G'day everyone out there in podcast land. Have you ever wondered why you work too much and you wanna change what's going on? Maybe have a few more hours to yourself. Have you ever thought about writing yourself out of a job and into an investment? We have got Kerry McGilvray here today who's gonna be talking to us about exactly that. So, Kerri, I guess to get started, how common is this problem? Extremely common. So quite often, you know, when businesses
start, there's the owner does everything. They've got all the hats. And as they get a little bit bigger, they hire doers so so that they can get some of that, but they find that they the management of that is extremely time consuming. And then they get stuck in the day to day and they can't scale. So it's so very common and especially up to certain, income levels. So up to probably half a mil to a mil. Quite often they're really stuck in that day to day, and it holds them back from just growing
their business. I could say that I completely agree with having worn all the hats and, tried to take some of the hats off. And I think, the big issue is it can come down to mindset, but also the the exponential growth can lead to exponential loss if it's not managed properly. And and that's a huge risk and it's scary. It's it it it lives as a as a little gremlin on a lot of people's minds. What have you seen over the time that you've worked with businesses, their type of
successes, and, what you've given back to them? So over the past few years that we've worked with other businesses, we've found quite often the owners end up stuck in frustration. Now frustration's the worst feeling that you wanna be stuck in because you just you can't see out. So it really stops that even thought of growth at all because you just you just basically holding the business together. And it's like you're sticking it together with sticky tape. Right? So
there's the processes aren't great. They're not going to get you to the next level because they got you to where they are but you need to change and make them more efficient to get you to the next level. They also find that they're not looking at their finances correctly. So some of them work out that they oh, I've made some money this month because I've got enough there to pay people.
That's that's about as detailed as some of them go. Some of them have subscriptions from ten years ago that they didn't realize they had. Still, all that stuff's going on in the background, and they just they have no space, no mental space, and no physical space to even consider making the business more efficient. And the thought of bringing someone in is scary as hell, right? Who do you trust with your baby? Like, if you were gonna hand your kid off to someone else, who would you
trust to do that? Right? You'd be really selective. So it does take a little while for owners to be comfortable to trust us enough to take on what we do. But we come in and we just we take everything off the owner as much as we can. So anything that they need to do specifically they keep. So if they're a consultant for example and you know they're a project management specialist that's something that they do. They work with the clients, they stick with that.
They do, I guess. They're doing what they're doing. Their passion. Yes. That's right. You know, the thing that they got into business for in the first place that they really wanted to do, but then, you know, there's all this other stuff that you have to do to keep the business going, and it's usually not their forte. How much does, perfection and letting go you're talking about letting go a bit
there. And, I was told years ago something I didn't really agree with a whole bunch, but it did make sense, which is if you can get 20% the eighty twenty if you can get 80% of the work done by everyone else, it's 80% of the way there. You're only doing the 20% difference, or you don't and you just lower everyone else's expectations on what service and support is meant to be. But how do you find people that have a level high level of perfection deal with change in in their business
when it is their baby? They need a lot of, how do I say Cuddling. It's probably the way to put it. You know, they need to feel like they can trust you, and sometimes they won't give you everything straight away. So you take what they're willing to let go of, which is usually the stuff that they really hate doing and really don't like, and you take that straight away. And then as they see that you're doing really well with that, they feel more comfortable to let more stuff go.
And we don't promote business coaching. Right? But it's it comes with the gig. It just does. Because, you know, you have those conversations with the owner. You talk them through letting that stuff go, and they just start to feel more comfortable. Yeah. And I think it it, like you said with coaches, it comes to, like, some people have a $1,000,000 mindset, some people have a $10,000,000 mindset, some people, are constrained by their own belief systems or upbringings.
