Ten take-aways from this session:
- Have access to the right information
- Have a plan and execute the plan
- Surround yourself with experts that you trust
- Develop a culture of learning (from the past)
- Challenge what you do and know your ‘why’
- Work on your business not in your business
- Being qualified is not necessarily being good at what you do
- Keep everything simple
- Ask yourself what opportunity something is giving you
- What’s your legacy?
***The following transcript has been automatically generated and is presented here unchecked***
LinkedIn Live Financial resilience in leadership
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, business, john, plan, resilience, financial, clients, planning, positive, thinking, conversation, reflect, year, specialists, resilient, pandemic, important, communicating, linkedin, investment
SPEAKERS
Nadine Powrie
Nadine Powrie [00:00]
And here we go. I always start by saying, and here we are alive. I need to find another beginning of my LinkedIn live. A very good morning, everybody. I’m Nadine Powrie. And I’m an executive and leadership coach, and I’m the workplace mediator.
Beautiful morning, everybody. My name is John Langford. I’m a financial advisor, I help individuals and businesses reach their financial goals.
And it’s my turn now. So brilliant introductions by two people there. My name is Mahmoud. I’m an accountant by qualification, former teacher worked in industry worked pretty much in most industries. And nowadays, I help businesses make more money, save time, save tax, and have a business that they would enjoy.
Nadine Powrie [00:44]
That’s great. That’s great. And we should say that we are waiting for Leslie Jerry, she’s director of people HR consultant to come in, but she’s having a few issue connecting this morning. So at any point, and she will come on, and hopefully be part of our conversation today, I should declare that I know John and Mahmoud, and I met John, back when I was in Newcastle. John, you were my Barclays premier banking manager, dealt with a complaint of mine.
I was that that was our first meeting. Yes,
Nadine Powrie [01:21]
that was our first meeting. And you did that so well, that I thought I want to keep John as my financial advisor from now on, good for you. And the mood and we met at a training with some rustling a couple of girls. And you were sitting not far from me. And we got talking. And then we took the train back together. And I thought I want this guy to be my accountant. Then, and then you became my accountant. And I am so glad. So thank you. So today we’re going to be talking about financial resilience in leadership. And I guess the why we’re doing that is that when we’ve had the budget that’s been announced, and we are heading towards the search, first of March, which is the end of this financial year. And we’ve got our roadmap to hopefully have, you know, a life after COVID. And, and therefore we need to start thinking, well, we’ve been we’ve been thinking about planning, but we really need to have a conversation about what it means. And you know, how we want the future to shape up for ourselves and for organizations. But when I was looking at the title, I thought, well, financial resilience, people might define it in a very different way. So John, Mehmood, how would you define financial resilience?
Oh, John, Jr. First show, just dive in or go. We’re being very polite today, as we always are. I think there’s two things, I love the way that you describe it as life after COVID Looking forward, and I think that’s part of it. Resilience for me is probably made up of a number of attributes and factors. And it’s not just about having the right attitude, the right positive action, even though that’s really important here. It’s about being resilient in your own team, you and your team. So there’s that sense of well, being center looking after yourself, is actually having information. So once we have an idea what’s going on in our businesses now, and going forward to having the right management systems having the right financial data coming through and accessing it, that’s key for me, being able to communicate that with some degree of integrity, honesty, with all your stakeholders, and effectively action. So Indecision is not really a good, comfortable bedfellow to have with you for financial resilience, and you need to demonstrate leadership and action.
Nadine Powrie [03:43]
That’s very, very clear. Okay, we’re done. We’re done. Okay, John, do you want to add anything?
Yeah, I think for me, it’s just kind of been a kind of a bit more simple, simplistic around it. Having a plan, being able to execute the plan, and being efficient around that. So kind of, you need to know where you’re going and what you want to achieve your processes and whether or not be financial or kind of time management, be efficient with that it’s very important. And then kind of to get to the plan. I’d say, now, I’m biased, but around this, but surround yourself with people who know what they’re doing specialists. So whether it be your financial advisor, or your accountant, or your HR representative, because those people will add up resilience and make sure that the plan comes into place. Now, there’s lots of different areas that will branch out and smaller ways in which you can achieve that but I think that’s the kind of the broad umbrella of it.
Nadine Powrie [04:38]
I love to surround yourself with the right people, which is exactly what I’ve done in my business. There is one thing that you’ve not mentioned, which for me is important is to learn from the past as well if you want to be resilient is look back and it’s not necessarily the mistake that you’ve made, but the way you made certain fine initial decision at a specific time, given the context, and why now those decision could perhaps be quite different.
