you buy Facebook shares, Mark Zuckerberg isn’t going to ring you Anthony and say, Hey, I’m thinking of changing the name to Meta. It’s just not going to happen, is it? And people fall for this thing. Whereas if you can make a business or create your business that has complete business reliability, which is what we aim for.

Then you can, first of all, you still, if you’re not in it, then the number of people you can sell it to suddenly is tenfold because a lot of businesses are sold because people buy a new job. That’s what they do. Right. But if you’ve got a business that’s throwing off money, a hundred K a year, well, that’s a nice lifestyle.

All right. And for a lot of people, 50 K a year is fine because they have other investments. So, you know, there’s a thousand dollars a week coming to you. Right. But now you still have a very small Salable asset. So people say, Oh, I want to get a scalable business. Well, when you scale the business, you know, and Simon and I’ve had this summer, Bowen and I’ve had this discussion is a scalable business is purely a business that has increasing speed of execution and diminishing cost of execution.

It’s like getting a black belt in any martial art. You’ve done the basics, you know, congratulations. You’ve done what you meant to do is have a scalable business, but a scalable business. Is something else, right? It’s

Anthony Perl: a, it’s a very interesting space that and, um, I know that, uh, aside from what I’m doing and my focus is a really around podcasts and you talked about, um, getting back to what you really love doing and hence the reason I’m, I’m in this space, but, uh, I’ve teamed together with a couple of people to help businesses become more exitable and, and we’ve Yeah.

Use that term exitable, which is not actually a word, believe it or not, but everyone kind of assumes and understands what it is. Yes, because we, because I think the thing is, is that, um, we realise much along what you’ve said is that there’s a point where people might actually find that they, the business is going much better and therefore they love it much more and don’t actually want to sell it.

So making it exitable gives them the option of when to do that and sets them up for that. Doesn’t mean they have to do it. And, uh, but I think it is a, as you say, it’s, it’s a mindset as well in that in order for a business to be exitable, you need, uh, you need to have a strategy for how that business owner can step away and the business can continue and even go better once they have moved away from that and whether that means that the, uh, that the owner becomes, uh, You know, remains the owner and just has a passive involvement, uh, or whether it means a sale, either way, the point is, is that you need to have new experts running the thing.

Azim Sahu Kahn: Absolutely. Anthony. And I think some of the things is that the owner had the original vision. And if they can stay in a position where they can still have that influence. over the vision, but maybe some of the strategies and tactics to keep that vision, right, may change, may be different, right, because, you know, as the saying goes, you know, what got you here won’t get you, you know, get you the next point.

So, and then to work in that space, Is, um, I mean, you know, everybody uses the example, but if, if, if, if Steve Jobs was still around Apple would probably be a different company to what it is today, right? If they were still sharing his vision, right. Of what it is. So, um, and that’s just one example, but there are many examples around of that.

So the idea of having an exitable business is once you also know how to do it, then why not, like we were talking about shares and stuff before, well, my personal Point of view around this and my personal goal is to have, you know, five to seven businesses. That I own in that state, generating me revenue and I have my own, you know, SMP 5, right?

Okay. Yeah. I can have direct influence and it’s totally independent of the stock market then, right? And it’s something I can do. So with any business owner who I essentially, I mean, it’s the old thing people say, you know, um, feed the man a fish you’re feeding for a day, teach the man a fish you’re feeding for a lifetime.

So here’s a really contrarian point of view. Today, Anthony, people want the fish. Right? If I can push a button right now and have Amazon deliver me something by 9 p. m. tonight for the listeners It’s quarter past 3 in the afternoon. I just want the freaking fish, man All right, and the salad and the chips and the tarte sauce teach me how to fish by all means But right now I need a fish.

Okay. Yep So but here’s the thing is I am still open to learning about the fishing And this comes back to what I said at the start of our interview was sometimes you do have to help the business owner fish, right? I mean, I personally have sat in rooms and, and, and, you know, done presentations to boards of the first customer for a client.

They weren’t even in the room, you know, I’ve helped raise capital for people. They’re not even in the room. Sometimes you have to do it. And that’s, that’s what makes me slightly different. And I enjoy it as you can hear my voice, right? I enjoy that stuff. Because, you know, when I have, um, when I have a, a, a client as a, I do a lot of work in the franchisee and franchise also, but when I had a, a client in New Zealand stand up at their, their franchise conference and say in front of the crowd, um, you know, uh, we worked with the Zim for 18 months and it was the first time in eight years that we took a month off And visited Australia by, to visit our, our son and his family and didn’t worry at all that the business would be run, you know, rock solid while we were there.

