Ask any business owner what their values stand for, and you’ll often hear the same list: honesty, professionalism, and quality. All great things, but here’s the uncomfortable truth:

These aren’t core values.

They’re the bare minimum.

Customers expect honesty. They assume professionalism. They take quality as a given. Touting these as your firm’s values doesn’t make you memorable, it just make you one of the same.

In today’s competitive landscape, your ability to stand out matters more than ever.

What real core values look like

Real values express your unique identity. They make your team say, “Yes, that’s us.” They make your customers think, “I feel that every time I work with them.”

Here are some examples of real, human-centred values that resonate:

Family First

Remembering our purpose in life

Enduring Relationships

Being there with care and respect

Keeping It Real

Practical and proven solutions

Empowerment

Believing in you

Fun

Because life is too short

Each one tells a story. Each one sets a tone. Each one builds an emotional connection, which is exactly what you need if you’re serious about becoming your clients’ trusted advisor.

The Power of Simplicity: 3 Words, 7 Words

To make values stick, keep them short and sharp. Here’s the rule:

1. Three words or fewer per value
2. Seven words or fewer to define it

Why? Because you need them to be memorable. If your team can’t recite your values, how can they live them?

What to Do Next

• • Audit your current values – are they generic or unique? Do they tell your story?
  • Define 3 or fewer real core values – make them emotional, memorable, and personal.
  • Keep each one under 7 words – clarity wins.
  • Share them – make them visible, repeatable, and part of your daily conversations.
  • Live them – give your team permission to call each other in (not out) when values are missed.

You’ll be amazed how this small shift transforms your culture and opens the door to a more advisory-driven business.

As Dr. Seuss said:

“Why fit in when you were born to stand out?”*

The following content was originally published by BOMA. We have updated some of this article for our readers.

Ever wondered what it actually means to work ‘on’ your business as well as working ‘in’ your business? You’re not the only one, so let’s break it down.

First, here are some practical distinctions to compare working ‘on’ and working ‘in’.

Now that the key differences have been explained, here are the five most important activities you should be doing with your business to drive success:

• • Prepare a business plan and update it annually. Tip : Do this in the last month of your financial year or the first month of the new financial year
  • Prepare a budget and forecast for the upcoming 12 months. Tip : Do this at the same time as you prepare your plan (and of course, review this annually too)
  • Report against that plan and budget monthly
  • Communicate the plan and the results to the owners and your team
  • Meet monthly for 1 to 2 hours to review your progress, your numbers, your business structure and any risks and opportunities that exist to improve the business

How much time should you set aside to work on your business?

Working on the business doesn’t need to be a full-time role, but you should make sure you’re allocating sufficient time each week to focus on it.

A good guideline is to be working on your business 1 to 2 hours each week, while allowing for a half-day progress check in each month to make sure you’re on track.

Also, set aside 1 to 2 days each year to go off-site and update your business plan and structure. Best practice is to get someone independent of your business to help you establish and maintain these regular disciplines and hold you to account to really improve your business.

What do you need to change to work more effectively ‘on’ your business?

If you need our help, get in touch.

“The business is there to serve you, not the other way round. You should not be a slave to your business” – Anon

The following content was originally published by BOMA. We have updated some of this article for our readers.

Sales and marketing are fundamental elements of finding new customers. But sales and marketing activity can also be a major draw on your time and resources.

So, wouldn’t it be great if you could automate some of the basic sales, marketing and social media activity? The reality is that AI is more than capable of taking on these tasks.

Let’s look at five areas of your sales and promotional activity where AI tools and AI agents can take on some of the fundamental workload.

1. Sales

AI sales agents can automate some of the most time-consuming parts of the sales process, including lead qualification, follow-up emails and scheduling. Agents score leads based on their likelihood to convert, helping you focus on the most promising prospects. They can also analyse sales calls to provide insights on what works, and what doesn’t.

AI product example: HubSpot Sales Software is AI-powered sales software that offers guided selling, sales engagement, deal management, reporting and analytics, CPQ (configure, price, quote) and coaching for your human sales team.

