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James Bennett

Business Plan Gold

Business Plan Gold 150 150 Cypher

Business Plan Gold

No matter how old your business is, it’s important to have a business plan. Lots of business owners have one; it gets done once, with just enough information to convince you there is a business opportunity there, but then it’s not looked at again. Some people have never done one; some business owners monitor and tweak it all the time.

There’s an old adage that no plan survives first contact with the enemy, which is why a business plan shouldn’t be seen as restrictive, fixed and inflexible. It should be an opportunity to get real clarity on what you want from your business, who you want to serve in terms of your customer base, along with some realistic numbers.

The most important part of a business plan
I love a good business plan! At the start of Cypher’s journey we needed some finance so I wrote my first business plan with two aims; one to convince my wife that it would work and secondly to convince the bank so they would give us the funds we needed. I included all the traditional bits; the unique opportunity we’d got, what our strengths were going to be, some SWOT analysis, our typical customer, who our competition was and how we would be different, then I did a three-year financial forecast. It became an 81-page PDF.

I would argue that the final document, all 81 pages of it, is not particularly useful anymore, but the time we spent thinking about each section was really powerful.

The most important element of business planning is the time and the headspace business owners give themselves to actually think about their business. Business owners need to understand who their competition are, understand their ideal client, understand the importance of cash flow for their business and how everything fits together.

When I showed a business coach the financial forecast, he immediately recognised that it was for my wife’s benefit.  Cypher was operating just above breakeven.  At the time I was acting out my business horror story and I needed help to see a brighter future. But that is another story.

The 1 page business plan
One of the best things we did with our 81 page business plan was to distil it into a one-pager; a pitch-deck of the key headlines. It has a summary of each section, plus some of the key numbers in the forecast. Now, whenever we log in to our client management system, the first thing everyone sees is our core values; what we stand for and why we’re trying to do things differently. All the stuff that came out of that business planning process is front and centre in our daily routine.

The importance of Cash Flow in Business planning.
The amount of business plans I see that have no mention of cash flow is phenomenal. A lot of new business owners are able to create a solid profit and loss account; they project the amount of sales they will make and estimate how much it will cost them to make those sales. Based on that, they break even in month six and are profitable by month eight. Well done them.

What they miss is the disconnect between profit and loss and cash flow. The amount of times I’ve had to sit with someone and say, this P and L is great, you’re making profit in month eight, but to get to that point, you’ve first had to buy £100k of assets, you’ve had to pay for everything up front because you’re brand new  but your customers have 90-day payment terms, so actually if you don’t make profit by month four, you’re going to run out of cash before month seven, so being profitable in month eight is a waste of time.

Forecasting
Forecasting is tough, but if you forecast profit and loss, you’re only doing half the job and you’re forgetting the most important part. A business can trundle along for a few months, breaking even if cash flow is ok, but no business can survive with no cash.

For example, its vital to understand the impact of payment terms; are customers paying 50% upfront and the balance on completion, or 100% on point of delivery or is payment due 30, 60 or 90 days after delivery. With this information, we can build the rules around when the business is receiving funds for work done.  By understanding the impact of each transaction a simple decision to shorten payment terms from 30 to 14 days for example, might give you another three or four months of trading at a very low income rate.

We then look at fixed costs, for example; is the rent paid quarterly in advance, or is it paid monthly?  What payment terms does a business have with its suppliers? We know things like if you’ve got staff that they get paid at the end of the month but that national insurance and PAYE is paid on the 19th of the next month to spread the risk.

Beware the cash black hole
Our aim, using all of this knowledge is to find the month, in the first 12 months where there is a potential cash pinch. Based on funds coming in and money going out we can see if there is a cash black hole somewhere down the line.

Business planning for established businesses
If you have a more established business then the business planning process either allows you to reconnect with your plans at the start, or if you are doing it for the first time, it re-engages you with your purpose.  Businesses and business owners shift overtime and a business plan reconnects you with what you are actually trying to do. Once you have done that and you have your longer term vision, the next step, is to plot what you are doing in the next 90 days to achieve part of that plan.

The Power of Review your Business Plan
Whether you make a business plan or not, the important thing is to understand that businesses change, owners change, markets, customers, competition all change and reviewing your situation at regular intervals provides great insights into a business and an opportunity to re-evaluate, or learn, unlearn and re-learn what a new framework for the business might be.

The best time to make a business plan
The good news is that typically new businesses outperform their initial forecast, but our job is to look at cash run rate based on a worst case scenario. The best time to do this is before a business model becomes a business. No cash has changed hand and the impact of decisions won’t be as critical. But however old a business is a business plan with SWOT, competitor analysis, customer research, P&L and cashflow forecasting brings huge amounts of clarity.

For me the best outcome for a good business plan is that it gives the business owners the comfort or belief that there is a business there; that they know it isn’t going to run out of cash in six months, they have thought about who their customers are and know there’s a market for their product or service, that their pricing is correct and their idea has legs.  Then distil it all down to one page and you have a plan.

Find out more

New editions of the Mind Your Business Podcast appear every Friday. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your choice of Pod provider to have it delivered straight to your device.

The destructive power of Apathy

The destructive power of Apathy 150 150 Cypher

The destructive power of Apathy

Apathy is something that can haunt all entrepreneurs and business owners at various stages of their journey-sometimes quite drastically- such is its destructive power.

Now, everyone has ups and downs in their business, but have you considered that perhaps apathy plays a massive part?

Apathy is an emotion that by definition means you lack interest, enthusiasm, or concern; in other words you don’t feel anything, you don’t really care one way or another and that is the problem.

On the Mind Your Business Podcast, we have talked about the power of belief and the affect an entrepreneurial mindset can have and how motivation, inspiration and enthusiasm all provide really powerful energy that help entrepreneurs to act no matter what. It keeps them going forward when the path is blocked or times are hard and brings light and colour to their world. Apathy on the other hand is dullness and emptiness; I can’t be botheredness; a listlessness that can be really destructive when you are running a business.

Check your revs.
One way to view your levels of apathy at any given time is as the speedometer or rev counter in a car. On one end, let’s say near five, maybe six thousand revs, you get action and at the other end- under one thousand revs- you have apathy.

It’s a situational thing for sure; people aren’t generally apathetic about every aspect of their business- if they are then there’s a bigger problem- it’s usually only in certain circumstances that apathy causes our revs to drop. The problem here is that if we let our levels drop – even for one day –maybe as a culmination of events, it has the power to undo lots of good our work. Losing your mojo for a day, without realising that you are having that sort of a day can also have a very negative effect on your team.