That, first of all, it humbled me, but second of all, it just made me feel so good because that was the outcome. That’s the outcome. He was able to step away from that. And in fact, you know, they do, um, yeah, so there’s a lot of stories around that. But it just gives you this sense of, um, you know, we take out insurance for all sorts of things.

But the reality is, the best insurance you can have in a business is great systems, you know, um, James Clear says it, you know, you don’t rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems, right? And it’s so true. It’s so true.

Anthony Perl: And it’s something that most businesses don’t have properly in place.

No, not at all. And, uh, particularly those businesses that have been brought up by a business owner who has had his fingers in every pie for, um, you know, going back to its infancy and has struggled to let go. And those things really make it challenging to actually get that documented because there’s always that attitude isn’t there of.

Well, it’s easy to just do it myself than to bother explaining how to do it.

Azim Sahu Kahn: Well. Um, what’s his name? Uh, uh, I’ve forgotten his name right at the moment. Um, one of, he basically said, and it’ll come to me in a second, he basically said that if you can’t explain what you’re doing as a process, you dunno what you’re doing.

And, uh, uh, you know, and it, and it is so true and I, and I have fun at, when I’m doing, um, conferences and stuff, uh, Anthony. I’ll get people to write down the process that they do for brushing their teeth, uh, in the morning. And I get them to write the whole thing down and we give them toothbrushes and say, right now swap your instructions with the person next to you.

And everyone’s got a new toothbrush and we say we want the person next to you to go through the motions. And just the laughter and raucousness of what happens after that is a You, what, you don’t rinse your toothbrush down because it’s been sitting out there exposed all night and the cockroaches could have run over it.

You don’t rinse it before you put the toothpaste on. Other people put the toothpaste on and then they wet it and just, it just goes nuts. I mean everybody laughs, right? And then, and so the truth is there’s something that’s subconscious but it is actually a system. And then when they sit down and explain it, that’s when it gets hard.

You know, I mean, um, uh, Joshua Lissac, the, uh, the great ghost writer. He actually says, um, something very, very cool, that if you can set something up, so that if you follow it, like Lego, if you follow the instructions with no steps skipped, you’ll get the picture on the box. And that’s what I aim to do with business because every problem, and I’ve had this open argument, every problem in a business boils down to a system that’s not there or one that’s broken.

I had, I had somebody ring me from, um, uh, another country and say, Hey, you know, we’ve got this person. They, they’re, um, uh, they, they want to take us to, to court of unfair dismissal and all that sort of thing. So we drilled into it. And what had actually happened was The person had gone 95 days, so it was a 90 day probation period, 95 days, so three days, before they let them know that they were going to not continue with them, right?

But because they hadn’t informed them, they thought that they had the job, right? So then they said, well, I was dismissed from the job, when in fact they were being let, well, they, the owner thought they were let go. Anyway, we got it sorted out, everybody was happy. But then I came back and said, okay, so what system’s broken there?

And then I said, okay, so what’s your onboarding system? Our onboarding what? Was the answer, right? And I said, right. So when you put someone on, we’ve already put in place that the person should be here at 30 days, here at 60 days, and here at 90 days. So the moment that person comes on, now you’re putting in a good, in your calendar, just simple as a Google alert, and it’s now part of the process, that in 80 days, you review this new employee.

So that will never happen again. But there was a, that wasn’t there as an onboarding system, right? It had nothing to do with the performance of anybody. It just had the fact that it’s so simple,

Anthony Perl: some of these things. And, uh, and I think that’s the point, isn’t it? That we don’t necessarily think about all of these steps that can make a huge impact.

On an outcome and how people feel, I think that’s 1 of the, the important parts as well as is how you make people feel is often more important than whether you’re going to give them a bonus or all sorts of other things. Uh, you know, I just had this discussion with a client of mine where he was happened to be telling me about.

Uh, a role within the business. Actually, they’ve taken someone else that was in a more junior role and they’ve ramped them up. And I said, that’s such a great story. You’ve got to tell people about it. But I said, aside from telling people about it. Have a think about the impact that it’s going to be on this person when publicly the organisation says how wonderful it is that this person has been able to step up and she’s doing a great job in the new role.

That is everything. And it is those little things, as you say, the little reviews, the opportunities to remind people. It just makes such a big difference.

Hope you’ve been enjoying the conversation so far. We look forward to bringing you part two in the next episode of Biz Bites. Biz Bites is brought to you by CommTogether for all your marketing needs. So you can build your brand, engage audiences on multiple platforms, go to CommTogether.com.au follow the links to book an appointment for a free consultation.