It’s common knowledge that it’s easier to keep existing customers rather than winning over new ones, but this fact can sometimes get lost in amongst the pressure we all feel to be bringing in new customers and growing our business. We get distracted and we start neglecting those customers who have already engaged with us in the past.

Why should you shift your focus to your existing customers?

Have you ever considered how much time and money you spend trying to engage new customers through your marketing? Of course, you have to spend resources in order to make sales, but could some of those resources be better spent looking after your existing customers? Marketing is essential for growing your business, but how much of your marketing is going to people who were once your customers but left for a better solution? Save your time, money and energy by focusing more on your existing customers.

While we’re still talking resources, have you ever considered what will happen when all that marketing pays off? Does your business have all the resources ready to go if, suddenly, a swarm of new customers want to engage? If you become overwhelmed and can’t provide the new customers with the service you promised them or the existing customers with the service they’ve come to love, you could be running the risk of losing everyone all together.

How can you foster loyalty?

You’ve got customers, so how can you make sure they stay with you? It’s less about meeting their expectations and more about going above and beyond!

Be Transparent

Have you ever wanted to buy a product online, only to find they had no clear guide to shipping costs? Maybe it’s an oversight or perhaps it’s a deliberate omission to hide their astronomical prices. Either way, it’s not a good look. Laying everything out clearly for your customer to see is the best way to foster trust.

Be Accessible

Most of the time, it feels like you’re shouting into the void – your email campaigns might show increases in sign ups or sales but it’s less common to have your customers telling you exactly what they think. Provide them with an option to give you feedback and make it front and centre. Not only does it feel less like you’re talking to yourself, but it gives your customers a voice and opens up the communication between you.

Be Knowledgeable

If you were asking someone for directions in a big city, would you trust them if they weren’t even sure where they were or changed their mind constantly? Similarly, in business, it’s important you know where you’ve been, where you are now and where you’re going. Know everything you can about your business so that when, inevitably, a customer asks a question, you can give them a confident answer. How can they trust you if you’re not sure about something you’re supposed to be good at?

Be Consistent

Customers are big fans of consistency. It’s comforting to know that you’ll get the exact same great result every single time and if you are consistent, your customers will become even bigger fans of you. Never sacrifice quality for quantity, no matter how efficient you seem – it will ultimately make your customers lose faith in the service or product you provide.

Be Genuine

You might be selling your product or service but you’re also selling the experience of doing business. Having genuine, honest conversations will keep customers coming back for more and owning up to your mistakes, when you make them, will show your customers you care about the end result. It might seem like a small (and easy) thing, but being genuine could be the reason your customers choose you every time.

Start implementing some of these easy tips today and watch as your customers become raving fans!

If you want to find out more about creating Raving Fans or about what we do at Bx, feel free to book a quick 15-20 minute chat with me and we can talk. Book in HERE.

The post Creating Loyal Customers & Raving Fans appeared first on Bx | Business for Life.

Mentoring can be an extremely valuable experience, not only when you’re new to the business world, but right through the life of your business. There is a lot of time and effort involved in creating a successful and effective mentoring relationship and it should never be one-sided. So, what should you expect from your mentor and what should you be doing in return?

Your mentor should:

• Be a sounding board. Sometimes, you need someone to bounce ideas off and mentors generally have more experience and business knowledge, making them the perfect sounding board for all your ideas, crazy, ambitious or even unrealistic.

• Give you guidance.  After you’ve thrown ideas at them, you might be expecting your mentor to tell you exactly how you should make those ideas a reality, but unfortunately, that’s not what they’re there for. Rather than give you step-by-step instructions, their role is to offer guidance on what might work – the hard yards are all on you!

• See the big picture for you. When your head is stuck in your business and deep in paperwork, it can be easy to lose sight of why you’re doing this in the first place. A mentor makes sure you don’t get bogged down or lost amongst all the busyness; your mentor keeps you moving forward, even when you’ve forgotten where you’re going.

• Set clear boundaries. Are you unsure when the best time is to call your mentor? Do you have a set time to meet every week or month? How long is this mentor/mentee relationship intended to last? If you have a good mentor, you already know the answers to these. Clear boundaries mean that both of you know where you stand and what’s expected of you.