2. Business development

To boost your business development, AI agents can help you find new opportunities and increase your access to prospect data. They can scrape public data sources, like LinkedIn, to build comprehensive lead profiles, identify key contacts and even track job changes to turn existing relationships into new business opportunities.

AI product example: Apollo.io is an AI-driven sales platform that provides you with sales intelligence, pipeline builders, a call assistant and enrichment of your prospect data.

3. Marketing

A true AI marketing agent automates and optimizes your whole campaign, not just the campaign content. Agents use your customer data to personalize customer journeys, predict the best time to send emails and even recommend the next best actions for improving the campaign’s performance. You get better marketing results with less time-intensive manual effort.

AI product example: Active Intelligence is an AI-powered marketing tool that brings together data points and purpose-built AI agents to deliver fully realised marketing strategies.

4. Social media

AI agents for social media can automate your content creation, scheduling and performance analysis – all within the one tool. Agents can generate post ideas, write captions and suggest the best times to post for maximum engagement. They can also provide insights into what your audience is saying about your brand, competitors and wider industry trends.

AI product example: OwlyGPT is a social media AI assistant from Hootsuite. Owly pulls from real-time social conversations to generate fresh insights, effective strategies and social content that resonates with your customer audiences.

5. Data analytics

AI-powered data analytics tools help you quickly make sense of your sales and marketing data, without needing to be an analytics expert. AI agents can track hundreds of metrics, identify patterns in your customers’ behavior and give you tangible insights into which sales and marketing actions will drive the best results.

AI product example: Zoho Analytics is an AI-driven business intelligence and data analytics platform that’s designed to help businesses make sense of their data, without requiring a deep technical background. Zi, their AI Assistant, gives instant answers in the form of charts, reports and key performance indicators (KPIs).

These strategies provide less time spent on low-level sales and marketing tasks and more time to focus on your wider business strategy, talking to customers and working to develop your offerings. 

The following content was originally published by BOMA. We have updated some of this article for our readers.

Would your business still thrive, or would it suffer a catastrophic failure if you suddenly stepped away?

It’s tough to remove yourself from the day-to-day operations when you’re passionate and busy. However sudden accidents, illnesses, or family emergencies can – and will – happen and you need to be able to step back knowing your systems are robust enough to cope.

Build in resilience

For your business to work for you, you need to make yourself replaceable. Large corporations have plans in place to mitigate what’s known as ‘Key Person Risk’. But when you run a small entrepreneurial venture, who is the backup?

The more you can train and empower your team to perform the business’s essential daily functions without micromanagement, the closer you’ll be able to enjoy a lifestyle business.

Establish repeatable and scalable support infrastructure to run the daily operations and create a great team that you can lean on. Your staff need a common purpose – knowing why what they’re doing matters – as well as clear expectations around their roles. By creating a suitable work environment, where employees both individually and as a team are more efficient and likely to enjoy what they do, you’ll breathe easier knowing they have your back (and your business) in an emergency.

Finally, it’s important to know what the business looks like without you. An exit strategy is often thought of as the way to end a business — which it can be — but in best practice, it’s a plan that moves a business toward long-term goals and allows a smooth transition to a new phase. That may involve re-imagining business direction or leadership, keeping financially sustainable, or pivoting for challenges.

A fully formed exit strategy takes all business stakeholders, finances and operations into account and details all actions necessary to sell or close. Strong plans recognize the true value of a business and provide a foundation for future goals and new directions.

Top Tips:

1. No one is irreplaceable – Challenge yourself to step away for a week. Which systems fall over? Which procedures get left hanging? Which duties get ignored? Go cold turkey as a test case for the time you may have to leave your business in the hands of others.
2. Embrace innovation – Get systems that are simple, streamlined, effective and can be used by multiple key team members. Make sure anyone can log in and see exactly what’s needed for what reason at any time.
3. Recognize the value you’re creating – A business that doesn’t rely on its owner is worth a lot more when the time comes to sell or pass the reins to someone else.

Talk to our team about structuring your business to make it more reliable.

The following content was originally published by BOMA. We have updated some of this article for our readers.