Introducing Carwardins Match Report

Introduction

To everyone reading this, I would like to give a warm hello and welcome to the first issue of Carwardin’s Match Report.

This letter will contain a mixture of thoughts and articles which will talk about the worlds of high performance, sports, business, and life in general, along with what we can take away from these stories.

Because one thing you’ll discover reading this Newsletter is that I am passionate about people being successful. I want to see people doing what it takes to achieve excellence in their field of choice, impact the world and achieve happiness.

That’s why I created the Match Report.

I want to share these success stories, share my views and explore what I find interesting to encourage other people to find success in life.

My field of choice is business ownership. In this role, I put big decisions into the proper context and provide this perspective so owners and managers can take the necessary actions to make everyone happy.

Quote of the issue

“The more I practice, the luckier I get”

Gary Player.

I much prefer this line to ‘the harder I work, the luckier I get’ because it emphasises the importance of practice.

Practice is something that every athlete values.

You can see how important practice is to high-performing teams and star athletes. There is the legendary rant of NBA Hall of Famer Allen Iverson, a rant so good that Ted Lasso had to use it in an episode. There was also the attitude of Michael Jordan, who treated every practice as life and death, as it ensured that everyone followed a standard and could perform under pressure when it counted.

To me, practice is about preparation, about being deliberate about what you are targeting and dedicating your time to.

Simply spending your days doing something generic is often unhelpful or, in some cases, ultimately detrimental. Real practice and preparation need to be specific.

Targeted. Measured.

It should build discipline, technique, and consistency throughout everything you do.

After all, there’s a big difference between going to the driving range for hours and hours vs playing good golf.

However, such practice should also encourage innovation and trying different things. After all, an old adage goes along the lines of

‘never try a shot in a game that you haven’t practised at some stage.’

You can see that with athletes like Tiger Woods, who would dedicate hours to specific shots that he would later play at tournaments, such as for Amen Corner at the Masters.

Practise may be repetitive, but it will build your technique, test your boundaries and creativity, and build consistency.

So, remember, practise with a purpose and use your time wisely.

What’s Happening in the World?

Today, most financial conversations revolve around inflation and the rising cost of living. At times like these, our ability to practice and prepare is tested and challenged.

We will see if we really understand our delivery times, product and service margins and stock/product costings. The people who run service businesses will be tested on whether they know the connection between salaries and wages, charge-out rates, utilisation and recoveries.

After all, if we know costs will change, can’t we look ahead and find ways to minimise the damage and take advantage of the situation?

In these situations, those that unprepared will fall behind and go by the ‘rules of thumb’ and work things out after the fact.

Those forewarned and prepared can get ahead. They can make more informed decisions and choices about what they commit to. They can also have the necessary conversations with their customers and suppliers. They are the people who will have an opportunity to ensure their survival and recovery, even before the situation hits.

Ultimately, these periods test a business’ logistics, costing/pricing and communication with its customers and suppliers, a business’s owners’ quality and speed of information and their decision-making skills.

You need suitable systems and procedures to structure your management team properly. Get that right, and you can survive and, ideally, prosper.

Getting the Foundations of Change Right

All of my work revolves around some form of ownership discussion.

My work revolves around what owners want to do with their businesses. I don’t focus on keeping business as usual. Instead, I focus on how to make some form of significant change. That change could be a substantial growth to meet value objectives or introducing other owners and managers into the business to increase capacity; reduce risk, and help with succession and exit planning. I could even aid in buying businesses or selling the current business.

As you can see, my work might mean challenging the norms of what has made the owners and their businesses successful.

That’s why it is essential to have the discipline, diversity, creativity and innovation needed to take consistent actions that build to preferred outcomes.

Here are some of the things that I focus on:

Exit Planning

A significant challenge in selling a business is creating a consistent message and discipline throughout the organisation.

Clear roles, systems, and responsibilities are essential for this process.

I need to ensure that owners can replicate the processes that lead to their success and that there is a training regiment to transfer these skills to others.

Practice and preparation don’t guarantee outcomes. After all, requiring everything to be perfect before you start typically means never starting. But a good combination of preparation, competition then the reflection will get the best results over an extended period. So, the more we focus on getting the foundations right, the more helpful it can be for the actual game.

Another critical success factor is an organisational chart where everyone understands what is expected of them individually and how they fit into the team and are supported by it, regardless of their place in the hierarchy. Everyone, even the owner, CEO, and management must know their position to their team members.

All of this is challenging, but it is critical to do if you are going to make progress.

Sale Processes

Sale processes are the same too.

Sure, you could go straight into a sale process. But do you know what is needed for success, and have you evaluated what happens once the sale is complete?

If you’re not careful, it could be a false start – instead of concluding a quick deal, the outcome is an extended sale process drawn out.

Those who have prepared in advance are better positioned to take advantage of an opportunity.

That’s why I make sure to test the water, find the ways you can structure a sale to accommodate the owners and keep them informed regarding the decisions that we make.

Making our Lives Better

As a regular participant in the CAANZ’s mentor programme, I am interested in how people can advance their careers and lives.

For me, career development follows the same principles as practice and preparation. People need to have a clear understanding of their role and their place in the team.

People might not have access to ‘on-the-job’ training, but there needs to be the right balance between practice and preparation to perform their job under pressure when required (not that I am an advocate for the Michael Jordan school of hard knocks!).

What can we learn from

Scott Dixon... You’ve all probably heard of him.

If you haven’t, let me tell you exactly who Scott Dixon is.

He is one of New Zealand’s most successful professional racing drivers and has won the Indy Car Series Championship six times.

Some of the highlights of his career include:

• An unheard degree of loyalty in professional racing, demonstrated by driving for the same team – Target Chip Ganassi Racing - for 21 years.
• Winning at least one race a year for the last 18 years, a remarkable success over a long period.
• Being the second-winningest driver of all time as the winner of 53 Indy car races.
• Alongside his six championships, he has two 2nds, six 3rds and three 4ths. This means that he only finished outside the top 4 in four of the last twenty seasons.
• The two-time New Zealand Sportsman of the Year (2008 and 2013) and a four-time finalist for the position.

Motorsport is incredibly good at getting talent overseas. At a young age, all the top drivers compete and travel overseas to test themselves against the best.

Scott Dixon was no different, receiving support from a syndicate of NZ backers and moving to the States as an 18-year-old in 1999. The rest, as they say, is history.

If you’ve seen his movie, Born Racer, you will know he had a big crash that year in the 2017 Indy 500. Amazingly, he was still in the car the following week despite being hobbled from the accident. Not only that, he showed amazing focus, finishing second as if nothing had happened.

IMHO Dixon’s story is about excellence, consistency, professionalism and the ability to move on to the next race.

The biggest takeaway from Dixon and his story is his ability to maximise outcomes from any situation.

After all, wins are great, but you don’t always have a car good enough to win, or luck might not go your way. But turning a 17th-place start into a top 10 helps more than a DNF. Turning 8th place into 4th or 5th makes a difference in the points. And at the end of the season, it’s all about the points you accumulate– as much from the hard graft top 10s as from the easy wins.

What I’d like to ask Scott Dixon: What do you now make of your 2004 F1 test drive and F1?

-Tim Herbert