And, it's it's good to you need to have a courage to guide you through those to be able to grow inside so that you can have a different mindset to be able to be the business person you need to be. And if you're spinning too many plates right now, how are you ever gonna make more money? And I guess that comes back to what you said at the start. How
do you write yourself out of a job and into an investment? If you are able to earn the same amount of money working for someone else forty hours a week plus maybe if you're on a salary, bit of extra. If you're if you're able to do that, why would you want to have all the risks, headaches, insurances, and other coverages that you need to have running your own business? And let's be honest, particularly in a start up
phase, you're not getting four weeks holiday pay and two weeks sick leave. You're you're running eighty hours a week and sometimes running backwards. Yes. Yeah. What are your thoughts around that, I guess? Why people do it? You mean? Yeah. Why would why do people start out instead of if you bought an investment property, you'd never think twice. Is it gonna turn over money?
Is it going to increase in in value in in value over time? If the answer is a yes, then it's probably a good investment some of the time. Definitely take a few more numbers and you look out than that. But some people don't look at business as an investment or a way that they're going to build a vehicle to success or freedom. They look at it a way that they're really good at what they wanna do and they just don't like being boss. And that's pretty much what puts most of them where they
are. Yeah. Right. Know that it's one of the main reasons that I do what I do. I've been so misunderstood in the corporate world. I don't wanna work for another boss again. I believe in doing business differently to what they do in corporate, so that's why I've gone out and done it myself. And the investment property is a perfect example. Right? Because when you buy an investment property, how many people actually consider managing the investment themselves? No.
They just get a real estate straight away. Yep. Which is exactly what we are. Right? We're the equivalent of the real estate manager who runs it for you. And the idea yes. At the beginning, you do all the things, and that's how you invest. You invest in time because you don't have the money to invest otherwise. But as you grow and you start to get that little profit pool, that's when you start to consider
making that bigger investment in the management of the business. You bring someone in who's an expert in that side of things so that you can grow and scale and get it to a point where it is an investment that you can just sit there and just collect your share of the profit. And it's really important. So many people don't look at it that way.
It's a very big mindset shift to get them to look at it that way and the country is full of people that are, you know, in their retirement age that are going to be closing down businesses and it's because they don't have management. That is a perfect segue into my next question. So I wanted to talk about old school businesses versus evergreen businesses, businesses baby boomers are selling,
and more importantly, the the mindset shifts. When Carrie and I started talking, she introduced me to a model that I hadn't heard of in Australia at this stage or isn't that big in Australia, which is great, because you've got a great platform to grow off of, which is fractal management. So if you've got only a couple of employees, but you still need to have them managed, this is not out of the realms of ridiculous. Is that
fair to say? Absolutely. So, you know, most smaller business or small to medium businesses really think that they can't have access to that kind of expertise because they feel that they need to have someone full time. They they have this idea that you have to put someone on full time. Where in the last few years, it's it's kind of starting to take off the whole fractional management. Like, there's fractional CFOs, CMOs.
There's all different kinds of fractional managements, and we're fractional operations managers. So we can come in just for ten hours. If that's all you need, then that's all we do and it doesn't matter to us. Right? So if you tried to recruit someone for ten hours a week, you wouldn't get very many people because most people can't live off it. Right? But for us, it's it's perfect because we do that for
multiple clients. And any learnings that we get across the people that we work with, if we can see that it's a value to others, then we'll implement it. We're a collective community that's helping everyone grow together, which is awesome. Yep. And do you find that the, I guess, baby boomer businesses that might be getting sold at the moment, is it a good opportunity to purchase those and then put in a middle management level that's
being managed in a appropriately? Or do you think if you're about to sell your business, it's more palatable to your pocket if you put this in beforehand? I guess it's a double edged question. It just depends on what you wanna do. Right? So, you know, if you wanna sell the business, you could sell it to someone who wants to collect the cash, who's already got the mindset of it's an investment, and they can bring in someone like us to run it and they they really
do just collect their cream. Right? Mhmm. Or you can get the, you know, the plumber that's 65 years old and doesn't wanna dig trenches anymore. But he doesn't really want to close his business down because if he doesn't sell it he's got to close it. Right? They're the only two options. So you can get someone like him and if he goes okay but can you manage it and he can just sit back and that's his retirement plan. He just collects the cash. Like an investment. Why would you sell it if it's
profitable? That's right. Yeah. No. That that that makes a lot of sense. It can't just be about just extra people. There's gonna be other processes and IT systems that that you need to have in place to keep people in check. What what what do you normally see as some of the top five things that businesses should look to put in place to at least get a get their the reins pull the reins in, and know that they have a bit more visibility? So processes are crucial.
