May 9, 2024 • 28 mins
Welcome to the Profit Cash Growth podcast where, in this engaging episode, we delve into the intriguing parallels between fitness training and building a successful business. In this surprising exchange, we underscore the importance of maintaining consistency in both the gym and business settings, drawing upon the concept of progressive overload evident in fitness. The narrative delves deep into the value of having strategic business approaches set in place, akin to thought-out gym workouts. Furthermore, we broach on the often overlooked necessity of addressing weak points, drawing parallels between 'business injuries' and our personal inclinations to avoid strenuous gym routines.
Imprinting the crucial importance of technique, we expand on how perfecting your business strategy or gym workout can yield maximum benefits. Our conversation brings in examples from sports and fitness, venturing into our personal experiences with weightlifting regimens, archery lessons, and even heart rate tracking using MyZone. We extend this comparison into the business realm, illustrating the significant role of technique and skill in achieving unprecedented growth.
An additional focal point we address is tracking. Much like how MyZone eliminates guesswork during workouts by providing real-time data on effort levels, tracking business metrics provides insight into performance. Finally, we emphasise how success, whether in the gym or business, is not about isolated efforts but a learning journey. Constantly testing, learning, adjusting, and upskilling play a pivotal role in flourishing businesses.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This week on the podcast, can going to the gym and running a business really
be that similar? We'll find out.
Welcome to the Profit Cash Growth podcast. This is the podcast for six and seven
figure business owners who are looking to grow a financially successful business.
My co-host Claire Hancock is a finance director, chartered accountant and entrepreneur.
(00:21):
And every week I'll be exploring guidance and frameworks designed to help you
increase your profits, improve your cash flow and grow your business.
Right then, Claire, now we're all quavered up. Ready for this week's podcast?
I didn't eat quavers, though, did I? I had these really low-fat cardboard-tasting
things, but yeah, I would have liked to have eaten quavers.
Anyway, I've got a really serious question for you. Can I ask you,
(00:44):
what are you doing for World Bee Day on the 20th of May?
Well, I didn't know it was World Bee Day, but bees are... People think you're
saying World Bee Day, like a bidet. No, it's not.
Not for cleaning your bottom, no. World is in buzzy bee day, yeah? Yeah.
What a random thing. There's a day for everything now, isn't there?
But bees in particular, they are the cornerstone of our nature, aren't they?
(01:04):
I wasn't expecting this big sell about bees.
I just was like, I saw it in a magazine. I didn't know there was World Bee Day. But what's your plans?
You can buy some honey. Do you know what? I bloody love honey.
And I would say for anybody who goes and buys their honey from the supermarket, scrap it.
Never buy that crap ever again.
Go to a proper farm shop, an artisan bee honey place, and you can taste the difference.
(01:30):
It is like chalk and cheese. The stuff in the supermarkets is just basically water and sugar.
Whereas when you go and you get proper honey, you can really taste the difference
in the types of flowers that are actually in the environment. It's staggering.
And do you know what? For a well-spoken Southern girl, your language is gutter.
Is there crap in there? A bloody in there? I've noticed as of last week,
your language is getting worse and worse each week.
(01:51):
We're going to be dropping the F-bomb in a few weeks' time, aren't we?
And this podcast is labelled as clean, so you need to tidy your language up, I'm afraid.
In the words of Simon, enough of that shit chat, because I have never been more
excited to do a podcast than today.
I think the world of the gym and business collide and they are my two favorite
(02:12):
topics to talk about so simon do a fancy little intro so we can crack on with
us well we need to do the news first so let's do the news,
So this week's news story, you're going to talk about Thames Water.
This was on the Rest Is Money podcast and the Financial Times recently.
And it was just really a shocking revelation, really, wasn't it?
(02:35):
When I heard this, I almost fell off my chair. Ironically, I was actually in
the gym listening to this podcast.
The Rest Is Money, they were talking about the water companies and whether it
was right to privatise them or not.
That aside, they listed some staggering statistics, which I then also read in the Financial Times.
And they said that of all of the pipes and the water network that the different
(02:56):
water companies have got, Thames Water estimates that it doesn't know where 30% of its pipes are.
And Southern Water said it doesn't know where 40% of its pipes are.
And I just thought, what?
As a business, could you imagine having assets and you just don't know where 40% of them are?
It's madness. So this really resonated.
(03:19):
Well, it sort of had a lightbulb moment. with this because obviously i've heard i've heard
about the a lot about the water companies but i don't really follow it
i'm too busy so when you told me that the fundamental
issue with this like you know the under-maintained waterworks
is just the simple fact that 40 percent of it they don't even
know where they are so therefore there's no maintenance plan in place
so therefore you know things are just falling apart because they're not being
(03:40):
looked after it's like staggering i i lost for words with that but really also
just fascinating yeah it is i mean in their defense they did say They say that
when they took over the water system in 1989 from the government,
there was no mapping then.
So the government worked on the same basis and they said the cost of doing it would be prohibitive.
Government has a blame for this one. So when it was in public ownership...
(04:02):
That's that was where the issue was one with actually
having the mapping and the assets is that what you're saying yeah because obviously
it's like victorian systems that have been adapted and extended and
you know every time a new estate's built they put new waterworks in and things
like that but what i found interesting as people that buy a lot of property
how do they do this in the conveyancing yeah i was just thinking that yeah because
we paid a lot of money for certain properties to have like searches and things
(04:24):
like that and it turns out that maybe Maybe 40% of the pipes might not be there.