I think in everything we do, we always reflect backwards. And we always learn, it is a real kind of important thing to be able to kind of reflect, analyze and evaluate what you’ve done. And a sec kind of best practices kind of a massive part of my education. And that’s probably where I learned more than anything else. And it’s based around himself kind of my peers, and find out what the best practices are pulling them together and thinking what will work for me because not everything will work for everyone sort of taking the bits that will work for you, and then your business and kind of what you’re trying to do. I think that’s
kind of underpin all that is, I’m warming to everybody very much, because it’s the idea of planning. So I think businesses, leaders need to have a planning mindset. So that’s certainly looking ahead in terms of the direction you want to take your business the direction you want to take your organization, and that the future direction is going to be defined to some extent by what you’ve done historically. All good organizations, I think, always have a culture of learning. So you’ve got to accept that, you know, things may not go the way you want them to go, things may go wrong, things may not happen correctly. But if you’ve got the right people you’re surrounded by, if you’re if you’ve got the culture that’s receptive to learning from those paths, happenings, then I think you’re in a much stronger position here. I mean, the history is littered with lots of examples. Edison is the most much quoted cliche, one of not 10,000 mistakes, but just 10,000 steps to get to the eventual light bulb. So yeah, I think it’s about learning from what you’re doing. But it’s having a direction. I think, a plan, planning, looking ahead, is definitely got to be underpinning everything that we do, because that will define the people we’re going to work with, that will define what we need, that we’ve defined the learning that we’re going to do the investment we’ve got to make. So it’s a whole multitude of these things coming into play.
Nadine Powrie [07:05]
You’re seeing that? I mean, certainly when when I plan. I also look at the I always do my risk assessment, my due diligence. And I quite like leaving a little space for the unexpected, because I like to be surprised by what’s going to come to me, you know, and this week, something happened with my business. And it was a really nice, nice surprise. So do you do you? Do you believe that? You know, we’ve got to look at risk, we’ve got to look at the due diligence questions, in our planning, not be so rigid that when the when the unexpected happen? You can’t deal with it. You have to respond to that, don’t you? And how do you how do you do it as well, when you’re just a small team,
I think part of the plan might be not to have a plan. So that sounds kind of as daft as it is. But kind of my role a financial planner, what I do is sometimes I feel a little bit negative, because what I need to do is sit down with clients and think kind of would know where we want to get to, but what could go wrong, and what could hinder that progress. Now, don’t get me wrong, kind of if I can predict everything that could go wrong, and do my job really well. But it also needs to have a bit of flexibility in my own processes, and confidence in my ability as well, to think actually, if something goes wrong, exactly what you’re saying I can react to it and react to it in a positive manner. And again, in an efficient manner to get that sorted. Because we’re the best will in the world, kind of nobody can predict the future, if you can predict the future. And kind of, I suppose kind of a lot of roles will be obsolete. So yeah, planning is really, really important. But it’s having the flexibility and the confidence in yourself to know, actually, you can rapidly react to things that do happen.
I mean, I think, for me, I’d have taken on both of those things. I think, for me, the for the planning, and I would probably make the analogy with like a jelly. So once the world opens up, and we decided we want to go on a holiday, we’ve got an endpoint. So we’ve always got to have what I would call purpose and an in depth, destination mind, you know, a defined goal. There’s measurable now. So if I decide to for example, you know, I’m going to take a holiday to somewhere in the UK, I might travel up to North London, beautiful part of the world. Well, I might decide that my journey is going to be essentially driving in there. Now as I’m driving, I might encounter roadblocks, I might suddenly get my cars breaking down. I’m still in my mind that I want to get to North London as my destination. I’m then going to measure up, you know, do I actually then choose an alternative method of transportation? Do I take more breaks. So how the actual physical journey is done? It is always going to be flexible can be adaptable, but I’ve still got in my mind. North London is my end destination point and in business. So John, I would imagine in the context of retirement planning, somebody says they’ve got an objective what they want to have a certain quality of life, a certain thing and it may be to say this is the investment route that we go down. Well the stock It can change, things can change. And you might divert slightly in your own imagine again, same as well, you’ve got an end purpose in mind. And you’re working towards that. So I think you can’t divorce yourself from having an end goal purpose. If you’ve got that. It’s much easier to make that journey.
Nadine Powrie [10:18]
Yeah, yeah, we’ve got Jenny, Jenny Lynn. Actually, Jenny is, is a colleague of mine. And Jenny’s is asking, how can you plan ahead in the current climate? When certainties are lacking?
It’s always a case, nothing’s ever certain. So again, that comes back to kind of your research and losses of what went behind. Now I’m kind of thinking in my mind financial planning, particularly. But we know that this time last year, we were just getting to grips with COVID Coronavirus, is probably a brand new word to me likes of zoom, I was walking for the first time. So I was learning. However, the principles around what we do the stretch back over kind of 1015 20 or 100 years, those principles are always the same. So if we look forward into the future, and those principles will still stand, I think that kind of the blips are elements in time. So if we go back in months, kind of we didn’t know we’re gonna have a big blip. So that’s when we’re reacting to a book, again, kind of, through our knowledge and kind of education. We also know that longer term planning, kind of, we’ve got a bit more of a smoother road.
