This One Simple Change Means You’ll Hit ALL Your Business Targets

Let's get into the session for today. I have a special guest.

My special guest.

Some of you do know my special guest because I talk about him a lot. He's one of my heroes, one of my mentors, Steve Pipe. I first met Steve way back now in November 1998, when I was running my accounting firm as a sole practitioner and making a real big mess of it. And it was him that helped me to turn my firm around. And thanks to him, that's where I am today. And Steve's gonna be talking about, as you can see, all about business targets. So I'm going to see if Steve is there and ready. Steve, how are you doing?

Hi, Mark. I am great, thank you. My goodness, we met such a long time ago now. I remember the day really, really vividly, of course, because we talked about it many times since. But yeah, brilliant to be back today. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah.

And great to see you looking so well.

It's awesome.

So, Steve, I know that we've got.

A lot to cover, so it's going.

To kind of dive straight into it because you said you've got so much you want to share. And also there is a bonus session towards the end as well, which you'll tell people about. So let's just dive straight in. And I know, Steve, that you've got a new book coming out fairly soon. I forget how many books you've written.

I've got.

I was trying to dig them, dig them out.

I think this is 10 or 11. Now I lose track as well.

Wow, that's. That's double the number I've written. I know you've written things like the World's Most Inspiring Accountants, Better Business, Better Life, Better Worlds. You've written some great book. In fact, you inspired me to start writing books as well. So I know you've got this new.

Book coming out fairly soon called, I.

Think, if I got it right, Better Business Targets, which is coming out in a few weeks. I think you'll probably correct me.

Yeah, we're just in the final stages of proofing it the moment. So, yes, awesome.

And you kindly sent me a copy to a few weeks back to read through, which I did put your request, a testimonial in the front, which I, if I remember right, I said things like masterfully crafted and visionary, profoundly important. So I love the book as I.

Love all of your books, Steve.

They are amazing. I guess my first question then is, what made you write this particular book about target setting? Because it's very different to everything else that you've written?

Well, I guess it is, but it goes back to my roots as an accountant and as I think will become apparent, actually it's got a lot of threads from the other things I've written as well. For the first time ever, going back to what brought me into accountancy in the first place and using our skills with numbers to help our clients build better businesses and through that build better lives and hopefully a better world as well. One of the areas which I think's been neglected by the accounting professional and certainly neglected by me when I was in IT and I think by many of the rest of us is this idea of target setting. Targets really matter. Every single serious business in the world should have targets. The problem is that we haven't revisited the target setting process for many, many years. You know, years ago, someone, perhaps an accountant, created some simple target setting processes and we've used them ever since. But actually when you look around you see that so many businesses are consistently missing their targets. But it must be a big clue that we actually have to start to do something to revisit the process. So that's where I came from. I spent three years fine tuning the ideas. The book, which is very, very short, 40 pages in the, in the, in the current draft, is a step by step guide to a brand new process to creating business targets in a way that not only makes that much more likely to be achieved by the business, but much more impactful on the world as well.

Yeah, and obviously being privileged to have had a read a copy of the pre published version of the book, one of the things I do love about your books is they are so practical, practical steps and in this case a step by step guide. So why should the. We've got lots of accountants here, I can tell on looking at the thread here. Lots of accountants here. Why should they be interested in this?

Well, I mean as accountants we simply must know about target setting. We must be masters of it. I think it's compulsory. Anything short of that is letting ourselves down, letting our profession down, letting our clients down. We must know how to do the best possible target setting within our own accounting practices. For sure, those are businesses and there may be a few people, Richard for example, that's with us. I know Richard from Geneva is not an accountant to the best of my knowledge, but is passionate about this kind of stuff.

You know, we can, we should be using these ideas, of course on our accountancy businesses. Yes. But as professional advisors we have a responsibility, I think, to help our clients use these ideas. Too. If when you've looked at the ideas you like, Mark and I and many other people think they're really powerful, then we have a responsibility to share those with our clients, to help our clients do better target setting and the great opportunity. And you were just talking about your Business Advisory Masterclass no. 1 Sales Target Setting as a service. And yet there is a real opportunity with something brand new like this, something powerful like this, to launch a new service wrapped around it. And I think this is so important that, yeah, as you kind of hinted at, we'll be giving the book away for free at the end of. The end of the session. And I will help anybody who loves these ideas as much as I do, as much as you do, to implement them for free in their business and with their clients.

Yeah, that's awesome, Steve. Awesome. And people who watch me regularly will know that I keep talking about the fact that we have to start creating more value for our clients, doing more value, doing more valuable things. And this sounds like something that's a great way of doing that. So I can't wait to find out more. We have to create more value because the world's changing so fast right now with AI and some of you who came to my February livestream, I did have this prediction about how long we have before compliance work like bookkeeping is completely taken over by AI. It's going to disappear. So we have to do stuff. And this sounds like it's great, Steve And I know that in the book, you kind of, you have this, this sweet spot you call the, the why sweet spot. What is that and why does that matter?