So, yeah, I just thought as a business model, how can you run a business like this?
You know, if you don't know where 40% of your infrastructure is,
you don't know what state it's in and therefore what maintenance is needed,
what the cost could be of that.
You know, I think back to my days of working in, you know, infrastructure and
(04:47):
manufacturing and stuff, a key part of that was maintaining it.
In the long run, if you maintained it and did repetitive maintenance,
it kept your longer term costs down.
And it's no wonder that the water companies are in such financial dire straits
if they simply can't maintain their infrastructure because they don't know where
it is. It's bonkers, absolutely bonkers.
Amazing. Well, how not to run a business, that's the new story of this week, yeah?
(05:11):
Certainly one to watch, any utility companies. Are they going to take them back
into public ownership, do you think, with the Labour government? Is that the next step?
Well, maybe this is a podcast for another time, But I think,
you know, 2025 will be a crunch point for pretty much every water company.
All of them will run out of money in 2025. So there's either going to have to
be some sort of government bailout or they have to be privatised.
(05:34):
Sorry, taken out of privatisation.
Born to the state, yeah. Yeah, I'm not quite sure which I think is the best,
a government bailout or if we buy them back. Who knows? I don't know.
Anyway, let's move on to this week's deep dive.
So, in this week, interesting topic. We realise, we are gym goers,
(05:56):
aren't we, Claire? You, perhaps, even more so than me.
And we started to realise there are quite some similarities to gym...
The advancements that you can get in the gym and the advancements that you can get in business.
So we thought it would be a fun thing to do to try and overlay those two and
see what the correlations are.
I love the gym. I have lived and breathed the gym. If anybody asked me what
(06:19):
my number one passion is, I would say it was sports.
And by far, I am somebody that likes to get in the gym and do what people would
say is called grunt work.
So some of those like strongman heavy lifting style things and like CrossFit.
Olympic weightlifting, doing anything like that really I love
and Simon you're a bit of a late bloomer you're not
really into sports that much but over the last
(06:40):
few years you have got into it more partly because I forced
it upon you but now you have learned to love it a little bit haven't you
well I said I said on our podcast last week that health without
health there is no wealth and the reality is is
that you know as you're getting older you need to look after yourself
so begrudgingly three four times
a week I go to the gym and I do my thing I get
(07:01):
into my routine of what that is I try very
hard not to get injured which is a big problem as
you get older is if you push yourself too hard you very easily get
injured and then you're out out in the gym for months on end and my biggest
fear is always just being like knocked out of the gym for months on end and
then you can't do anything so it is a difficult a difficult
time for me to walk I don't want
(07:22):
to spoil it for the viewers because it is one of the things we'll talk
about with the six crossovers between the gym world and the
business as well but as i keep saying to you simon it's not just about
what you do in the hour in the gym if you do no mobility work
no stretching no things like yoga all of those
types of things outside of the gym then you probably are
going to get injured in the gym so yeah unfortunately you've
(07:43):
only got yourself to blame it's a time thing isn't it it's having that time
i mean to be able to dedicate three four hours a week of your time to to doing
the gym as it is but you could easily put the the same amount of time into all
of the ancillary stuff around that and it's just difficult to find all that
time isn't it especially when you're running a business so.
But I am the kind of person that doesn't feel myself if I can't work out.
(08:05):
So anyway, me and Simon are going to give you our rundown of the things that
we believe the gym world teaches us about being in business.
Great. So if you don't mind, I'm going to take number one just because I'm a
big believer in this one. And that is consistency.
Consistency, consistency, consistency. see and anybody listening to
this that's been in business for more than five years will know that
(08:29):
everything is about being uber consistent in
what you do so i mean i talked about just simply showing
up to the gym that's the starting point isn't it every workout is
better than no workout that's the that's the mantra i live
by any workout is better than no workout that can
be self-destructive as well if you're not careful but um
that's a different it's a different thing but yes
(08:50):
absolutely step one is you know just going to the
gym three four times a week whatever it is i think if you
go three times a week and you do the right things in the gym and you do that
for a long period of time you know indefinitely you know you're going to feel
gains from that and i think exactly the same thing can be said in in your business
you know if you pick up the phone to you know to new leads three four times
(09:12):
a week rather than not and you do that absolutely consistently,
you will have an ongoing pipeline of new business just dropping into your business,
you know, while you sleep at night. It just happens.
I think we've all seen as well, those sort of get fit, get ripped,
get skinny kind of adverts that some personal trainers sell online.
(09:32):
And don't get me wrong, some of them do work. They're horrendous.
You'll be in like spinach and working out for like four hours every day.
But if you've got the right body type and your
starting point is not too bad you'll probably get some results but
what we're talking about when we say consistency is like sustained
results so if you do one of these like 12 week boot camps if your starting point
isn't too bad you might come out of it looking ripped but the minute you stop
(09:55):
you're going to go back to zero again absolutely but if you're five years in
you know we know now that if we go on holiday for a long weekend or something
we won't go to the gym But that...
