It was sad to read in the NZ Herald today that a roading contractor wins an industry award one day and the next day is put into receivership. What’s up with that!? How could an obvious industry best practice operator get it so wrong? Also, how could the judges of the awards get it so…
Today at a networking breakfast I listened to a humorous, inspirational, structured and relaxed presentation on how to put a pitch together to win business. It was by a local expert in the game, Hugo Meares from Sparkplug. www.sparkplug.co.nz The presentation itself was a pitch in its own right, as you might expect, but was…
I came away from a client meeting last week with a building company owner really pleased to hear that a new staff performance review system we had introduced had been a great success with the field staff. There is always a risk of these more “corporate-like” processes being resisted strongly by the guys on site…
At a recent finance and legal seminar I co-presented with Trina Lincoln (construction law specialist) one of the key topics of discussion and frustration by the builders present was securing the final payment on a project. Several builders recounted past issues of being strung out by owners at the end of a project, being asked…
Can you identify with this situation? You are very good at what you do. You are a great tradesman and take pride in completing jobs to a high degree of quality. You enjoy being on the tools. This is what you enjoy most. But the other parts of your business also have to be done.…
Let’s face it. Most tradies would rather be forced to watch replays of marathon chess matches than put time into creating a budget for their business. I can understand their reluctance, but I would also like to show them the error of their thinking. Creating a budget for your business can be one of the…
Over the past couple of months I have been working with two semi-group coaching programs, called the the Business MasterClass. One at my office in Albany and one in Greenlane. Participants are well through the early modules and already seeing the benefits of coming on-board. I knew from my experience that participants would receive tremendous…
I had a great meeting with a client this week. We are a couple of months into our 6 month Business MasterClass with him and were going through our second 1:1 meeting. We were covering some specific marketing tactics he will be implementing, and also reviewing the foundation strategies from earlier meetings. His comment, “I…
Having the right culture in your company is vital to its success. The culture that exists in a company can make or break it, so it is important to make sure the right culture is proactively developed. By not taking a proactive approach the culture will simply evolve in a random way by usually drifting…
In Africa, there’s a saying: If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go with a group. Does this apply to learning as well? Why would you want to learn with a group? Why share the experience you have gained through so many years of the school of hard…