Make More Money And In Less Time? Spoiler Alert: Can't Be Done....

Many business owners are always looking for short cuts, to more money and reduced hours. In my latest video filmed at Network Groups June 2019 meeting, I openly talk about how I found trust with my employees through my vulnerability, resulting in a happier workforce, more profitability but above all a happier boss.

Video Transcript

I asked a room full of MSP owners if they were happy with their lives, their business and their finances. Only three people put their hands up. Either they were embarrassed, or they weren’t as happy as they pretend to others. And that’s horrendous, because everybody should put their hand up.

I went to the Oxford dictionary to find the definition of happiness. It said: ‘happiness is a feeling that comes out of you when you know life is good, and you can't help but smile.’ Happiness is a sense of wellbeing, joy, or contentment. When people are successful, or safe, or lucky, they feel happiness’.

Five years ago, I was really unhappy. I was working 70 hours a week and I had staff issues. Everybody moans about staff, but I was just about to go on holiday and somebody resigned.

I couldn't switch off, and it wasn’t in a good way. Business owners tend not to switch off anyway, but I felt like I was going backwards. My business is 31 years old this year, so five years ago I’d been going 26 years.

You wouldn’t have thought that after 26 years I thought I was going backwards, and it wasn’t because I wasn’t financially secure or running an unsuccessful business, because we were very profitable. But personally, I felt like I was going backwards.

I was always on the phone, 24/7. Customers would phone me for support, because they knew if they phoned me I probably then go mad at the IT guys that were on call or out of hours. I'd be able to get results the customers couldn’t because they didn't think they could go directly to the IT guys.

Even though I haven’t done tech for years, the owners of the businesses that I brought on thought they had to phone me. I used to see the numbers of the customers come up, and I'd get that sinking feeling you get when you see the name of that customer who always finds you on a Friday night or Sunday afternoon. I also had customer issues and felt like we were going backwards.

Holidays were a nightmare. My phone used to be next to me on the sunbed. I used to hate holidays, and if at all possible, I didn't really want to take holidays, because it normally ended up more hassle. I’d end up phoning the office to work out what the bloody hell they were doing.

I felt like I was blagging it. I know a few people have said they felt the same. People think if you’ve been running a business for as long as I had that I must be really successful.

I’m uneducated. I don’t have a shitload of exam results, I didn't go to university and ended up running the business by default. Who am employ people that are graduates? Something didn’t sit comfortably with me.

I used to think, ‘Why wouldn't somebody else just do something other than me? Why is it me that's got to go and get all the big clients or deal with the problems? Why is it me when there's some money to be chased, and the finance guy who’s employed to do finances couldn’t get it in. I make one phone call and they say they’ll send the cheque tomorrow.

It was very frustrating, and I’d had enough. I felt suffocated. Suffocated enough that, one morning five years ago, I was driving on the motorway on the way to work, sitting in a nice car. I'm not driving around in a heap of junk; I live in a nice house and my kids have all done really well.

There I am sitting in the car on my way to work, which is a half hour journey. I'm 10 minutes in and I start to cry. I was 46 and crying on the way to work. What the hell? What did I have to cry about?

Luckily, my dad's a counsellor, so I phoned him up and said, ‘Dad, I’m crying on the way to work. What do I do?’ And he said, ‘Turn your car around, get your wife to phone the doctor and get yourself booked in.’ I’ve just had the son of a friend of mine, who works for IBM, jump out of a third-floor window. You need to get yourself home and go and see the doctor.’

‘What?!’ So, I drove home and booked an appointment. Luckily, I live in a small village and they got an appointment for me about half an hour later. I walked into the doctor’s, sat down with him and he asked me 20 questions.

After I completed the test, the doctor asked me if I had a shotgun at home. It was a serious question. I said I had a 2.2 shotgun, not a rifle, then I asked him why he wanted to know. And his answer was, ‘Because you're clinically depressed, and three people in the village have taken their lives in the last two years.’

