Why You Should Build Your Business Around Your Personal Lifestyle w/ Doug D'Aubrey

One of my clients who's a gas engineer, so actually we were able to work out that if he just did the maintenance stuff and the routine annual maintenance and then he also did any kind of repairs and so on, we started outsourcing all the boiler, the new boilers and the boiler fits, and suddenly he became a lot more profitable. There could be loads of different circumstances whereby holding down a 9 to 5 Monday to Friday job isn't going to be feasible for them. So it might not be about the money. It might be about actually our lifestyle.

This is the Field Rocket Podcast. I'm your host, Tullik Priest, and today we're joined by Doug from ETC Limited. Doug is an executive business coach who specializes in helping businesses improve their profits. Welcome to the show.

Hi, how are you?

Yeah, well, thank you for joining us. Today we're going to be talking about how your personal goals impacts your business strategy. Where would you actually, where would you start?

Well, working with our clients, one of the first things we ask our clients to look at is their personal goals. And as a business coach, that might sound very strange. But the reason for that is that setting a personal goal, what does the business owner want to achieve from their business then allows us to set the business goal that will allow that personal goal to be achieved.

Could you give us some examples of like a personal goal, like make more money? Is that a personal goal? Or how would you actually kind of make it a bit more precise?

Okay, so quite often when I ask business owners what their personal goals are, I get answers like, 'Oh, I want a successful business.' Well, first of all, it's not really a goal. And if it was a goal, that's a business goal. Because it's, it's about the business. And yes, it's very personal to them because it's their business. Business owners, it's a very personal thing that they succeed in their business and so on. But actually, what we're looking for here is what do they want in life? What sort of lifestyle do they want to be living? And And sometimes we will go down the line of, you know, if you could give you 3 wishes, money and time being no object, what would they be? And they'll come up with, you know, they want a holiday home or they, you know, they want to have a special type of car or they just want to live in a better house or something. Now we're starting to look at personal goals. So this is the way they want their life to be. This is their desires and their dreams for how they want to live in their life. If we can get to that, we can then work on the business goal.

Okay, and then do you find that, well, what do most people want? Do they want more time? Or is it like freedom of time or kind of freedom of money?

Or, well, initially you think that one of the main answers is, oh, I want financial freedom. But that's different for everyone, because financial freedom can mean one thing to somebody and another thing to somebody else. So It could mean I've got no debts and you go, what, including your mortgage? Oh, no, no, not the mortgage. So what do you mean, you haven't got any credit card debts? Yeah, that's right. So it depends on what they want in terms of financial freedom. But generally, you're talking about having enough money to not be worried about it so that they can go and they can have a meal if they want to go for a meal or they want to book a holiday, they can have a holiday. And, you know, the ladies, they can go and buy, you know, a new pair of shoes or go and have their hair done or their nails done without worrying about it because they've got enough money. And that is the sort of thing that comes up regularly rather than a full-blown, I've got no debts and my mortgage is paid, etc. Although we do have some of those who want the entire lot. And that's great. Doesn't matter. It's whatever is right for them.

Yeah, it sounds quite kind of modest goals. These are not like owning a superyacht or a Ferrari or anything. So are they generally quite kind of—

Majority of the time, people have got, when you— modest goals, to them, it's not necessarily modest. To them, it's big compared to where they are. That doesn't mean to say we haven't got a few who want the big, yachts and all the rest of it. But also, there's a bit of reality has to go on here in terms of what they can do with the business and what that business is capable of doing.

Okay. So could you just give us like an example of like a reasonable sort of a goal that a business owner would say? And then we can kind of use that example once we go and see how that affects the business strategy.

Yeah, okay. So I'm just trying to think of one that I work with. So one of the chaps, his His personal goal was he wanted to be able to live in the Mediterranean half the year. So that he wasn't— because he hated the winter. Liked England, but hated the winter. So he wanted to live and work in the Mediterranean.

That's a good solution. It's better than buying a bigger heater.

Yeah, exactly. So that was what he wanted to do. And that then meant we had to restructure the business completely because the way his business was structured, that was never going to be possible.

Okay, when you mean restructured, are you meaning that so there's more like delegation and there's more kind of like controls? How did the actual, the restructuring work?

So, um, this was some time ago and, um, uh, cloud, uh, technology was only just coming into its fore at the time. So one of the things that we had to do was we had to make sure we could, uh, get the business, uh, so that it was operating as an online business. That cloud technology was just, say, coming in so that he could see what was going on when he was in the— it was actually Spain he wanted to go to. It was a case of the Mediterranean was a big place. Where do you want to go in the Mediterranean? So we ended up with Spain. So when he was over in Spain, he could actually have access to what was going on in the business. The second thing was that he couldn't be the one having— doing all the delivery. So the delivery aspect of it had to be, we had to get other people doing the delivery.

