It’s Not Rocket Science! Five Questions Over Coffee with Nik Gray (Ep.13)

Who is Nik?

Nik is an ACTIONCoach

Nik works with businesses so that they achieve these outcomes

Imagine a world where your team work and achieve results without stress to you

• You’re working ON the business moving it forward not IN
• Profits are increasing not just turnover
• You have a better Work: Life balance
• You work with down to earth, like-minded business owners, just like you, to get results, push you to where you want to be and have FUN!
• Be part of a community of business owners who are improving their businesses and their community

Key Takeaways

What you will learn in this podcast :

1. Keep a log of what you do and delegate the low skill tasks
2. Learn the task which takes 20% of your time and use it to get 80% results
3. Use systems and processes to free your time your business is worth 2.2 X if you have none and 6.8 X if you do.

Valuable Free Resource or Action

Nik was influenced by Brian Tracy’s book Eat That Frog

Transcript

Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Stuart Webb 0:39

Hi, and welcome back to the it’s not rocket science five questions over coffee I was just telling you yesterday, Nick grey, that I’ve just got a freshly filled cup of coffee in front of me, which I hope is going to sustain me through a really interesting conversation. Nick is an action coach and he works with people to help them in the team to achieve results without stress, where they’re working on their business and moving forward, not in and helping them to increase profit and and have some fun. So we’re gonna have a really interesting conversation today. Nick, welcome to the to the podcast. Thank you, sir. Thank you for having me. No problem at all. So, Nick, let’s just start off by sort of understanding what it is that the biggest challenge your ideal client actually faces today?

Nik Gray 1:31

Well, as you mentioned, it’s it’s typically business owners I work with helping them with their business. And I think the fundamental one is time, but there’s three really there’s time team and money. So it’s it when you talk about team, it could be anything, recruiting the right people, keeping the right people, keeping them motivated, getting them doing what they need to be doing. If it’s money, that could be a number of things, you know, could be getting the leads in could be converting those leads into customers, it could be cash flow, it could be making enough profit. And then time, which is I think the thing that ties it all together, because the other two, if you haven’t got time, you can’t make any of the other two anyways. So it’s you know, more often than not, I have seen business owners, especially recently, funnily enough, actually, people seem to be a lot busier recently. And that busy doesn’t necessarily mean productive. And quite often we’re busy, busy, busy doing lots of things, but and not got the time to spend on working on the businesses, which is what, which is what you mentioned a minute ago. And of course, working on the business will allow you to develop the business into what it needs to do to to achieve your goals and your dreams. And the other thing that suffers it is people’s people’s home life. Yeah, busy, busy busy, then often the family life, or they’re out of the work life out or their life outside of work suffers as well. Yeah, quite often, if you’ve found this that people say, well, that’s just what you’ve got to do. And I think after a while, they get used to it and say, you know, that’s just what it is. But you’re right.

Stuart Webb 3:17

You’re right, Nick, you’re absolutely right. Too often, I see business owners who who would i’d you know, I dread to use the phrase, but it is what it is appropriate. They are busy fools because they are busy. But they’re concentrating their efforts on all the wrong things, aren’t they, they’re, you know that the key things that I think you should put into your diary every week, which really make the difference are first of all, put your family because you’ve got the block out the family time, if you haven’t got family time, anything nobody ever suggested, on their deathbed. You know, I wish I hadn’t spent more time with my kids. They were horrible. That’s just not something that people say. And the other thing is that I think too often people are looking around and going, I must do this, I must do this. And then you ask them well, is that generating any money? And the answer the question Well, no. And that so the key question is to why are you doing it, then if it’s not generating any money? It’s sort of like, I don’t know, I thought it was a good thing to do. And there’s so many good things to do that don’t do anything for your business. You’re absolutely right. Yeah. Well, I

Nik Gray 4:16

think that I think, before we got to say here at this stage is that it’s, it’s not anyone’s fault. Because all all business owners pretty much are great at what they do. Yeah. Yeah. most business owners become business owners because they, they’re great at doing something whether it’s being an electrician, or a hairdresser, or whatever it is, but no one teaches us how to be good in business organisations, person doesn’t teach us that. So things like time management, sales and marketing, finance and admin. We’re not just not taught. So that’s where people like you and I come in to help people. Yeah,

Stuart Webb 4:51

absolutely. Great. So So what’s the common mistake that you find that people have made when they’re trying to solve those, you know, how do I manage my time To my money.