I mean, I think Jenny raises a very good point that, Nadine, and I think, you know, that people saying, you know, how do we know what’s going on? And I come back to this idea about a planning mindset. Now, you know, we 26 years of running my own businesses and helping other clients I experienced, shall we say, rocky times when we’ve had recessions, but business hasn’t been going quite well. underpinning it, I think, really, is what we think about a journey plan, I would say, ultimately, you need to produce, for example, what I call a cash flow plan, then say, typically, this is the route map that I’m taking, this is what it means financially. And therefore if you build that model, for example, correctly, and you can then subject it to saying, actually, this is the route plan, I’m taking the best situation, it things go not quite as well as I expected. So I don’t have as many customers, it takes a bit longer to get 1012 costs go up, you can actually see the impact on that and having some idea of what I call foresight, but not predictability, I promise you actually reduces that minimizes anxiety, not knowing what’s going to happen is not a reason not to plan ahead and get a financial plan.
Nadine Powrie [12:41]
Yeah, and I guess, I guess it’s an opportunity as well to assess what you’re doing to look at value for money and cost effectiveness. Because when you when you look back at your business, and you look at, you know, the expenses, or everything that you are using to the cost of running your business, when you look at those, and you think well, do I really need that? And what’s the impact of that? And so what, then actually, you can plan ahead and say I’ll abandon that, because there’s no return on investment. I’ll bring that because it’s quicker, it’s enabling me to communicate with more people, for example, the Reach Out is bigger, I think it’s really important to constantly assess what what you are doing, and to look at it from value for money and cost effectiveness and return on investment. I mean, I, I sometimes wonder if I’m not self obsessed by that when I run my business, because I constantly every month I look at okay, how did I use that platform? How am I doing with this? And how am I doing with that? And it’s making me reflect on if it’s not achieving what I wanted to achieve, then I change not the destination, but I changed the route the road,
control certain things about this idea of actually, if you have an understanding what’s going on in your business, so you can challenge these things. And I think what, whatever other people have found is that I think since the pandemic kicks off last year, what a lot of people did, they took that time to actually reflect it because financials are quite squeezed. They actually looked at what was going through their bank accounts, they looked at all the subscriptions that were going on, they look to the cost of services that are accessing and saying, is this value for money? does this serve my business? Does it serve my customers? And I think that conversation here about challenging things in your business. It’s got to be had, if we had people that were using for external say marketing support, and those people weren’t delivering, we weren’t getting the results. We will hopefully have the courage and the strength to challenge that and say, what’s it bring into my business there? I think people generally speaking, you know, I’ve got very poor money mindsets as well. And that’s probably half the reason why we Don’t actually connect with our numbers as well as we should do.
I think this is really important. So kind of, I know kind of I felt guilty of this sometimes, and not just kind of from business. But in everyday life. If things are busy, you can get on a hamster wheel. And I admire your kind of the way you go about things being because you are constantly reflecting by your own admission, it’s easy to draw on the hamster wheel, especially if you’re a business owner. And kind of time is, time is precious, to stand back and take that reflection context, from that precious time when kind of you want to be concentrating on the business. However, it’s essentially important that you do that. So that kind of work at the minute kind of with a couple of gentlemen who are lean business specialists. And I can guarantee that kind of unless they have their interaction, again, it’s come from the specialist point of view, unless they have their interaction, there’ll be many businesses out there who want it the time to step back and think actually kind of work and be more efficient, certainly with the monetary, outgoings at the heart. And it all comes back to kind of taking that time to step back and analyze and reflect on what you do and working out whether or not that’s a value for you in both time and money.
Nadine Powrie [16:14]
You see, this year I’ve, I’ve, I’ve narrowed down. And I’ve gone deeper. And I’ve had different conversations with you, John, how many times have I emailed you about ideas that I’ve got, and my mood, I think you’ve got to think you’ve got a daily email from me, said we need to relook at our service level agreement again. But the good thing about that is that, you know, because you’re reflecting and because you want to get the best, you know, to run your business. It means that every day, you’re asking yourself some questions. And as you said, John, you have to be surrounded by the best people around you. And, and it’s so important to know who are those best people for you. I mean, I’ve got my very small team, but they they make me go where I want to go. And you’re part of it, both of you.
I know, you demonstrate and John does, you’ve got that filter. So when you do approach experts support and people to support your business. And I think there’s two things that come from that John, raise a very great point there. And it’s the whole idea about change your mindset to actually work on your business and not in your business all the time. And we can get obsessed by short term, but you had a clear understanding in your own mind what you were looking for, or what you didn’t want. So therefore, when you were looking for new support, here, you had a clearer idea of what you wanted that individual or individuals to do. And therefore you already defined your standards there. When it comes to a business thing here, again, I always come back to this mindset. And it took me, let’s say, I’ve been doing this for 26 years, it took me about two or three years, to slowly learn a transition from working for a big organization, to working for myself, it’s still taking me 26 years, by the way to learn how to run a business in the sense of that in there, where you don’t actually personalize conversations, you talk about your business. And it’s a tough, but it’s a positive thing to be done out there.