That week or like you know five seven days
off of exercise actually does us good whereas when
you're right at the start if you take a week off your you know
(10:17):
your body blitz boot camp or your buff workout then actually that that seven
days of no exercise is going to kill you so when you're five years in yeah you
know you can take a bit of time off and still not go backwards and everything
just seems a little bit easier so consistency is really key but also the length
of time like Like realistically,
it's probably like three to five years to change your body and to change everything
(10:40):
around you in your life and to reap the rewards of it.
Yeah. So consistency is definitely the first one. Yeah.
So the second one is about constantly challenging yourself and constantly pushing for the next thing.
In the fitness world, this is known as a progressive overload or hypertrophy.
And basically what that means is that if you can lift 10 kg today,
(11:01):
then tomorrow you need to try 11.
And the next day you need to try 12 and you need to keep pushing those weights
up because you will only keep getting stronger if you keep pushing yourself
and i think this is something we forget about in business particularly when
it comes to you know we were having a look at your numbers the other day actually
simon when we're looking at your marketing spend,
and your marketing spend over the years has consistently gone up in line with
(11:23):
your sales yes it's like you've got you should just look at it as a to get bigger
percentage of the turning so
So if you get it to a place where you keep spending the same on marketing,
but your turnover is growing by 50%, well, guess what?
Your turnover is going to start to slow down because your marketing spend as
a proportion of the size of your business is no longer representative of it.
(11:43):
You've got to keep pushing yourself. What you can do today, you need to try
something different tomorrow.
You need to go into tomorrow thinking that you might fail or that you might
not be able to do it and keep challenging yourself. I think...
Firstly, it also keeps you engaged and motivated with things as well.
If you've got a new goal to push for, I think that's important.
Absolutely. I think it's, you know, this is also very applicable to education and learning.
(12:08):
And it is that thing of, you know, just every week, just say to yourself that
I'm going to do something this week that I've never done before.
Because if you do something you've never done before, then you are going to learn a new skill.
You are going to come across something different or go and talk to somebody
that you would have never spoke to before.
For because you will it will open the door and you will you
will move forward with it I did this in lockdown actually when you
(12:30):
know lockdown seemed to go on for like what felt like about 10 years in
the end but at the very start of lockdown when the gyms shut I
decided that I was going to do one thing every day
for an entire month so I did like 100 sit-ups I
think I started in April actually I did like 100 sit-ups every day in
April and by the time we got to the end of April I had abs of
steel and then I was like oh I'm going to do 100 push-ups every day for
(12:50):
the month of may and combining that consistency with
that constantly pushing yourself was really really quite
eye-opening because at the start i could
probably do like eight to ten push-ups
on my first set and then i would have to stop but by the end of it
i was getting up to like 30 40 push-ups before
i had to stop so in that really short period of
(13:12):
time you notice just by constantly pushing yourself that
little bit more the gains that you make yeah it's so easy to
just stay within your comfort zone and this that's what this is all about it's about
just just you know not not being that uncomfortable you're
constantly you know out of your depth but
actually you're just doing little incremental things every
now and then just to put yourself out the comfort zone and
(13:32):
just learn something new so constantly challenging yourself
so the next one i actually heard this.
On somebody else's podcast when they were talking about and they described it as
reps and sets and i really liked that you know when you approach
the gym we tend to follow a methodology called
five by five so if anybody's really into their gym they'll probably recognize that
but it basically means that you do five reps and you
(13:54):
do that five times so if you're doing squats you'll do five
lots of five squats so five reps and five sets but
the reason why i did this in there was about having strategy and purpose so
every time we go into the gym we're following a workout we're following a methodology
we're following a plan we know what we're going to do we're not just turning
up at the gym and winging it every day I mean I'm certainly not I think Simon
(14:16):
probably is more easy but.
And we don't just turn up and wing it. We know what is what we're going to do.
And therefore, what we're doing is always intentional and we're doing it to achieve an outcome.
And I think we can learn a lot of that in business because, you know, we all have it.
Days when you kind of sit down at your desk in the morning and you do a bit
(14:37):
of admin and you push a few bits of paper around and you answer some emails
and you might do a bit of social media and then you might have a phone call with a customer.
You get to the end of the day and you think, what on earth have I done with
my time? Whereas if you approach every day, every week, every hour with intention.
Yeah, be absolutely intentional with your time.
Yeah. I think this one, you've got to be careful with this one because this
one can encroach on the one before, which is you could get yourself into a really
(15:00):
good routine where you never break out of that comfort zone.
So the two, this is actually why growing a business is so difficult because
you actually, you know, the core things that grow businesses is actually being
very boring, very consistent and very the same.
But actually there needs to be that move forward at
all times as well and actually making sure that one doesn't conflict
(15:21):
the other is is a skill in itself yeah definitely excellent
so next we've got do the
things that you hate so these are your weak
points if you don't address them you get injured and this is
you basically having a go at me about not stretching i just realized
what i'm reading here i'm like ah is that what you mean claire yeah
i mean we know too well in the gym or any sports
(15:44):
you do you know you're going for a bit of a run in the morning and you feel a
little niggle in your hamstring or something and you ignore it and it becomes a
bigger and bigger problem whereas you know if you just the
first time you felt that niggle if you just realized that you got that niggle
because there's a muscle imbalance somewhere or a little weakness or something
like that that you just did a few extra exercises or a few extra stretches to
address and nip it in the bud right away so our bodies are very good at telling
(16:07):
us what our weaknesses are and we don't like them.