When I looked at, and as I said, I've been spending three years fine tuning these ideas. We've talked about one or two of these ideas on some of your previous sessions together, but never in this way, never brought together in this kind of way. So over those three years when I've been looking at the target setting process, what's crystal clear, of course, is we always set targets almost by definition that are good for us. You know, profit targets, sales targets, referral targets, customer satisfaction targets, whatever they are, these sort of traditional targets, we pick them, we set them because we want those outcomes. Those outcomes, number of sales, profits, referrals, cash flow, etc. Are good for us. There's a kind of is good for you. It's the Y element of the equation. But the challenge is that actually we can't really achieve our targets in a vacuum. And it's much easier to achieve our targets if we have other people Helping us. We want our team to help us pulling in the direction of striving to realize the targets, to achieve them, to blast through them. We want our customers to help us. In particular, we want our customers to buy more from us, pay us on time, refer us to other people and so on. There are other people and there are bank managers, in the case of the accounting professional, the referrals and so on, that in an ideal world we would engage in helping us as helpers, I call them, in achieving our targets. The problem is that we don't really factor that into the target setting very clearly. And where we do, we do it fairly crudely. What I mean is, you know, sometimes we'll put, we'll think, okay, we need to get the team on board or pull in the direction of the targets or maybe our customers, let's give them, refer, let's give them commissions and bonuses and incentives and rewards when we hit our targets or for trying to hit our targets. The problem is that those kinds of financial commission type rewards just don't cut it. They don't motivate people at the level that we need them to. And in some cases they're just not legitimate, they're illegal, they're inappropriate, you know, it's, they're unprofessional. Quite often you can't, you know, promise that you're going to give a backhand to a bank manager every time he introduces a client to you. You know, there's going to be all sorts of practical, legal, ethical issues there. So we need some other way of engaging and motivating and getting these helpers the H in the Y equation. We've got the Y, we've got and now the H. We need to get them involved. And when you think about it and we just, here in the uk, just yesterday I think it was we, we had sadly, Rob Burrows pass away. And the news was completely dominated by this inspirational former rugby league player who died of motor neuron disease, which is actually what my mum died of also. So I know exactly what him and his family went through. But there was so much news coverage around him because of the extraordinary lengths that his, his friends, and in particular Kevin Sinfield, but others as well, went to. I mean, they ran a marathon a day, seven days in a row. And extraordinary things that people do when a cause really matters. And they jump out of airplanes, you know, they bungee jump, they, they, they go without sleep 10 days in a row. You know, they do the three peaks in two minutes, 20 seconds or whatever. You know, what I mean, people do extraordinary things around causes that they care about. And if we could harness just a fraction of that level of engagement and energy and enthusiasm around the things that matter to us as well, then we really would put our target setting process on steroids. And the key, therefore, to getting our helpers, customers, team members, bank managers, whoever else it is that we want pulling in the direction and helping us achieve our targets is to make the targets about something that those carers, those helpers, really care about. And that really means making them good for the world. And we've seen a little example of that already in your introduction because I suspect you have a target, even if it's an informal one in the back of your business. My mark, which is I want more people to come to these sessions. One of the ways you reward and thank and, and acknowledge and appreciate people coming to these sessions is use that QR code to make something magical happen and something magical happen in the world. And you've done that three hundred and something thousand times, which is really just quite extraordinary, isn't it? Now, those three elements, making our targets good for you, the Y bit, or let's do them the other direction, making them good for the world W making them good for your helpers H and making them good for you actually adds up to what I call the why sweet spot. And in fact might be useful just because there's a picture, there's a diagram in my book, if we toggled across to sharing from my book. And in fact this is just an extract for that's what the book looks like on the front. This is the first figure in the diagram and it's this. The Y sweet spot is that intersection, that blue bit in the middle where your target setting process is good for the world, is good for your helpers, team members, customers, bank managers, whoever else they are, and good for you. And that's where this starts from with that really quite different approach. And if we can put our target setting process and our targets firmly in that blue triangle in that, in that Y sweet spot, everything changes. We could probably stop sharing my screen at the moment, Mark. But that was the, that's the why sweet spot and that's why it matters.

Okay, I love the explanation. And you had, right in the middle, you had the little blue triangle for the middle. So I guess the question goes in my mind, and perhaps other people, is how can accountants and their clients think about targets then how can they put targets in that why sweet spot?