Your mentor should not:

• Run your business for you. A mentor’s job is a little bit like someone helping you to run a marathon. They’re there to prepare you, to give you advice on what it’s like out on the course, but they’re not going to run alongside you every step of the way and make the decisions for you. You can expect them to cheer from the sidelines but expecting them to take up a role in your business is both unrealistic and unreasonable.

• Tell you what you want to hear. Just like a great friend or a parent, a mentor doesn’t tell you what you want to hear, they tell you what you need to hear. This means that your mentoring journey won’t always be easy, but you can be assured that all of their advice – even if it’s confronting – is for your benefit as well as your business.

• Be at your beck and call 24/7. The reason you have a mentor is because they know a thing or two about business – this usually means that they have their own, successful business to be running. As a consequence, calling or emailing them several times a day will wear thin very quickly. Respect your mentor’s time and be fully prepared for the designated time you spend together each week or month so you can get the most out of them while you can.

With clear boundaries, mutual respect and an enthusiasm for business, you’ll be on your way to creating a successful business mentoring relationship.

Do you need a mentor? Some coaching? Or just a conversation around getting a mentor?

Feel free to book a quick 15-20 minute chat with me and we can talk. Book in HERE.

The post What Makes a Great Mentor? How to Find a Great Mentor. appeared first on Bx | Business for Life.

This year BxPonential gathered together a wealth of speakers, and October was no exception.  Here’s a quick wrap of the BxPonential ideas our speakers shared with the audience:

Luke S Kennedy

Luke S Kennedy was an obese alcoholic and drug addict leading a street fighting crew, constantly on the verge of death through his risk-taking and substance abuse. Not only was Luke close to death himself, he was also putting others in the line of fire through street battles.

In 2007, Luke began his journey to regaining his life for himself – he lost 47 kilos and started his own business, Punchy’s Training & Nutrition, Oatley. In the time since, Luke has become an award-winning businessman, speaker, mentor and international best-selling author.

Particularly passionate about empowering others to take back their lives and live life positively and to the full, Luke travels all over Australia speaking to troubled youth as well as visiting high schools, prisons and corporations to share his experiences, low and high.

At BxPonential, Luke compared his experiences in street fighting to his experiences in business noting the similarities between the two when it came to becoming established: he needed a big idea to motivate him, it was important to make a strong early impression, and to hustle for what he was after.

Luke shared on stage the missing ingredient during his time leading a street fighting gang was his willingness to receive feedback. “If anyone in the gang gave me ‘feedback’, I was likely to stab them,” he said. Yet what he learnt was this: Anything led by ego eventually self destructs. “I had to learn to be open to change, open to criticism. “It was only realising the importance of feedback and welcoming it from customers, family members and employees alike, that allowed me to move my business forward.”

Meet: Matt Alderton

If you’ve been doing business in Sydney over the last 20 years, you might recognise Matt – the founder and a shareholder in IWS, Australia’s largest cloud-based rostering and payroll company, as well as Bx, Aldterton Enterprises and Orderfast.

Wanting success from a young age, Matt’s passion is to share his knowledge and experience to help others achieve success through growth and development, specialising in leadership.

Matt has trained and mentored with John C. Maxwell, Les Brown and Terry Hawkins. Matt is proud to teach with John Maxwell and be a part of the John Maxwell Leadership Team.  He loves delivering an enjoyable, funny and high-energy learning experience to make sure that everyone gets as much as they can to start growing both professionally and personally.

On the BxPonential stage, Matt spoke about the difference your attitude can make in your day and in your business. Throughout his business journey, Matt has had many days where he has swung his legs out of bed and wanted to swing them right back in again; through his many ups and downs, he knows that having a positive attitude is not always possible, but it is always possible to fake it until you make it.

“Having a positive attitude can turn problems into blessings and learning experiences, it can change and define our approach to life and it can open up opportunities in business that might never have come our way before,” said Matt.

He also shared the value of taking the time to remember someone’s name. “It may not seem much, but it gives you a wonderful connection,” said Matt. “It shows how you notice and value someone. There’s no secret trick, you have to find out what work for you as a memory aid.” It may help if you think of yourself as an aural or visual learner. “One colleague will remember someone’s name as soon as it’s printed in front of her. Another uses verbal word association more successfully.”