Inherently as people, we like to do the things that are easy and the things that we enjoy.
So if you are avoiding something in your business or in the gym,
it's probably because you're not very good at it.
And therefore you need to learn to be better at it. Yeah, absolutely.
You can't love everything.
There's a great Jeff Bezos quote that if you enjoy 50% of your job,
(16:32):
then you're doing as well as anybody else can expect to do.
And his point in that is that there will always be, no matter what you do,
where you are, what level you're at, there'll always be half of everything you do.
You don't enjoy there isn't something that you really want to
do but guess what tough luck it just is part of
part of that journey to to get to where you want to get
(16:53):
to and i think you know he sort of put that put that you know across in that
way i'm not great at this if i'm really honest because the more you know it
depends what the motivation is and i think the more you have choice in life
the more difficult it is to continue to do the things that you hate because
you have a choice not to do yeah you can give them to
(17:13):
somebody else to do or how you get over that yeah that procrastination i mean
it's really interesting because i watch a lot of crossfit and there's a very
famous crossfitter called matt fraser who has been like world's fittest man
i think like four or five times anyway when he's in competition like nobody
can touch him he just like runs away and is clearly going to win the competition
right from day one and when.
He's always asked what makes him successful is he says i do
(17:36):
the things i hate like if i'm not good at something then
I do it until I'm good at it because it's the only way to overcome
those weaknesses and you know I must
say actually I've got a bit better at this I have
even been doing like some cold calling this week to try and drum up a bit of business
launched a new product and things got a bit quiet and
I never thought that I would do that
(17:56):
because I'm not gonna lie it sounds a bit dirty doesn't it cold
calling is that what you did Claire well they
were not entirely aren't you a chartered accountant you cold called
well yeah but everybody knows when you own a business actually
what you should be doing in sales and marketing absolutely right so being facetious
yeah good on you it's not easy it's not great
it's absolutely necessary and i probably sucked at it makes a difference i probably
(18:18):
sucked at it as well that's the reality i thought you were brilliant oh thanks
simon but i'm gonna keep doing it because actually no one's gonna come to you
and no one's gonna exactly but i was i was bad at it because i haven't done
it before and And if I do it more, I'll get better at it.
And it won't be my weakness anymore yeah if you think about
the amount of things now that you do with your eyes shut and you
(18:39):
just have to constantly remind yourself could i you know could i do this originally
and the answer would always be no you couldn't and the second time you do it
you get a bit better and the tenth time you do it you get a bit better you know
cool you introduced me to camera i couldn't i couldn't use that at all very
quickly got to use that because i was loving the rewards and the results that
it gave me so brilliant and that leads us nicely into our
next one, which is technique,
(19:01):
technique, technique over everything.
And I think I've seen in the gym so many times, you know, squatting is a classic one.
The form on most, I'd say like 99% of people's squats is a wonder that they're
not injuring themselves,
but they're certainly not getting the benefits out of that workout and the effort
(19:23):
that they're putting into doing that movement that they should because they
just have no idea what they're doing.
And I think we see this a lot in business you know people
do activities without really understanding
what they're trying to do they don't have skill in it and they
don't get the results they want and i think pay-per-click is a really good
example of this or like paid for ads or marketing in general you know people
are putting so much content on social media is it giving them any benefit well
(19:46):
actually no because they don't have any idea what they're doing they don't have
the technique they don't have the skill required to do the tasks that they're
trying to do you're absolutely right and And I mean,
a good example of that in the sales world is things like sales scripting.
You know, people don't call you up from the big companies and just randomly start speaking to you.
They have highly tailored scripts that are constantly evolving and constantly getting better.
(20:11):
They are fighting in what I call the 0.1% for incremental benefit there.
And that is about constantly improving their sales technique.
And exactly what you said about marketing as well, that constant test and measure,
that constant improvement.
Should we change the copy this week? Should we change the picture next week?
And they are fighting in the world of technique, I would say.
And I can remember I had probably been squatting my body weight.
(20:35):
For about two years and I had a
30 kilos in you yeah I bloody wish I had a
PT like a weightlifting coach and we focused
on technique for nearly two years before I
squatted correctly and the first time I felt
that movement it was like nothing I'd
(20:57):
ever felt before and I think when you get it right
the benefits that i got from that one squat probably
outweighed the thousand that i'd done before by far
just because i had the right technique i i got
exactly the right benefit in the muscles that i intended and i got exactly the
outcome that i desired and that is what technique and skill gets you so if you're
not if you don't have skill in things don't try and get somebody to help you
(21:21):
get a specialist to help you get better get better do whatever you need to do
to get better learn learn the skill yourself upskill yourself or pay somebody else to hey Hey,
another good example of this is the archery that we've just done.
And the guy, you know, we did it, we did archery at the weekend for the first time.
And the guy's biggest, the biggest takeaway I took from the archery was he,
he was talking about the stance, the positioning and the technique.
(21:44):
And he said, if you do nothing else, but focus on that, that will be 95% of where the dart goes.
And it was just interesting that he said, you know, if you can be consistent
with that technique, then that, you know, that will give you the rewards you
want in the, in the shot. So another good life example, I think. So next one.
Big one for you, Claire. Track everything. Track everything.
(22:07):
So I mean, like as an accountant, I feel like this is where the worlds collide.
