Business Mastermind Podcast

This week, we talk to Donald Moore, the former Managing Director, and now Chairman, of Rowlinson Knitwear.  He led the change to becoming an employee-owned business which has transformed employee retention, productivity, customer satisfaction, and in turn, profitability.

Sign Up Here: https://bit.ly/biz-pod

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Family businesses have a tendency to exist purely for the benefit of the family itself, or for the shareholders. Often, that can lead to an unfortunate sense of greed, and can affect morale.
• Donald's philanthropic viewpoint on his company, was that it needed to start caring more. Targets and incentives were leading to bad feeling and selfishness. His first rule in the wake of this, was that everyone needed to care, for the business, for the customer, and for each other.
• During the banking crisis, Donald made some poor decisions in order to satisfy the demands of shareholders. Service and customer satisfaction suffered as a result, as did profits.
• A good business discipline is to constantly monitor the cash you have on a daily basis, and ensure that it's working effectively for you.
• The new directive, in the face of near-disaster, was to focus on customers and people instead of profits, and put the shareholders last. 
• The best way to get through any kind of recession is to conserve cash and watch your margins. While the herd mentality chases growth in the hope that it'll help them survive, keep your hand on your prices and hold your nerve.
• People will always pay a small premium for quality, good service, and speed. It's a strategy that worked for Rowlinson in the face of defeat. Concentrating on customer service and quality resulted in a staggering rise in profits.
• By engendering trust with its partners, Rowlinson was easily able to secure the funding required in order to complete their transition to an employee-owned company. Donald credits this trust as the main reason for his company's growth and success.
• Rowlinson commit to making sure that its lower-paid employees are taken care of as a priority, and the higher-paid employees come last. Along with other benefits, such as pensions, this has created an incredible in-house culture.
• Employees at Rowlinson are fully involved with the way the company operates, and their rewards, such as profit-shares and holiday allowances, are tailored to the results of customer service response. This has led to an increased level of engagement, and the sense that each person can really make a difference.
• The areas that business owners need the most help with in order to effect true growth are:
  • Cash confidence 
  • Dealing with imposter syndrome
  • Creating a team that people want to be a part of
• Happiness at work is the most important metric at Rowlinson's. It's a cornerstone of the company's culture, and is far more crucial in terms of determining the suitability of new hires.
• The future is an incredibly important part of all decisions taken at the business. By providing a happy, inclusive, generous-spirited place to work, Rowlinson have created a place that people will aspire to being a part of for generations to come.

BEST MOMENTS

‘It's not always the family that are in the best position to grow a successful and enduring company'

'The business was individually, and collectively, selfish'

‘If you head-butt someone, then you're not likely to keep your job, really'

'Trust became our second value'

‘We want to be trusted'

‘I think that all commercial companies should reward their people with elements of profit-share'

'This year's customer satisfaction is next year's profit'

‘It's all part of our plan to build a great business for years to come'

VALUABLE RESOURCES

The Business Mastermind Podcast 

Donald Moore LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/donald-moore-26235521/?originalSubdomain=uk

Rowlinson Knitwear http://www.rowlinson-knitwear.com/home/meet-the-team

To contact Gavin about how he can help you and your business, email [email protected]

ABOUT THE HOST

Gavin Preston

Gavin is an inspirational Speaker, Business Strategist, Business Growth Mentor, Trainer and

high-performance Coach.  He works with Business Owners and Entrepreneurs and has a strong track record in creating creative strategies to accelerate the growth of their business. He has helped hundreds of SME business owners and leaders improve their performance and that of their business and a comparable number of executives and employees in blue-chip corporates over the last 20 years.

Gavin's energetic, insightful and yet down to earth and practical talks, workshops and coaching is in demand with high growth business between £250,000 and £30 million revenue and with multi-national organisations at all levels from Board to frontline

Managers. He is an expert in Business Growth Strategies, Peak Performance

Mindset, Persuasion & Engagement, Marketing, Productivity, Leadership

Development, Team Development & Motivation, Leading Change, Stakeholder

Management, Personal Effectiveness and Behavioural Change.

CONTACT METHOD

Gavin Preston Website

Gavin Preston LinkedIn

Gavin Preston YouTube

Gavin Preston Facebook

Gavin Preston Twitter

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Extracts from Gavin's Kindle Book, Time Tactics That Work 107 Ways to Get More Done

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Time-Tactics-That-Work-Ways-ebook/dp/B00JUJHASC

ABOUT THE HOST
Gavin Preston

Gavin is an inspirational Speaker, Business Strategist, Business Growth Mentor, Trainer and

high-performance Coach.  He works with Business Owners and Entrepreneurs and has a strong track record in creating creative strategies to accelerate the growth of their business. He has helped hundreds of SME business owners and leaders improve their performance and that of their business and a comparable number of executives and employees in blue-chip corporates over the last 20 years.