Naomi Simson

With a hand-me-down computer and $25,000 of personal investment, Naomi Simson started RedBalloon in the front room of her house in 2001 with the goal of selling experiences and memories rather than gifts. By 2011, RedBalloon had 46 employees and today, they’ve sold over 3 million experiences and cemented themselves as one of Australia’s biggest online business success stories.

Naomi has learned a lot in her time as the founder of RedBalloon and she shares her experiences and insights through public speaking engagements, her blogs, books and LinkedIn, where she has over 1.2 million followers.

Recognisable now as the ‘Red Shark’ on Shark Tank, Naomi is a keen investor and a big supporter of the start-up community. At BxPonential, Naomi took the audience through her journey of being a business owner – through unexpected surprises (both good and bad), she knows that the learning never stops.

Naomi also has found that her two biggest choices are the decisions that revolve around how she spends her time and what she does to invest in relationships. When it comes to relationships in her business, she knows that her staff want to “belong, to be healthy, to learn, to be noticed and, perhaps most of all, they want to know that they can contribute to the lives of others.”

Naomi also reminded those of us at BxPonential that we need to be willing to ask for help when we need it – everyone wants to offer help, in their own unique ways, so by asking for help we are empowering other to serve. She also reminded the audience not to take themselves too seriously: you need a strong wishbone (your plan), backbone (resilience) and a funny bone.

John McGrath

In a small office in Paddington, Sydney, John McGrath quietly launched McGrath Estate Agents, now one of the loudest voices in the real estate industry. Armed with a philosophy based upon integrity, transparency and delivering great results to every single client, the McGrath network grew until it became the force it is today. With 87 offices spanning the length of the Australian East Coast, the network has a strong market presence and it’s only growing as it breaks into the Victorian market.

At Bxponential, John shared his passion for real estate along with his experiences and insights into the world of business. For anyone worried about being too young to go into business, he encouraged them with, “if you’re good enough, you’re old enough.” He was adamant about the responsibility every individual has to take for themselves, saying “there is only one person who holds you back and prevents you from doing something and they’re in the room right now…you!”

John also offered a great exercise on self-assessment, asking the audience to rate themselves on a scale of 1-10 where 10 is world’s best in regards to planning, time management, health etc. “If you’re not rating yourself at an 8 or above, you need to make changes.”

In John’s opinion the best real estate is between our ears, and we all have to work on our “inner market” a concept he learnt from his own mentor in regards to overcoming the negative internal voices of self-doubt and becoming “a black belt of the mind.”

The post Behind The Scenes At October’s BxPonential 2016 appeared first on Bx | Business for Life.

This blog, meets one of our experts, Karen Dempsey from “The Real Biz Networking” – to not only understand their area of expertise but to understand what it is about their mindset that makes them ‘x-ponential’.

During our Business For Life 12 month program, it’s all about connecting, learning and growing – which is why I’m so passionate about aligning the right experts and delivering world-class education to help support our community. 

Throughout the year, participants connect with like-minded people in an x-ceptional learning and networking environment, enabling a community of support and collaboration. Our experts cover every element of business: HR, IT, Finance, Sales, Marketing, Communications, Mindset, Leadership and Productivity.

Networking: Karen Dempsey, The Real Biz Networking.

Karen & Grant Dempsey

If you’re a small business owner uncomfortable with the idea of networking, The Real Biz Networking Group offers a great way of learning and improving on your networking skills in a supportive, friendly environment. With meetings across Sydney and Canberra, director Karen Dempsey believes it is the relaxed, friendly culture that makes The Real Biz Networking the success that it is.

“Each member is encouraged to relax, connect and build quality, trusted business and social relationships without feeling pressured,” says Karen. Bx caught up with her to ask her a few Exponential questions:

What 4 things does a small business owner need to do to be x-ponential?

