Last month, while PT Business coaching, I had the opportunity to attend an event in Melbourne with six of Australia’s most successful business owners who each shared their own inspirational journeys from the tough start-up days, all the way up to the international business juggernauts they are today. Over the next few weeks I want to share with you their best tips on SCALING your business, FAST growth and dominating the ONLINE space …I hope you like it!

Carolyn Creswell – founder of the $80 million Carman’s Muesli Empire

Melbourne based mother of 4, Carolyn Creswell bought Carman’s muesli for $1000 at the ripe old age of 18-year-old. Now 40, Carman’s is now exported to more than 30 countries around the world and landed Carolyn in the top 25 of BRW’s 2014 Young Rich.

 

Show amazing attention to detail.  

– People notice the little things. If you want to be world class, do an audit on your website, your flyers, your uniforms, your service and your product and be fussy. Constantly strive to get 1% better every day and make your product remarkable.

 

Touch things once

– One of the easiest ways to save time and reduce stress as your business grows, is to ‘touch things once and move on.’

– Practice chunking email response time to twice per day, so they don’t become an interruption. When you do check them, give yourself a limited time-frame like 30-60 minutes and fire back a 1-line response to internal questions that don’t require any more. Have discussions in person inside your business and use the phone for any discussions needed outside the business. All other emails can be deleted or delegated to someone on your team.

– Don’t take ownership for too much. Check something once and then empower others to manage your own area of expertise.

– The graceful NO. Learn to be ‘ok’ with saying NO to many of the endless request people have on your time. “Many of us don’t always have enough time to spend with our own family and friends, so don’t just give it away freely to strangers”.

 

Learn to solve problems and adapt  

Carolyn shared the story of a men’s barber who was almost run out of business selling $25 haircuts, when a new barber opened 3 doors down, with a big sign saying ‘Men’s Hair cuts $7.99’.

After suffering for long enough the more experienced, better quality barber that she knew simply responded with a new sign of his own, that read “we fix $7.99 haircuts…….and business returned to normal. ”

 

Choose a team for greatness 

Surround yourself with amazing people, who make life fun and force you to grow.

 

“Culture eats strategy for lunch, so invest into your people daily and create an environment where people want to come to work. We have a 10am meeting every day for a quick catch-up to discuss what happened yesterday and re-focus in on our no.1 project.

 

We all stop and eat lunch together, we give staff the day off for their birthday, we have POETS day which allows staff to leave 2hrs early, every 2nd Friday and we get their cars washed for them once a month.

Our Goal is to make staff love us and our managers soooo much, that they would follow us to our next business.”