Beware Dementors
Apathy is nothingness. It’s like the Dementors from Harry Potter that literally suck the life out of everything. Now that’s an extreme example, but  I think it describes the link between anxiety, which is a burner of energy, and apathy, which is the feeling of emptiness you are left with after you have completely burnt out quite well.

Apathy can also be common in people that have a very negative view of themselves. All of us have heard of impostor syndrome, but negative thoughts and self-doubt view both play into apathy.

Are Entrepreneurs at greater risk of apathy?
There are very few entrepreneurs that haven’t suffered from a healthy- or unhealthy- dose of anxiety. They deal with pressure situations all the time and not everything comes off. So there are bound to be times of doubt. I would say that this leaves them more at risk of this condition called apathy.

Apathy is self-sabotage
Business owners that are apathetic about their business have the potential to do a great deal of self-sabotage. Business owners get in a mindset of ‘what’s the point?’, ‘it’s not going to work’ and the situation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. As an example, a client pitched for a massive bit of business, but was sure they weren’t going to win it. Normally they would have followed up two or three times, this time they didn’t bother. Now, they may not have lost the business because they didn’t follow up after the meeting, but they definitely wouldn’t have won it that way either.

When team members are apathetic
There are, of course, super motivated business owners, who are always 100% motivated and driven but they have team members that fall into apathy. Everyone has seen the ability of one person to drag down the whole room. It’s not necessarily their default position but they are having a day where they just don’t care. As leaders we have to recognise apathy for what it is and maybe give that person the benefit of the doubt for one or two days; lots can be going on in the background. But if the apathy spreads it’s time to have a conversation. Be heavy on empathy, let the individual open up but also recognise the effect that apathy can have on your business – and them as individuals.  Remind them of the valuable contribution they make, how their actions can help everyone grow.

But remember, it isn’t their business. It’s not their fourth child, their baby. Yes they will enjoy working with you, enjoy the rewards it brings but it isn’t what keeps them up at night. Now that doesn’t mean business owners can’t have powerful conversations with workers, give more responsibility that can make them feel it is their business. You do have the power to inspire people to go well above and beyond what is in their contract.

Toxic workplaces
In a room of 10 people, you would hope seven or eight are flying and maybe one or two are feeling a little apathetic, that’s just life. In any culture or workplace you cant expect everyone to be on it all the time. If the majority of workers are having off days though then business owners have to dig deeper because there could be a million reasons for it as we talked about in our Toxic Workplace pod

Get moving
There is a clear link in many articles between apathy and a lack of exercise. So doing something that gets the heart rate up, the blood pumping is a great way to stop the funk. If you’re having a rubbish day, go for a walk, go for a run, do something.  The link between exercise and mood is massive!

Avoiding apathy
Apathy can manifest itself in the minds of business owners and their teams. It can be driven by anxiety and can lead to a lack of positivity but also a lack of productivity, which is key. We have talked a lot about the mindset that successful business owners have; they are positive, enthusiastic and driven. If you’re apathetic about your business then 100% it won’t do as well. No successful business owners are apathetic about their business. That’s not how you create a £1m organisation.

The first thing to do to avoid apathy taking hold is to be able to self-diagnose; to understand that it’s natural to have days when you just aren’t on it as much as other days, but once you have recognised that you’re feeling apathetic about your business, get some easy wins. Find some tasks which are ten, fifteen minute jobs that can just be done.  Post on LinkedIn, ring a customer or reply to an email; do something that can be ticked off of a list.

Secondly get active. Stop staring aimlessly at a screen and physically make yourself get up out of your seat.

Thirdly have someone, a coach, a business partner, a trusted advisor, someone that you can talk to who recognises that you’re self-sabotaging and is able to bring you back on track.

Times can be hard, clients leave, pitches are lost but there is never a good time to take your hands off the wheel.

As business owners we have spoken a lot about a positive, healthy mindset; how clarity can prevent a horror story being scripted that doesn’t need to play out. If we recognise our revs are low meaning our apathy levels are high, then we can shift the needle through to action and the power this can generate for a business is huge.

Find out more

New editions of the Mind Your Business Podcast appear every Friday. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your choice of Pod provider to have it delivered straight to your device.

Autumn Budget De-Cyphered

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Autumn Budget De-Cyphered

‘Jobs up, growth up, debt down’, Chancellor Rishi Sunak delivered his long-awaited autumn budget speech today.

While there were few surprises, – the Chancellor got himself into hot water by trailing most of his announcements in the press last week- his mantra for economic and jobs growth reflects the experiences of the majority of our clients.

I would say 90% of our clients are growing, if not quicker than they were pre COVID, then certainly at that level, many have also either recently recruited or are in the process of recruiting. In terms of debt, however, a number of small business are still sat on bounce back loans, some have spent a little, some a lot, some have repaid them in full but the picture is slightly different to the overall headline.

While there was little in the budget for an accountant to get our teeth into tax-wise but there were a few things that caught my eye.

Annual Investment Allowance
This was set at £1m and due to be reduced in April 2022, but it has now been extended until March 2023 meaning that the first £1m you spend on things such as commercial vehicles, tooling and computers you still receive 100% tax relief on, or actually slightly more based on the Super Deductions announced in the March budget. This £1m applies to all businesses whether they are a corner shop or Sainsbury’s who can burn through this quite quickly but for farmers who invest annually in big plant material this is big news.

£22bn R&D investment targeted
We work with an excellent business that has sourced and secured great sums of money for clients in terms of R&D tax credits. In his speech today Chancellor Rishi Sunak set out a target of increasing spending on research and development (R&D) in the UK to more than £20bn by end of the current parliament and £22bn by 2026/27.This was said to represent a cash increase of 50% in addition to R&D tax reliefs.

He also pledged to ‘modernise’ the R&D tax credit system to ensure more money is spent in the UK, which might mean, if you’re a UK subsidiary of an overseas business, potentially you will see restrictions from 2023 on how you get R&D tax relief but hopefully this represents the first step in applying the necessary rigor to the sector to ensure spurious claims are wedeled out the R&D claims made are funding the appropriate programmes.

