We often hear that businesses care about transparency, that they are investors in people and that their customers are number on. But once you get beyond the marketing and the clever copywriting, how many businesses have you experienced where this is actually the case?

Our guest for this episode of the number one small business podcast is Simon Biltcliffe, the managing director of Webmart. Listening to Simon’s laidback demeanour, you might not have guessed that he was the leader of a highly successfully and innovative business. Surely an MD or a CEO should be stressed out, knocking back coffees and chewing enough gum to give Sir Alex a run for his money? The difference between the stereotypical business leader and Simon is in how they choose to run their businesses.

Simon has created an environment where staff are empowered to find the correct role for them, where profits are shared between team members and charities and where happiness can be measured in real-time.

Simon’s here to give us the lowdown on how he got his people to buy in to this system and the benefits that a similar system could have for your small business.

Issue Challenged in this Small Business Podcast:

How can you scale your business by empowering your staff, inverting your management structure and thinking about things a little differently?

About Simon:

Simon Biltcliffe is the MD and chief strategist of Webmart as well as being a renowned speaker and expert in creating value for his customers, suppliers and employees.

Simon has grown a hugely successfully business while doing things a little bit differently. In this episode of your favourite small business podcast, he’s going to be sharing his experiences of inverted management structures and the benefits they could bring to your own small business.

Actionable Tips:

* Ask why you are in business. If you’re in business simply to make money for yourself, that’s fine but you can’t expect other people to be engaged with it. If that isn’t the reason, ask what is enough? What is enough for me? Decide what’s enough both for you personally and your organization.

* Work out your parameters. What are the ethics of the business? What’s important to you beyond a successful business? How could you empower your team?

* If people aren’t the right people for the business, you can’t have them on-board. A weight will be lifted from everyone. It’s rigorous, not ruthless.

Top Quotes:

* “If a business doesn’t have that human dimension, it doesn’t resonate with anybody.”

* “If you get an alignment that really means something to people, their family, the people around them and to the community. It you’re doing the right things for the right reason and delivering value to all. If you get that, you get alignment, you get motivation. You get all the stuff that you read books about. It comes as standard.”

* “We all need a feeling of belonging, we all need a feeling of appreciation. There’s a vision and a moral basis for what you do. Those are the two things that you need.”

* “Intellectual return, emotional return and financial return, in that order. Most companies go for ‘F’ first and ignore the rest.”

* “People who really care are amazingly powerful in the marketplace.”

* “Ideas are cheap, delivering them is really difficult.”

* “Having a trusting, transparent business is simple. There are no contrasting views on things. We share all of the notes from our board meetings with everyone in the business the next day. We have live metrics up on the board. We measure happiness every day and we measure the happiness of our customers and suppliers.”

* “This is an evolution, rather than a revolution. There’s still an awful lot of still that we know that we can improve...