Small Business Australia – Part 2

SUMMARY:

# Overview

This transcript covers various topics related to small businesses and their challenges. It includes discussions on the definition of small business, the background and role of Bill Lang, support for small businesses during the pandemic, challenges faced by older business owners, digital infrastructure and security, succession planning and digitization, leveraging artificial intelligence, learning from mistakes in business, and the profit improvement blueprint offered by Small Business Australia.

# Topics

## Definition of Small Business

– The government’s definition of small business is discussed, highlighting the need for a clearer understanding.

– Different definitions based on turnover or number of employees create a disconnect.

## Background and Role of Bill Lang

– Bill Lang shares his family history in small business and his experiences in the field.

– He discusses his education, involvement in starting businesses, and campaigns with Small Business Australia.

## Learning from Mistakes in Business

– Learning from others’ mistakes is emphasized as the best way to learn in business.

– Mistakes in areas such as intellectual property protection and corporate structure setup are mentioned.

– Business owners should seek advice from real people and learn from their experiences.

TRANSCRIPT:

Anthony Perl: (00:00:01) I hope you’ve had a chance to listen to part one of this interview on Biz Bites.

Anthony Perl: (00:00:06) Stay tuned now for Part 2.

Anthony Perl: (00:00:10) Welcome to Biz Bites, brought to you by CommTogether

Anthony Perl: (00:00:13) Helping businesses like yours build their brand through telling amazing stories to engage and grow audiences on multiple platforms.

Anthony Perl: (00:00:25) Being on the on the, on the the wrong end of things, I’m sure I have my story is probably no different to probably a vast majority of small businesses.

Anthony Perl: (00:00:35) I had a client who went bankrupt there.

Anthony Perl: (00:00:40) They owed me several $1000.

Anthony Perl: (00:00:43) And of course the people that were going to get any money out of their business at all were of course the big banks that didn’t really need it.

Anthony Perl: (00:00:49) You know I was way down in the queue didn’t receive a single cent for all the time, energy and effort that was put into it and you know and and what makes it even worse of course is a month later they opened up under a new name and and traded and traded again and you know you you don’t end up anywhere And I think there’s a lot of problems with that and I think it goes back to what you were talking about before in terms of definitions of small business and things as well.

Anthony Perl: (00:01:15) I’ve I you know on the flip side of it I I remember several years ago because I have a part of my business that deals with not-for-profit organisations and that a bit of a background in that myself.

Anthony Perl: (00:01:26) And I remember there was a government put out a a document several years ago.

Anthony Perl: (00:01:31) I was 3400 pages long and they were asking for community feedback on it.

Anthony Perl: (00:01:35) And and I remember writing in and saying to you that the thing that you’ve got wrong is the definition of not-for-profit.

Anthony Perl: (00:01:42) Everything else I’m sure is fine, but the.

Anthony Perl: (00:01:44) But you’re starting off from a wrong premise.

Anthony Perl: (00:01:46) And I think that’s often, you know, when you talk to people about who their targets are, their target audience, which is a common discussion among small business owners, Who are you targeting, say, well, I’m targeting small businesses, yeah.

Anthony Perl: (00:01:57) But what does that look like?

Anthony Perl: (00:01:59) Because, you know, it’s an interesting one because my definition of small business might be, you know, based on the number of employees or based on a turnover.

Anthony Perl: (00:02:08) But that figure is just what my gut feel is.

Anthony Perl: (00:02:11) It’s not necessarily a correct one because you know, I’ll talk to people who consider themselves in small business and they’ll be turning over a few few $1,000,000 a year with 304050 employees.

Anthony Perl: (00:02:24) Well, they feel like a world away from from my business.

Anthony Perl: (00:02:28) So it’s I think there’s a a disconnect that the government has with that kind of definition.

BILL LANG: (00:02:34) Well, 100%.

Anthony Perl: (00:02:37) It’s it’s a it’s a it’s a little hobby horse of mine clearly.

Anthony Perl: (00:02:40) But I I wanted to talk to you as well about your role in all of this.

Anthony Perl: (00:02:44) So.

Anthony Perl: (00:02:45) So how did you find your way to to small business Australia?

Anthony Perl: (00:02:48) Tell me a little bit about that story.

BILL LANG: (00:02:50) Well the langs arrived for the gold rush up in the Ballarat area in Victoria in the 1860s, came out from Prussia and so I think we’re like 6 maybe even 7 generations now of langs around.