Nik Gray 5:02

Well, if we stick with time to keep it simple, I think one of the things that you hear people often saying is that I’m going to hire some more people. And in everything will be alright then. So that’s I can’t speak right now, but I’m gonna hire someone and I can speak to you. And that’s, that’s definitely a good a good strategy hiring people are going to be a people your greatest asset to move your business forward. The thing is, if we’re already if we’re busy, and we’re not efficient and productive right now, the danger is when we hire somebody, then we’re going to find ourselves abdicate into them. And that person is not going to get the adequate training, and not be delegated to them properly. And we could end up losing that person, and we could be even in a bigger mess. So we certainly need to make sure we got the fundamentals right with ourselves before we go and hire somebody else. And that could be some, you know, things as simple as, you know, as you just mentioned, your diary, you know, having that, that ideal week, what are the key things in your diary? You know, family time and exercise? looking after yourself is one thing working on the businesses others was key. Some people call them your rocks, you know, the rocks, that should be their first, or that the 20% of your time? Really? That’s when you get the biggest, biggest output?

Stuart Webb 6:29

Yeah, absolutely. Right. Absolutely. Right. So was that one valuable free action or free resource that you’re sort of, you know, helping your clients with at the moment that’s going to really deliver value to the to the audience we’ve got today?

Nik Gray 6:41

Well, one thing I’ve got on my website that I have a number of downloads on the website just giveaways where there’s a an E book on work fewer hours, I also do free webinars. I’ve got one self noon, actually just on mastering your time. It’s an interesting one, isn’t it? Master your time? We both know that that’s something you can’t do mastery assignment. It’s, it’s really more about mastering. Yes, yeah. Understanding the key skills to delegation. And above all, self management.

Stuart Webb 7:16

Yeah, absolutely. Right there. I can remember many years ago, the mentor of mine saying to me, stop talking about mastering or time management time will manage itself. But you’ve got the managers your attention between the times that you have available and you’re absolutely right, it’s around mastery of yourself. It’s about mastery of that of those those skills of delegation, etc, which, which enable you to make the use of the time that you’ve got absolutely bang on.

Nik Gray 7:43

Definitely one of the thing we can do, what I do with my clients initially, when we’re talking about time is just getting them to analyse what it is that they do. And it’s just a time log for a week or two is, is it quite an enlightening thing realise where your time is going. But then also looking at all the tasks you do. And as you mentioned, what do I like doing? And what is out what should I be doing? In other words, is it a skill level that I should be doing? Or is it a low skill that somebody else should be doing?

Stuart Webb 8:15

Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting when you say that, actually, and I think this is an exercise that 14 business owners do. But if you were to if you were to do that log yourself, and actually sort of assign a cost to it. You know, I know one business owner I worked with who said, we did that sort of exercise. And when we sort of then divided that by sort of the number of hours where he was doing something which was doing income generating, and I said, Well, if you were doing that all the time, how would that make your week look? And he went, well, I would be earning over 1000 pounds a day. So I said, Well, I have to ask the question, why are you doing your bookkeeping in that hour, then, when a bookkeeper will cost you a lot less than one hour of your time? And his answer was, I had no idea how to start going about delegating work to a bookkeeper. And of course, you sort of look at him and go, so it’s really not the sort of time element that it’s got it, oh, I’ve got a step of skill level or whatever that I need to get it to do. And then it was just a case of Well, okay, this is how you do that. And it was so easy for him after that to just turn around and go, I’ve now lost that particular thing. I just didn’t know how to do it.

Nik Gray 9:22

Yeah, that’s definitely right. Stuart, this is why I mentioned that your delegation, virtual assistants are great between where you are now and where you, you know, when you get an employee, but the problem with virtual assistants that people see is like you just said they don’t know what to give to, to somebody. I think it’s best just to get started with somebody like that and with one thing, and then it will just flow on your you’ll realise that they can do but

Stuart Webb 9:51

yeah. brilliant, brilliant. So So what’s that that comes out the the book that’s really sort of be most impactful in your experience.

Nik Gray 10:02

For that, it’s gonna be Brian Tracy’s Eat That Frog. Just a nice simple book with 21 time management, that’s fine management thing against management techniques. And the the eight, the frog title actually comes from Mark Twain who once wrote that, if you were to start the day off, by eating a live frog, you be safe in the knowledge that that’s gonna be the worst thing you do all day.

Back to that the 8020 rule I just mentioned about, you know, the rock or that 20% task, if you know what the task is that does that 20% of your time, but it’s 80% of the results. That’s probably the rock or the frog that you need to eat in the morning. That’s the task that will get the biggest results. But it’s often it’s this task that you’re putting off is that making those phone calls or having that conversation, the thing that you really don’t want to do, but you know, if you did do it and have the biggest impact. The other thing is that once you do that, it’s plain sailing the rest of the day.