Gavin's energetic, insightful and yet down to earth and practical talks, workshops and coaching is in demand with high growth business between £250,000 and £30 million revenue and with multi-national organisations at all levels from Board to frontline

Managers. He is an expert in Business Growth Strategies, Peak Performance Mindset, Persuasion & Engagement, Marketing, Productivity, Leadership Development, Team Development & Motivation, Leading Change, Stakeholder Management, Personal Effectiveness and Behavioural Change.

Sign Up Here: https://bit.ly/biz-pod

CONTACT METHOD

Gavin Preston Website

Gavin Preston LinkedIn

Gavin Preston YouTube

Gavin Preston Facebook

Gavin Preston Twitter

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

‘An essential part of effective leadership is looking to the future and thinking about tomorrow'

David Beaty, UK Head of  Business Banking at HSBC is responsible for a team of around 900 people who support 67,000 customers.

They deal with customers on a relationship management basis and work with companies turning over typically up to 10 million pounds.

Gavin and David discuss the challenges businesses face moving forward along with getting your work-life balance right and for customers the increasing importance of environmental and sustainability evidence within businesses. This is a fascinating insight into the trends and challenges that any business will need to engage with to be successful in the next decade, listen in and hear more.

Sign Up Here: https://bit.ly/biz-pod

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• There is a move away from great customer service to providing great customer experiences.
• Technology changes and digital disruption and the way customers are adapting to this present significant challenges for any business.
• It's now typical for someone to order late in the day and expect the item to be delivered the next day so it's about how you deliver a good customer experience on top of good customer service.
• It's at this point that individual personalities and building rapport play an important role.
• Increasingly consumers want to do business with companies who can evidence the environmental and sustainable within their business.
• Businesses in the future will be differentiated by their supply chain and its environmental credentials.
• There is a backdrop of global challenge for every business which must be managed alongside providing the best customer experience today and tomorrow.
• There are always opportunities for well lead well-managed businesses and even when a business is doing well it should be looking to the future.
• The most important thing a leader can do is make conscious decisions. Whatever the challenges your business faces your competitors are also facing them.
• Successful businesses never stand still and an essential part of effective leadership is looking to the future and thinking about tomorrow.
• If you can learn from what's going on elsewhere then you are increasing your chances of success.
• You need solid foundations so that you can take up the opportunities on offer.
• Be ambitious for your business by either focusing more on what you are already good at or through being imaginative about how you move forward.
• As the leader, you set the attitude and the pace of the team you lead.

BEST MOMENTS

‘I've enjoyed my career and I'm humbled to lead the team I do today'

‘We are pleased with the growth and customer satisfaction in our business'

‘Life moves fast and we need to make sure everyone comes along with us'

‘At HSBC we have worked hard to create a ‘speak up culture'

VALUABLE RESOURCES

The Business Mastermind Podcast

ABOUT THE HOST

Gavin Preston

Gavin is an inspirational Speaker, Business Strategist, Business Growth Mentor, Trainer and

high-performance Coach.  He works with Business Owners and Entrepreneurs and has a strong track record in creating creative strategies to accelerate the growth of their business. He has helped hundreds of SME business owners and leaders improve their performance and that of their business and a comparable number of executives and employees in blue-chip corporates over the last 20 years.

Gavin's energetic, insightful and yet down to earth and practical talks, workshops and coaching is in demand with high growth business between £250,000 and £30 million revenue and with multi-national organisations at all levels from Board to frontline

Managers. He is an expert in Business Growth Strategies, Peak Performance

Mindset, Persuasion & Engagement, Marketing, Productivity, Leadership

Development, Team Development & Motivation, Leading Change, Stakeholder

Management, Personal Effectiveness and Behavioural Change.

CONTACT METHOD

Gavin Preston Website

Gavin Preston LinkedIn

Gavin Preston YouTube

Gavin Preston Facebook

Gavin Preston Twitter

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transforming at Fifty – The Undercover Entrepreneurs Interview with Carl Pate and Paul Hornsey- Pennell.

DESCRIPTION

Gavin is with Carl Pate and Paul Hornsey-Pennell who have come together following successful individual professional business journeys to create the ‘Undercover Entrepreneur'.