And this is just like Christmas for me. But I have something called a MyZone.
And a MyZone is almost like a little bit like having an ECG.
It tracks your heart rate and tells you exactly how much effort you're putting
in, what your heart rate's doing, whether you can push harder.
And i really like my zone because on
(22:29):
those days where i'm feeling like
a little bit lethargic and i think oh i can't
really be bothered with this there's nowhere to hide when that
bloody fitness tracker tells me that i'm not pushing you know
when i should be in like like 80 heart rate and
i'm down to 60 you know where you are the numbers tell me
where you are black and white what's happening how much
(22:49):
effort i put in how many calories i've burned how long i've been going for there's
no hiding from it on your my zone if i had to put this
into a business contents i would say that if i went
to the gym and i didn't have my my zone on it would be the equivalent
of me receiving my my annual accounts from my
accountant three months after my year end to try and understand how i did that
financial year oh simon i've drummed this into you so that is how i would feel
(23:12):
without my equivalent of running your business without the number i feel with
my my zone is that i get monthly management accounts and i check those management
accounts actually with a my zone i'm I'm getting real-time information,
so it's even better. I'm probably getting flash forecasting.
You're not going by gut. You don't feel like you're working out really hard
when actually in reality you're just a bit lethargic today.
And other times, you know, sometimes I felt like, oh, I can keep pushing, I can keep pushing.
(23:33):
And actually I've been at like max heart rate and if I keep going,
I'm probably going to kill myself. So, yeah. Yeah.
Absolutely track everything track your sleep
track your food track your workouts track everything track
everything and track your numbers in your business most importantly
everyone so and the final one we've got on here is it's not an hour in the gym
(23:56):
it's a lifestyle and what you do outside the gym that is as important and business
is the same i think what you're trying to say here claire is that you immerse
yourself in the business world of the gym world and you you will get results.
So, you know, in the business world, if you immerse yourself with other,
you know, other entrepreneurs, other education, YouTube, podcasts,
all those type of thing, read some great books, then you're going to get better at business.
(24:20):
And it's the same at the gym, isn't it? Yeah, I think those like fitness influences
that we see on the TV and people in magazines and professional sports people
in particular, you know, I think if you've ever.
Watched any sort of documentary about elite athletes, like they don't just rock up to the
gym you know Usain Bolt doesn't just practice running for a couple of hours
a day and then he's really good at it he eats breathes and sleeps it he has
(24:41):
a coach telling him exactly what he needs to do to get that millisecond faster
he's got professional nutritionists putting the right,
food into him he doesn't drink he sleeps
well he does lots of mobility he does lots of stretching he
does lots of active recovery you know his whole entire life will
be about making him better at sports and I think this transfers into business
so well and probably is one of
(25:04):
the things that makes me appreciate you the most Simon is that we immerse our
entire life in business we eat breathe and sleep business we watch business
tv we listen to podcasts together we talk business in the car we've got family
members who've got their own businesses like everything we do is about.
Be more knowledgeable in the world of business and the gym and the gym yeah
(25:26):
learning the lessons i don't know you're talking more about we're a little bit
weighted like a seesaw maybe a bit more business over this side a bit more gym
over that side and vice versa but overall it you know you know we are surrounding
ourselves with it and immersing i keep you healthy and you keep me rich.
And together we keep each other happy indeed indeed well i hope you've uh you've
(25:47):
seen just how close to going to the gym, running a business is.
And I think, you know, you can use this across anything in your, in your life.
And, you know, effectively there's one core message here and that's nothing happens by accident.
Yeah. And I think a lot of people believe that business, you know,
you just need to hustle and work hard in business.
(26:08):
And I think that I probably learned this the most by going to the gym in the
early days is I worked my ass off.
And I also worked my ass off in the early days of my business and it didn't
get me the results I wanted because I wasn't doing the right thing.
Combining the hard work with all of these things that we've put forward, those key elements.
Intention, strategy, technique, consistency and then hard work and I think that's
(26:31):
probably the biggest lesson that I've learned both in the fitness world but
more importantly in businesses that hard work alone isn't what it takes.
Indeed. Well thanks for those insightful comparisons to business in the gym
this week Claire. Let's move on to this week's Profit Cash Growth Extra.
So this week on Profit Cash Growth Extra, yes, I just want you to take your
(26:53):
insurance premium through Confused.com.
Can I just say the irony that we've just spoke for, what, like 20 minutes about
going to the gym and living this like super healthy lifestyle.
People will be like dying to see us thinking that we are like a god and goddesses.
Our bodies must be so amazing if we do this much gym stuff.
(27:14):
But lo and behold, Simon is about to bring you a story all about Greg's. It's only the coffee.
Anyway, Confuse.com. If you order insurance through Confuse.com.
The range of incentives that you get back now is insane.
I mean, my car insurance was literally a few hundred quid, and I've got a free
Gregg's coffee every month for 12 months through the Confuse.com app.
(27:37):
All I do is I show them the app, scan it, and I get one of their coffees every
month, which is fantastic for me because I buy coffee from Gregg's,
you know, four or five times a month anyway.
