Simple reminders about business

Last week New Zealand came out of alert level 4 lock down and we are now in alert level 3 and with some luck will continue moving through the levels to a stage where we can all have a sense of normality.

Over the last four weeks, the wave of information has been significant, updates upon updates, all of which have had large amounts of duplication (It was great that as a firm we went with a ‘simple, practical and easy to understand’ approach). Like everyone else the impact on how we do things, how we run our business, how we interact with our customers / our people has gone through a significant change as we move things online increasing our capacity and our capability to work from home and still make things happen. There is also some uncertainty and I thought to help (in my own little way) I would pen some points I think are relevant but also simple reminders about business.  

Entrepreneurial spirit – Don’t forget the entrepreneurial spirit that drove you to start your businesses in the first place. Remember when you first started, when cash was tight, customers were few, suppliers didn’t want to extend credit and in many cases you were working the long hours, up late at night or early in the morning. It is very much the same now and the energy that drove at the beginning will be the same energy you need to keep you going as you work towards getting the business back up and running. 

Plenty of help available – ask questions / ensure you understand the levels of help available. Banks / lawyers / accountants / other business advisors are generally running free webinars on issues that are topical. Get involved and ask questions, might also be an opportunity to get some specific feedback for free and ultimately help you make some decisions. At the moment, there appears to be a mixed feelings towards advisors. Although most are good, there is some questioning the credibility of advice, or background of those that give it. My response is that the advice comes from a good place. There is a genuine sense of unity within the business community to help, so leveraging off of this will be a benefit.

Practical steps – There are practical steps that you need to do and hopefully you would have already identified what resources you have available to do the things you need / want to do. You will however need to do a good level of planning / forecasting/ cost reviews. The main reason for this is so you know what parameters you can operate in. Knowing these parameters will help you make decisions about the options / levers you can pull if things that pan out as you expect i.e. level of refinancing or new debt you may want to take on without risking the business as a whole. This thought process can also be applied to operations (i.e. who is not productive / improving and needs to do more (or needs to be moved on), what assets / services are non performing and can be sold, what services / products sell well and should be focused on or whether projects need to be put off hold or accelerated to take advantage of a new opportunity i.e. a client of mine recently let me know that a 6 month conversion project was completed within 3 days (to a point where it is operational). A concept I have seen also is the ‘pandemic pivot’ which was the process of being able to change your business to adapt to the times. The obvious one being to operate remotely via digital transformation.  

Good businesses – One of our managing partners said it best when he said ‘ if you were a good business before the lock down there is nothing to say you cannot be a good business after the lock down’. I believe this is true and for most it will be these businesses that are proactive in its planning, have made the tough decisions early and are ready to weather the challenges whilst continuing to looking for the opportunities out there. Thinking about what I have been involved with as I believe RSM fits into that definition of good businesses and words like being pro-active, focusing on your core, checking in customers and keeping good levels of communication with your people have all helped keep the machine moving.

Resilience – I have been trying to find a little bit of this myself of late. Who better to look too than Richie McCaw. Although we remember him for his successes, he was also part of the 2007 rugby world cup which for most of us have forgotten (I seem to think it was more of what was missed i.e. the forward pass). I have enjoyed reading his book and what occurred around the time post that world cup. Not surprisingly, a big part of the ability to come out of that world cup cycle was the guidance provided by Gilbert Enoka (if you have heard his story, you can understand why his work is so revered). In essence, the focus required to push through that loss is not dissimilar to what we as a business community need to do to get through the next week / month / year.  

Pasifika based businesses – I wanted to finish by offering some words of encouragement to the pacifika business community. Although we are a small one, (at last count the estimated number is 1500) depending on who you talk to as some say it is higher. Although we often have a high sense of cultural patriotism and although we can in many we let our pride get the best of us. I would ask that we look at the opportunity to come under the umbrella of Pasifika and help one another. Speaking to a few business associations / membership organisations out there, the trouble is that the issues are wide ranging. My advice would be to make it simple. Break the long list down to smaller lists that you can tick off but keep on prioritising and keep on moving forward. In the years I have been back in New Zealand, I feel there is more prominent levels of expertise / knowledge around the table that can help explain / translate information into a way that you can understand. There is a lot out of assistance out there in terms of wage subsidy, regional business partner network grants, tax relief schemes, business finance guarantee schemes, small business loan schemes and industry specific grants i.e. creative NZ grants. Ensuring you understand what you are getting into and the impact on your business is important. Reach out to the likes of Pacific Business Trust, the Pacific hub, other business associations / networks such as members of the Pacific Island Chartered Accountants Network (PICAN) to start having those discussions. 

These thoughts were driven from discussions I have had, material I have read and although not new I thought summarising some simple points would be a useful read which I hope you can relate. If you need to reach out by all means do so, drop me a message and I will endeavor to do my best to help in the best way I can.

Fakaue lahi (thanks)