They are on a mission to help people transform their lives at fifty bringing the perfect combination of IQ and EQ to help others on their transformational journey.

If you want to become more and be more then this inspiring interview will help you to think about the questions you need to ask to begin to find out who you are and what you want from life. It's all about a rich journey of discovery and challenge that belongs only to you and facilitates your transformation moving forward in the next part of your life.

Sign Up Here: https://bit.ly/biz-pod

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Being fifty is the most transformational point in life. It says you are halfway through with all the promise of what you can achieve looking forward based on the extensive experience you already have of life.  
• You will look back having completed 30 years in a career and ask is this it?
• This is the time to start again and create something new in the future.
• People who are employees by definition are limited – limited to a salary, required to behave in a certain way, they are part of a group.
• If you follow your heart it's a very different journey.
• It's about how you move into the next part of your life; you have the opportunity to create something new and thrive.
• Asking questions stimulates the mind to consider the future, choices, connections and possibilities.
• When you are in business on your own you need access energy. Coaches and mentors are essential along with the people you actually spend time with as this is what impacts on your energy.
• You've got to be open to growing yourself and growing a team that you can leverage.
• People need to find the meaning in what they are doing, when you have a vision and mission others see and understand it and you can enrol them to join you on the journey and increase the energy around you.
• As human beings, we are fundamentally designed to keep safe but we are born to live and fully experience our capacity.
• It's not just about setting up a business it's about who you become that is the ultimate prize.
• If you can do something that you feel is nourishing and engaging and which brings others into your world who are thriving imagine the difference this will make to this period of your life.
• It's all about discovery and tapping into your life.

BEST MOMENTS

‘People see older age as decline, part of the way people regard retirement is part of the problem of retirement'

‘How many people are genuinely creative but block it to meet the other needs in their lives?'

‘It's a rich journey, why would you not want to begin the journey'

VALUABLE RESOURCES

The Business Mastermind Podcast

[email protected]

[email protected]

Undercover Entrepreneur website

ABOUT THE GUESTS

About Carl & Paul Video!

ABOUT THE HOST
Gavin Preston

Gavin is an inspirational Speaker, Business Strategist, Business Growth Mentor, Trainer and high-performance Coach.  He works with Business Owners and Entrepreneurs and has a strong track record in creating creative strategies to accelerate the growth of their business. He has helped hundreds of SME business owners and leaders improve their performance and that of their business and a comparable number of executives and employees in blue-chip corporates over the last 20 years.

Gavin's energetic, insightful and yet down to earth and practical talks, workshops and coaching is in demand with high growth business between £250,000 and £30 million revenue and with multi-national organisations at all levels from Board to frontline Managers. He is an expert in Business Growth Strategies, Peak Performance Mindset, Persuasion & Engagement, Marketing, Productivity, Leadership Development, Team Development & Motivation, Leading Change, Stakeholder Management, Personal Effectiveness and Behavioural Change.

CONTACT METHOD

Gavin Preston Website

Gavin Preston LinkedIn

Gavin Preston YouTube

Gavin Preston Facebook

Gavin Preston Twitter

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

‘As the leader what can you do to support change and transformation?'

Gavin is with Freda Doxey, Head Coach from Wise Coaching. Freda specialises in supporting businesses to achieve change and transformation and talks with Gavin about the process involved and why you can only achieve transformation when you are helping others to achieve change.

Self-efficacy is a circle, a cycle that you are continually moving around and a team working together can achieve significant transformation listen in and find out how.

Sign Up Here: https://bit.ly/biz-pod

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• It's not about change it's about transformation
• People keep making changes but they are never satisfied
• Real transformation comes from the move from self-interest to the interests of the company.
• When the barriers have been identified you can then move towards learning and change
• You've got to put into practice what you are learning
• Leaders and managers need to learn how to coach individuals successfully to bring transformation within their teams.
• Leaders need to take on the role of coach to develop capability rather than dependency.
• With coaching you are promoting interdependency – you can function both independently and together with others within a team.
• You work together to achieve your own goals and that of the company and to realise this there needs to be a connection between the individual and company goals.
• There can be fear within a team and this will stop the team moving forward, the fear can come from either a team member or the leader.
• Identifying the fear, facing it and moving forward is part of the process and to do this managers and leaders must know the people they are working with.
• To motivate people it's important to focus on the key areas where they want to achieve change.