So that's a saving for me. So I'm very happy with that. but not only
that you can pick another incentive and there was a range
of them on there but the one i picked was a 20 pound gift voucher for
sainsbury's as well which is right in front of us
(27:57):
there claire not yet spent but i'm just waiting to go and get my sushi from
do you know what i was about to say the same thing i think we'll go and get sushi yeah but
seriously check it out confused.com insane how good
some of these incentives are getting now and i know it's all about you know
hooking you in but do you know what as long as you're not overpaying for
the insurance and you've done the checks and you're happy that it's the right thing
why not get a few of these incentives on on top of it as well
(28:19):
so thanks for joining us for this week's podcast hope you've enjoyed
the uh interesting mix of gym and business
as always make sure that you go to profitcashgrowth.com to
check out claire's uh claire's company check out the youtube channel and watch
something on there you can see on facebook instagram and uh if you'd like a
free business review of your business finances please drop claire an email claire
(28:41):
at profitcashgrowth.com and we'll see you for another riveting episode next week.
This week on the podcast, can going to the gym and running a business really
be that similar? We'll find out.
Welcome to the Profit Cash Growth podcast. This is the podcast for six and seven
figure business owners who are looking to grow a financially successful business.
My co-host Claire Hancock is a finance director, chartered accountant and entrepreneur.
(00:21):
And every week I'll be exploring guidance and frameworks designed to help you
increase your profits, improve your cash flow and grow your business.
Right then, Claire, now we're all quavered up. Ready for this week's podcast?
I didn't eat quavers, though, did I? I had these really low-fat cardboard-tasting
things, but yeah, I would have liked to have eaten quavers.
Anyway, I've got a really serious question for you. Can I ask you,
(00:44):
what are you doing for World Bee Day on the 20th of May?
Well, I didn't know it was World Bee Day, but bees are... People think you're
saying World Bee Day, like a bidet. No, it's not.
Not for cleaning your bottom, no. World is in buzzy bee day, yeah? Yeah.
What a random thing. There's a day for everything now, isn't there?
But bees in particular, they are the cornerstone of our nature, aren't they?
(01:04):
I wasn't expecting this big sell about bees.
I just was like, I saw it in a magazine. I didn't know there was World Bee Day. But what's your plans?
You can buy some honey. Do you know what? I bloody love honey.
And I would say for anybody who goes and buys their honey from the supermarket, scrap it.
Never buy that crap ever again.
Go to a proper farm shop, an artisan bee honey place, and you can taste the difference.
(01:30):
It is like chalk and cheese. The stuff in the supermarkets is just basically water and sugar.
Whereas when you go and you get proper honey, you can really taste the difference
in the types of flowers that are actually in the environment. It's staggering.
And do you know what? For a well-spoken Southern girl, your language is gutter.
Is there crap in there? A bloody in there? I've noticed as of last week,
your language is getting worse and worse each week.
(01:51):
We're going to be dropping the F-bomb in a few weeks' time, aren't we?
And this podcast is labelled as clean, so you need to tidy your language up, I'm afraid.
In the words of Simon, enough of that shit chat, because I have never been more
excited to do a podcast than today.
I think the world of the gym and business collide and they are my two favorite
(02:12):
topics to talk about so simon do a fancy little intro so we can crack on with
us well we need to do the news first so let's do the news,
So this week's news story, you're going to talk about Thames Water.
This was on the Rest Is Money podcast and the Financial Times recently.
And it was just really a shocking revelation, really, wasn't it?
(02:35):
When I heard this, I almost fell off my chair. Ironically, I was actually in
the gym listening to this podcast.
The Rest Is Money, they were talking about the water companies and whether it
was right to privatise them or not.
That aside, they listed some staggering statistics, which I then also read in the Financial Times.
And they said that of all of the pipes and the water network that the different
(02:56):
water companies have got, Thames Water estimates that it doesn't know where 30% of its pipes are.
And Southern Water said it doesn't know where 40% of its pipes are.
And I just thought, what?
As a business, could you imagine having assets and you just don't know where 40% of them are?
It's madness. So this really resonated.
(03:19):
Well, it sort of had a lightbulb moment. with this because obviously i've heard i've heard
about the a lot about the water companies but i don't really follow it
i'm too busy so when you told me that the fundamental
issue with this like you know the under-maintained waterworks
is just the simple fact that 40 percent of it they don't even
know where they are so therefore there's no maintenance plan in place
so therefore you know things are just falling apart because they're not being
(03:40):
looked after it's like staggering i i lost for words with that but really also
just fascinating yeah it is i mean in their defense they did say They say that
when they took over the water system in 1989 from the government,
there was no mapping then.
So the government worked on the same basis and they said the cost of doing it would be prohibitive.
Government has a blame for this one. So when it was in public ownership...
(04:02):
That's that was where the issue was one with actually
having the mapping and the assets is that what you're saying yeah because obviously
it's like victorian systems that have been adapted and extended and
you know every time a new estate's built they put new waterworks in and things
like that but what i found interesting as people that buy a lot of property
how do they do this in the conveyancing yeah i was just thinking that yeah because
we paid a lot of money for certain properties to have like searches and things
(04:24):
like that and it turns out that maybe Maybe 40% of the pipes might not be there.
So, yeah, I just thought as a business model, how can you run a business like this?
You know, if you don't know where 40% of your infrastructure is,
you don't know what state it's in and therefore what maintenance is needed,
what the cost could be of that.
You know, I think back to my days of working in, you know, infrastructure and
(04:47):
manufacturing and stuff, a key part of that was maintaining it.
