I tried to start February with a new fresh mindset putting the stress of January behind us but it wasn’t as easy as that as the project for Fit Education was still ongoing as they required many more changes so once again this put a lot of stress back on our staff. In saying this though we did it to ourselves as we would normally get a project closed off before making lots of changes like this and in this case we didn’t stick to our normal process, so really we put the stress on ourselves.
Because of this, it has actually made us a stronger team because we have needed to really define our roles, who should be doing what and how we should be dealing with our clients. As mentioned last month we systemised Unlimited IT Support but not Innovation Consulting so this actually works out well to focus on systemising IC. Maybe this is not the best way to do it (kind of backward) but hey we are getting shit done.
Back into the swing of things again, clients are now wanting to meet and start to implement changes in their business, which is great! We only have 2 kinds of customers; Clients who're businesses are going through growth or businesses going through a decline. This month we have taken on projects for both types. A building company who's got to 35 staff and knows they are unable to scale any further without putting systems in place and an engineering firm who has downsized due to the mining downturn from 90 staff down to 25. (Link to all our case studies once we complete projects). This month also saw me say no to our first 2 clients, wow it felt great! Typically in the past, I have always said yes and when we take clients on that don't fit our mold, it doesn't work out too well and we end up losing both time and money.
A massive congratulations to Algie for winning Employee of the year for 2016! Al is a great team player and it just goes to show when his other teammates vote for him. Al has been a dedicated employee since October 2014, his teammates love him, he goes above and beyond to help clients and they love him! Well done mate you’re a massive part of our family #teamCROFTi
We continued on with Pilates and Yoga plus we introduced a CROFTi Bootcamp session which is run by Stuart our personal trainer every Wednesday. As fitness is a massive part of my life I kinda force it onto everyone else. We hired our first Intern this month, Paul, and in my interview with him I asked him direct about joining our team and fitting into our fitness culture, his eyes lit up and were super excited so I knew straight away, hired! I don't know what it is exactly but I know that if you have fitness in your life your work habits become so much better and your mind is so much clearer. Don't get me wrong we still eat junk food and drink alcohol but it's just the endorphins that are released during exercise that I seem to love so much. Well, I think I'm on the right track at least as the guys seem to be very appreciated. I'll keep you posted on how this goes, it's only been a few weeks.
I headed to an event put on by a vendor where the topic was Sales and Growth and it was headed up by a sales director who grew the business he worked for from 120 staff to 900 staff in 10 years over in South Africa, SPL. Through that process, he became the Managing Director but he kept his sales skills true with all the staff he hired. This talk turned into a conversation for 3 hours (as it was a small room of 20 of us) touching on all things sales and it really brought a lot of topics home for me. This was just what I needed to get my motivation back on track again and as you're probably aware, two projects a month isn't quite enough to keep the machine going.
I took Amy out to breakfast (we used to do this regularly, every Saturday, in fact, we used to go for our morning walk and breakfast to chat about all things business but we haven't done this in a long time) and I know we needed to change some things in the business to bring things back on track so this was the perfect time to have the conversation with Amy about my ideas and everything I learned from the event. I try to only talk with Amy about Entrepreneurship and Business when it really matters. I learned years ago when to talk and when not to talk so typically I have most of my business conversations in an online forum, Dans Mastermind. So I ran through the new plans to restructure the departments so I could focus back on sales and before I even got a chance to go over anything, Amy put her hand up to take on the well-needed role of the business, General Manager / Chief Operations Officer. For the next hour, she ran the discussion and she drew up exactly her thoughts (on OneNote, on my Surface) what it all means and how the new structure would look and feel. It's like she had already been thinking this for a while and I just needed to give her this opportunity to talk, well she had already read my mind and it was action stations. The staff now report to her and not me.
Amy calls a meeting with the team on Monday and lays down the new setup and structure and wow she blew me away! She was great! Explained everything to a tee and her vision and direction for the company was all hers! Very inspiring! It just goes to show when you give someone a focus and if they are up for a challenge they will excel!
My focus is now back in sales 100% so I can grow both sides of the business. I'm also getting good feedback on my weekly videos so a positive start. The turnover for February is $68k so back on track but still behind. My aim for March is $75k.