Business rates
Typically, business rates isn’t something we speak to clients about because we can’t affect them in any way.  You can’t, for example, reduce the cost of them by adding money to a pension scheme. The good news though is that the multiplier is not increasing next year like it was expected to and interestingly, in a move to help regenerate run down high streets, businesses that improve dilapidated old premises will not incur increased rates based on the value added by the improvements.

In addition – as a number of our clients are in the retail, leisure and hospitality sectors- they will welcome the 50% discount applied to rates next year.

Cut in beer and sparkling wine duty
Landlords and pub goers might feel like raising a glass this evening after the Chancellor announced a major cut in taxes on prosecco, rose, draught beer and cider. He also said that the 28% premium on sparkling wine will be shelved, while duty on sparkling products will be levelled at the same rate as still wine, knocking as much as 83p off each bottle of bubbly.

A planned increase in duty on spirits, whisky, wine, cider and beer will be scrapped from midnight tonight, basically making it cheaper to have a drink in a pub.

The Chancellor said he will also slash the so-called “keg tax” on barrels of beer delivered to pubs and clubs so less costs are passed on to the consumers.

In other good news for accountants of licenced premises, the chancellor announced a simplification of alcohol duties. Sadly this came a day too late for me as I spent a day filling out an alcohol duty registration form for a new microbrewery. It was the most complex tax form I have ever filled out.

National Minimum Wage
In good news for those earning the minimum wage, the chancellor has announced an increase to £9.50, but of course if you are a business owner that pays this level then you might see an impact on profits.

HUGE BOOST FOR BROWNFIELD DEVELOPMENT
In good news for the building industry, the chancellor outlined plans to build 160,000 greener homes on derelict or unused land in England with almost £2bn set to be invested, with a further £9m also pledged towards 100 urban pocket parks across the UK.

National Insurance and dividend tax hikes from April
In terms of how the Government will pay for its new spending plans, the greatest tax increases were announced last month as the Prime Minister announced a rise in both National Insurance contributions and dividend tax rates across the UK from April 2022.

Following a rise of 1.25 percentage points basic-rate payers will pay 8.75% tax on dividends, up from 7.5%, higher-rate payers will pay 33.75%, up from 32.5%, while top-rate payers will pay 39.35% up from 38.1% on dividend earnings of above £2,000 per year.

There is still time before these changes come into effect, so if you have excess reserves in your company it may be worthwhile voting additional dividends in this current year to ‘bank’ the lower tax rates.

Find out more

Get in touch if you you have any questions or Read our blog on how to take money out of your business.

The Power of Brands

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The Power of Brands

The whole concept of brand and reputation is massively powerful and something that is easily translatable between the biggest and the smallest organisations.

While an accountant will take an inventory of all your company’s assets, creditors and debtors to ascertain the ‘paper’ value of your business, the true worth of a company includes its brand value in the market place. You have a logo, a web site, a presence, tangible things people can touch but a good brand also has an intangible element; you can’t pick it up and touch it, but it does have weight and it does have value.

What’s in a brand?
As an example of the power or value of a brand, at this summer’s UEFA European Championships, Christiano Ronaldo –heard of him lately- managed to knock around $4bn off Coke’s share price by moving some bottles of their product out of shot during a post-match press conference in favour of a bottle of unbranded water.

In the same week, France midfielder Paul Pogba, a practising Muslim, removed a bottle of non-alcoholic Heineken beer after he was named ‘Star of the Match’ in France’s 1-0 Group win over Germany.

As one of the official sponsors of Euro 2020, in their response, Coca-Cola said that “everyone is entitled to their drink preferences”. What’s interesting is that since the incident, Coca-Cola’s stock value has since risen, so the cynic in me wonders whether it was all just a ploy to create some headlines.

As a company, Coca-Cola has a value of around $284 billion, more than many small countries, but if all it takes is one person moving two bottles of their product to wipe off 2% of that value it goes to show the added value of a brand. Yes Coca-Cola, along with Amazon and Apple make a substantial amount of money from sales of product but there’s a big chunk of their share price, which is made up purely of this intangible goodwill towards the brand.

Remember how Gerald Ratner undid all of his life’s work – and destroyed a very well patronised high street jewellery brand by stating the products were all ‘crap’. The company’s shares dropped £500 million in a matter of days.

Ronaldo and Pogba are recent examples but, but athletes refusing to endorse a team or competition sponsor isn’t new. Back in 1992 at the height of their battle with Nike, Reebok paid millions to sponsor the warm up gear of the USA’s basketball Dream Team at the Barcelona Olympics. Predictably, which Reebok was counting on, the Dream Team won gold, but atop the medal podium, Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley – both Nike sponsored athletes- draped US flags over their shoulders to hide the Reebok badges of their warm up apparel. Both knew the value of their association with Nike and weren’t prepared to jeopardise it – especially at one of the most watched events in history.

Brands and football
When you look at the brands that sponsor an average football game, in my opinion, it is 100% sport washing. McDonald’s, Coca Cola, various alcohol and sports-betting brands, Tik- Tok, Gazprom; they are they’re there because everyone loves football and it has such an unrivalled, world-wide audience. It’s why we’ve got world cups in Qatar and boxing matches in Dubai. They try and push their human rights record, the obesity epidemic and the gambling and alcohol addictions to one side and get cosy with brand football.

FIFA or UEFA seem to sell to the highest bidder, which ethically is probably a conversation in its own right, but to make it relatable for small business owners, the message is to be careful who you partner up with.

The power of a brand for small businesses
The power of a brand is greater than your balance sheet, and has far more value than I think a lot of people realise. I like to think that we have managed to build a brand at Cypher. If you’d have asked me three years ago, do I think small businesses can build brand, I would say no, at the time, I thought it was all about the business owner’s personality or the credibility of a product, but it’s not, and I think now small businesses definitely have an opportunity to brand themselves and if they do it well, then it’s a massive tool in their arsenal to differentiate themselves from the competition.

Brand v branding
It’s important to remember that branding isn’t just about your logo, or the colours you use on your web site. It is much bigger than that; it’s about how you act, how you are perceived, what clients think of you, your touchpoints and how you ‘show up’. You know when you’ve got your branding right when your customers are proud to share your logo, your work, content and comments too.

Going back to football and its dealings with sponsors, Norwich City, recently promoted back into the Premier League had to do a complete U-turn on a shirt sponsorship deal with Asian betting company BK8 worth millions when fans complained about the adult content being shared on the sponsor’s social media pages.