In the long run, if you maintained it and did repetitive maintenance,
it kept your longer term costs down.
And it's no wonder that the water companies are in such financial dire straits
if they simply can't maintain their infrastructure because they don't know where
it is. It's bonkers, absolutely bonkers.
Amazing. Well, how not to run a business, that's the new story of this week, yeah?
(05:11):
Certainly one to watch, any utility companies. Are they going to take them back
into public ownership, do you think, with the Labour government? Is that the next step?
Well, maybe this is a podcast for another time, But I think,
you know, 2025 will be a crunch point for pretty much every water company.
All of them will run out of money in 2025. So there's either going to have to
be some sort of government bailout or they have to be privatised.
(05:34):
Sorry, taken out of privatisation.
Born to the state, yeah. Yeah, I'm not quite sure which I think is the best,
a government bailout or if we buy them back. Who knows? I don't know.
Anyway, let's move on to this week's deep dive.
So, in this week, interesting topic. We realise, we are gym goers,
(05:56):
aren't we, Claire? You, perhaps, even more so than me.
And we started to realise there are quite some similarities to gym...
The advancements that you can get in the gym and the advancements that you can get in business.
So we thought it would be a fun thing to do to try and overlay those two and
see what the correlations are.
I love the gym. I have lived and breathed the gym. If anybody asked me what
(06:19):
my number one passion is, I would say it was sports.
And by far, I am somebody that likes to get in the gym and do what people would
say is called grunt work.
So some of those like strongman heavy lifting style things and like CrossFit.
Olympic weightlifting, doing anything like that really I love
and Simon you're a bit of a late bloomer you're not
really into sports that much but over the last
(06:40):
few years you have got into it more partly because I forced
it upon you but now you have learned to love it a little bit haven't you
well I said I said on our podcast last week that health without
health there is no wealth and the reality is is
that you know as you're getting older you need to look after yourself
so begrudgingly three four times
a week I go to the gym and I do my thing I get
(07:01):
into my routine of what that is I try very
hard not to get injured which is a big problem as
you get older is if you push yourself too hard you very easily get
injured and then you're out out in the gym for months on end and my biggest
fear is always just being like knocked out of the gym for months on end and
then you can't do anything so it is a difficult a difficult
time for me to walk I don't want
(07:22):
to spoil it for the viewers because it is one of the things we'll talk
about with the six crossovers between the gym world and the
business as well but as i keep saying to you simon it's not just about
what you do in the hour in the gym if you do no mobility work
no stretching no things like yoga all of those
types of things outside of the gym then you probably are
going to get injured in the gym so yeah unfortunately you've
(07:43):
only got yourself to blame it's a time thing isn't it it's having that time
i mean to be able to dedicate three four hours a week of your time to to doing
the gym as it is but you could easily put the the same amount of time into all
of the ancillary stuff around that and it's just difficult to find all that
time isn't it especially when you're running a business so.
But I am the kind of person that doesn't feel myself if I can't work out.
(08:05):
So anyway, me and Simon are going to give you our rundown of the things that
we believe the gym world teaches us about being in business.
Great. So if you don't mind, I'm going to take number one just because I'm a
big believer in this one. And that is consistency.
Consistency, consistency, consistency. see and anybody listening to
this that's been in business for more than five years will know that
(08:29):
everything is about being uber consistent in
what you do so i mean i talked about just simply showing
up to the gym that's the starting point isn't it every workout is
better than no workout that's the that's the mantra i live
by any workout is better than no workout that can
be self-destructive as well if you're not careful but um
that's a different it's a different thing but yes
(08:50):
absolutely step one is you know just going to the
gym three four times a week whatever it is i think if you
go three times a week and you do the right things in the gym and you do that
for a long period of time you know indefinitely you know you're going to feel
gains from that and i think exactly the same thing can be said in in your business
you know if you pick up the phone to you know to new leads three four times
(09:12):
a week rather than not and you do that absolutely consistently,
you will have an ongoing pipeline of new business just dropping into your business,
you know, while you sleep at night. It just happens.
I think we've all seen as well, those sort of get fit, get ripped,
get skinny kind of adverts that some personal trainers sell online.
(09:32):
And don't get me wrong, some of them do work. They're horrendous.
You'll be in like spinach and working out for like four hours every day.
But if you've got the right body type and your
starting point is not too bad you'll probably get some results but
what we're talking about when we say consistency is like sustained
results so if you do one of these like 12 week boot camps if your starting point
isn't too bad you might come out of it looking ripped but the minute you stop
(09:55):
you're going to go back to zero again absolutely but if you're five years in
you know we know now that if we go on holiday for a long weekend or something
we won't go to the gym But that...
That week or like you know five seven days
off of exercise actually does us good whereas when
you're right at the start if you take a week off your you know
(10:17):
your body blitz boot camp or your buff workout then actually that that seven
days of no exercise is going to kill you so when you're five years in yeah you
know you can take a bit of time off and still not go backwards and everything
just seems a little bit easier so consistency is really key but also the length
of time like Like realistically,
it's probably like three to five years to change your body and to change everything
(10:40):
around you in your life and to reap the rewards of it.
Yeah. So consistency is definitely the first one. Yeah.
So the second one is about constantly challenging yourself and constantly pushing for the next thing.