Right? Because if you want to scale, you need something that's repeatable and it needs to be at the same standard so your processes are they're like the bible. Right? They need to be efficient. They need to be
updated often. The other thing that you also need to be aware of is review your systems like the IT systems that you're using because you know you pick a system at the beginning which is great but you know you've grown so much since then it may not have the capability to do what you need now so sometimes you need to invest and upgrade that system. So that's another thing that's really, really important and integrations between systems. So to get efficiency you want the integrated systems.
You want Xero to talk to Dext or whatever it may be that you're using to process your invoices and your receipts. You want your CRM to talk to your other systems as well if they're not in the same one. So sometimes you can actually get one that'll do it all or 90% of it because most most that do all the marketing side of things don't do accounting. So you do need some that separate systems, but I I try and keep it get it down to at least three or four. It's very manageable. It can easily blow
out and that's Very easily. We we see a lot of trades, that industries that have to quote to, like, insurance companies and things like that, and they have to have four or five different portals that all kind of do the same things or manufacturing places that have, four or five different wholesalers and have to then bring in four or five different feeds. And we go into to help them integrate and make those work better, but sometimes the systems are so archaic. What
what do you do with with systems you're forced to use? Is it just suck it up, Princess? Or move move away? Sometimes it's suck it up, Princess, especially if it's a portal that, you know, suppliers have that you have to use. There's not really much else you can do if that's their preferred way of getting product out. But the other time is always just just review and keep an eye on it. Right? Because they've got new systems coming out all the time. New IT softwares coming out all the
time. They always got updates coming out. So when the emails come through and tell you what the update is, you should probably read it, is a good start, or your business manager or ops manager should read it so that you know because they'll give you the insiders to, you know, oh, we're getting AI in Google now. Great. Excellent. So, you know, that's something that we now don't need ChatGPT for or we don't need Copilot. Yeah. So you can kind of reduce your systems as others upgrade as well.
One of the things I've actually found, I did a YouTube video on it a number of years ago now, was, if you go to your industry expos, you're gonna see the stuff that's industry leading in your industry. But if you go to another different just sidestepped industry, you'll see how they're doing things completely different in in their industries and, and that can be game changing for your industry to sort of sidestepping and looking through the through the eyes of a
of a place that you would never have otherwise gone to to an expo. And I found that's been quite valuable, just just stepping outside what you'd normally do like, what you'd normally be doing like you were mentioning earlier. Sometimes you're so stuck in your in your zone with what you're doing, you can't see the forest for the trees. That's right. Yeah. And you're
absolutely right. Sometimes you can look at so business coaches and marketing agencies, for example, sometimes they will run on very similar systems, but maybe the what the business coaches are using is actually better for a marketing agency or vice versa. But you don't think to look at what they're
using because they're not in your industry. Right? Correct. Yeah. So it's it's very valuable to sometimes take that step back and see what the others that are in a similar space that are doing the same kind of tasks that you do also use because it might have more functionality. %. Like, if anyone that's listening has gone to, an open home and they've just jotted down your mobile number, isn't it weird when you drive past the next open home somewhere else to send you an SMS?
