Why BIG Changes Will Kill Your Business - Love Your Business TV. Show 12

 Adrian Peck:

Fantastic, we're live. Good afternoon, everybody and welcome to Love Your Business TV. We are a couple of minutes late today because of a slight technical fall, but we're back on it and we are ready to go. So, good afternoon. I am Adrian Peck. I am the entrepreneur and founder of Better Never Stops. We deliver business advice and coaching programs to entrepreneurs and business owners who are typically over 45 years old and want to run one million pound plus turnover companies.

Adrian Peck:
I am also the author of How To Fall Back In Love With Your Business: The Entrepreneur's Guide To Rediscovering Your Mojo and Enjoying Everyday By Living Your Dream. And that's exactly what I do. I help business owners either stay or fall in love with their businesses. Invariably, over time, what happens is the business owner kind of builds a business up and it gets good momentum, and then at some point they run out of time, run out of enthusiasm, and run out of some business ideas as well.

Adrian Peck:
So, I help them formulate a plan, get them back in their business and get them loving their business again, and hopefully get them living back their dream and getting all the things they want out of life. So, welcome again to Love Your Business TV. We have been going now for a couple of months. The audience and stuff is growing, growing. This is really, really great. And really I'm here to help and support business owners across the world, particularly in the UK, with some sound business advice and a place to go for some support every single week, and we tackle various subjects over the weeks as well.

Adrian Peck:
So, you can catch up with us, we're live on Facebook and on YouTube as we speak. You can also catch up on previous... So, we turned this into a podcast, which goes out onto Spotify, Apple, and also to Google, and you can look at all our previous episodes and stuff as well on Love Your Business TV channel on YouTube as well.

Adrian Peck:
So, really great to have you here this afternoon. As always, thank you for the feedback that you give me every week. It's really encouraging. If you want to reach out with me today, you can leave a message. Any questions you have on the topic we're going to cover today on the message bar. You can also reach out to me at adrian.peck@peckuk.com, and I can obviously catch up and answer any questions you have there as well.

Adrian Peck:
So, this week we are going to be looking at big changes. Big changes kill business growth. Absolutely, it's a topic that I come across a lot when I'm working with businesses or before I work with businesses and as they're trying and do lots and lots of big projects. And I'm going to explain to you why that's a really, really bad approach and why that fails. I'm going to take you through as well, what the better solution is. So, I'm going to tell you really about why does it kill growth, what is a better way. I'm going to give you a couple of case studies, and then I'm going to leave you with some call-to-actions as well at the end of it.

Adrian Peck:
So, let's crack on. So, why does it kill growth? Why does those kind of big projects... and really what I'm talking about is that a lot of companies and a lot of business owners, they get their business to a point, and then they see the next step of their business growth is this kind of massive hurdle. It's this next really big jump. If only we had this, if only we could do this. And they try to build it up on a really, really big project.

Adrian Peck:
And of course, what happens is that they procrastinate about moving those projects forward. And the longer and longer you procrastinate about moving a project forward, is we have this kind of human thing that when we put things off, they grow bigger and bigger in our minds. Therefore, to get those projects done and to get those initiatives done, they get bigger and bigger in our minds. So therefore, really that mountain just grows taller and taller and taller, and that puts us off even more.

Adrian Peck:
The other part, and it's actually kind of to get lost a bit. Where do we start? Because they're such big projects, what do we do first? How are we going to do it? And invariably, because they get put off over a period of time, changes happen or something comes up, and therefore the project never gets started because of that as well. It's kind of the old adage of, "Well, we were going to do it and then this happened and therefore we haven't got around to doing it. Oh, I must get around to doing that one day."

Adrian Peck:
There's also the other big problem when you try to implement big projects into a business as well and big changes, is that there's going to be resistance internally from it. The one thing that people are very wary of and very [inaudible 00:05:23] to obviously is change. And the bigger and bigger that step change is trying to be, the bigger that project or initiative is to that business, the bigger that resistance is going to be internally as well from those changes. What tends to happen as well is not a single person tends to drive the projects, and these projects do need driving. Otherwise, they will just run out of energy and they run out of focus, they run out of esteem, and they just do not happen.

Adrian Peck:
What I've also seen is when you try and make these big changes, is that there's also this kind of scope creep that comes in as well. And what you kind of started off wanting to do invariably has changed over that time. actually it's kind of lost its momentum and lost its focus of what it was trying to achieve. And of course, because there's this kind of length of time between when we try to start at this project or initiative in the business and we want to do all these changes and when it actually happens, there's lost scope of that, and actually then, "Did it even work?" And it's kind of, "Well, did it work?" And it's very difficult then actually to find out what you have done isn't really implemented, and therefore that puts you off in doing anything else in the future.