The club’s fans are very protective of its brand and its legacy but while, hopefully this is an opportunity for Norwich to take a step back and consider all of its future commercial decisions, I am not sure whether smaller businesses have the luxury of making such wrong choices. You don’t generally ditch your football club and go and support someone else over a sponsor, but you would ditch your local restaurant if that restaurant got called out for unhygienic or inhumane working conditions.

Customers vote with their feet and so small businesses need to be more conscious than ever, of not just the quality of their logo and visual branding, but also the values behind them and the perception this can give prospects and customers. Understand that your reputation as a business owner is what people say about you when you’re not there. How you do anything in businesses, is how you’re perceived to do everything.

Perception is Brand
When we take on any client that has a history of trading, we ask them what has brought them to us, essentially why they want to change accountants. A number cite receiving unexpected or big bills. As an example, one recent client was hit with a bill for £16,000, payable in 14 days. The outstanding amount was for work done on their behalf, which only came to light when their accountants were audited. After the shock of the size of the bill, their immediate thoughts were how can we trust anything these guys do for us if it takes six years and a third party auditor to spot that they haven’t billed us properly? Basically, if they don’t look after their numbers, how do we know they look after ours?

This type of scenario absolutely undermines any statements on a web site about being proactive, helping clients with cash flow and supporting business owners because there’s no authenticity to it.

Instagram life
How many of us only share the good bits of our life on social media. LinkedIn is full of stories and posts from business owners winning. The thing is we want to be associated with winners. We queue overnight for the latest Apple product, not because we understand the P and L’s and the balance sheets and the cashflow of the business, but we understand the brand and its association to winning.

The rise of influencer marketing
The power of a brand is massive but these stories demonstrate how tenuous it can be. What would happen if every Premier League or international footballer followed Ronaldo and Pogba and boycotted Coca-Cola, how much would that knock off the share price? And imagine if the water bottle what Ronaldo picked up was an Evian bottle?

Find out more

New editions of the Mind Your Business Podcast appear every Friday. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your choice of Pod provider to have it delivered straight to your device.

How to Avoid Toxic Work cultures

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How to Avoid Toxic Work cultures

In the war on talent, one of the overriding messages was that strong company cultures would always attract better talent.

The topic of this blog and podcast came about following the publication of an open letter to the co-founder of BrewDog James Watt from ex-employees, accusing him of creating a culture of fear in the workplace.

In the letter, circulated on Twitter, former workers alleged that the Scottish brewer’s rapid growth had involved cutting corners on health and safety, espousing values it did not live by, and creating a “toxic” culture that left staff suffering from mental illness.

The language used is particularly emotive and claims that further 45 ex-employees supported the message but refused to share their names for fear of repercussions.

There’s a particular section worth highlighting that for me sums the whole letter up in one go. It starts “So many of us started our jobs at BrewDog  eagerly, already bought into the BrewDog ethos only to very quickly discover that ‘fast-paced’ meant unmanageable and ‘challenging’ meant damaging’.

Fast-paced dynamic workplace or somewhere you’re lucky to survive?
This is an example of management failing at every turn. Now I was always a fan of James Watt. He is famous for putting himself out there and being a bit edgy. His book even has a chapter on how to make people hate you.  He believes that there is no such thing as a job for life, if you do that you might as well be a zombie. His views are that you go in, do your work and if you move on, you move on. This story however, completely changes my perspective on BrewDog from being a fast-paced dynamic, modern workplace to somewhere that you’re lucky to survive two or three years before you’re being binned off.

Sadly, toxic workplaces, aren’t the preserve of the large corporations, you can have really dysfunctional, toxic work environments in small businesses too. I learnt it the hard way. I was part of a leadership team in a business that had lost a number of really good people in a short space of time. But I didn’t realise how toxic the culture was until I sat in a meeting for over an hour and a half to hear the senior partners conclude that the problem was the staff and not them!

Theory X and Theory Y
In the 1960s, an academic called Douglas McGregor suggested two contrasting management theories, Theory X and Theory Y. Theory X was a traditional view of direction and control that suggested workers required close, firm supervision with clearly specified tasks and that the threat of punishment or the promise of greater pay were the driving motivating factors. The classic stick and carrot technique if you like.

Theory Y, however, suggested that human beings are motivated by engagement, empowerment and will exercise self-direction and self-control in the service of objectives to which they are committed. In short, work can be inherently motivating and people will seek responsibility and see it as reward in itself.  McGregor created Theory Y, not as a panacea for all the ills created by Theory X, but he hoped that by highlighting Theory Y, as an alternative it would persuade managers to abandon the limiting assumptions of Theory X and consider using some more of the techniques suggested by Theory Y. I think we still need to be somewhere on the spectrum between these two extremes.

A fish rots from the head down.
A business coach once told me, that a fish rots from the head down. You will not find a dysfunctional workplace culture where there is a high-level functioning leader. If the people at the top understand their vision and have clarity on what they’re trying to achieve, then they can build a culture in service of that mission and bring the team along with them. Whereas, bad decisions and poor people management completely takes the legs out from any culture below them.

As a leader, displaying the behaviour that gets the best out of the people is surely the best possible start for creating a culture conducive to human and business growth. If you have a structure that is big enough to contain a tier of middle managers, then it is their job to filter the message from the leadership down through their direct reports. Make sure that those guys are a hundred percent on board and are aligned to your values too, because that’s where the message can get muddled. And how can you expect a manager to build a team if the directors above them can’t stay on message.

Focus on people and the results will follow
It’s easy to imagine that in many bottom-line driven organisations, a focus on profit will outweigh a focus on culture. Going back to BrewDog this was allegedly a case of a hierarchy so focused on growth that it would sweep some people issues under the carpet, as long as the numbers stacked up. But surely, if you help your people be the best they can possible be, the performance will follow.

Both Alan and I recounted stories on the Podcast of our first experiences of management. I was working as a bike mechanic at a national chain, Alan was working at a national DIY store. His store manager demonstrated a thuggery and use of language that many would be appalled at, while I encountered a regional manager that spent his time belittling the store manage, whom everyone liked. In both cases management meant bullying, swearing and keeping people down. Not a great advert for leadership.

It also demonstrated that in any workplace, you don’t necessarily need four or five people of sufficient seniority to create a bad culture, one is all it takes. It may be more detrimental the higher up they are but the power of one individual to undermine an entire business culture is phenomenal.