Yeah, great, great question. And really that's where the Book really starts to get practical. And in the book, and indeed on this session is really what I'm going to do today is kind of summarize some of the key elements within the book because everybody can have all the chapter and verse details through the book. Afterwards it will be on Amazon, it will be for $45 or whatever. Don't worry about the price. I'll give it to you because this matters too much to me. In the book as here we start with a familiar example. It's an example that we've touched on in some of our sessions before, but we take it somewhere new. And really importantly, we can use that familiar example to create a general model that can be used in any business. That means in your business, whoever you are, and all of your clients, businesses, whatever they do, wherever they are in the world. So I'll share my screen again, if we may, Mark, and we jump into the book, I think for this and I'm assuming that people can see it now, but it doesn't matter if you're listening to this on an audio version. Subsequently we'll try and talk through it as well. The book's only 40 pages long and it's broken down into three core sections, the why, what and the how. So we've looked at the why already. That's the why sweet spot. Because target setting really matters. And if we can put our target setting process in that why sweet spot, you can see that up in this bit of the book over here. The next session is, the next section of the book is this simple example. And let me just drill, zoom in on the pages of the book so that that example starts to come to life. And this is the example that we have touched on before. But I want to really take it into more detail here, which is imagine that. Well, imagine that there are two coffee shops and you're in the middle of town, you want to have a cup of coffee. You're standing on a high street and there in front of you are two coffee shops, one on the left, one on the right. They are identical in every respect but one. They are identical in that they're equally convenient. They're right in front of you. They sell the same kind of coffee for the same price in equally nice environments, equally nice team members. There is nothing to choose between them in any conventional sense. Now, I know that's usually coffee shops do have some differences. Let's just as a device for the purposes of the example, so that we can hone in on the implications of the one thing that does Differentiate them. Let's assume that they're identical in every other respect. They sell their coffee at the market, market price, £3, $3, whatever it is, where, where you are watching this. The only difference between the two coffee shops.

Is that the one on the left uses a traditional target setting process and the one on the right has put its target setting process in the Y sweet spot. And that results in them using global impact targets that will become clear what that means in a minute. That's the only difference between them, the nature of the target setting process. Now of course, that target setting, that difference in target setting process then shows up in what they do and in the book. We talk through how it shows up, how it changes everything. But let's just zoom out a bit because this is where it starts to get a little bit familiar. When you go in the coffee shop on the left, indeed any coffee shop.

When you place your order, they then say, okay, we'll make the coffee for you. Go and wait over there, don't they? What happens in most coffee shops is, well, you go and wait over there, you maybe get your phone out and scroll through social media or something, you just basically wait. This is a largely transactional experience. You go in there, you give them the money, they give you the cup of coffee in 90 seconds time or so after they've written your name on the cup and then call your name out when it's made, you know, all that, that kind of stuff.

But so that's what happens in the coffee shop on the left, that transactional approach to business, driven by the fact, or I forgot to say, both of the two coffee shops have got the same target. Both of them want to make a million pounds in profit. So they have the same objective and in every other respect, the same infrastructure and products and prices and so on. The only thing that differences differs is the way that they set their targets and the way that it shows up. So the coffee shop on the left, you go in, you, you order your coffee, you wait for it, it's made for you and then you take it and you walk out the coffee shop on the right and hopefully. I'm sorry, just jumped through a bit, that's what I wanted. The coffee shop on the right, however, as you're waiting in front of you, right on the counter, right where you're waiting is the thing you can see on the screen. The thing that I'm holding up here is a little sign that says we want to provide 1 million days of help to people in need. So every time you Come in. You'll be able to choose who we help that day and it won't cost you a single penny. So to help someone today for free, point your camera's phone at this QR code and then underneath it says, as an update, thanks to our customers, as of this morning, 312,588 days of help have been provided. Now, you're already standing there, aren't you? You're waiting for your coffee, you've probably got your phone out. You're expecting to go on social media like you do in coffee shop. You think, you know, that's a bit intriguing, you're probably a bit skeptical, but you're probably going to point your, your mobile phone at the QR code and that QR code will take you exactly as it does Mark for your customers to one of those. A screen like this is just a, a screenshot of that screen. Let me just zoom in on. Is a fully functioning QR code. So in the book, you'll better follow through on it and see it in the flesh. But basically, to shortcut that, if you were to point your phone in the coffee shop on the right at that QR code, it will take you to this. So it says, as a thank you for coming in today, please choose one of these wonderful projects and we'll make it happen on your behalf, but at our expense, as part of our commitment to providing a million days of help to those in need. I mean, that's quite an extraordinary thing, isn't it? So you're a bit taken aback, but you go, okay, well, I'll click on one of the orange buttons and you do, and the screen comes up and says, thank you. That's happened. We've made that happen for you. You're waiting for a cup of coffee and you've either just provide provided a day's worth of access to clean water or a day's worth of grain that we're going to food to feed a child for a day, or a day's worth of use of a bed net that will prevent mosquitoes giving someone malaria. You've chosen which of those things happen, you've made it happen, but it doesn't cost you a penny. Just like it doesn't cost a penny to people for people to make things happen when they come to one of your sessions, Mark, this happens in the coffee shop on the right whilst you're waiting there. You contrast that to what happened to me the other day in a coffee shop. In fact, my last three coffee shop experiences, I went into One and it said proudly on the wall in Marks and Spencer's Cafe. In fact we proudly give one pence per cup of coffee. But they don't say where, they don't say where they give it to. And I have no influence over where that 1P goes. And 1P seems like a pretty derisory amount, doesn't it? The other coffee shop I went into, which is one of the big chains when you, when you check out on this, the little card reader screen it says would you like to add 10 pence to give to charity? They don't even give to, they don't even make anything happen, they ask you to pay more. But this coffee shop, just like you do, Mark recognizes that they can turn this into a much, much different and better experience. One that's like to engage their helpers, their customers to actually buy this coffee, come back and buy the next coffee and tell other people about it and therefore move them towards achieving their one million pound profit, traditional target of one million pounds in profit. So that happens in the coffee shop on the right. Of course it doesn't happen in the coffee shop on the left. And so here's the question, here's the question. And in the chat box it would be great if people could just type in. So you got to choose which of those two coffee shops to go into, you're standing in front of them, it's same coffee, same price. The only thing that differs because of the difference in the way they set their targets and you see how that comes about, how you can do this in any business is that the coffee shop on the right, you get a chance to make something wonderful happen in the world and help change the world, move the dial in the world. And the coffee shop on the left is just like every other coffee shop, you don't get that chance in a meaningful way. So left or right would be a great, would be a great answer. And whilst I can't see those, we can probably stop sharing my screen Mark. Fantastic. And you'll probably be able to read us. Well, hopefully you can see those in their mark. But just to give people a sense, I've done this activity about 3,000 times over the last three years and I usually use a visual card like this to get people when they voted. I mark up the the scores can't do that today but the last time I did it, 27 people went for the one on the right, the time and no one for the left. Time before that was 10, time before that it was 139 and one person went to the one on the left and when I asked them why, they said, have you seen the queue of 139 people on the right? Yes, I have. And that's, that's, there's, that's where the, this, this starts to make a profound difference around achieving your targets. Because which of these two coffee shops, or indeed which are the ones that people are voting for now is more likely to hit its target of a million pounds profit? Well, it's crystal clear, isn't it? It's this one on the right because it's doing the right thing and hopefully, and I'm assuming that's coming out again and again and again in the answers that are coming on the screen. And I can see that from the ones that you're sharing with, which is brilliant. I've now done this with over 3,000 people and less than 20 have said the coffee shop on the left. And they have all said it for the same reason that this one person did. It was have you seen the queue?