1. Think of your business like an organisation and build a network of people whose skills you can draw on e.g. marketing, accounts, finance etc.
2. Go with your gut – seek advice but make the decisions you believe are best for your product or service, It’s your time, money and energy you are investing, so listen to your intuition and back yourself.
3. Don’t be afraid to fail, many great ideas have risen out of the ashes of failures. Fail fast so you waste the least time and money!
4. Be accountable to someone e.g. a coach/board/mentor. Unless you are one of the 2% of the population who are highly driven, self-starting, burn the candle both ends people, then you need someone to check in on your progress to ensure you stay on target and achieve the goals you need to achieve.  Business is all about execution – having someone you are accountable to means you are more likely to be the person who makes it happen rather than the one who talks about making it happen.

What piece of advice you would offer to yourself in your first year of business, knowing what you do now?

It’s all about the money. Many people enter business thinking it will be easier than employment, that they can take time off whenever they want, they dream of the 4 Hour Work Week etc. but year one is really all about working your butt off to get cashflow happening. You need to hustle and hustle to get cash coming in otherwise you’ll be back on SEEK looking for work. Focus on the numbers and keep hustling until they work.

Who would you like to be sat on a 24 hr flight next to, and why?

Dame Judi Dench – at 80+ years of age, having had an extensive career as an actor I reckon she has probably seen and heard it all so she must have some fascinating stories and life lessons to tell. She has also risen to the top of an incredibly competitive, male-dominated industry, so she must know a thing or two about resilience and focus. If I could get her talking, I think the 24 hours would fly by.

Where would you like to be in your own business in 5 years time?

I have a real desire to work and travel domestically and internationally where I can include my kids, so I am working on some options to make that happen.

Karen can be reached via karen@therealbiz.com.au and, of course, you can benefit from her expertise if you choose to become a member of our 12 month Business for Life program. Learn more here.

The post Business Expert Spotlight: Karen Dempsey ‘The Real Biz Networking’ appeared first on Bx | Business for Life.

Mark Bouris – lessons learnt from the road of business

When Mark Bouris took to the stage at B-xponential last month, he shared how he got Kerry Packer to invest $25 million into Wizard Home Loans in 1999.

Mark, now chairman of Yellow Brick Road, sold the company in 2004 for $500 million. After the technical terms of the deal were agreed, Mark was told by James Packer that he had to go and see Kerry.

As Mark tells it, the meeting started with Packer looking at him across his desk in silence. He then took out a cigarette and smoked it, still looking at Mark without saying a word.

When they finally started talking, Packer put three questions to him which every business owner – large or small – ought to be able to answer.

1. Do you fully understand the purpose of your business?
2. Have you got enough fight to maintain your passion when things go wrong?
3. Are you prepared to go the distance?

Do you fully understand the purpose of your business?

Mark shared how taken aback he was. Hadn’t Kerry Packer read what Wizard Home Loans did, wasn’t he across the deal paperwork? Yet on the first point, Packer explained to Mark that he wasn’t just in the business of selling mortgages. He was in “the business of people’s hopes and dreams”.

“Fear is the thief of your imagination,” he told the Bx audience. “To know your purpose, to know your why, that takes away fear. It helps you learn how to market.”

Telling an audience of people from small businesses that passion is not enough is a blunt message. Your purpose, after all, is supposed to feed your passion. Many business owners and leaders in smaller businesses will rave about their passion for what they do, but Mark also highlighted the need for a bit of mongrel when it comes to business survival:

“Passion’s important. We’ve got to be excited about something. You’ve got to be at a minimum excited about it. But Kerry Packer said to me, “Son, passion’s not enough. I want to know – I know that all this stuff you’re presenting to me so passionately, which is going swimmingly at the moment, which is forecast for growth at this level, blah blah-blah – I know you’re presenting it passionately. But I want to know, because something’s going to go wrong, invariably something’s going to go wrong: do you have enough fight to maintain your passion?””

Mark Bouris reminded us all at Bx about having the fight inside of ourselves, to pick ourselves up when we get knocked down.

Being prepared to go the distance

You have passion, you know your purpose, and you have the fight inside to get back up. But Mark asked us, are you prepared to be tested? That’s different to putting up a fight. We all need somebody to test our hypothesis in business. “People in your office might be testing you – above you or below you or next to you. It doesn’t matter. Your personal partner might be testing you. You need to be tested. We don’t need to have someone give us the answers, we need to have someone give us the questions,” said Mark.