Listening to staff feedback
Going back to BrewDog employees, it feels that a toxic work environment is just so unnecessary. Very few people leave without giving you a reason, so like your inner critic sift through the gripes and identify some real nuggets. If 30% of your workforce is leaving in a 12 to 18 month period, there’s an issue whether you like it or not, whether it’s too much for your ego or not, there’s an issue. And you need to find out what the problem is and you need to fix it.

One of the best examples of creating a strong company culture was led by Nicole Reid, chief people officer at Xero. Xero refer to their staff as ‘zeros’ which could literally mean nothing, but they have got to the point where people are happy to be classed as a zero because they focus so much on employee engagement. Every day, before they leave their employees do a ten second survey. Have you had a good day, thumbs up or thumbs down? Have any of your colleagues been a star today, write their name and say why? It gives the company a daily pulse check that can measure the health of an organisation. Is there an overriding positive or a negative? Three thumbs down in a week from a colleague is a clear indication that you need to put your arms around them.

Treat people well, and they reward you with better performance
For me there is a clear correlation between culture and performance. If you want growth, improvement, more revenue, then you need a culture that breeds performance. A toxic culture might lead to a short term bump, but overall usually the wheels come off sooner or later. There is no good business reason to allow a toxic culture to invade your organisation. You may not know that you have a toxic culture, but your staff do. So the underlying key message is to talk to your staff.

Find out more

New editions of the Mind Your Business Podcast appear every Friday. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your choice of Pod provider to have it delivered straight to your device.

NI and Dividend tax increase – how much extra will you pay?

NI and Dividend tax increase – how much extra will you pay? 150 150 Cypher

NI and Dividend tax increase – how much extra will you pay?

Earlier this month, the Prime Minister announced that National Insurance contributions and dividend tax rates will increase by 1.25 percentage points across the UK from April 2022. Basic-rate payers will now pay 8.75% tax on dividends, up from 7.5%, higher-rate payers will pay 33.75%, up from 32.5%, while top-rate payers will pay 39.35% up from 38.1%.

There is a dividend tax-free allowance on top of the £12,570 personal allowance, so the first £2,000 of dividend income you receive is tax-free.

The Government said the move would raise £600m in extra revenue, to contribute to funding social care in the UK, the financing of which will change from October 2023.

These changes affect 3 groups of tax-payers.

Employees will likely see their monthly take-home pay reduced by the 1.25% increase in employee’s NIC.

Employers will  pay an additional 1.25% of employer’s NIC for employees earning above the class 1 secondary threshold (currently £8,840 in 2021/22).

Business Owners running Limited Companies will pay an additional 1.25% of tax on any dividends they take over and above the £2,000 tax free amount.

There is still time before these changes come into effect, so if you have excess reserves in your company it may be worthwhile voting additional dividends in this current year to ‘bank’ the lower tax rates.

Find out more

Get in touch if you you have any questions or Read our blog on how to take money out of your business.

Winning the war on talent

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Winning the war on talent

I’ve had a number of meetings with clients, all of whom tell me how hard it is hire people at the moment. Simply put there aren’t enough quality candidates to fit all the roles available. There is a talent shortage and everyone wants the best available. This blog is about winning the war on talent.

The lack of quality candidates is represented on a national scale as according to the Office for National Statistics, job vacancies have hit a record high of 953,000 in the three months to July. The unemployment rate meanwhile fell to 4.7% in the three months to June, while the annual growth in average pay was 7.4%. Despite this overall increase in optimism, finding – and keeping -the right talent is a challenge.

Every business owner wants the best people. But, as the ONS stats show, it’s a candidate-led market and the abundance of jobs available, means the cream can pick and choose who they sell their skills to. You need to create a culture that’s conducive to attracting talent, enabling it to grow before you can reap the benefits as the best people stay and attract more talent.

The new hybrid or remote working models have provided a further challenge to creating this culture; while remote working offers more flexibility and demonstrates more trust, when people aren’t all together in a physical space there is a potential loss of team dynamic, of collaboration, or of idea creation.

Two types of leader
For me hybrid working has developed two types of leader; there’s the ones who, despite not doing this before the pandemic, are now clock-watching to check productivity, they are micro-managing their staff and stressing about how to monitor their work because they can’t physically see them. Then there is another group that has embraced remote working, provided the tech and the systems for their staff to work autonomously – with support- who are now five steps ahead of the competition and frankly killing it in the war for the best talent.

Put yourself in your candidate’s shoes
We work with a lot of recruiters and their feedback is that to attract your talent, like you would any potential customer, you need to wow them before they even step through the door –or join the Zoom call. When they’re checking your website and they’re looking at all the other little touch points within your business, or speaking to colleagues or contacts about what it’s like to work there, you  need to wow them because – like any consumer – they’ve got a number of alternative choices.

You have to put yourself in their shoes. Think, if you were a candidate now, what else would you look for in addition to the brand name and the name of the person interviewing you? There’s the history of the business, Google reviews showing who the customers are and what they say- are they good brands themselves? Will it excite someone to work with those businesses? What’s the full package you offer? Is it flexible, hybrid or office-based what sort of hours do you work, what hardware or software is there to support them and this model?

What’s your Employee USP?
If you want the best people, there needs to be a reason why they want to join you. What is your unfair advantage? Usually it’s who you are being are as a leader, the quality of the conversation you have with them, as well as your purpose and your legacy.

Don’t forget throughout the pandemic a lot of energy, ideas, motivation and passion have gone into creating new start-ups as workers have decided to go it alone, so now you have to convince candidates that working for you is better than working for themselves.

It’s not all about the money
The majority of clients and recruiters reinforce this point consistently; it isn’t always about the money. The candidates that are still in a role, or juggling more than one opportunity will receive a counter offer to attract or retain them. If that offer blows yours out of the water, the chances are you will lose out, but that business may then have to offer similar raises across its workforce whicj will eat into its margins. Or, if the candidate is out of the door enough to be looking for – and taking- interviews there is a good chance that something else has motivated them to leave.

Alan talked on the Podcast about a recent signing for his team, Glasgow Rangers. The player had offers from clubs in England and France that would undoubtedly have offered him more money. The deciding factor for him was a conversation with the manager Steven Gerrard. Many of you will know of Gerrard’s exploits on the pitch for Liverpool and England, but off it, his pledge to make the new signing a better player – ultimately enhancing his career -was what sold it. Can you offer your candidates the chance to simply be better at what you do?