There is a core point there. We can talk about marketing. And you and I used to talk about marketing a lot together when we ran the AVM business together and helping accountants market any business make themselves more compellingly attractive. What has the coffee shop on the right done just by changing the way it sets its targets? And we see the mechanics of that shortly. And that new target setting approach shows up in some small changes in its behavior, but small changes which can lead to absolutely phenomenal different changes in outcome. And that's really what the, that's an example, merely an example, but an example of putting targets in the Y sweet spot. And that gives us the scope to extend this out, as we do in the next chapter of the book, into a general model that will work for any business, for your business, whatever your business is, and for all of your clients businesses, whatever their businesses are. And just imagine being able to help yourself and your clients tap into something like this kind of effect, something like that idea that just by changing the way we set targets, we can change everything, we can change our results and we can change the world. That's the core bedrock starting point for the bookmark.

And one point that I think is worth raising is that you describe the process for what the customer does. They click on the, they use the QR code, they click on the link. Just to be clear from the customer's perspective, it's insanely easy to do. And if you want to check out the experience, I put the link early or Sarah put the link into the into the chat. So if you did, if you haven't yet on this session, if you didn't, if you missed the QR code for our projects, go and do that now. Go and find it in, go and scroll back up through the comments, find the, the first of the two links that Sarah shared. Click on that, pick one of the four projects and you'll find you don't have to put in your email address or sign up for anything. You just choose the project that resonates most with you and that's it. And the money then goes straight away, it comes out of our bank account immediately and goes to that worthy project.

It's a wonderful process, Steve. Very, very simple. I guess the, the worry people might have, and I know I had this as well originally when we were thinking about should we, should we make a contribution to a project somewhere for everybody who shows up live? What if lots of, what if thousands show up live? And I guess the question is, does the cost of this then become prohibitive? How would you deal with that question?

Yeah, well.

Truly the cost of doing this can be whatever the business wants it to be, from pennies to pounds, if we take the exact example. So I costed in the book, you see the costings for that coffee shop. Its target is to remember the two coffee shops, but the one on the right that's using this approach to target setting, the better business target approach, the why sweet spot approach. If when they achieve their £1 million of profit, which they do by selling a million cups of coffee, by the way, when they achieve that, the total cost of all the projects that their customers will have chosen through that QR code will be just under £5,000. So they will have, they will. Their return on investment in that approach to.