BILL LANG: (00:03:01) And the case of my father, he was one of 15 children all of which had left school by the time they were 13 or 14 and all of ended up in small business.

BILL LANG: (00:03:10) All had businesses have all ended up making a living out of having a business.

BILL LANG: (00:03:14) And in the case of my father, unfortunately he had a very dodgy accountant and discovered because my father, you know, can’t read or write, discovered that a lot of money was owed to the tax office and that accountant end up suiciding and taking a lot of businesses down.

BILL LANG: (00:03:28) So I was fortunate I was educated by the Christian brothers who kept me at school compared to some of the other teenagers from the the South side of town where I grew up.

BILL LANG: (00:03:36) And some of them were in jail, some of them are dead.

BILL LANG: (00:03:39) But I stayed at school to year 12 and then was fortunate enough to get into university where I studied accounting and then fortunate to very naively, you know, write some letters to big accounting firms, some of which said come back when you’re in second year.

BILL LANG: (00:03:52) But one invited me in to have a cup of tea and then offered me a job to work for them that summer.

BILL LANG: (00:03:55) So I was the first first year student to have a summer job with them.

BILL LANG: (00:04:01) They ended up being five or six years.

BILL LANG: (00:04:02) I then I then moved into the law faculty, then at at uni with a couple of other mates.

BILL LANG: (00:04:06) We started a business called Doctor Dog.

BILL LANG: (00:04:08) So we sold hot dogs out the front of pubs and nightclubs in Melbourne.

BILL LANG: (00:04:12) I had a fleet of vans, we called it.

BILL LANG: (00:04:15) When I applied to go to Harvard Business School to do with my MBAI, called it a mobile monopoly because we had a lot of pricing power.

BILL LANG: (00:04:21) So we would get there half an hour before closing time and leave half an hour after closing time and do three to four venues a night.

BILL LANG: (00:04:28) And it’s quite amazing what you can charge for hot dogs, Very good hot dogs, by the way.

BILL LANG: (00:04:34) But we had a very much a variable pricing strategy, which I then learned at Harvard.

BILL LANG: (00:04:39) That’s what it was.

BILL LANG: (00:04:40) Well, look, I’ve, I’ve grown up around small business people my whole life, being fortunate to get, you know, well formally educated and then to work internationally.

BILL LANG: (00:04:49) And then back in the late 90s with a mate of mine from a firm called McKinsey and Company, we started an Internet company here called Free Online and we went from zero to 400,000 customers in 18 months to be #2 to what was called Big Pond.

BILL LANG: (00:05:03) Then we’re about to float that company here and the Nasdaq’s index went from about 6000 to 1200 and we’re all everything was done, several $100,000 had been spent on all the advisors we’re about to raise $50 million and our underwriter who wasn’t really underwriting it, it was called lead managing, said, well, look, no, we don’t guarantee we’re going to get you the money.

BILL LANG: (00:05:23) So we couldn’t raise the money.

BILL LANG: (00:05:24) So 12 months later fortunately we we kept at it and the underlying technology we had developed it was pretty compelling and we, we entered into $120 million partnership with British Telecom and AT&T and I moved to Silicon Valley.

BILL LANG: (00:05:38) So we’re over there for a couple of years and I ended up selling their business on to them and then moving back with the family back to Melbourne and then thought OK, well I want to do something international, something that’s sort of education and skill development.

BILL LANG: (00:05:50) And then we start started a business called Building International and we’ve had clients in 50 different countries using processes and systems we developed for helping people manage people and helping small business people manage their small business.

BILL LANG: (00:06:05) That culminated in a in a global book called Scores on the Board.

BILL LANG: (00:06:10) Meanwhile, Small Business Australia had been an entity that from time to time, you know, we had used for campaigns like trying to get rid of best statements for example and like why do you know, why can’t it be treated like company tax And just once a year we do a reconciliation rather than all that additional paperwork, good for the accountants but of no great benefit to the small business owner.

BILL LANG: (00:06:30) And then we decided to really, you know, particularly as the pandemic happened, we we don’t for a while a trademark called Buy Local and we decided to get very, very active that we would need big companies to help a lot of the small businesses during the pandemic.

BILL LANG: (00:06:45) And then it was terrific.

BILL LANG: (00:06:46) We formed Team Small Business Australia.

BILL LANG: (00:06:47) SCOMO had something called Team Australia for a while, but Team Small Business Australia is still in place and so companies like Telstra, Aussie, Post, NAB, PEX Out all instantly got on board, started providing resources.