BEST MOMENTS

‘Change only really happens when there is an inner transformation and you look to help others achieve change'

‘Persistence and endurance are key elements required for any transformation'

‘Celebration and recognition will lead the way to increased motivation'

VALUABLE RESOURCES

The Business Mastermind Podcast

www.wisecoaching.company

ABOUT THE HOST

Gavin Preston

Gavin is an inspirational Speaker, Business Strategist, Business Growth Mentor, Trainer and

high-performance Coach.  He works with Business Owners and Entrepreneurs and has a strong track record in creating creative strategies to accelerate the growth of their business. He has helped hundreds of SME business owners and leaders improve their performance and that of their business and a comparable number of executives and employees in blue-chip corporates over the last 20 years.

Gavin's energetic, insightful and yet down to earth and practical talks, workshops and coaching is in demand with high growth business between £250,000 and £30 million revenue and with multi-national organisations at all levels from Board to frontline

Managers. He is an expert in Business Growth Strategies, Peak Performance

Mindset, Persuasion & Engagement, Marketing, Productivity, Leadership

Development, Team Development & Motivation, Leading Change, Stakeholder

Management, Personal Effectiveness and Behavioural Change.

CONTACT METHOD

Gavin Preston Website

Gavin Preston LinkedIn

Gavin Preston YouTube

Gavin Preston Facebook

Gavin Preston Twitter

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Gavin talks to Nathan Hirsch, the co-founder of FreeeUp, a marketplace connecting business owners with the top 1% of virtual assistants, and who has since gone on to found Outsource School, a specialist service that allows you, through the use of VA's to scale up your business.

Nathan talks about his entrepreneurial journey, how he scaled FreeeUp from $5k annual turnover to over $12 million, the lessons he's learned about scaling, and his astounding plans for the future.

Sign Up Here: https://bit.ly/biz-pod

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Nate's entrepreneurial journey began in college, when he took the innovative step of using the Amazon marketplace to buy and sell used textbooks to fellow students, thereby saving them many hundreds of dollars.
• Because hiring was an issue for his Amazon business, Nate found the world of Virtual Assistants, and through his newfound interest in this world, founded FreeeUp in order to solve the issues he discovered there.
• FreeeUp sought to simplify and refine the process of hiring VAs. Each candidate was asked to submit to a process in which they could be vetted professionally, with only the best applicants making it through. This created an elite database of VAs for potential customers.
• Nathan chose to launch FreeeUp as a barebones system, and built in the subsequent iterations by listening to feedback from its users on both sides.
• Marketing, and becoming a brand ambassador for his businesses, is something that Nate fell into by instinct, having no prior experience. By honing and refining your marketing skills, you give your business a huge advantage.
• As a business scales, the need to hire and delegate becomes far more pronounced. Nate learned this lesson at the beginning of his career, when his Amazon business suddenly became too much to handle.
• If a VA is adding value to your business, then pay them what they want. Ask them what they'd be happy with. You shouldn't try to undercut people, as it can be exploitative, plus if they see opportunities elsewhere, they'll be more likely to pursue them.
• Do whatever you can to retain talent. Onboarding and recruitment are costly, both financially and in terms of time. Make sure it's not wasted.

BEST MOMENTS

‘We were dependant on Amazon, and that got old really fast'

‘I wanted to build a VA army'

‘Everything was either automated or delegated'

'The first stage I went on, I bombed'

‘You're going to learn this lesson on your own'

‘Eventually it's going to explode'

‘Find people who are going to be happy with what you pay them and then reward them over time'

VALUABLE RESOURCES

The Business Mastermind Podcast 

Nathan Hirsch LInkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanhirsch/

To learn more about Outsource School go to www.bit.ly/outsourcebmp

ABOUT THE HOST

Gavin Preston

Gavin is an inspirational Speaker, Business Strategist, Business Growth Mentor, Trainer and

high-performance Coach.  He works with Business Owners and Entrepreneurs and has a strong track record in creating creative strategies to accelerate the growth of their business. He has helped hundreds of SME business owners and leaders improve their performance and that of their business and a comparable number of executives and employees in blue-chip corporates over the last 20 years.

Gavin's energetic, insightful and yet down to earth and practical talks, workshops and coaching is in demand with high growth business between £250,000 and £30 million revenue and with multi-national organisations at all levels from Board to frontline

Managers. He is an expert in Business Growth Strategies, Peak Performance

Mindset, Persuasion & Engagement, Marketing, Productivity, Leadership

Development, Team Development & Motivation, Leading Change, Stakeholder

Management, Personal Effectiveness and Behavioural Change.

CONTACT METHOD

Gavin Preston Website

Gavin Preston LinkedIn

Gavin Preston YouTube

Gavin Preston Facebook

Gavin Preston Twitter

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.