What's up with that? They're able to to track and use that data and the geolocation of the information to be able to then present you more opportunities to be able to be in front of other listings. That is that's cool tech. Is, similar
sorts of things is being done in retail stores around the place. Nike did a big thing where they they knew exactly how many people were in the stadium that were wearing their clothing and they adjusted their marketing accordingly to make sure that, it was it was appropriate to whoever the the masses were. And I thought that's really, really clever. And this is like It's so insane. Right? Instant on demand marketing for 60,000 people or more. And and and they know everything,
and you go, shit. How can I use that in my industry? How can I change that? If you're if you're a mechanic or you're selling pies, how could you change around how you don't have to do inventory anymore? This would be a very similar process. If they can take an inventory of 60,000 people, you could probably do a few pies very quickly in a day. So but changing industries, if you went to the, using the pie and the other the the bakery analogy, if you went to the bakery expert, they're
probably not gonna be talking about that. No. They wouldn't even look at it. No. No. That's right. They wouldn't even be in their purview. But the other thing that's really great at the moment is all the AI that's coming out. So I'm not an expert in AI. That's not my field of expertise. But there's AI agents that you could get set up that are specific to your business. They can link into all your systems and your processes so that they know what to say and respond
to customer service inquiries. You can automate a lot of your tasks using it as well using those kind of AI agents, and they're all built specific for your business. So instead of doing all the manual stuff, you can really make things super efficient by introducing something like that. It's and it's the it's the one percents that make the difference in the business and people, I guess, from my it took me a while to see the mindset of don't look to get big lavish house, big
nice car, and all these things. Just, how do you get to that? You just look at the 1% changes you can make in your business to make it your your home and home, I guess. Yeah. And that's the other thing that quite a lot of business owners don't look at. So they don't plan that out. So what we try to do when when we do take some of that work off off them and they get those hours back, you need to give them something to do. Right? If they don't
know what to do, you need to give them something to do. And quite often, our particular role manages up and down. Right? We do have to manage both ways and but it's good in the sense that, you know, the owner will go, okay. What do I have to focus on? And you just go, I need these three things delivered this week. And you go, yep. And off they go. Right? That's all they need to worry
about. They don't need to worry about anything else because any other projects that are running within the company, we make sure we take care of that and make sure everything hits its its points. But, yeah, you do need to get them to plan and get them involved in that plan. Find out what their dream and their vision is so that we can then bring everyone on the ride with them
and we're all going in the same direction. I like it. And I think anyone that wants to have a superhero in their business, the admin superheroes and Kerry can definitely help you out. We'll put a link to to her website so that you can check out how she can do the voodoo that she does in your business so you don't have to keep doing the stuff you don't wanna do. That's it. Is there any books for our listeners that you would say have, changed the way and
direction that you have looked at life or business? Oh, there's so many. I love Simon Sinek's, Leaders Eat Last. Yeah. One of my favorites, Start With Why. I'm a big fan of him. A current book that I've just finished reading is Dan Martel's Buy Back Your Time, which is very fitting for what we do and and what a lot of our owners are trying to do. And it's got some amazing things in it as well. Sweet. Well, I'm I'm always I've, I've read Eat is Lit Last, start with why,
Buy Back Your Time is the next one on my list. Is it is it one of those books that you can definitely listen to as an audiobook or is it quite graphical with tables and It does have a few graphs and and tables and things in it, but I think it'd be okay with an audiobook. Yeah. Okay. Because sometimes I've I've I've fallen into the trap, and I'm sure other people have as well. I'm downloading a scientific journal, and it with figure eight reference this, and I'm like, this is not really
working. Yeah. It does it does have a few of those in it. So it might be to be honest, I would buy the book because you're gonna write and earmark and do all those kind of things. Perfect. So Being in front of screens all the time, I'm more more interested in touching paper anyway and instead of stepping away whenever I can. So that sounds like a good choice. Yeah. It's not a very long book. I did it in a weekend, so it's it's a quick read. And it's
easy to read. It's good. It's engaging, all those kinds of things. Well, the podcast is called Business Build Freedom, and I'd love to know what is business freedom to you? So business freedom to me is actually getting to a point where my main focus is personal development for both myself and my team. That's that's what it is for me. So getting to a stage where I no longer do any client work, my whole focus is building my team and growing the team in every aspect. And that's important both
mentally, physically, everything. So whatever their goals are, I would sit down with them, find out what they are, see how we can fit them into the goals of the business so that we can all improve. That's beautiful. Well, Kerry, I've loved having you on the show. And, anyone out there in podcast land, if you have any feedback, I'd, also, love to have you part of our Facebook group and that LinkedIn group to better, throw through any questions to Kerry. And,
leave us some feedback. Give us some love. Head over to iTunes and everyone out there in Podcast Land, stay good. Thank you very much, Keri. Thanks for having me.