I walked into the doctor’s thinking he was going to give me some vitamin C, and he told me that I was clinically depressed. He seriously thinks that thinks I'm that bad, potentially I could take my own life.

That was a massive shock, and I think it would be to anybody if you set out to go to work for a normal day and you end with the doctor asking if you’ve got a shotgun at home because he thinks you’re going to top yourself. Shit.

This is something I need to start taking seriously. I was prescribed some tablets and went home. I pretty much stayed in bed for six months. I'd go to work for a few hours and then come home. But every time I’d go to work, there was a sigh of relief when I walked out of that door. It was just like the biggest weight off my shoulders. It was it was unbelievable.

I put managers in place at work so I didn't have to be there. They knew what was going on, but I never told anybody really. My wife was struggling with it, because it seemed that we had everything, every possession, and we’re fine with money, so why can’t I get out of bed?

My best mate told me to pull myself together. And about 80% of the people I knew said exactly the same thing, because they couldn't understand why the hell I couldn’t get my own arse out of bed. And to a certain extent, I couldn’t understand it either.

The end for me was pulling the covers over my head because I’d got to the stage where I didn’t care if I didn’t wake up tomorrow. ‘After six months, I don't care. I've had enough. Because if all these trinkets I've got - the watches the cars, suits, the house - I don't really care’.

The next day, I decided I was going to get my arse out of bed, go back to work and start to get my life back together. There was a phrase that came up a lot, but I believe in fate. ‘There will come a time when everything is finished. That will be the beginning’. And that was the previous day. I got to the stage where I was comfortable with what was happening and I knew what I had to do about it. But that took me six months. 

People who knew me at the time would never have known I was suffering. I used to think it was an owner’s mask we all wear, where we always have to say things are brilliant and going great. We never say, ‘Oh, it’s shit’, because we want our peers to think well of us. Nobody would have heard me say anything negative at all.

I would have never shown anyone how I was feeling, because I would have seen it as a weakness. There's no way I would have ever spoken to any of the people I knew about anything, even individually, because I wouldn’t want to be belittled. I felt, ‘I’m a boss, I'm meant to be strong, to know stuff and be the best that I can be’.

And that's what we don't do. We don't speak to anybody about it for the fear of the response we’ll get. A lot of us wear masks, and our employees wear masks. We actually think that about 70% of our staff have some form of mental health issue, which I think is the national average - about 70%* of everybody in the country has some form of mental health issue, so my business isn’t going to be any different.

*(Mind says the actual number is 25% of people, well of those at admit they are suffering to their doctor, I would suggest that most go in silence)

I came home from work one day and found a book had arrived through my door. I hadn’t ordered it and I didn’t have a clue who it was from. It was from Amazon, there was no invoice, no nothing.

So, I read the book one day. It’s called ‘The Fred Factor’, it’s by Mark Sanborn and it’s quite short. It’s about a postman who does lots of things for people without asking for anything in return.

Prior to reading it, I was the type of person who wouldn't do anything for somebody without getting something in return. That's what I thought you had to do to be a businessman. If you want to grow the business right, you’ve got to get what you can.

The book is based on a true story, about Fred, a postman in America. When he was doing his rounds, if there was a newspaper sticking out of a letterbox, and he knew the owner was away, he’d go and push it in.

If there was a parcel that was outside a front door, and he knew the owner was out or on holiday, he’d go and put it in his van. When they got back, he’d bring it to them. That was so the parcel didn’t get stolen or the house broken into. He did this just as a matter of course, because that’s who Fred was.

At this time, I had unbelievably low self-esteem, and I still sort of do now. It’s hard for me to get up on stage and speak, but I know that it’s something so important to do, that I'm almost getting a bit of a taste for it. I suffered from unbelievably low self-esteem, but because of my mask, nobody would have never known that.

So, what can we learn from Fred? Everybody can make a difference. You must continue to make value for others, and it doesn't have to cost a penny. We must do, and add value above and beyond our job description.