Target setting for a five grand investment is the million pounds profits. Now obviously it's not the only thing that generates the million pounds in profit. There's all the other infrastructure, all the other ingredients that make for business success. But that feels like a pretty good return on investment to me. However, if that doesn't feel like a pretty good return on investment to the business, they can change that 5,000 into 500 or even 50 if they choose, just by changing the metrics in the approach set out in the book. So literally any budget that any business has for this can work. It just needs to be structured slightly differently and the re. And that's possible and one of the, one of the ways that we can see that's possible. I did a major piece of research last year, specifically a Subset research looking at and identifying in fact 40 different platforms through which you could make these impacts. B1G1 is one of those platforms the One use, it's one I use, but it's not the only platform. There are 39 or so others. But by looking at the. They don't all do exactly the same thing, by the way, but by looking at the cost, I was looking to come up with a set of alternatives so that people can use whichever one works best for them. And in the book there's a link to a spreadsheet, the most up to date edition of the spreadsheet that links them through to every single one of those 40 platform alternatives.

No spoiler whatsoever to say that the B1G1 platform out delivers in every respect, but there are these other platforms as well, other opportunities, so it can be flexed at any budget. And even if it couldn't, quite frankly, this really isn't just about money, is it? It's about not only the fact that the coffee shop on the right, any business, yours and mine included, is able to more likely achieve its targets, its conventional targets, profit targets and so on. Not only that, so there's a financial benefit, that's one of the elements of it. And we can equate that off with the financial cost, which actually I don't think is a cost. I refer to it in the book as a global impact investment. We aren't actually spending money. We are investing in a better planet for our children and grandchildren and ourselves a better world. But in a way that also deliver, has a return on investment for the business specifically around our target setting process.

It's about money, it's one dimension. It's also about how this makes us feel over and above the monetary payback. Most people say to me it just feels fantastic, you know, there's suddenly a purpose in the business, you know, that's why we called it the why sweet spot, because it gives us a real reason why to get up in the morning this springing our step and smile on our face knowing that we're doing something that's not any great for us, it's great for the world. And there's the third dimension. It's not only makes us feel good and great for our bank balance, but it's also great for the world. It creates a better future for us all. So the cost can be whatever people want to invest in it.

Okay, great. And I kind of see it as a win, win, win because it's from the customer's point of view. The customer going into the coffee shop probably feels good, the fact that they're making a difference to the world. Secondly, obviously the world is a better place because of that contribution. But also, as you've said, Steve, I think it's important to realise that the business itself is also better off because if customers are choosing that business because they are different, then, yes, there is a cost to the business of the contributions. But that pales into insignificance compared to the upside. The more customers coming to the shop, spending money as a result of it.

Completely, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it's not just the 3,000 people that I've done this survey with and including your audience today. There's a huge bulk of other evidence out there that points to there being what's often referred to as a purpose premium, a payback from building doing good into our business models. The payback in terms of a more highly engaged and motivated team who are more productive, who go the extra mile to serve customers with a smile on their face, that get up in the morning and get in on time and stay a bit later and just work harder to achieve more because it's meaningful to them. There aren't many employees who work in the traditional. In the coffee shop on the left with a traditional target. Bear in mind the target there is to make a million quid in profit. Do you know anyone who works in a coffee shop and wakes up in the morning and says, you know what, I'm really keen to go to work today because I'm going to help my boss make a million quid? It just doesn't motivate. Traditional targets do not motivate people. Whereas when that target has been turned into a target in the global sweet spot, and that's what we're going to look at next, of course, is how to do that. But just thinking back of the benefits of once it's that kind of target, the target for the. The coffee shop on the right, remember in their poster, was, you know, our goal is to unlock a million days of help around the world. Their target is a million days of help. Now, I can imagine a lot of people who wake up in the morning working in coffee shops and going, do you know what? I really want to do a good job today because we're going to move the dial towards creating a better world. It's so much more motivating a million days of, of help than a million days of profit for the boss, isn't it? They ultimately achieved the same thing because as a result, as a byproduct of delivering A million days of help. The coffee shop will have sold a million cups of coffee. That's how it happens every time you buy a cup of coffee. You get to use the QR code. They'll have sold a million cups of coffee and they'd have hit their million pound traditional profit target. But they haven't focused on that target, they focused on the alternative target. And that's the magic of this.

Awesome. So Steve, we've looked at a very specific example so far, that coffee shop. But can we turn that example into something that's a bit more as a more general model that any business can use?