For Mark, his test came when Kerry Packer said: “Ok son, so what you’ve got to do, within 12 months, you must buy an influential interest – or all of – the wholesale business that funds Wizard Home Loans.”

Mark and Kerry Packer shook on it. And he had 12 months to do it. Talk about a test!

In the end it took a flight to Amsterdam, and a long wait in the reception area of this particular Dutch bank to meet the Managing Director. Mark had no appointment, just a commitment to meet the test set of him by Kerry Packer. Here’s how he went:

“I sat there for hours and hours, and about 4pm in the afternoon he came down the stairs, and he said: “Is your name Bouris?” I said yes. He said: “What do you want?”

“I’ve got 30 seconds to tell him what I want, and I was smart enough to drop Kerry Packer’s name in there. And he said: “Listen, I’m going to be in Australia in three months time doing my rounds. I’ll see my managing director. I want to go and meet Kerry Packer.”

I thought: My God, that’s the last thing I wanted.

But they met up, and the managing director of the business in Australia, of the wholesale business said, “You’ve got a deal. You can buy 49 per cent.”

There is more – far more – to the financial deal of the story that Mark shared from the stage at Bx. But the point Mark wanted to make sure we understood was this:

“What I had was the supreme tester. And it did one thing, apart from scaring the daylights out of me, it did one thing: it got the best out of me. And in order to be successful today, in business, it’s very good to have somebody, whether you call them a mentor or a business partner – somebody to get the best out of you. Because you won’t get the best out of yourself. You never will.”

Another gem that Mark Bouris shared, that resonated with me, is a great one when the thief fear is creeping in, or you feel like you are low on the energy to fight back, get up again, be tested again?

“It’s an honour to work. It is God given and a blessing so don’t do it begrudgingly. It all comes down to your attitude.”

Want to learn more about how to succeed in business, from experts like Mark Bouris? Bx can help you with strategies, resources and invaluable connections for your business and pave the way for your success. Call Bx on 1300 068 229 or find out about our Business for Life Program.

The post Mark Bouris – lessons learnt from the road of business appeared first on Bx | Business for Life.

During our Business For Life 12 month program, it’s all about connecting, learning and growing – which is why I’m so passionate about aligning the right experts and delivering world-class education to help support our community.

Throughout the year, participants connect with like-minded people in an x-ceptional networking environment, enabling a community of support  and collaboration. Our experts cover every element of business: HR, IT, Finance, Sales, Marketing, Communications, Mindset, Leadership and Productivity.

This blog, meet one of our experts – to not only understand their area of expertise but to understand what it is about their mindset that makes them ‘x-ponential’.

Experts- Systems: Scott Gellatly, Bollo Empire.

Scott Gellatly grew up in a family of small to medium-sized business founders and what he observed became the motivation to create his own business, Bollo Empire.

“I watched the struggle to break the growth ceiling and create successful, scalable businesses. As is true for many small business owners, they created jobs for themselves and it became frustrating. I watched it impact our family with the accompanying disappointment of never achieving dreams – which can be soul-destroying when you are pouring so much time and effort into a venture.”

This is the WHY that gets him up each day in Bollo Empire.  “I realised that the missing key to success was systemisation. Systems empower a team to deliver for you, so you are free to focus on the strategy and growth of your business. If you think a system is too hard to build, it’s worth remembering that well-designed systems set you free. You build them once, and then watch them repeat what they are designed to do, over and over. That’s our passion at Bollo Empire. Designing systems for small business owners so they are free to scale and grow easily.”

It is this passion that has seen Bollo Empire recognised as the leading Podio partner globally.

Podio is a platform that enables founders of small to medium enterprises to underpin their processes, tieing together CRM, Project Management, HR and Operations together in one place. The result is complete visibility over business data, enabling more informed decision making, operational efficiency and the ability to easily delegate processes to your team.

We asked Scott a couple of non-systems type questions, so you get to know the person behind the skills.

What 4 things does a small business owner need to do to be Exponential?

1. It’s vital to get “off the tools” and focus on strategic growth. You cannot see the wood through the trees. You cannot build a successful business if you are stuck facing customers and solving tactical issues every day.
2. Put systems in place – turn everything you do from sales to product/service delivery into a standardised repeatable process that can be delegated easily.
3. Use software automation to reduce time spent on menial tasks and create an efficient operation.
4. Create balance in your life. If business comes at the cost of life (whatever that means for you) then why are you doing it in the first place?