So when you mean delivery, like if you were like a gas engineer, you're talking about doing the quotes, actually doing the work, you know, all of those kinds of things, I'm guessing.

Yeah. So doing the quotes is sort of the sales. So you've got your sales and marketing, which is generating your opportunities. And going out and doing the quotes. Once that's been accepted and you now have a customer, you have to deliver. So it's the actual technical aspect of putting a new boiler in or rewiring a house or whatever it is. So if you are the one doing the delivery, then you have to be hands-on, you have to be facing the cold face, so to speak. If you want to be away from the business and spending time away from the business and overseeing it, you can't be the one doing the delivery. Unless you can do it online. But for, you know, for a tradesperson, you're going to have to have people employed to do the work for you. Whether that's subcontracted or salaried, that's another question. There's different ways of managing that employment.

Okay, so in the end, you restructured it.

Did—

how— what kind of like controls did you put in place? Because if he's not physically present, how do you actually make sure the work is getting done, the customers are happy?

So this is all around process. So making sure you've got process in the business so you can see what's happening. And, um, one of the things that we needed to do was to make sure that the— as the work was being done, it was being recorded. So it was going into the system. So it could be onto a platform, it could be onto via an iPad or something so that it drops into— technically, it drops into a system so that when you're away from the business, you can still have access to it, you can still log in and see it because it's all online. Nowadays, technology is amazing. It's come on leaps and bounds. And you can actually be anywhere in the world and see what's going on in your business, provided you've got the technical information being dropped in. And it's so easy to do.

You kind of have— you can do that. They can put the information in, but I still feel like you need a bit more control. Like you need some kind of like metrics or scorecard or something to let you know because you could have gone out, done a landlord's guess, or one of your teammates out doing a landlord's landlord's guest safety, but then you don't know if the customer's happy or not. You know, there's some other, you know, things in there that need to be controlled as well. How did you actually kind of deal with that?

So depending on the business, you're going to get feedback. You either have customer feedback or you can actually have a situation whereby at the end of each call, they have to, the customer has to sign the documentation. And that can be uploaded. So you've got a signature that the customer is happy. You can have an automated system whereby a survey goes out saying, were you happy with the service? How was the, you know, was the engineer clean? Did he leave it clean? Or, you know, was he well mannered? Whatever it is you're looking at to monitor and identify whether the job was done right, you can have that in the survey.

So this would be So this would be like your company values, like if your company values, we always leave it tidy, we always respectful, etc., you know, that would be in that survey.

Yeah, that's right. So depending on what it is you're doing and depending on what it is you're promising, because at the end of the day, you need to be, well, whatever it is you promise, you need to deliver. Okay, so whatever your marketing material is or when you're selling or your promises, you need to be making sure that's happening. And that way you're going to get good reports back. Because at the end of the day, if you promise A and don't deliver it, you might have done a fantastic job, but you didn't deliver exactly what you said. You're likely to get a bad report back.

Okay. Yeah. So you just need to make sure that you have— you set the expectations. It sounds really simple, but then in practice, you know, it's actually sitting down and thinking, well, what am I actually promising on our website? What do I actually promise over the phone? And then actually tying that together.

Exactly. And when you set that expectation, don't over-egg it. Set down what is a real expectation from you and your business, whatever you can achieve. If you over-deliver on that expectation, the customer's ecstatic. If you under-deliver, you've got a grumpy customer. So don't make out that you're going to be able to do all this fantastic stuff and then not deliver it just to try and sell. Be realistic in terms of managing the client's expectations, which is a whole nother subject in terms of customer service and client expectations.

If you were a sole trader, so you're just working by yourself, how would your personal goals impact your sort of business strategy? So you don't have a team yet, or you might even not want a team. How does that sort of play out?

Well, again, this is coming back to making sure that you understand, understanding what the personal goal is, getting the business owner to say what it is they want in life, what is it that, what sort of lifestyle do they want, and then working the business goal to meet that lifestyle. Now, let's face it, if you're a business owner, your business should be facilitating the way you want to live. Otherwise, why are you in business? Go and get a job, get a salary. That business should be facilitating what you want out of life. So whatever it is you want out of life, you then use the business, set the goal to make that happen. And it could be as simple as, I want to have enough money in the bank to allow my kids to go to university if they want. So that could be the personal goal. So that's like, okay, so what is the level of income? What What does the profit level need to be to be able to put money aside on a routine basis so that by the time they get to that university age, the money is sitting there?

Okay, and so let's say you choose an amount, and then from that amount, that profit margin, you actually work down to how much you pay or how many jobs that you need. Is that how it would actually impact?