Yeah, of course. And, and that's the next chapter in the book. So fantastic for, for taking me there and for that I'm going to share my screen if I will. I've just taken a few images out of that next chapter. Oh, I forgot to say the coffee shop on the right as well as further down on their little post, there's a second QR code and there was that number that said we've given 312,000 days. Well actually if you click on that second QR code, it takes you through to a web page where it shows the coffee shops impact by project, the coffee shop's impact by location around the world, and the coffee shop's impact spread across the Sustainable Development Goals. So this makes it even more real and believable because there are going to be people out there that are skeptical about the whole thing. But then there's this independent evidence and that's an important part of the story as well, I think. But anyway, the next chapter of the book looks at this process of moving from the coffee shop on the left, which has a traditional target, to the coffee shop on the right, or a business on the left to a business on the right, a business doing the right things, setting its targets in the right way. And it's a four step process. This is exactly the graphic that appears in the book. But because in the book it's obviously got a lot of text around it, I've extracted the graphic and put it on this PowerPoint slide instead. So there's this four step process that moves any business from the left, which is where we start off with our traditional targets and moves them into the Y sweet spot, the same blue color on the right hand side. And we can just break that down really simply. We do it in a bit more detail in the book and give you a bit more clarity than we'll be able to in a few minutes together here. But you'll get the point? Every traditional target, every business starts with a traditional target. In the coffee shop's case it was, you know, we want to make a million quid in profit and a traditional target is, let's call it T for traditional target. It might be a target around the amount of cash, number of customers, you know, million pounds of sales of profitability, referrals, productivity satisfaction and so on. We have these traditional targets. That's the first step and that's already in place. We as accountants have always helped our clients set traditional targets. So step one, the first column in this on, in the diagram on the left hand side is in place already, or certainly should be. Step two then is the next column in the diagram and that's what I call non financial mapping. And here the idea is to take that traditional target and map it across into a broadly equivalent relatable non financial target. So for example, for the coffee shop, the million pounds in profit is. As an accountant you can help them work out that a million pounds in profit is broadly equivalent to selling a million cups of coffee. We can look at the underlying drivers of the traditional target and we can come up with something which is broadly equivalent but which team members and customers and bank managers and anybody else who's a helper for us can relate to more. They're not going to relate to our million pounds of profit. They're not going to wake up in the morning and want to help us achieve a million quid in profit. They don't even really understand it. But we can map it across into a broad equivalent in the case of the coffee shop, a million cups of coffee. Sometimes the two targets, the traditional target and this broadly equivalent one, if it's non financial in the first place. We don't actually have to do anything here unless we need to take a million pounds of profit and turn it into a, a relatable non financial unit. But we might not have to take everything so that, that first step, sometimes we need it, sometimes we don't. The second step in the process is to say, okay, so we've now taken our million pounds of profit target and turned it into the coffee shop's case. A million cups of coffee. Now we can decide on the good thing that we want to unlock in the world for every unit of the non financial mapped relatable non financial unit. In other words, for every cup of coffee. That makes sense. It could be that we want to unlock a day's worth of water for every cup of coffee or.

Protect a square meter of rainforest for every cup of coffee or plant a tree for every cup of coffee. The third element here is we identify, I call it G, in this model, a specific global impact that we're going to unlock. We're going to provide per cup of coffee in our example, per unit of the non relatable thing, of the relatable non financial thing. So there's lots of words here. It is much clearer when you read it because you can reread it a few times and it just makes perfect sense. So we move across from the first column, a million pounds in profit to a broad equivalent, a million cups of coffee. Then we decide what's the impact we're going to unlock. Let's say it's a day of help per cup of coffee. And then we simply multiply those last two numbers together. A million cups of coffee multiplied by a day of help per cup of coffee means our global impact target becomes a million days of help. And if we remember, that's exactly what the coffee shop on the right went public with, you have this sign as you're waiting for your coffee that says, we want to provide a million days of help. That's how any business can take the traditional target on the left and convert it into a global impact target on the right. Now, I probably didn't explain that as clearly as I could or should have done. Don't worry. I promise you, when you read the book, it will be crystal clear. It's a process that can apply to any business with any target anywhere in the world. And the book gives you lots and lots more examples of how to do exactly that. That's how. That's the structure, with a little bit more guidance within the book that will be crystal clear. We don't have time to go into that extra detail now, but hopefully that makes sense for the time being.

Absolutely. Thank you, Steve. And the way that in our business, obviously, as you know, we're part of B1G1, so our business is all about the number of members in the Value Pricing Academy. So every single month, every single member of the Value Price Academy can choose a project and we make a contribution for every member. Similar, we want to help as many accountants around the world by teaching them critical skills. And so when people come to a live stream or webinar, when people watching this come to the Business Advisory Masterclass in a few weeks time, again, we will be making a contribution on their behalf very quickly. Steve. So give one very quick example of, for an accounting firm, how they would apply that to themselves. So they want to grow their Accounting firm, what might be the mechanism or the way they give some sort of impact in the world?

Yeah, well, I mean, one of the examples in the book is actually an accounting business. We might get a chance to see that in a second. But basically what we did there was we sat down and identified what, what are the key things that matter in moving the business forward? Number of clients, number of meetings, number of sets of accounts produced, number of tax returns produced, and so on. And we worked out how many of those we wanted to do each year and we then linked those two through the QR codes and so on to every time a set of accounts went out in the covering email and so on, there's a little message that says, you know, thanks so much for letting us do your accounts. Over and above the value that the accounts will bring to you and your business. Understanding things more clearly, we can also now use this as an opportunity to make something great happen in the world together. Just click on the link or use the QR code. And in fact, we're broadening that out even more in that. So they've got seven or eight of these things, numbers of accounts.