Adrian Peck:
So, the other really, really big thing that stops these growth of programs going as well as these initiatives is the fear of failure. The bigger and bigger the initiative is and the changes you want to try and make in your business, the bigger and bigger that risk is particularly for you as the business owner. And the bigger that risk is, is we have inherent thing we have in our bodies and our brains that then starts putting this fear of failure in there. What happens if I try and do this and it fails? I'm going to look stupid. I'm going to look stupid in front of my team when I've been pushing for these changes and these initiatives and they don't work.

Adrian Peck:
So, that then builds up this massive fear of failure, and that fear of failure is probably the biggest reason of everything that stops business owners from making changes to their business. It's that fear of failure. And the bigger and bigger that project is or that initiative is, the changes you want to make, the bigger that fear of failure. And that's really what stops it.

Adrian Peck:
So, hopefully that has given you a bit of a background of why these big changes are not the right approach. So, let me share with you actually then what is the approach. The other thing, of course is the last bit on there, is why they kill growth. It's that in essence, because of all that fear of failure, what ends up happening is the business owner plants his head in the sand and kind of goes, "This is too big. I don't know how to deal with it. Well I'll stick my head in the sand and just let everything go on and I'm sure it will sort itself out." And that's really what stops the business growth as well.

Adrian Peck:
So, what is the better way? And the better way, as I like to describe it is what I call the formula one principle. And it's the formula one principles of marginal gains, marginal changes. The reality is your business is not broken. Very rarely do I work with businesses that are completely broken. Normally, if they're that bad, there's an insolvency practice and they're working on them and they're not broken. They're not broken. They run on broken models. You've built your business so far. It works, it generates money. Yes, it can be improved, but it's not broken. Therefore, you need to move into what I call is the formula one principle. The formula one principle is about making small changes in lots of areas. And that's how formula one works. It's all about the small little changes that add up into a big change and as time goes on.

Adrian Peck:
Sometimes those changes aren't immediate and you do have to have patience with those changes. And my analogy is around ice cubes. If you took an ice cube and you put it into a fridge, obviously it would take longer to melt. But every increment of degrees that you warm that ice cube up, the first few changes don't really have much change at all. Or the first few increases in temperature don't have much change at all. It's actually, as soon as it hits a point and all of a sudden, the ice cube starts melting quite quickly. And it's the same when you make changes in business. It's that sometimes those feel that they're not having any effect and there's all this kind of hard work you have to do underneath. It's almost [inaudible 00:10:14] the iceberg. It's you have to always work underneath the sea level, doing all this stuff. And all of a sudden it pops out and it starts working. You have to have patients with those changes.

Adrian Peck:
So, it's all about making small step changes. Small step changes across lots of areas of your business. They are then, the small improvements, they are fast and manageable. You can make these changes quite quickly. You'll have lots of team. You have lots of support in making these changes versus lots of resistance when you try and make a big change. So, you can have a lot less resistance about making these changes because you do it in conjunction with your team. And all the time, they will give you the changes they want to make. Some of those changes, you will question about the effect of them, but just go with it. Let your team help and guide those changes and they will buy into them. And it'll also allow you to make other changes as you go.

Adrian Peck:
My analogy always with change management is around... There's a guy called Charles Handy, and he has had various management theories about change management. And his analogy was about boiling toads. And it's a great analogy. It says that if you were to put a toad into boiling water, the toad would just jump out, because that's a needed reaction. But actually if you put the toad into body temperature water, so that is what its body used to, and you slowly turn the temperature up on that toad in the pot, the toad actually sits there and gets quite warm and snugly, and it'll actually boil himself to death because it won't jump out because that change is so gradual. He won't jump out.

Adrian Peck:
And that's the same to be in managing or change in managing that resistance. It's about making those small changes. Those small changes you'll get buying, you'll get less resistance. And those small changes all add up to a big result. And that's the thing you've got to bear in mind. It's all those little increments, 1%, 1%, 1%, 1%. They might make a big change in the end. And that's the bit that's going to drive the performance. That's the bit that's going to make the change in your businesses.

Adrian Peck:
The other thing... If you've watched any of my shows, you've heard me talk about this before. It's only shit happens. It's one of my mantras in life. Only shit happens. Everything else you have to make happen. Now, the one thing about making those small changes is it tends to kind of drive the energy and the motivation and keeps the momentum going of making changes. And it almost, if you're good at it, it becomes a habit in the business. So therefore, like my business better never stops and you can keep that momentum going. You can keep those changes going. You can make them smaller, more manageable, faster changes, and therefore that momentum keeps going and the habit is sets there in the business that always be changing.

Adrian Peck:
So, I'm going to quickly touch on two case studies just to kind of reinforce the point, really. The first one is the British cycling team. Anybody that's sort of cycling will know of the last 10, 15 years nearly, British cycling has gone through this absolute revolution. Now to give you a bit of a backstory, the last Goldman in Olympics, I think it was 1908, was the last time that they won the Olympics prior to the new revolution of the British cycling. A chap was brought into British cycling called Dave Basford or so Dave Basford [inaudible 00:14:12]. He came in and started managing the British cycling team. And his whole principles was based on these small marginal changes. And he basically stripped down the whole process from the maintenance, the sleep, the nutrition of the athletes, through to their sanitization, that's the right word.