Success is built on relationships. Relationships are built on trust. People trusted Fred, to tell him when they were going on holiday. I don't post when I go on holiday now on Facebook, because you don't know who else is watching to see that you're not in the house. People don’t do that sort of thing, but people trusted Fred. And he was only their postman, but he built that trust with them over the years.

So, I read Fred, and I thought, ‘Wow. I'm not like Fred, but he doesn't sound like he's got low self-esteem. He sounds like he's and absolutely stunning guy’. I thought it was all about the money for me. That's what I did; it was about money and that was the thing that drove me.

But Fred wasn't doing it for money, he was doing because he was a good guy. So, I thought, ‘Well, I want to be a good guy that sounds good.’ And that was the start of a new chapter for me. Just reading one book was a catalyst five years ago. Those people who knew me then will know that I'm a lot different now.

The sort of books I did read in the past were those ‘get rich quick’ type. It was about the money. I’ve realised now that it’s not about the money. It seriously isn't about money.

At ATG now, we’ve got a bookcase with over 70 books which everybody in the company reads. One of the best books in there is ‘Five Dysfunctions of a Team’, which is from a guy called Patrick Lencioni, who’s very famous in the States.

The book is about how you build trust in a team, or with anybody. Patrick’s rules, his pyramid of what you should do, are like this: You need to build trust through vulnerability.

A lot of people wouldn’t stand up and tell everyone their innermost weaknesses. But you need to build trust with your team, because as Patrick says, ‘Without having trusting your team, you can’t have conflict. And if you haven't got conflict, you can't have commitment. And if you haven't got commitment, you can't have accountability. And if you don't have accountability, you can't have results’.

In a roundabout way, if you want to have results, you've got to have trust in your team, and they've got to trust you. And trust comes from vulnerability. You can find Patrick’s stuff on YouTube.

If you want success in your business, you need to have trust, running throughout. And that can take time, but the quickest way to build trust is through vulnerability.

We can all be classed as trustworthy, but you have to be vulnerable to be trusted.

We start to build trust in the same way we make friends. At some point, everyone will have made friends or fallen in love, and it’s about trust. Trust is just how we build relationships, nothing too complicated. You’ve got to do what you say you're going to do.

As a business owner, when you say you're going to do something, you have to do it, because otherwise it’s a really quick way to lose trust. You have to be vulnerable to one person at a time. It's so much more powerful to do this in a one to one at work.

It’s about the words we use and how we show up. It’s about being honest, and above all about being ourselves. We shouldn’t attempt to be somebody that we not. And the masks that we all wear aren’t us, the masks ae what we think other people want to see of us, or what we think they want us to be.

The first thing you've got to do as a leader is to lead. That’s why you’re called a leader! It's about going first, because you can't expect your staff to be vulnerable to you first and then you’ll be vulnerable back. You've got to be first.

Think about this: ‘Could you be vulnerable with your employees?’ The fear that I had for not doing that with my employees, and not wearing a mask, was because I thought I was going to be ridiculed. But if someone ridiculed me now, I wouldn’t be bothered.

Why would it bother me? Because if that's how you think, then you don’t mean anything to me, if that’s how you’re going to treat me. If you've got employees that are going to do that to you, then maybe they shouldn't be employees. I don’t think it makes me or anyone else weak to open up like that. I think it’s one of the most powerful things you can do.

What do you think about doing in your business? Actually, you should do it everywhere, but certainly in your business. What do you think would happen if you had trust in your workplace? Your staff would feel included and they’d work as a team.

You’d all know each other's strengths and weaknesses, because people would be prepared to tell you their weakness. You will have a newfound openness and honesty in the workplace. Staff will feel empowered and staff retention will increase.

It creates a caring environment in the workplace. Staff will tell you when they’re struggling, rather than failing and letting you down, and letting themselves down.

The other thing is, you'll also be open to sharing that you can't do what you think you're going to do. I used to think that as a boss I had to know everything. Every used to come to me for the answer and I used to give it to them, so I had to know it.