Yeah, so you break that back down. Yeah. So you're going to say, right, okay, how many— if that's how much I need to earn, what is my cost of living? What do I need to live on? So we need to understand what that is. You also need to understand what does it cost me to run the business? So all the overheads of running the business, you add the two together and that actually is your proper breakeven. Your breakeven is not just your business. When you're a business owner, it's also what you need to earn to live. Otherwise, there's no point in doing it. So we need the— what you learn to live, so that— i.e., what do you need to take out of the business? Maybe that's 3 grand a month. So if that's 3 grand a month you need as a salary, then you pull that out as a salary. And you need another 3 grand to run your business with the insurances, your vehicles, all the other stuff. So 6 grand is actually what you need to make. Anything above 6 grand starts to create profit. So then you can work out, okay, what's your average client? So what are you— what are your— what's your average sale? So whatever it is you're doing, whether you're installing boilers, or you're just doing rewires, or helping house renovations, or whatever it is you're doing, then you can start looking at what your average sale rate is. You can then say, great, well, we need 20 customers a year, or 20 customers a month, or whatever that figure is. Doesn't matter what the figure is, but you've got to know what it is. And that helps you drive your sales then. But also, you can actually work on increasing your profit, which I'm sure we're going to cover in another podcast, but all about profitability within the business depends on how you're costing it. So you can then build that in and start looking at actually, I should be making more money from each job, because I haven't got the time to do more jobs, but I need more money. Therefore, I need to make more profit on each job in order to be able to start putting money aside so that over the next 10 years, I've got that money in the bank to support my kids when they go to university.

Yeah, it kind of all comes together. And it would also kind of control which services you offer and actually give you a kind of a sense, is this the right service I should be doing? And then you'd be looking at your area as well, because you can only drive so far. Like if you're a sole trader, you can only go so far. You need to actually look at your area and find out what kind of customers are there, what kind of service I can offer, and actually what the prices and stuff that I need to be charging.

Yeah, absolutely. One of my clients who's a gas engineer, he was doing boiler fitting and anything he could possibly do. And actually, what we identified was doing the maintenance on the annual maintenance on the gas boilers and gas fires, etc., were far more profitable than fitting new boilers. Fitting new boilers was a lot of turnover. But you had to buy all the kit, you had to buy the boilers and all the rest of it. So actually, we were able to work out that if he just did the maintenance stuff and the routine annual maintenance, and then he also did any kind of repairs and so on. We started outsourcing all the boiler, the new boilers and the boiler fits, and suddenly he became a lot more profitable. And actually, he went down to 4 days, 4 days a week in terms of working. He didn't need to work 5 days a week.

Okay, so without actually working out where the profit's coming from, and actually, yeah, I can definitely see that because if you the challenges with installing boilers is that, you know, it's a big job. It might get— if it overruns, there's a bit more risk involved, or it gets delayed a day, you kind of lose all of that. But if you— if one service, you know, gets delayed a day, you know, it's not a massive impact. So it's— I can kind of see that you kind of have to— it sounds a little bit like, you know, there's a few things kind of interconnected. So you've got your your personal goals and you say, okay, we need this amount. And then you look at your business and say, how can I make this work? How can this actually happen?

There's no one answer to it at the end of the day. Your business goals, first of all, you're setting your personal goals to understand what your business goals need to be. Your business goals is only going to be what you're going to end up with. That's what you want to end up with. Now you've got the task of going, well, how are we going to make that happen? And that is a whole, a whole system of things throughout the business. It's not one thing or another. You've got to have the right marketing, you've got to have the right sales, you've got to do the delivery, and the delivery has got to be in the right manner so that you're making profit. You've got to manage your finances, you don't want to be overspending. So running the business is not just one thing. It's you, and if you want to improve your business, you don't just improve your sales or your marketing or your operations. You have to improve the business across the board. But the starting point has to be the goals. Because otherwise, you don't know where you're going.

Yeah, if you're, if you're running a business, and you're not getting at least twice as much as you would do as an employee, you know, running a business is, there's extra risk, there's extra hassle, you know, you could be better off just employed.

I would say that sometimes it's not about the money though, because there are people who want to be self-employed because they hate being told what to do. So they don't want to work for somebody else. You also have a situation whereby they may have personal circumstances around looking after parents, disabled children, whatever. There could be loads of different circumstances whereby holding down a 9-to-5, Monday-to-Friday job isn't going to be feasible for them. So they're going to have to run their own business to give them the flexibility that they need in life. So it might not be about the money. It might be about actually a lifestyle.

Okay, yes, that's a good point. Well, it kind of nicely comes back to that personal goal. So until you actually get those personal goals, you know, you can't actually work the rest of it out.

Exactly. Yeah. And everything flows from there if you want to do it.

Okay. That was very good. Thank you very much for your points there, Doug. And this is Doug from ETC Limited, and he is an executive business coach helping businesses improve their profit. So thank you very much.

Thank you.