Adrian Peck:
And through to their cycling of the bikes. He stripped every single process down, rewrote it and make the marginal changes within it. Even down to the point, but all the athletes were taught how to wash their hands. Are you thinking, how the hell can that be relevant to riding a bike? When actually it's all about the cleanliness that they have in their hands and therefore the less germs that they have and therefore the less viruses they pick up and therefore the less illnesses they're going to have, that's going to stop them training, stop them performing in their events. So, you can see how his thinking was about even the minutest of details. The things that sounds quite bizarre, how it can have effect in what they do. They had a set of bedding that followed the teams of the web as well.

Adrian Peck:
So, they always slept in the same bedding. In some ways, for Basford it looks like he was very anal in what he had done, but it's all about those marginal changes. And all those marginal changes added up and added up and added up. And going on now to be this amazing cycling team that won the Tour de France. Now I think four or five time. Out of 10 years, I think they might have been five or six times they've run it in a 10 year period. Some years obviously back to back, the amount of medal, and so on, et cetera. You know the story. It has been amazing bit, but it's all done for those marginal gains.

Adrian Peck:
The second bit that is case study is actually refers to one of my clients or all my clients in general, actually, because this is how I work with businesses. I work on the principle of marginal gains and I have this process called SECCESS, which stands for strategy, empowerment, control panel, cash efficiency, separate and scale. And what I do and how I work with business owners is we go around every single part of the business and we make small changes on every part of their business and we keep going. We better never stops.

Adrian Peck:
So, we keep going round and round the business time and time again, making those small incremental changes all the time. To give you an example of just one business that I'm working with in a four-year period, we've taken that business for 1.2, to, it's going to be over 3 million pounds this year. In that time, they have more than trippled their gross profit percentage as well. And based on that revenue, you can kind of get a good idea of what kind of gross profit they're doing now. They're doing wonderful, wonderful part time now, but it's all been through that principle or those marginal changes. Keep going through the business and keep making little step changes through and throughout all.

Adrian Peck:
So, let's move on then to your actions this week. I want you to have a long hard think about that stuff you've got on your to-do list. That you've been putting on that to-do list about the things you really want to get done in your business. Those big plans, those big projects, those big changes you want to make. I want you to now draw a line through them all, a big cross with them. You're not going to do them. What I want you to do instead is I want you to sit down with your team. I want you to sit down with your team and talk about the small improvements that you can make. And it could be the minutest of detail that somebody says, "Well, wouldn't it be better if we just had this?" And just go through all those small changes and those small changes want to be stuff you can do in a maximum of a month, ideally within a week.

Adrian Peck:
Okay? The maximum is going to take you to make these changes is a month, on ideally really it's a week that you can just make those changes. And some of these will be almost the instant stuff you can do. And some of it will be ridiculously small stuff as well, but it's all little changes that will start adding up and get that momentum going. Why don't you have every single week a meeting with all your staff or as many staff you can get together in a team. You have that meeting with them. You have it for 10 minutes and go, "Okay, what changes we're going to have? What we got to do less now?" And you keep going through those to-do list. And you keep adding the little ones into it and you keep making those changes.

Adrian Peck:
And that will all add up to that big change in the end. Trust me it really, really will. So, if you want to know more, obviously you can grab a copy of my book. If you haven't got one already, please contact me at adrian.peck@peckuk.com. Send me an email and I'll send you a free book. You can also get all of the tools that go with the book on my betterneverstops.global website. There's a section there called Free Tools. You can go on there. You can get a lot more help and guides and stuff that are on. They support this. And also you can obviously catch up with all the previous episodes as well. There's a scorecard. If you want to look at about some of the changes you make across all of your business, have a look at the scorecard. It's peckuk.scoreapp.com, and you can go on there. It will take you about 20 minutes to do that.

Adrian Peck:
That score scorecard is a piece of business health check. And it does look at every single aspect of your business. And it will give you a score and it'll give you a 28 page report that comes off the back of it. And they'll tell you all the things that you need to do to improve your business as well. So, next week we're going to focus on lead generation and I'm going to talk around some lead generation stuff. I put a survey out last week about some of the stuff that you want help with. And the strong thing that came back was generating leads. So I'm going to do a couple of weeks now about a lead generation.

Adrian Peck:
Hopefully, the week after next I've got a couple of guests who want to line up over the next three weeks to come and join me on that. They'll give you some extra content as well. That will really, really help you. So, thank you very much. And thank you for joining this week. And I look forward to seeing you again next week. Be safe. Again, if you want to reach out to me, please do. And you can go on, jump on to Love Your Business TV as well. Stay safe and remember better never stops. Thank you very much.