Marketing to candidates
Most businesses are really good at understanding who their ideal clients or customers are and marketing to them. You need to use this same strategy in any recruitment drive. Identify who your ideal candidate might be in terms of skill set, personality and cultural fit and then market to them as if you’re trying to attract customers. Think about all of the energy, resource and creativity that goes into attracting potential customers into your sales funnel and replicate that. Create your talent strategy to win the war.

Communication and role clarification
We talked a lot about bringing people in, but you also need to keep what you’ve got. Start by reviewing and clarifying your team’s roles and the positive difference they make to your company and to your customers. Be transparent about what a good job looks like, what a great job looks like and if someone wants a pay increase what sort of contribution they need to make to get it, so then you can start to talk about career progression and development within their role.

The second thing is your internal communication; how often do you talk to your teams and not at them? What tone do you use, what subjects are discussed, are you motivational and inspiring, is it a two-way conversation and how much do you- or do they think you care about their lives and situations away from work?

These two things have a massive impact on culture – and then make it more authentic when you talk it up at interview.

Right person, wrong role
Separating the person from the role, looking at all the skills you have in your business versus the jobs you need doing can be another way of getting the right person into the right job. Businesses can learn to move things around and create the right role for the right person. Allowing your people to grow, move up or change what they’re doing will create different roles underneath.

Talent pipeline
Ill use the example of a manufacturing client; their work is specialised requiring a specific skills set. Historically, these skills were widely available in the market place, now they are in short supply. To support their talent pipeline they recruit an apprentice every year. Now in my school days – the 90’s- apprenticeships, and particularly trade apprenticeships, were reserved for the kids that weren’t particularly academic. These kids were pushed towards trades and 30 years on are all doing very well. But in the 2020’s, while apprenticeships are growing in popularity, are the same levels of apprentices in these traditional trades coming through? The manufacturing business owner has decided to push the boat out and recruit three or four to safeguard his business for the next 10 years or so.

It is important to ask yourself where your talent comes from and if the pipeline is still strong! If not, do something about it.

There is a war on talent. The game has changed. If we thought people were becoming more demanding pre pandemic, post pandemic it’s going off the scale. Unless you want to be at the back of the queue, you really do need to have a strategy for winning talent, developing your people and putting the best possible team out there.

Find out more

New editions of the Mind Your Business Podcast appear every Friday. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your choice of Pod provider to have it delivered straight to your device.

Waiting Brain

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Waiting Brain

This blog is about a concept called Waiting Brain, which came about from an article that I read and that rang very true for me.

Waiting Brain is the concept that your brain enters a kind of standby mode where you are very unproductive in the lead up to big events or important tasks.

As an example, let’s say you finish a meeting half an hour early and have another one coming up. You have thirty minutes back that you weren’t expecting, but rather than complete a few easy tasks, your brain says ‘well there’s no point starting anything new because I’ll have to stop in 15 minutes’ so you do nothing.

Or, you’ve got something big happening, whether it’s a doctor’s appointment or a big sales pitch at two o’clock in the afternoon and by mid-morning the thought of it has consumed your day and you can’t concentrate on anything else. The fact is in either scenario, you could still be productive, but rather than achieve anything you let ideas ruminate without actually doing anything about them.

It was interesting to discuss with Alan Clark , why we allow ourselves to get into this productivity-squashing cognitive funk, and importantly, how can we combat it?

An obvious solution would be to talk about productivity and time management and how better we could fill those empty minutes, or plan better to avoid big gaps leading up to events. As an example, in a typical day, I can have nine or ten Zoom meetings back to back. Usually, because everyone is prompt and on point, they finish five or ten minutes early. This means I often get an hour back in my day. In that time I tend to do a number of small, two-minute jobs that don’t require me to switch my brain on, or I do my bookkeeping because  a) it’s my comfort zone, but b) it’s something that I can pick up and put down and it doesn’t cause me any stress or bother.

In my mind every time I use one of those five or ten minute blocks to do something that I would otherwise be doing at the end of the day, that’s feels like a win.

But another school of thought we explored on the Mind Your Business Podcast is do we necessarily want to fill this time, or can we be smarter about how we approach these gaps and perhaps use them to create a break and maybe reduce a feeling of overwhelm? If we took these opportunities to step back, make a clearing in our schedule then rather than seeing it as losing 20 minutes, we might instead see the gaps as a chance to just stop and think and use the space to replenish your resilience and create insights that you can use to improve your service.

Prior to lockdown, my gaps between meetings would be spent either walking or driving to the next meeting. My default, at least in the car, would be to call a client, so I didn’t really experience the procrastination of Waiting Brain. Now I rarely leave the office – or house- and my day is Zoomed out, it’s more apparent so I think there is definitely a link to movement, which causes energy and engages our brain and prevents it getting into ‘waiting’ mode.

The second way Waiting Brain manifests itself then, is when you have a big event; a meeting, an appointment, a pitch and while you aren’t on standby mode from nine o’clock in the morning, it’s in the back of your mind throughout the whole day. And then by the time you get to an hour, or two hours out, it’s become such a momentous thing that your brain enters waiting mode and it’s game over until the thing is done.

There are two ways I deal with this. The first is that I try and break my day down so that if I can achieve three identifiable things in it, I am winning. I work around the important event by making sure that my three wins are small enough to be achieved around whatever or whenever that is. I confront whatever it is and change my working habits to maintain my productivity.

The other thing I try to do is to book those sorts of things in as early in the day as possible. I eat my frog for breakfast so I am not stressed about it all day, I get it done and then I can be productive afterwards.

The third approach is self-confidence; nothing is ever as bad as your mind lets you think it will be and if you have already spent time making your business and your approach as good as it can be then you are going to be able to deal with whatever situation you find yourself in and can have absolute confidence that you are prepped in advance and that your product or service is good enough.

Whether you use the time to plan, complete small jobs or take the time to step back and breathe, the key is to have a system that works for you.

The opposite of waiting brain is another procrastination zone created by putting things off until the last minute. I’ll use the example of my school days and homework set during the summer holiday. I was given five bits of homework, I had the whole summer to do them and yet I ended up doing them the last weekend before I went back to school. I am sure I am not alone in this approach.

Interestingly, there’s a lot of research that suggests the reason we do this is because the brain works best at a certain level of stress and pressure and that actually it’s hard to be productive without a pressing time boundary. Although we operate months in advance of our formal deadlines, I combat this by booking in client meetings for a fixed date so I create my own deadline, knowing that two days before the meeting I will deliver the product.