Nadine Powrie [18:11]
I mean, I want to say that I’m build my resilience, and thanks to my network as well. Because sometime you think you are resilient, and you are but actually thanks to the conversation that you are having with people. They fit in your resilience. So every time I talk to John, I, every time I talk to you, Mahmoud, you’re actually making my resilience stronger, because you are the expert. Does that make sense?
It makes a lot of sense.
I think a lot of the time people want to know if they’re going on the right path. So I’ll compete with people speak to me, and they’ll have very specific ideas of what we want to do. And you know, if I can turn around quite quickly and say, Yeah, you kind of you’re on the right path. Fantastic. Sometimes that might need a bit of a tweak, kind of have you thought of this, have you thought of that? Kind of What’s your understanding of this part over here? But yeah, I think a lot of time, people will just want that little bit of kind of handhold. And to kind of Yeah, you do and grid. And again, it comes to a trusted person to be able to turn around and say that, for you to be able to kind of go on and kind of complete the plan and complete the kind of whatever you’re doing at that point.
Is that reassurance, isn’t it, John? It’s so it’s the reassurance and try to avoid people having too many conversations with Pete down the pub or Mr. Google says x and you will somebody who’s been there experienced it. And actually you can say, actually, and you need to be very polite with clients just to say that’s perfectly fine. But by the way, you haven’t considered X or actually what you’ve just heard or what you think is is actually not right. It’s not correctly, you will be careful not to go down a rabbit hole.
I think you’ve I think you’ve said a phrase that kind of hinders me quite a bit and it’s the people down the pub, because people can speak so confidently and there might not enjoy this, there might be 95% there. But that 5% That’s not quite right, can actually kind of cause quite a big detriment. But it’s a weird kind of you push back on that. And with all due respect, kind of this is kind of this is what you shouldn’t be looking at. But yes, it can be difficult. And again, we’ll go back to kind of surround yourself with those specialists. You’ve might have friends, family, who have got fantastic experience and knowledge. But is it up to date? Stuff like the budget change? And are they are they aware of kind of everything that’s been involved in that or are using specialists around you that kind of immerse themselves in those changes?
There’s reasons you’ve spent all those years doing exams, John? Likewise, it’s not because we’ve got no friends, but that might be part of it. I don’t know. But professionalism. And again, being qualified is not necessarily a guidance to being good in what you’re doing is a combination of the studying. And it’s the qualifications and the experience that goes with that as well.
Nadine Powrie [21:09]
Yeah, we’ve got a Mr. Ms. trudge forward, actually, Mr. You were on Now You went on my LinkedIn live yesterday. So thank you for coming back today. And you’re saying constantly review inclusive communication be responsive? Now, my module on Iran, you talked about communication?
Yeah. What what I meant those two things. So if I go back to my own personal experience, when, you know, the the, the impacts of the pandemic began to unfold in the wider economy here, for me, it was more about actually communicating with our clients, making sure that all my style, were up to speed, they were comfortable, they were happy, it was about being honest, as well. So you know, trying to pretend that everything’s perfect, you know, it’s not the way so the communication is going to be speedy, it’s going to be authentic, it’s going to be, you’re going to respond, you can’t just have one way communication, it’s got to be a dialogue, as opposed to a monologue monologue there. And I just found with lots of people in the space, not just my space there, lots of people weren’t actually responding to anybody. And people have when you create a vacuum, and you’re not communicating, what happens is, people fill that vacuum with their own thoughts, their own ideas, which can be very difficult to reconnect back to so yeah, it’s about being responsive is about knowing what you are talking about. So it’s, it’s practical stuff. So like knowing what’s going on when somebody’s business, if you don’t have that access to data. In real time, it’s very difficult to communicate your team to figure out what’s going on. When people had to make cutbacks, when people had to do things, possibly, unless you’ve got a clear understanding of the situation, all you’re going to be doing is communicating what I call just very, shall we say, loose words, which have no meaning.