New clients, tax returns and so on. Each of which leads to one of those opportunities.

To give the client a choice of something good that they can make happen in the world. For example, at meetings, it's even nicer, I think, that the QR code can be used by both the client, the person on the other side of the table at the meeting, but separately can be used by the team members so that not only the other person gets to make a difference as a result of being in that meeting, but so does the tax manager or the, you know, the account senior or whoever it is that's running the meeting. So they both get to choose a project and therefore the impacts are doubled, but the sense of, you know, engagement is massively enhanced as well. So there are practical examples around the accounting profession in the book because of course, it's where I started from.

Okay, I love that idea. That's awesome. So it's really clear to me that this kind of form of setting our targets is a no brainer. Where should people start?

Yeah, just go back to that other idea that one of the practical things that we found in the accounting foundation firm is that sometimes we forgot to have that conversation, forgot to show them the QR code. Brilliant solution to that. We had the QR code printed and put inside the back of the mobile phone cover. Everybody takes their mobile phones to them so the team member can pick up their mobile phone and show the other person the QR code that's inside the COVID So. And it's probably sat there on the table the whole time through anyway, didn't it? Sort of looking up at them just. There could be obviously a sign on the, a little stand on the table or a picture on the wall, but. But the mobile phone thing is a really neat way of doing it. Where should we start? Well, that's the final chapter in the book. The final chapter in the book is called how. And we've identified.

Six key elements. And very, very quickly I can take you through. The first key element to making this work is you start by asking your team what areas matter to them. Is it doing something about poverty? Is it, is it climate change? Is it planting trees? Is it helping the elderly? Is it helping entrepreneurs and building income for impoverished families and so on? So there's some standard, there's some survey, there's a clickable link through to a, some standard wording for a survey in the book that will allow you and any business to talk to their team and identify the broad areas.

That matter to the team. So that's the first key, because engage the team in making those initial choices. The second key then is to, is for the business owners, the business leaders, to choose the specifics. So the team might say, you know, climate change really matters to us. But the business owners can then decide which tree planting projects or which, you know, other environmental projects they're going to actually include behind the QR codes, as it were. And that's where I did the research that in the book there's a clickable spreadsheet so you can identify, you can go through to the 40 different places that you can plant trees and provide help and education and so on, one of which is B1G1, although it's the one that for me is by far the most useful, but the others are in there as well, so that there's balance. So the second key then is for the business leaders to choose the impacts that are going to fit with their budget. The third key then is use some technology, whether you create it yourself or through B1G when it's there easily to create those QR codes and, or clickable links so that the other, the person on the other side of the table, the client, the bank manager, the helper, the team member gets to make the final choice. But bearing in mind they're choosing from a subset of projects which have already been. The team love them because they pick them in the first place. You love them because you pick them and they match your budget. And now the helper gets to make the final choice. They love them too. So then everybody, every stakeholder, everybody in the Y equation is then is bought into and the difference that's being made, the trees planted or the kids educated is going to resonate with them. The fourth area is that we can use this approach with every single target within the business. Not just we might have more than one target and we can use them with all of those targets. And in fact the fifth idea, big idea in the book, is we can aggregate the individual targets into a business wide total. So let's say you're an accountant, you might have a target for the number of accounts, you're going to produce a target for the number of clients and the target for the amount of profit you earn or whatever. Each of those can have, you know, a number of days of help or trees planted, but add those up for the business as a whole, then you can go public with this singular story. The singular stories you know, we'd like, we're here to provide a million days of help by 2030, for example, like six years away. That's only 150,000 days a year. You've blasted through that in the last year, Mark, for example, as has the accounting firm that, that I'm working most closely with this on. So we aggregate them into a single business wide target. We've then got this massive story to tell about like the coffee shop does a million days of Help and there's detail around how to do each of those things in the book in that how chapter. But those are the headlines, as it were.

Okay, so it sounds like from what you're saying is that this is, it's a great process, but it shouldn't be done just internally and privately. We should actually be shouting about it.

Yeah, well, I mean I think you can do it internally and privately if all you want to do is engage and motivate your team. But if what you want to do over and above that and your team are key helpers, so you know, it may be that that's enough. But personally I would find a humble way of shouting out and the book talks about how to do that because when we do shout about it, we are able to tell this is the story of our brand, this is what we stand for, this is who we are. It will show up, this is how our values show up within our business. Not only will that engage more helpers, more customers will refer more other people and more people will come on board and tell more people. And so you achieve your targets more readily. Not just that, the benefits to the business of going public with the story, but you also are able to inspire others to follow in your footsteps and play a leadership role in created a better world through business. So, and in the book there's a, there's a, there's a practical worked example around an accounting firm and how they are telling the story. I think when people, when, when you see, I mean, you've obviously seen it, Mark, but when everybody else looks at, they go, this is so easy, this is so powerful. And we could just lift that and use that as our story too. So in the book that's, it's crystal clear where that is.