BILL LANG: (00:07:00) We interacted with their customer facing teams in terms of the conversations and help the small business owners that they would need to do through, particularly in Victoria, an incredibly uncertain time here for a couple of years around the number of lockdowns and other sorts of things that took place.

BILL LANG: (00:07:18) And that’s culminated more recently and we’ve had our first ever national conference, so that happened a couple of weeks ago in Melbourne.

BILL LANG: (00:07:25) More than 1500 business owners have accessed all the resources.

BILL LANG: (00:07:28) We’ve put together the recordings and things and we’ll probably look to do that now on, on a bit of an ongoing basis.

BILL LANG: (00:07:33) But again, it’s bringing helping big business, you know, truly support, understand and collaborate with small businesses and then increasingly helping small business owners, particularly male ones that are a bit older to, you know, get together.

BILL LANG: (00:07:49) You know, I find generally speaking the female business owners that we deal with are much better at sharing with each other, helping each other.

BILL LANG: (00:07:57) Whereas with this rate of digitization and the challenges that a lot of businesses that have been owned for a long time and and led by, you know, male business owners are facing challenges and risks like the pandemic was was awful.

BILL LANG: (00:08:10) But it only takes a major cyber attack.

BILL LANG: (00:08:12) It only takes a couple of other things and out of nowhere, out of the blue, some of these businesses can be you know, destroyed.

BILL LANG: (00:08:19) So that’s an area of real focus for us now is the the older business owner and helping them understand the risks and how to manage them and how to pick good partners and good vendors rather than just having the IT guy or Once Upon a time with marketing and advertising as a local businesses bought and ad in the Yellow Pages.

BILL LANG: (00:08:36) You know, yes.

BILL LANG: (00:08:38) Now there are hundreds of different things and you got told to go and do blogging a few years ago and then now it’s social media, now it’s AI.

BILL LANG: (00:08:45) You know, like it’s this stuff continues to come to come at them.

BILL LANG: (00:08:48) And it’s still fundamentals of business are the same, but different types of customers want to communicate in different ways.

BILL LANG: (00:08:54) So that’s very much our focus now.

BILL LANG: (00:08:56) But small business runs in my DNA.

BILL LANG: (00:08:59) It’s for anyone who’s got a small business that you know, has a reasonably predictable profits.

BILL LANG: (00:09:05) It’s a great way to achieve a range of other life goals you’ve got with, you know, coaching your kids at cricket and doing those sorts of things and having a bit more flexibility with holiday times and all of that sort of stuff.

BILL LANG: (00:09:17) And we worked with Aussie Post to create something called Local Business Heroes.

BILL LANG: (00:09:21) It’s in its third year now and and I do, I coach directly the winners of Local Business Heroes and some of the businesses that people have started all around the country, particularly in regional Australia and a lot of them women that that these businesses that they’ve started and developed are enabling them to meet their life goals.

BILL LANG: (00:09:39) It’s it’s not purely about the finances.

BILL LANG: (00:09:42) It’s not necessarily about.

Anthony Perl: (00:09:43) Being super, super.

BILL LANG: (00:09:44) Rich, although some of them have got some fantastic businesses they’re building.

BILL LANG: (00:09:47) But it’s and as we realize, I said and look, well, I’m not.

BILL LANG: (00:09:50) I’ve refused to use the term mummy-preneur.

BILL LANG: (00:09:52) These are these women are entrepreneurs, You know, they’ve identified a gap in the market.

BILL LANG: (00:09:57) They’ve gone about doing something about it.

BILL LANG: (00:09:59) They’re, you know, balancing and juggling the other needs and it’s just fantastic.

BILL LANG: (00:10:04) You know, that’s a, you know, that’s a small business owner, you know they’re leaders, leaders of their families, leaders of their businesses, leaders in their community.

BILL LANG: (00:10:11) And we need more people doing it.

BILL LANG: (00:10:13) And those that are thinking about giving it away, No, no, we we’re a bit of help here and there and you can keep going.

Anthony Perl: (00:10:18) I love it and I love what you guys do.

Anthony Perl: (00:10:20) I I’ve got one final question just to wrap things up as well.

Anthony Perl: (00:10:25) Well, actually two if we can squeeze it in, but I just very quickly because I know you ran the conference recently and we’ve touched on a little bit separately, give me a bit of a, a summary of what you see as being the big issues facing small business in the coming year or two?