Nadine Powrie [22:52]
And I think it would be fair to say memory that you are communicating more and more live on LinkedIn. And John, you are writing some posts on LinkedIn, you’re you’re you’re very both of you are very visible on LinkedIn to, to build people resilience, perhaps, you know, because we are listening to you because we are reading what you are writing, I think that’s really important to share with people where you don’t need to wait that people are going to ask your question to feeding their resilience, you’re you’re giving to people,
it’s very important that you kind of you do kind of open your arms and sit, the people are kind of snap, I’ve got information, I’ve got knowledge that you might need. And it’s it’s almost kind of just connected with what their need is at that point. So some stuff are put out on LinkedIn, and some of the stuff we’ll talk about today won’t be relevant for everybody, but it will be relevant for some people, and then we might move on the topic. But it’s it’s kind of sharing that information and almost encouraging the conversation to unfold from there. Now by sharing information, I think kind of what you are showing is that you’re open to that conversation. And without wanting to kind of do myself out of a job here. My the main role of what I have kind of it’s not the product, policeman or anything like that is trying to make the kind of financial planning, trying to make it simple for people, if I can help them understand it, and it’s going to be simple, then that’s my job done. And what we’ll do is we’ll move on from there. It’s not what products you have, and it’s nothing to do with that. It’s making it simple. And that is by being as open as possible and engaging in conversations. It’s
my job. So he’s just making everything accessible. So what you do know Dane, John and myself, it’s about saying, it’s important that you do this. So it’s important that you have those difficult conversations, it’s important that you plan ahead for think about your future, it’s important that you connect with your numbers to do that. So that’s the important message. Obviously, you know, in terms of how you do that, how you implement that. There’s people out there there’s people like us three that you tap into, but is that is there two meshes that go at the same time, make sure you’re aware that y is in hoping to do this and how it’s going to transform and change your lives for the better. And then the actual physical implementation of whether it’s a particular product is the thing that comes really to support that.
Nadine Powrie [25:11]
We’ve got, we’ve got Jenny, who comes back to the planning. And she said, doesn’t that presuppose you have a financial cushion to support you? I’m thinking of businesses that have no income over the past year.
Not Well, yes. And no, I mean, here’s how I would look at it. I on the news this morning, I picked up the fact Unfortunately, carluccio, for example, went into receipts going into receivership. Now, pre the recession. And to be fair, the the ex chief executive said that pre the pandemic, they’ve gone through some financial restructuring, they had some problems anyway, and COVID just pushed them over the age, okay. And that just close the door. Now, if you’re going ahead, if you think your business does not have a future, if you think that’s it, all your customers are gone, and there’s no money in the bank, and it’s completely dissipated, and you can’t move that business forward. That’s fine. That’s a different conversation. If you feel that your business has got prospects, if you feel that you can do something with your business, then you’ve got a future there. And it’s about thinking, what is his future look like? And then deciding at the end of it? What do I need to do financially to support my path going forward? And until again, ultimately, until you translate your journey into a cash plan, a financial plan, you won’t actually know what you should be doing going forward? So I don’t know if that answers the question, but that’s how I would look at it.
Nadine Powrie [26:35]
John, do you want to add something?
It’s kind of pretty much nailed what I was thinking there. Yeah.
Nadine Powrie [26:44]
Nothing to add. Okay, so So what about I mean, we talk about financial resilience here. But what about when we, when we have clients who actually, you know, aren’t resilient. And we have a duty of care to to help them in terms of financial resilience? How, how do we do that when we know we can see their plan, and we can see that it’s going to be difficult, but they’re not quite resilient? What can we do to help them?
I think, a year ago is a perfect example of this. So I was very lucky in the fact that when we were all asked to come home and leave our office and sit down in rooms and offices, I had a task of ringing kind of a number of our clients. Now essentially, what had happened was, stock markets had dropped people’s pensions and investments they had dropped. So it was very much kind of having the foot beam proactive and going out and speaking to those people. Now, I was very lucky in the fact that in testament, my colleagues who put plans in place, some a lot of these people, the first time I’d spoken to them, they were already educated enough to see this. And we’re aware that investments go up and down, it’s a very difficult time at the minute. But we’re confident in the knowledge that we’ve already been given that investments will come back all the time. Now, as it turns out, that timeframe was was quite small. And it was all within 2020, which was fantastic. However, the word handful of people who were worried and and it’s at that point, it’s kind of, it’s taking them by the hand, and offering kind of the expertise, their knowledge, but also the empathy of putting yourself in those people’s shoes. Because, again, I mentioned it earlier on, I can live by different principles. And I can detach himself from people’s emotional states, when it comes to things like the retirement planning. However, these people are very involved in that. So what you need to do is kind of need to get on their level. Again, the empathy is a massive, massive part. And then it comes back to again, what I just recently said, it’s the education part of it. So be cool, calm collected off of that educational piece. But it’s about being empathetic as well. And Shawn, actually kind of you do care.
Right. Like I would say, there’s one small thing I would add to that, I think empathy is actually a central criteria, whether you’ve got a pandemic or things are really rosy and positive, okay, putting yourself in the customers shoes, your client chooses a critical thing, I think you can give them the tools, you know that you can encourage them, tell them their support, but ultimately theirs. And once they create that, once they’ve got themselves in a better headspace, then you’ve also got to remember they are the ones who do the action. So you know, whether it’s a family with children who are about to leave home, you support them, you know, they’re always gonna be there to love them, look after them. But ultimately, that business owner has got to have that space and comfort to actually take that action themselves. You can’t do it for them. You can just be there to empathize, support them, give them the tools, the resources, knowing that you can be there in the background, but ultimately, that business owner is also going to take some responsibility for moving their own businesses forward.