Stuart Webb 11:10

Absolutely right. I love I’ve not heard that quote before, for about two and I have written it down, I will find a way of working that into an email at some stage today, just because I’ve now learned it, and I really want to use it again. But I mean, going back to that point it once again, another mentor of mine many years ago, turned around to me and said, If you make a list of the top three things that you have to get done that day, and they’re all done by 11 o’clock in the morning, the rest of the day is yours, and you sit there and you think, Wow, a lovely freeing thought that you haven’t put them off until the end, and they’re there all day waiting for you. You’ve got them out the way and then you go, I feel free for the rest of the day, I can now be the sort of, you know, the creative or whatever you need to be in order to sort of Enjoy the rest of your day.

Nik Gray 11:51

That’s it. And that you I think you’ve uncovered something that we overlook a bit. And that’s how much stuff’s going on in our head. And if you’ve got if you if you get out the way like you said it clears it out of your mind, and you break your brains 5% of your body, it takes up 20% of the energy. So if you get out from time to time, you’re gonna feel a lot better as well. Is that a lot better?

Stuart Webb 12:14

What a man it What a great weight off, you’re buying. Not only that, but it frees up your energy as well, doesn’t it? What a fantastic one. So, Nick, let’s let’s just sort of, you know, turn to the to the last question, which is the one that I always say, is the sort of my get out of jail free card? What’s the question I should have asked you, which I just haven’t actually managed to sort of ask you yet, which will give great value to our audience?

Nik Gray 12:36

Well, I guess on that same, that same line that we’ve been talking about time, I suppose How does a business owner become truly free? Because that’s what most why most business owners start their own businesses because they want to be free. And I would say it’s, it’s IT systems, IT systems and processes is, you know, something that you’re very well got a great deal of knowledge about as well, what were your clients with it? If we think about the business, there’s two numbers I think I like to throw about there’s 2.2 and 6.8. And just roughly 2.2 is what your business is worth 2.2 times your annual profit if your your business doesn’t work without you. In other words, if you have to be there every every day, 6.8 is the multiple if you can get the business to work without you. And the key to that is getting those those systems and processes, I think the first thing you can start if you want to start on that route, is to think about the operations manual that you’d have, that your general manager would have to run your business if you weren’t there. And start with the front page, which is just that table of contents, you have to write out what the process is just that table of contents. Start by writing that out with all the things on the even if it’s open up in the morning, open the mail, little things like that everything to the big jobs, how do we get a customer? And once you’ve got that table of contents, then you can start the process of gradually putting those processes together and you can see them that’s once you’ve done that you’re pretty much on the waiter. That freedom. Yeah,

Stuart Webb 14:17

yeah. Do you know the trick to that net? The absolute truth? Absolutely right. Start with table of contents. And then every time you do something, you just make a short note of what have I just done? It does two things, doesn’t it? One, it builds that manual. I mean, even if you’ve just got a piece of paper next to you but but you know, I obviously try and explain to people in the best thing to do is to stick it somewhere on a on a computer so that other people can access it. But not only that, as you sit and look through it, you can ask yourself the question. Why did I do it that way? Because there are always ways you can go well, if I didn’t do that, I did it slightly better, slightly quicker. I’d save a bit of time. And I’d also ask myself occasionally, do I even need to do it because then there are things that I know we all do that we take Right time over, and we just shouldn’t be doing them at all. We should actually sort of Generally, we didn’t do anything didn’t didn’t move the business forward. Let’s stop doing that one, then.

Nik Gray 15:09

Yeah, you’re you’re absolutely right. And I think if we, as you were saying, When we think of it also, when we’re telling people something, if you’re if you tell somebody one of your staff how to do something, if you don’t write it down, then you’re going to be saying that again.

Stuart Webb 15:23

Yeah, brilliant. absolutely loved it. Look, it’s been a really brilliant conversation. Thanks very much for spending some valuable time with us today. But listen, guys, if you want to hear more of these sorts of conversations, if you want to sort of listen to what we’re doing, get on to, to, to this, this link, which is HTTPS, colon forward slash forward slash tcaa dot FYI, forward slash subscribe that subscribe is dead easy to spell, I won’t even bother to try and explain it. So HTTPS, colon forward slash forward slash TTA dot FYI, forward slash, subscribe, hear more of this sort of stuff from people like NEC where we get to talk about some really interesting stuff like this. Nick, I hope the downloads go Well, I hope the webinar this afternoon goes brilliantly, really looking forward are going to sort of get on your website now and sort of download some of that time management stuff. I’m sure it’s gonna be a great read. So really great to have spoken to you this morning. I sincerely hope that you get to spread more this message with some of the people we’ll talk with today. Thanks for having me, Stuart. Good to speak to you. Thanks next to you again soon. Cheers. Bye.