In this episode of the show we have our second ever guest on, our good friend Lisa Reed, who is a Business Consultant.

Note that this episode has two parts – click here for the audio for part 2.

Lisa has recently rebranded her consultancy to A Little Ray of Sunshine, she is a business consultant with a management accounting background which is quite different to business consultant who has a sales and marketing background. She has many many years of commercial experience both in the corporate arena where she worked with budgets in the billions, through to small corporates and SMBs.

This is an absolutely packed episode, full of knowledge bombs, wisdom and light-bulb moments. No matter what level of business you’re operating at, whether you’re at startup phase or working in the $100-200+ million range, this is an episode to listen to.

Listen to this episode and learn:

* why asking your accountant for business advice could be a bad move

* the 3 types of accountant and why the difference between them is important to be aware of

* we chat about financial tools and why keeping your books up to date is a critical part of growing your business

* why you and your ego could be the thing thats limiting your business growth

* ….and many other foundational components of building and growing a successful business

Highlights, Notes and Action Items from this episode:

* Lisa’s business – alittlerayofsunshine.com.au

* Financial tools mentioned

* Xero

* Calxa for Cashflow Forecasting

* Shoeboxed for managing receipts

* FathomHQ for business dashboards

* How grow a business

* the 5 ways model

* identify the unique core competencies of the business and focus on growing those

* Remove “key person reliance” – look at who has responsibility for daily, weekly, monthly critical tasks in a business, ask yourself what would happen if they left and build on action plan around that scenario so you can eliminate risk

* 3 levels of focus

* tactical – the daily, weekly

* operational – monthly, quarterly

* strategic – long term, this is where the business owner should spend most of their time

* One of the first things Lisa works on in a business is removing the business owner from the daily tasks

* Be mindful of the breakeven gap and “busy fool syndrome” – we want the breakeven gap to be as big as possible

* Books recommended in this episode:

* The Personal MBA

* The Lean Startup

* Delivering Happiness

* Peak by Chip Conley

* 3 types of accountants:

* Tax Accountant

* Financial Accountant

* Management Accountant

* Quoteables:

* Business is people and performance, 90% of it is people

* Business owners need to be people people

* Business is always limited by the business owner

* Recruit people that are better than you

* Change is slow, expect a minimum of 3 months for change to happen

Podcast transcript:

The intro to talking all things business in the next hour or so

Ed Keay-Smith: You’re listening to the Business Marketing Show, episode number twenty, part one of two. You can find us at www.BusinessMarketingShow.com or on iTunes.

Brendan Tully: Welcome to the Business Marketing Show,