Nadine Powrie [29:50]
So in the context of the new budget and the end of the tax year, I guess, the question will go first to John, what are the kind of financial planning that we should be thinking of,
I suppose is just being aware of candidates who have gone back to a movement, as well. But it’s been aware of kind of what has changed. So things like the personal allowance, what we’re allowed to earn on, on a yearly basis, it’s creeping up, but it will freeze. Now, what that means is in the kind of the bigger context is, we will down the line pay a little bit more tax for business owners, corporation tax will be gone up shortly. And again, that might that might affect how you manage the money within your business, because it’d be planted down there, well, kind of what you want to take out the company now or what you want to take off tax efficiently in future. But it’s a very broad question to, to nail down into one answer, because everybody has a very different background, and a very different plan moving forward, but you want to bang on about it. It’s surround yourself with specialists because that specialist will react to your circumstances, and help you with that plan. And educate your own what’s changed.
Nadine Powrie [31:11]
So you’re what you’re saying is read, keep reading.
Yeah, keep reading, go on, go on their LinkedIn life and go on webinars, read it yourself on any kind of social media, and have a look what the experts are saying. But also, be aware that kind of you need to almost kind of take away from what’s relevant to you. And put it as part of your plan. But again, that’s where the likes of I think removal, especially as a tax planner, he will be able to relate any changes, and related anything that’s happened. And I’ve done this specifically, when we moved when we had a meeting last week, I ran up straight after and said, the move the something happened in the budget there. I’ve got an understanding in my head of what happened. And I think this is how it’s gonna affect me. Can you just confirm I’m on the right lines, anyway? Yeah, you on the right lines. And it emphasizes what we’ve just been saying there. It’s getting that that clarification from a trusted partner, actually, kind of the all night lines. However, if it turned out when John, you’ve got this completely wrong. Again, that would have been so valuable to me, because I’d misunderstood the information that had come out. As it turned out, kind of we’re both on the same page.
I mean, I would add two or three things to what John said there in terms of what’s politically for the budget and what’s ahead. I think there’s a what you refer to the people who’ve got to learn the lessons over the last 12 months. So if I gave one single piece of advice to people, and I have no shame in saying this, do a cash flow forecast or problem one. Number two, there are headlines in the budget, which we know. So we know the landscape is changing. We know there’s pressure on economics, Exchequer funds and money that’s been pumped in to third I support scheme, there will be tax rises over the next few years. So even though as John mentioned, the allowances are frozen, sole traders, self employed companies that you will end up paying more tax. And number three, down the track, I’m having a conversation the other day, there was lots of what I call compliance activity going on with HMRC, where they’re actually investing more resources, more time or energy. So making sure what is already out there, they are tightening up the system very quickly. So you’ve got to take the opportunity now to make sure your own houses in order to make sure you’re aware of what those big changes will be over the next two or three years here and plan for them, in fact, to the mean to your business, it’s because it’s gonna get very interesting from HMRC point of view about what they’re doing for things like digital taxes moving online, in terms of the allowances, so don’t be scared by it. Oh, by the way, because it’s good. It’s happening. Tax is a cost as part of your life. But you can do things to mitigate and plan for them as well. But so take the lessons, do a cash flow plan, do a financial plan, talk to people like John, talk to people like yourself in a downturn, people like me, and look at it as a positive because one thing I’ve learned, the closer people understand what’s going on in their business financially. It’s great. It’s a cathartic experience. It minimizes the anxiety, it puts them more control. And actually, it makes them feel very positive, that they actually have got a better understanding what’s going on financially.
Nadine Powrie [34:30]
There might be people listening, who are thinking, I’ve no idea how to do a cash flow plan. So you’ve got a lot of resources on on your website. Do you want to say something? Yeah, yes, no,
- So there’s a couple of things here. If you want to go on to the website, I’ll drop the link later on. If you go to the resources, there’s a free cash flow guide that you can access that will talk through that. There’s videos and broadcasts and stuff I’ve done on that. I’m planning to do a webinar If I don’t know if that’s the right term for it these days, sometime in early April, or cash flow planning to talk to people through the steps, so obviously have a look at it. But don’t confuse doing a cash flow plan with saying, I can predict exactly what’s going on. Don’t confuse that with saying, I’ve got to be a great mathematician. Think about your vision, first of all, and then the cache, just translate that. So yeah, lots of resources, lots of free guides on the website, check out the resources, and watch out if you’re happy to publicize it for your network as well. And today, there’s a cash flow webinar coming up in April.
Nadine Powrie [35:33]
That’s good. That’s good. John, anything from you on that?