Okay, awesome. So as I said in my testimony, Steve, I think this is really, really important stuff. And of course we do it ourselves, as you know. And it's so easy to do. You said it's, you talk about the step by step process, having done it ourselves some years ago. It's really, really easy to set up. And so I kind of, I think everybody should be doing this. So what should people watching do next, Steve?

Well, as I said at the beginning, I don't think as accountants we can ignore this. It would be professionally irresponsible when presented with a way of doing target setting better that's better for businesses and better for the world. It would be professionally irresponsible just to ignore that, saying, no, I'm not interested. I think target setting is something we absolutely must be good at. We owe it to ourselves, we owe it to our clients. We can use it in our business, we can help our clients do the same and we can even sell it as a service. So I think the case for at least taking a look at the book, which I'm going to give to you for free, is overwhelming, isn't it? But actually not just for taking a look, but doing something with it. And that can start with one simple action today. And I think Sarah's going to share some links and maybe even a QR code. And that simple action, that thing to do very first is either jump onto a zoom meeting with me when this session with Mark finishes. So in about five minutes or so or five to 10 minutes, Sarah will probably put up a zoom link. I'll put it share my screen as well if we can. Mark, I've got the same zoom link there. So, so that's, that's a QR code that will take you to it on your phone. You set yourself. I think we'll put the Zoom link up. Hopefully you'll be able to come to that session immediately afters where we'll, we'll, we'll get you set up and show you exactly what to do to make a start. If you can't stay for the next 30 minutes, then there's my email address. Email me and we'll see what we can do to help you outside this. Those are, I think, the by far the most sensible places to start, given that we have to do something. But I wouldn't, I would absolutely. If you can, come to the implementation session, because I'll give you the book for free and I'll help you for free wrapped around it. But if you put this off, it'll just join that long list of other things that you're going to get to one day, but actually you never get to. And this is, I think, too important for business, for our clients, for posterity, for the planet, for our futures to sort of leave in that kind of way. So my strong recommendation is stay back for another 30 minutes or so for the implementation session. If you possibly can. If you can't, email me straight away and we'll see what else we can do to help you.

That's brilliant, Steve. That's awesome. And as I said at the outset, we have to do more for our clients. We have to create more value. And helping people do this, putting in place measures, targets and so on, I think is a really powerful thing that we can do. And so, Steve, I know you've got to rush because you've got this session now to jump onto Zoom.

I'm going to rush and open up the Zoom Room folk will be able to. I think the Zoom Room will require people to register, but then it'll send you an email with the link, will be in there within seconds. Anybody that's able to. To join me there?

Yeah. Well, while I wrap up Steve, I'll let you go and set up your Zoom Room. And.

I can see that the link is in the comments so people can go across there.

Thank you, Mark. Thank you everybody. I will zip off now. Bye for now.

See you soon, Steve.

Bye.

So.

In about three minutes you can go across to Steve. I just want to remind you of a couple of things myself very quickly. And one of those is, remember, we are giving away some free tickets to the Business Advisory Masterclass where we're going to talk about how you can create more value for your clients, how you can help them build more successful, profitable businesses. Takes place June 25th to the 27th. And we're giving away some free tickets. So if you would like to come along for free and get a free ticket, then just grab the link that we did share earlier. I'm sure Sarah will share the link again with you at some point. She's pretty good at sharing links across the various social platforms. Also.

If you found this valuable, please just hit that like button. Wherever you are on social media, hit the like button. And also we're going to play out some music in a little while. What I would love to know is.

What'S the one thing you got out of this session? What did you enjoy the most? What was the thing that you learned? Stick that in the comments box. I read all the comments out as the map as the countdown music's playing or the end of show music is playing. And finally my last announcement is when, when and what is my next live stream? It's next week and it's a special one next week which is June 12th. I have no idea if that's Tuesday or Wednesday next week, but it's next week, June the twelfth. At same time as this. What I'm going to be sharing with you is a really important topic which around this ChatGPT stuff. How can we save hours and hours of time by training up ChatGPT so that it can respond to emails on our behalf and write great emails. I've been doing this for last. I created some prompts a few months ago and now whenever I respond to emails I just use standard prompt prompts and pretty much every time the email that comes out is really well written and occasionally I tweak a few bits and pieces. But it saves hours and hours of time. So if you find yourself spending time writing emails and you want to spend, you want to save hours of time, you want some shortcuts, that's what I'm doing next week on the live stream June 12, so make sure that's in your calendar. As usual. We will be sending out on Monday email with the link to join it. It will of course be on our YouTube channel and also LinkedIn and possibly Facebook. We had a problem today. Facebook wouldn't work for whatever reason I know they've banned going live to Facebook groups now. Not sure what Mark Zuckerberg's got against that. But anyway, we will definitely be live to YouTube and LinkedIn next week. So I will hopefully see you on June 12th. Thank you so much for coming along. You can now go across to Steve's session if you want to. I'm going to play with some music as normal and I will read your comments. So let me know in the comments.

How was the session for you? Bye for now.