I thought that was what a boss had to do. But now, I’m quite comfortable saying, ‘I don’t know how to do that. And the difference is how the staff jump on it and sort it out. That’s unbelievable, and that’s just from having trust in the workplace.

I called my presentation to Network Group ‘How to Earn More Money in a Quicker Time’ because that’s what most people want. People want to know how much you charge and how you justify your prices.

You think it's about money. It's not. Since I've been working on this for the last four years, I've reduced my working hours at ATG from 70 hours to 26. I finish at three o'clock every day and on a Friday, I’ll go and take my wife out for lunch at midday.

I’ve had no loss of staff for four years, and before that we were losing staff all the time. If you think about money, just the recruitment costs and training expenses we were incurring were huge.

We had a 24% increasing turnover last year. We did 110% net profit increase last year, with me working 26 hours, not 70. I'm allowing people now to do the job that they're paid to do. Because we've got trust. And if you think of Patrick Lencioni’s pyramid, we can't hit the figures if we haven't got trust.

I’m working fewer hours, I’ve lost no staff and I’m earning more money. It’s a bit of a no-brainer and I wish I’d known that 30 years ago. We've won multiple industry awards. We’d never won an award before, even after 26 years, and now we’ve won four.

This week, Kate, my office manager, was nominated for an award for being one of the best women in tech. Two of the guys in a department sent off the application and I knew nothing about it.

The best thing in the world for me, out of all of that, is that I’m the happiest I’ve been for years. I'm earning less money than I did five or six years ago, because we were a much bigger company then, but I know where I’d rather be. I’d rather be where I am now, happiest spreading the word now about trust and what a difference it makes to you and your workforce, because it's not about the money.

Trust is the number one leadership competency skill that’s needed today. Trust builds people into teams, but it takes time. I've been doing this now for years, and I've probably only got it right for the last two.

It's going to take you two years to get it done. As a visionary, I thought I’d do traction in six months, but it took two years. We can all learn it, though, because it’s not hard. The biggest reason their employees don't trust their management is because the management don't trust their employees.

Loads of you moan about your staff, but go and speak to them and tell them if you’ve got a problem. Leaders are responsible for the people, not the results. The people are responsible for the results.

Think about it. What's the easiest business you ever win? Referral. Why? Because trust is transferred from your existing client to the one that's been referred. The easiest sale you can ever do is referral business.

Business innovation stops if you don't have trust, but flourishes when you do. The IT industry is moving so quickly that we’ve got to change. Years ago, we were break/fix, now we’re MSPs and looking at MSSP, never mind the MSP 2.0 that we’ve missed in between.

We’ve got to be looking to innovate all the time and curve jump to whatever the next new thing is, because we’ll all be dead. AI is coming, and it’s going to fix most of the problems that your techs are fixing now. Your techs won’t have a job to do.

But if there’s trust in the workplace, your staff will be thinking what they can do next, it’s not just you thinking about it. Consider what curve jump you can do to stay ahead.

People always ask me how I deal with millennials. I say, ‘trust them!’ They want to be trusted; they want to be part of something. Trust them to do the job. It's the little things that make a difference, like putting Kate in for the award without anybody else knowing.

It’s remembering somebody’s birthday, or a kid’s birthday at work. Just little things. Remembering people’s wife’s names, and giving them a day off when you know they’ve got a problem. They’re bound to have a mask and feel guilty about leaving the job. There are tons of things you can do and they can cost nothing.

Sitting down with people, being honest and being yourself doesn't cost anything at all.

We can all be considered trustworthy, but you've got to be vulnerable to truly be trusted.

How do you start? The first thing you've got to do is recognise some of the things I’ve mentioned and admit to yourself, to take your mask off for two minutes and look at yourself in the mirror and say, ‘Do I really want to do this?’ It’s not hard, but it's a lot of soul searching. But when you come out the other end, you'll have a much stronger business and you'll be a lot happier.