No, again, just just echo on kind of what Mahmoud says, kind of understand where you want to go. And kind of put those plans in place, use the tools that are available to us to do that. I’ve been on the mood website myself and use those tools. The fantastic,
Nadine Powrie [35:53]
yeah, yeah, there’s one, there’s no topic we haven’t discussed. And it’s actually been challenging my resilience, which is, which is Brexit. Because my business is international, and I’ve had to register for the most VAT and go through the whole process. And I find that quite challenging actually. And it’s, it’s challenging your resilience, because you’re because a the administration process is, I think, is fairly cumbersome. Because you have to read a lot of documents that really, I don’t speak that jargon at all. Because it’s quite complex, because I’m not quite sure what I’m doing because it’s new. And it’s taking a lot of time. You know, when you’re a one person business, I mean, if you’re an organization with a lot of weeds a team, that’s fine, you can delegate, but for, you know, small our business like mine, my resilience has been tested, because I still want to operate in Europe, but I’m having to spend quite a lot of time processes processing what I’m supposed to be doing. So how would you how would you, you know, how would you? What would you say to that, Mahmoud, and John?
John, is first off to talk about
I was gonna say, yeah, kind of, I think just generally just be open to the adaptation and knowing that there’s going to be some hurdles ahead. I think we’re all aware that kind of legislation, when it’s, when it’s changing, it hasn’t been simpler for a lot of people. And it’s almost kind of dig in, if you want operate within those markets, kind of you will find a flaw of getting there. But I think there’s a massive learning curve that we’re all on at the minute. And I’m not sure kind of anybody is kind of 100% or fear with it. We’re all learning together, whether or not kind of UK citizens, or whether or not you’re part of an EU country who was dealing with the UK as well. So yeah, kind of, I understand it’s difficult. And educate yourself kind of roll with the punches and kind of you will get there. But it’s having that automatic, it’s having that resilience, that mental resilience to say I’m gonna keep on going and
yeah, absolutely. I mean, I have lots of sympathy, because I think there’s two things. And I’ll just say we, I’ve read on this for people to check out the website, there’s articles on Brexit, and whatever. But people who had no connection with what people don’t realize is, once we left the EU on the first of January, the EU is seen as the rest of the world. However, even people in the EU aren’t up to speed on their processes and procedures. I would say it’s gonna take about another year, year and a half for things to settle down become smoother, is making sure you get a clarity of understanding, avoid Mr. Google and avoid Pete down the pub and make sure your advisor mode gives you that clarity that you need to actually understand what to do is largely assist a situation of changing what understand the main headlines, getting the compliance done, get the rules, right, there will be light touch to begin with. But first of July, the rules change against slightly. So you just need to be up to speed and make sure you got somebody on your bus as you I think you call it once upon a time that day, somebody can actually tell you what’s going on.
Nadine Powrie [39:20]
Yeah, yeah. And I, I mean, I will share with people that you’ve got a great webinar actually, on doing the registration. And I think we should we should share that with people because I’ve done your webinar. And without that, I wouldn’t have been able to understand what I was meant to be doing on the phone. So I think I think it’s important to share that. I just want to ask a final point is, you know, it’s been, it’s been a challenging year for everybody. I think we must recognize, I mean, people think that I’m smiling a lot that everything is great in my life. And, you know, well, it’s challenging for everybody. We’ve had to reach fly and learn and do things differently. So what can we do to, to grow that resilience, because, you know, we’re not at the end of the tunnel yet. John, I’ll let you go.
So kind of, I’m visually it’s kind of always, always grow. But the way I’ve reflected on the last year, and I had a comment was quite early on, when we went into first lockdown, you’ve been very positive about everything. And it’s a case of almost getting yourself into the mindset, having a word of the self and seeing this and kind of, there’s two ways in which it can go if you kind of focus on the negatives, and if you will become negative. Or if you focus on the positives, and know that if you can really push those positives, things will grow from it. So if I think of a year ago, sitting down with a list of clients who I didn’t have a long standing relationship with, I looked at that and thought, right, so this is an opportunity in a time of turmoil for the world, to speak to these those clients, and introduce myself. And you know, what it is kind of a year down the line, when we’re speaking again, I will be that person that came to them in kind of in difficult times. So from that point of view, I couldn’t get out, I couldn’t meet new people. I wasn’t visiting people’s homes or places of work, that weren’t coming in my office and kind of weren’t acquiring new clients, actually, but I had a big client is who was building strong relation relationships with, because we’re in a difficult time. And I was able to offer a positive insight into that. And those people now a year down the line, that kind of they’re appreciating that, but that’s with that positive, positive attitude of seeing kind of what can I do about this? Rather than saying, I can’t? Well?