What piece of advice you would offer to yourself in your first year of business, knowing what you do now?

Think scalable from the beginning. Don’t invest in anything that won’t produce a scalable business at the end.

Who would you like to be sat on a 24 hr flight next to, and why?

Barack Obama. He is an inspiring leader who has faced what appeared to be insurmountable challenges – yet he overcame them. I’d be fascinated to sit next to him and discover how he did it.

Where would you like to be in your own business in 5 years time?

I would be practicing what I preach: so in a purely director’s role, focusing on strategy and direction of business. I would also spend my time studying and creating my next business!
Scott can be reached via https://bolloempire.com.au/book and, of course, you can benefit from his expertise as a member of our 12 month Business for Life program. Learn more here.

There’s loads of tools to get your website working harder and your marketing to get results. Bx coaching can help you find the right tools for your business and pave the way for your success. Call Bx on 1300 068 229 or find out about our Business for Life Program.

The post Business for Life: Meet the Experts- Scott Gellatly, Bollo Empire appeared first on Bx | Business for Life.

During our Business For Life 12 month program, it’s all about connecting, learning and growing – which is why I’m so passionate about aligning the right experts and delivering world-class education to help support our community.

Throughout the year, participants connect with like-minded people in an x-ceptional networking environment, enabling a community of support  and collaboration. Our experts cover every element of business: HR, IT, Finance, Sales, Marketing, Communications, Mindset, Leadership and Productivity.

This blog, meet one of our experts – to not only understand their area of expertise but to understand what it is about their mindset that makes them ‘x-ponential’.

Experts- HR: Kathryn MacMillan, Nine To Three Employment Solutions

Kathryn has more than eighteen years of experience in recruiting and managing staff. She is a specialist in the field of business administration, small business management and bookkeeping. With an in depth knowledge of many industries and their varied recruitment needs, she and her team can structure your HR so it works to help free you from compliance and employment contracts. Yet more than that, she is passionate about small business, growth and community and the force behind the St George and Sutherland Shire’s Biggest Business Morning Tea. We asked Kathryn a couple of non-HR type questions, so you get to know the person behind the skills.

1) From your area of expertise, what four things does a small business owner need to do to be Exponential?

Working in the HR space, I’ve seen so many personality types who succeed. There’s not one type of personality, but there are traits I see over and over. These are:

Be resilient – never give up, even when you feel hopeless. It’s that resilience that delivers on goals.

Think outside the box – it’s a well-worn phrase but there are plenty of people happy to stay in the box, so look outside of it.

Always believe in yourself – sometimes that can be hard (see my point about resilience) but, no matter how large a team you build, you are always going to have to remember to believe in yourself first.

Don’t listen to the dream takers – you are the sum of the seven people you hang around with the most. Choose dream supporters and champions around you, as well as the ones who give you the real and honest reality checks. But never settle for people who will say you can’t do it.

2) One piece of advice you would offer to yourself in your first year of business, knowing what you do now?

We can be so impatient! Especially now as technology speeds our world and flow of information up. I’d tell my one-year old business self: slow and steady wins the race.

3) Who would you like to be sat on a 24 hr flight next to, and why?

My husband because he is the best person in the world to travel with, or perhaps Shakespeare – how did he know so much about Italy – did he really write all the plays? Or possibly Leonardo da Vinci – why did you only paint 16 paintings and do you know I intend to see all 16 before I die? I’d love to know who was the model for David.

4) Where would you like to be in your own business in 5 years time?

I am blessed with a great team. So I’d like to be contracting back to the business once in a blue moon!
Kathryn can be reached via http://www.nine2three.com.au/ and, of course, you can benefit from her expertise as a member of our 12 month Business for Life program. Learn more here.

There’s loads of tools to get your website working harder and your marketing to get results. Bx coaching can help you find the right tools for your business and pave the way for your success. Call Bx on 1300 068 229 or find out about our Business for Life Program.

The post Business for Life: Meet the Experts- Kathryn Macmillan, Nine To Three appeared first on Bx | Business for Life.