CREATING A GRATEFUL BUSINESS – BETTER BUSINESS, BETTER LIFE, BETTER WORLD
Whether you’re running a business or working in one, this one ‘top level’ piece of BETTER LIFEadvice has served me well: Stay true to yourself no matter what.
Let me share a tiny piece of my story. When I started Inspire, I did so out of a frustration with the accounting industry. The bulk of the industry then was just reporting on history and ‘doing the tax’. I thought ‘what if as accountants, we could give game-changing advice that could help people write a better future for their business and their families?’ To do this, I had to change how Inspire worked with our clients.
Almost five years on now and thank goodness we stayed true to ourselves. The result has been a business that’s saved its clients over $3,454,000 in tax over the last two years alone. And we’ve got a pricing model where our accounting fees to clients pays for itself an average of 3 times in tax savings for every dollar they pay us.
So, it worked! Moral once more so that you really remember it: Stay true to self.
BETTER BUSINESS – STOP AND ENJOY THE MOMENTS
Running a business is intense. So, here’s the big takeaway: Take time to stop and enjoy the moments.
I learned more recently to take a moment, at least once a day, to do something for yourself. Meditate, go to the gym, stop to cook a nice meal, sit out on the back deck under the trees and sip a cup of tea. It’s almost counterintuitive in some ways. Yet please remember; when you take time to stop and enjoy the moments, you build your own resilience. And then you’ll be in a position to look after the people you care about.
BETTER WORLD — BE GRATEFUL FOR THE SMALL THINGS
Here’s some advice for you that underpins everything and, not surprisingly leads to a better world. It’s simple too. Be grateful for the small things. When we all learn to do this every second, every day and in every way a beautiful better world becomes the reality.
This story hit me like a tonne of bricks. And it still does!
It was Thursday the 1st of August 2013. This was the day I met B1G1 Chairman, Paul Dunn for the first time — at his ‘Power of Small’ presentation at a hotel in Hamilton, Brisbane.
Now back to that Thursday — Paul was asking the audience ‘Who drinks coffee?’ The next question was, ‘Now who gets a little agitated if they don’t have a coffee for a day?’ My hand went straight up. Paul went on, ‘OK, now who feels like they could go without water for a day? Unfortunately, there are 663 million people in the world who go without access to clean water each day. Imagine if, for every coffee you purchased, one of those people received access to water for a day — and you made that happen.’
Wow — I was hooked.
My gratitude for simple things like water, safety, shelter all went through the roof that day. And not only that, because of how easy B1G1 makes it for businesses to give, I immediately signed Inspire up as a member — to be able to express our gratitude by giving back to our community around the globe just by doing the tasks we normally do in our business.
And that, in turn, created a ripple. In fact, in the year 2017, we set a target to give 1,000,000 days access to water that year. And we celebrated doing that by heading to see some of the projects on the B1G1 Study Tour — to live it and to breathe it all in. Then other companies heard about what we were doing — they set out to do it too. And suddenly I really got why I had called that tiny little accounting firm that I created at 23-years-old ‘Inspire’.
Now, those simple values: ‘Stay True to Self No Matter What’, ‘Stop and Enjoy the Moments’ and ‘Be Grateful for the Small Things’ have spawned so many great things in our world. Inspire has become an example of the great things we can do. And I hope it this note inspires you do be that same example too — what a great legacy that would be to leave.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Better Business, Better Life, Better World: The Movement is an Amazon Bestseller. In this book, 52 amazing business owners answer one question: “What advice would you give to your grandchildren to create a better business, a better life, and a better world?”Filled with unique perspectives and wisdom, this book promises nothing short of a life-changing experience.Get your copy of Better Business, Better Life, Better World now.