Rather than having a fixed event that causes a lack of productivity, it’s the lack of a fixed deadline that allows our brain to dance around and stop something coming to the top of the priority list and choosing to do other things instead.

The key thing here is clarity. Clarity on what we actually need to do, what the task or project is, what the commitment is, how long it will take and importantly when we will do it. Then add it to the calendar.

A phrase we hear a lot to combat this procrastination is time management, but I think time ownership is more useful and fits with both concepts discussed in this blog.

If you really own your time, then you are probably more mindful of how valuable it is and what you really want to use it for. So, then if you get an unexpected half an hour back it probably becomes an easier decision for how you want to spend those 30 minutes.

 

Waiting Brain is a cognitive state that occurs typically either when you get given half an hour back between meetings you weren’t expecting and yet you can’t be productive, or you’ve got one big thing in your diary that consumes all of your thoughts and also stops you being productive.

The different ways to combat it is to:

  1. Use the time to make a clearing in your thoughts or schedule and step away and just let your mind go
  2. Use the time to get a number of little jobs out of the way, so you don’t end up doing them in the evening or at the end of the day
  3. Use the time to re-energise, exercise and build up your resilience again
  4. Take the time to call other clients on the spur of the moment, connect and keep your brain working

The opposite; procrastination brain occurs when you don’t have deadlines. There’s no fixed timeline and so your brain wanders in a different way. To combat this, the insertion of artificial deadlines feels like an easy win. Alternatively, if you find yourself in a meeting or situation that is wasting your time, have the confidence to get up and walk out.

Find out more

New editions of the Mind Your Business Podcast appear every Friday. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your choice of Pod provider to have it delivered straight to your device.

Why aren’t all business owners thriving?

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Why aren’t all business owners thriving?

This blog set out to answer the question that given the abundance of knowledge available – the majority of it being freely accessible and even organised for us by Google- why doesn’t every business owner have a thriving business?

If everyone can find out how to do it at the swipe of a screen, why aren’t they?

We see this a lot; two business owners doing roughly the same thing, in the same place, in the same way and yet the outcomes for their businesses can be very different.

On the Mind Your Business Podcast of the same title, we distilled it down to three things; mindset, time and asking the right questions.

The power of a mindset
Previous blogs have covered the effect of a positive mindset and the sheer power of belief for business owners. Belief in your business will help you skyrocket, while doubt, uncertainty or a lack of vision about where you want to be hold you back and create a ceiling for your potential.

I do a lot of talks for start-up businesses or pre-start business about how to set a business up and I tell them to build the structure for the business they want, not the one they have on day one. A bit like dressing for the job you want. Ee set Cypher up in a way that would allow us to be roughly where we are now, more than two years on, even though we’ve grown by 300%. We created the systems and we got everything in place to be the business we wanted in the future. That was our mindset, we knew where we were going and with the right systems and structures in place we got there quicker.

Other businesses stay exactly the way they are on day one.  In the beginning they don’t want staff, don’t want additional systems because it’s just them. Their mindset is to crack on, do the work, get it done, send the invoices and bank the cash and that’s fine but the point is they don’t grow.

There is also nothing more frustrating than meeting a business owner who is struggling but who won’t accept that there could be another way of doing things. They say ‘this is the way we have always done it, so this is the way’. No, it’s not; it doesn’t have to be like that and if it does, and the only way leads to a struggling business or is way too hard work then more fool you for getting into that position. There is always another way.

Put simply, if you don’t have a clear vision about where you want to be and how you will get their – and have the confidence that this is your path, then by the time you get to a point three years in the future, your business is not very efficient, maybe because you’re doing all the jobs plus being the CEO, maybe you’ve got the wrong clients, paying too little for too much, because you’ve taken on anyone with a pulse, or maybe your brand isn’t doing what it should. Whatever it is, there will be things in that business that could have been changed from the start because of a vision and a more posituive mindset.

If you build it, they will come.

Make time
Ask yourself how much time in the last month you have sat down and just thought about your business? I would suspect it’s fairly limited. It might be when you’re in the car on the way to work or last thing at night before you go to sleep because you’re too busy doing the do. You could have all the free advice in the world, but it doesn’t matter because you don’t have the availability to take it.

Managing time is critical. I think too many business owners are too busy but not necessarily productive. They spend a lot of time doing lots of jobs they shouldn’t and then don’t have the time to clear a space in their diary or in their heads to think about their business, expand their knowledge and make the most of the information available to them, which means they don’t have time to ask the right questions of themselves.

Now it might be that you are this days old when you realise that there isn’t a one size fits all approach to a thriving business. It is very much bespoke and situational. We have a bookshelf full of business books in our office and I don’t get on particularly well with them, the reason being that every single one of them has a different way of approaching the same problem. So if you read them all, you would never be able to implement everything from every book, or indeed pair philosophies from different books, because in many cases they are at complete cross purposes and very contradictory.

If you’re running a one-man, one site shoe shop, while you may take a bit of inspiration from the guy that founded Nike, excuse the pun, but you’re just not in his shoes. So many authors write from a perspective that is completely different from that of a start-up business, or indeed one that isn’t already thriving.

Google it
One of the solutions we discussed was to simply Google the answers to the questions posed in any given situation. It may not feel like the natural reaction, but why wouldn’t you do it?

Now, given that Alan Clark my co-host on the Mind Your Business Podcast is a business coach, who is in business himself to help other business owners solve their problems, you might wonder if this approach changes his mindset to business. Spoiler alert, it doesn’t.

You might Google the error codes on your washing machine, get your hands dirty, learn on the job and maybe even solve the problem, which will give you great satisfaction but when you can’t you call the repair man and sometimes it costs more! Getting good people, real experts to help you in your business can be priceless.

You might be firefighting 18 different situations at once; problems with suppliers, problems with teams, a loss of market share, the pressure is on. Or more positively you have a phenomenal, new idea that you want to get to market. It’s a huge opportunity but you need help realising it. Using experts can go deeper into your issues or give you a higher level of emotional support.

Start with a question
Your solutions or gateway to a thriving business can start with the quality of question you’re asking yourself. I didn’t know all the questions and certainly not all of the answers, but I did know that at Cypher I wanted 200 clients and 10 members of staff. That was my vision and then we went all the way back to what do we need to do to achieve this? We need to astonish our customers, we need to have all the systems in place, we need to bill monthly and set our prices correctly.