BILL LANG: (00:10:41) Look, I think there’s there’s a lot of time being spent and a lot of errors being made in trying to make different apps and systems and IT work together because a lot of free ones out there or low cost ones or you’ve you’ve got your IT guy normally and this is what they’ve always provided.

BILL LANG: (00:10:59) I I think one of the big areas is, is coming up with something that’s much more secure, that’s integrated.

BILL LANG: (00:11:04) So there’s less of those mistakes, the data’s more protected.

BILL LANG: (00:11:07) There’s such bigger obligations now on business owners and consequences.

BILL LANG: (00:11:12) So I think getting the your digital infrastructure really a business grade is what I would describe it as And and there are some, you know, great providers now and you know we’re about to put in in place effectively a a website and digital strategy review service where you know we’ll have a look at it, we’ll give you a report, will point you in the right direction, know what you can expect to pay, what to be looking for.

BILL LANG: (00:11:35) So that’s that’s a big gap that exists at the moment.

BILL LANG: (00:11:38) Where can I go and get that and you know drop 1000 bucks and get that rather than I get 5 requests a day from youngsters in India reckoning, I can get me a number one on Google and all this sort of stuff.

BILL LANG: (00:11:48) So that that that I think is a really big area and then for a number of other business owners it’s like well look given where you’re at, given the change that’s coming, are you going to start you know change and stay or get ready to go.

BILL LANG: (00:12:03) And so many business owners have been very poor at succession planning and and we have a number we have to help and you know one of the partners has got cancer becomes a forced sale and and they haven’t really been developed, you know in terms of being in a good position to not be dependent upon the owner.

BILL LANG: (00:12:18) So the other part of all is digitiation and getting the right robust systems in place.

BILL LANG: (00:12:22) If you do it in the right way, leveraging artificial intelligence capability to do some things a bit more automatically and a bit faster and a bit better will be much easier.

BILL LANG: (00:12:31) But the other thing is your business is going to be more attractive for someone to buy now to come and take from you because it’s going to be, you know you’re not going to have to hang around which you know most sellers don’t want to have to do.

BILL LANG: (00:12:42) But again, the predictability of the profits, the economic sustainability of the business is much more visible.

BILL LANG: (00:12:48) So look, I think you know we we talked a bit about AI on your recent gathering and I I think it is absolutely business changing.

BILL LANG: (00:12:55) Will it run your whole business for you?

BILL LANG: (00:12:57) No.

BILL LANG: (00:12:58) If you don’t get involved with it, the competitors of yours that do get involved with it are going to start eating more of your lunch.

Anthony Perl: (00:13:05) Yes, absolutely.

Anthony Perl: (00:13:06) And I think I just wanted to wrap things up with one final quick question for you as well.

Anthony Perl: (00:13:12) And by the way, I hope we can come back for another episode and explore some of those things you’ve just touched on because it’s such a big area.

Anthony Perl: (00:13:20) But I really wanted to just ask you a question that I often ask my guests is when people have been involved with Small Business Australia for a little period of time, what’s the kind of a heart that they have that you wish people now would would know that they so they can come on board and get involved with you?

BILL LANG: (00:13:36) Look, I think many of us think and as humans and as adults, that the, you know, the best way you learn is by trying things and making a mistake, right?

BILL LANG: (00:13:44) You think about a kid putting their hand near the open flame on the stove.

BILL LANG: (00:13:48) And the thing about that is you put your hand sort of close to it, you sort of feel the heat or you’re in there very quickly and the brain responds and pulls you away.

BILL LANG: (00:13:55) The thing about business is that is actually not the best way to learn.

BILL LANG: (00:13:59) Particularly if some of the decisions you’re making and the things on having a go mean that if you do get it wrong or not quite right, it’s going to sink you.

BILL LANG: (00:14:07) Like you don’t get your intellectual property protected the right way.

BILL LANG: (00:14:10) You don’t set up the right corporate structure because you don’t really want to pay a lawyer.

BILL LANG: (00:14:13) You buy some cheap thing online, some website that’s 50 bucks a month, and then you can’t do anything with it.

BILL LANG: (00:14:18) And then you want to move to something and no, you can’t have the information.

BILL LANG: (00:14:21) So there’s there’s a lot of mistakes that get made along those lines.

BILL LANG: (00:14:24) But the best way to learn is not from making your own mistakes, particularly if they end up being having substantial consequences.