Yeah, I would probably add a couple of things that is that. Obviously, everyone looks at the world slightly differently. For me, I think what really helps you become resilient in yourself, as a leader in your own business is to have the right attitude, the right attitude doesn’t mean you’ve got to be smiley, happy all the time, because that’s unrealistic. By the same token, you can’t be completely down otherwise, there’s no point, you’ve got to bow overall, look after yourself, your own well being you’ve got to have I’m typically quite as sanguine, quite positive person. But it’s actually saying there are moments there where you think actually, things are frustrating. So being honest with yourself, making sure you’ve got a great team, our team aren’t necessarily people you’re employing the people that you’ve got around you. Can you talk to them? Can you have those conversations? I’m actually thinking in terms of so there’s an internal thing as looking after yourself as actual being having the right mindset. And the right mindset is you don’t leave your brains in your back pocket, and you keep your common sense goggles on. And don’t panic, try not to get overwhelmed by all of that. And if it’s not quite working, just go out and scream and go for a walk or whatever it is. But make sure you you’re not too proud not to take on external input support or support is the right one.
Nadine Powrie [43:00]
You’ve made it. Yeah, sorry, John.
From outside, it’s been open to communication. So that thing around kind of going out and screaming, speaking to somebody who’s in a similar position to yourself, can just give so much clarity on what’s going on around you, and put things into a bit more perspective. So find somebody on your level find find a peer, if you feel as if kind of your resilience is rocking a little bit and talk to them because again, kind of there’ll be lost the old adage that there’s there’s never a silly question. Well, there’s two people in that room will want ask that. There’s also you let that to be a lot of people feel in similar ways to you. But unless you kind of open up and talk about that you won’t realize, and there’s it, there’s a bit comfort in knowing that you’re not alone in that.
Nadine Powrie [43:50]
I think I will say something Mahmoud, about what you’ve just mentioned, that you’re one team doesn’t have to be people that you employ. I mean, I’m a one person business, but I’ve got people around me. And I have to say that’s my four children have played a significant role in my business this year in terms of building my resilience generation Zed, millennials, they offer a very different perspective. And I did a LinkedIn live a few weeks ago, with some students from King’s and UCL. And they have a very positive mindset, and they see things in a very different way. And I think we can learn from that. I mean, you know, I’m listening to them. And I’m saying, Yeah, actually, why am I not thinking like that? So I think for me, it’s also making sure that in in my team in my solving world, I have people from different generations.
Yeah, definitely. I think you’re right. I think it’s, you’ve got to actually, I think John mentioned about empathy. You’ve got to be able to take on board and have a character that says, there are different points of view, or different inputs there. You might not have to agree with them, but you’ve got to be receptive of them. All shutting down conversations and listening to other views. You gotta have a degree of certainty about your own path, though, because otherwise, all you’re doing is saying, Oh, John said, x, let me go down that route. The dean said that I better go down that route. And all you’re doing is that all the time. So it has some degree of purpose that actually take on board other people’s views. Because if you really just waltz in there, I promise you, you’re not gonna have a very productive business.
Nadine Powrie [45:22]
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So final, final message to close this LinkedIn live. Is there anything final that you want to share with our audience?
I would say, apart from the obviously, thank you very much for inviting me on your broadcast is, I would say, look, running your own business, being a leader in your business can be a is a lonely situation, because you’re the one ultimately, who’s making all those key decisions. However, you don’t have to be alone. So plan ahead, I’m gonna be really boring here, do a financial cash flow plan that reflects the journey you want to take. And then you can actually reshape your story, but be positive overall. And they’ll promise you the world will look a different shape in 12 months from now.
Nadine Powrie [46:12]
Okay, thank you very much, John.
Yeah, keep it really simple. So create a plan, where do you want to go? How’d you get there? Surround yourself with specialists? And try and keep it simple. Don’t overcomplicate things.
Nadine Powrie [46:28]
Thank you. And for me, I always go back to the question that my coach taught me many, many years ago, when I’m looking at, at something she said to me, what are what you need is this giving you and I always think like that, when, when I am, you know, in front of decision. And I’m thinking okay, so what opportunities that giving me looking at it positively and looking at it to build a different future, and also result to have a legacy. And for you know, the younger, the younger generation to learn from us, because John number, would we, you know, we, the young generation can learn from us. And, and I think it’s good to, you know, we keep communicating, we keep doing LinkedIn live, we keep sharing. And ultimately, we’re having some great conversations like we’ve just had today, and I’d like to thank you both for being on my LinkedIn life. It’s always a privilege to have you with me for 40 minutes. So I’ve got genuine said, great advice, some filler said, some real nuggets shared this morning. Thank you, Nadine, John, and memory. So thank you to both of you. Oh, am I saying thank you all for this very inspiring conversation. So in the LinkedIn notes, I will make sure that John, there is your contact, and there is your contact, and there is an opt in that you can download if you’re interested in what we’ve said, Leslie didn’t manage to connect, but she has written a text, you know, you know, Hopkins, so if you want to want to have a look at what we’ve written, then it’s available to you and I’ll make sure it’s in the notes. So, once again, thank you very much, Jonathan Mahmood, and wishing you a great day.
Absolutely. Positive, be saying win and be safe.
Nadine Powrie [48:23]
Thank you. Thank you.