Most of the answers for how a business can thrive are within the business owner. No one knows their business more intimately than them. But unless you know what the question is, how will you find them. I often go into a coaching session not knowing what the questions are that I need to ask, but through the coaching process the questions bubble up and at the end of a session can have a profound effect on my business. You can Google and get the answer, but you cannot get that accountability that another human will give you.

What questions are you asking yourself around the possibilities for your business?

Double your business
Could double your business by setting that target and giving yourself the space and time to come up with the big questions that need answering to achieve that goal and then find a set of answers either by reading literature or engaging another professional?

We’re not saying it’s simple, but we are saying it’s a possibility that a large amount of business owners simply are not accessing.

Find out more

New editions of the Mind Your Business Podcast appear every Friday. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your choice of Pod provider to have it delivered straight to your device.

Silencing your inner critic

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Silencing your inner critic

Most of us have experienced our inner critic: that little voice in our head that’s sniping away, bringing us down, criticising our efforts and ultimately convincing us that we’re not good enough.

Overall, it gets incredibly bad press. But on a recent Mind Your Business Podcast, Alan and I wondered whether it can have a more positive use?

Where does our inner critic come from?
According to psychologists the roots of our inner critics are found in childhood. Sigmund Freud, in particular explained the formation of our superegos as a process during which we internalise external views of ourselves – predominantly those of our parents, while at the same time, accepting wider social expectations and ethical norms that begin the generation of ego ideals – of which we then regularly tend to fall short.

A more scientific explanation locates our inner critic in the older parts of our primitive “survivor brain” that is tasked with physical survival and the fight-or-flight response to danger. Originally, our inner critic had a positive function: to ensure our survival. This includes not just spotting danger in our environment but also inner work in the form of psychological sense making.

Two things we have discussed, and written about, previously support the work to combat the inner critic; firstly, we discussed how not to create a business horror story, for which your inner critic seems a very willing and able co-writer. But also we talked about the brilliance of resilience and how to view everything that goes wrong as a learning opportunity and an opportunity to improve.

Separate yourself from your inner voice
At some stage in our lives we all listen to our inner critic, but while recognising it exists, and accepting it isn’t going away there are practical steps can we take to deal with it. The key is to be able to take on board what it says- to keep us ‘safe’- but then to ultimately move past it.

To do this, first of all, try to get a level of separation from your inner critic. For example, instead of the voice being yours, consider it’s an employee or a colleague. This allows you to manage it like you would any relationship with these people in real life. Their negative views may have some validity, but ultimately you are able to largely ignore them and move on.

Alan used this example when dealing with a business coaching client. They had a mix up on times and his inner critic immediately went into overdrive, telling him it was his fault, he was incompetent and had basically ruined his business; why would anyone want to be coached by him again? His response was to smile, actually take time to consciously thank his inner critic for its input but graciously decline to take the feedback on board.

He moved from catastrophizing the event to actually dealing with it in a calm and productive manner. The dates were sorted, the client was happy. Job done. In this way, giving your inner critic a personality is a step forward to actually managing it, but also being able to deal with it before it can have any further negative impact on your response to a situation is crucial. I know there are people that don’t have that ability, their inner critic is too loud to just silence.
I think it’s important to understand that it’s very rare for anyone’s inner critic to be a hundred percent right. The doomsday scenario doesn’t happen every 10 minutes of every day. Accept that there is an inner critic, everyone has one, but it doesn’t reflect reality, it’s a separate thing and a lot of what it says is absolute tosh.

Optimists v pessimists
I have talked a lot about the difference between optimists and pessimists. I think a natural born optimist is probably able to compartmentalise their inner critic better than a pessimist does, what brings out the pessimism is the louder inner critic’s voice and their view on the world.

Consider this concept; if the words and language we use, including our self-talk, reveals everything about how we perceive situations and how we feel, then –shocking headline- the more negatively we perceive something, the more we worry and the more anxious we feel  which informs our actions and ultimately outcomes.

So if you are consistently listening to your negative inner critic and taking its views to heart then you are probably going about your business in a far more negative way and displaying behaviours and actions that are not conducive to building relationships and growing businesses. Whereas, if your inner critic is more positive, more balanced, then it probably feels better being you and being with you.

Give your inner voice chance to speak
A way I used to deal with colleagues that were always very negative was to get them to write down all of their gripes. That process often allowed us to focus on real grievances and bat off things that weren’t an issue. If at certain times you subconsciously – or even consciously – allow your inner critic to vent then maybe there is a learning opportunity in there somewhere. Maybe you’re inner critic telling you that you are about to lose a client suggest that perhaps you aren’t paying them enough attention.

From this perspective there are parts of the inner critic that are definitely useful. It could be intuition. It could be sent from the universe. It could be something built into our evolutionary fight or flight response but there’s something going on that you might want to pay attention to.

If it brings our attention to something, it has done its job. Manifest in negativity and criticism it certainly isn’t a truth detector and 80% of what it says is potentially noise around the edges of reality but there are some nuggets in there you should listen to. If we know that then we can listen to our inner critic, not take it too seriously and maybe even love it.

Imposter Syndrome
Another way your inner critic raises its voice is as the lead cheerleader for imposter syndrome. A way to deal with this is to quickly list facts and not base decisions on assumptions. For example, what is going on with your business? How good is your performance? What are you doing to get better? How are you leading? What are people seeing and saying about you and your business?

Then expose the lies, the made up horror stories that you have created by shining a light on them and asking yourself honestly what are you basing the decisions that you aren’t good enough on? By bringing clarity to a situation it can demonstrate that the whole imposter syndrome that has limited you as a human being for decades is based on an untruth.

A technique I use whenever I get critical thoughts about the business I score areas of it out of 10 as honestly as I can. I use industry benchmarks and competitors, but often other sources sometimes to keep it interesting but if I feel we are on a par, or better than many then we are ok to be doing well. It’s a powerful tool.

Everyone has an inner critic; we all listen to it and its voice, no matter how quiet or strong, will have an impact on our response to a given situation. Listen to it, that’s its job, and why 8 billion human beings have one, but remember, the inner critic is not you, it’s going to be negative, probably hurtful but it’s not a truth detector. Engage with it, shine a light on it, sift through the noise and find the nugget that can help you actually deal with a situation.

Find out more

New editions of the Mind Your Business Podcast appear every Friday. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your choice of Pod provider to have it delivered straight to your device.