BILL LANG: (00:14:31) The best way is to learn from other people’s mistakes and and the reality is you know everything to do with business is learnable.

BILL LANG: (00:14:38) There are a lot of digital snake oil salesman out there.

BILL LANG: (00:14:41) So they’re promising everything on the Internet and I’ve got their digital notions, lotions and potions like if you can’t sort of talk with someone, interact with someone online, know it’s a real person around what they’re suggesting, you have a look at and the concept that you need to learn.

BILL LANG: (00:14:56) And so I think that’s that’s that is a key thing.

BILL LANG: (00:14:59) And then the other thing I would say for the older business owners is, you know, the old dogs can’t learn tricks.

BILL LANG: (00:15:04) You know, we’re sitting our ways, I am the way I am, blah, blah, blah.

BILL LANG: (00:15:07) The truth is that old dogs can learn new tricks, but only one trick at a time.

BILL LANG: (00:15:12) And and we have a service called the profit improvement blueprint, which is really around getting down to where do we start, what’s the first thing that we work on strengthening potentially, say the foundation of the business.

BILL LANG: (00:15:23) And let’s just have three or four months on that.

BILL LANG: (00:15:26) I use the analogy of home improvement.

BILL LANG: (00:15:28) You know we live in a house.

BILL LANG: (00:15:29) We might be renting it.

BILL LANG: (00:15:29) We might own it.

BILL LANG: (00:15:30) It’s pretty busy.

BILL LANG: (00:15:31) We’re flat chat.

BILL LANG: (00:15:32) We’re trying to keep it clean.

BILL LANG: (00:15:33) If we’ve got kids it’s even more of a challenge but we walk past a room or two and it’s like got to do something about that bloody dripping tap.

BILL LANG: (00:15:40) Well geez, that’s annoying me.

BILL LANG: (00:15:41) That fly wire scrunch.

BILL LANG: (00:15:42) There’s always a a project there and we walk past and the noises most business owners are exactly the same.

BILL LANG: (00:15:48) We’re busy running the business and hopefully it’s you know, more’s coming into what’s going out even after we pay tax and super and everything.

BILL LANG: (00:15:55) But there’s but there’s an area of that business that if the business improver could wave their magic wand that you could get improved would make a significant difference.

BILL LANG: (00:16:05) And and it’s and it’s finding and making because I don’t have any time or you don’t have any time because you’re flat chat trying to chop through the forest with a blunt axe.

BILL LANG: (00:16:14) You don’t take a step back and sharpen that axe a little bit and then actually sort of go you know what though, I’ll leave those trees there.

BILL LANG: (00:16:20) I’ll start with these ones over there.

BILL LANG: (00:16:21) You’re going to burn yourself out.

BILL LANG: (00:16:23) You’re going to tie the axe is going to get blunter.

BILL LANG: (00:16:25) You’re going to get more tired.

BILL LANG: (00:16:26) You’re going to do your back.

BILL LANG: (00:16:28) So I I think you know investing in a community where you can work at.

BILL LANG: (00:16:32) Where am I at?

BILL LANG: (00:16:32) What’s the next thing?

BILL LANG: (00:16:34) How do I think about finding someone to help me and how do I assess value.

BILL LANG: (00:16:38) So in other words, come and join Business Advantage dot online, which is our $300.00 a year premium membership but you.

BILL LANG: (00:16:46) But you can come and join for free.

BILL LANG: (00:16:48) Get a buy local listing which will help you with SEO and AI, Open AI and ChatGPT in particular, but you’ve got a particular need.

BILL LANG: (00:16:56) Come and have a look at what we’ve got and we’d love to help you.

Anthony Perl: (00:16:59) Fantastic, Bill, thank you so much.

Anthony Perl: (00:17:01) As always, we’re going to include plenty of information in our show notes below, so we invite everyone to come on to the website and check those things out.

Anthony Perl: (00:17:08) Thank you for being an incredible guest and I hope we can have you back sometime soon.

BILL LANG: (00:17:12) Anthony, thanks for the opportunity and you know again for all the business owners out there, thank you for everything you’re doing for your local communities and keep going.

Anthony Perl: (00:17:20) Biz Bites is brought to you by com together for all your marketing needs so you can build your brand, engage audiences on multiple platforms.

Anthony Perl: (00:17:30) Go to commtogether.com.au

Anthony Perl: (00:17:33) Follow the links to book an appointment for a free consultation.