I’d like to share another article with you that I wrote for our local newspaper, The Echo, a few weeks ago.

“I thought I’d tell a true story about how business coaching can help a real business owner change his business. The subject of the story is Jeff Banks, of Banks Consultancy, in Sydney. I’ve been coaching him for three and a half years now.

We met in 2007, thinking we’d talk about referring business to each other – Jeff is an accountant and has small business customers; my coaching customers are small business owners. As we sat and ordered coffee, Jeff said “I don’t want to talk about that, my wife says I need a business coach.” It went from there.

Jeff was frustrated in his business. He had a busy accountancy practice with $350,000 of turnover and more than 300 clients. But, profit was only $60,000 (Jeff’s personal income), the business had $300,000 in aged debt and almost $80,000 of the revenue was trade – that is money you can’t spend on important stuff like mortgages and petrol. Jeff was feeling the pressure, working very hard and wanted out.

The vision Jeff and Robyn (his wife) came up with for the business was “Sell for $750,000 in Dec ’09 – and escape up the coast.

We worked hard on the discipline of chasing debtors (and still do); we increased Jeff’s prices (to squeals and protest from Jeff but none from his customers); we started Jeff actively marketing (not something he felt comforahle with, I can tell you); we worked on Jeff – on stopping him from being such a pushover for some people, on his confidence in his (very strong) abilities in accounting (and gutter technology, as he he puts it), on his time management and prioritisation.

Within a year, profit was up to $100,000, Jeff was less stressed. We recieved and they rejected an offer to buy the practice (because they were enjoying it again). As of June 2011, revenue was $860,000, profit $300,000, Jeff is confident, engaged and a business leader in his local community.

Sometimes he likes to credit me with this but I think we know that 90% of it was down to him. The coach is just the catalyst.

Have fun in your business. And call Jon for a free coaching session on 02 6680 8036.”

Jon Dale
Small Fish Business Coaching Byron Bay
www.smallfish.com.au