In the fitness world, this is known as a progressive overload or hypertrophy.
And basically what that means is that if you can lift 10 kg today,
(11:01):
then tomorrow you need to try 11.
And the next day you need to try 12 and you need to keep pushing those weights
up because you will only keep getting stronger if you keep pushing yourself
and i think this is something we forget about in business particularly when
it comes to you know we were having a look at your numbers the other day actually
simon when we're looking at your marketing spend,
and your marketing spend over the years has consistently gone up in line with
(11:23):
your sales yes it's like you've got you should just look at it as a to get bigger
percentage of the turning so
So if you get it to a place where you keep spending the same on marketing,
but your turnover is growing by 50%, well, guess what?
Your turnover is going to start to slow down because your marketing spend as
a proportion of the size of your business is no longer representative of it.
(11:43):
You've got to keep pushing yourself. What you can do today, you need to try
something different tomorrow.
You need to go into tomorrow thinking that you might fail or that you might
not be able to do it and keep challenging yourself. I think...
Firstly, it also keeps you engaged and motivated with things as well.
If you've got a new goal to push for, I think that's important.
Absolutely. I think it's, you know, this is also very applicable to education and learning.
(12:08):
And it is that thing of, you know, just every week, just say to yourself that
I'm going to do something this week that I've never done before.
Because if you do something you've never done before, then you are going to learn a new skill.
You are going to come across something different or go and talk to somebody
that you would have never spoke to before.
For because you will it will open the door and you will you
will move forward with it I did this in lockdown actually when you
(12:30):
know lockdown seemed to go on for like what felt like about 10 years in
the end but at the very start of lockdown when the gyms shut I
decided that I was going to do one thing every day
for an entire month so I did like 100 sit-ups I
think I started in April actually I did like 100 sit-ups every day in
April and by the time we got to the end of April I had abs of
steel and then I was like oh I'm going to do 100 push-ups every day for
(12:50):
the month of may and combining that consistency with
that constantly pushing yourself was really really quite
eye-opening because at the start i could
probably do like eight to ten push-ups
on my first set and then i would have to stop but by the end of it
i was getting up to like 30 40 push-ups before
i had to stop so in that really short period of
(13:12):
time you notice just by constantly pushing yourself that
little bit more the gains that you make yeah it's so easy to
just stay within your comfort zone and this that's what this is all about it's about
just just you know not not being that uncomfortable you're
constantly you know out of your depth but
actually you're just doing little incremental things every
now and then just to put yourself out the comfort zone and
(13:32):
just learn something new so constantly challenging yourself
so the next one i actually heard this.
On somebody else's podcast when they were talking about and they described it as
reps and sets and i really liked that you know when you approach
the gym we tend to follow a methodology called
five by five so if anybody's really into their gym they'll probably recognize that
but it basically means that you do five reps and you
(13:54):
do that five times so if you're doing squats you'll do five
lots of five squats so five reps and five sets but
the reason why i did this in there was about having strategy and purpose so
every time we go into the gym we're following a workout we're following a methodology
we're following a plan we know what we're going to do we're not just turning
up at the gym and winging it every day I mean I'm certainly not I think Simon
(14:16):
probably is more easy but.
And we don't just turn up and wing it. We know what is what we're going to do.
And therefore, what we're doing is always intentional and we're doing it to achieve an outcome.
And I think we can learn a lot of that in business because, you know, we all have it.
Days when you kind of sit down at your desk in the morning and you do a bit
(14:37):
of admin and you push a few bits of paper around and you answer some emails
and you might do a bit of social media and then you might have a phone call with a customer.
You get to the end of the day and you think, what on earth have I done with
my time? Whereas if you approach every day, every week, every hour with intention.
Yeah, be absolutely intentional with your time.
Yeah. I think this one, you've got to be careful with this one because this
one can encroach on the one before, which is you could get yourself into a really
(15:00):
good routine where you never break out of that comfort zone.
So the two, this is actually why growing a business is so difficult because
you actually, you know, the core things that grow businesses is actually being
very boring, very consistent and very the same.
But actually there needs to be that move forward at
all times as well and actually making sure that one doesn't conflict
(15:21):
the other is is a skill in itself yeah definitely excellent
so next we've got do the
things that you hate so these are your weak
points if you don't address them you get injured and this is
you basically having a go at me about not stretching i just realized
what i'm reading here i'm like ah is that what you mean claire yeah
i mean we know too well in the gym or any sports
(15:44):
you do you know you're going for a bit of a run in the morning and you feel a
little niggle in your hamstring or something and you ignore it and it becomes a
bigger and bigger problem whereas you know if you just the
first time you felt that niggle if you just realized that you got that niggle
because there's a muscle imbalance somewhere or a little weakness or something
like that that you just did a few extra exercises or a few extra stretches to
address and nip it in the bud right away so our bodies are very good at telling
(16:07):
us what our weaknesses are and we don't like them.
Inherently as people, we like to do the things that are easy and the things that we enjoy.
So if you are avoiding something in your business or in the gym,
it's probably because you're not very good at it.
And therefore you need to learn to be better at it. Yeah, absolutely.
You can't love everything.
There's a great Jeff Bezos quote that if you enjoy 50% of your job,
(16:32):
then you're doing as well as anybody else can expect to do.
And his point in that is that there will always be, no matter what you do,
where you are, what level you're at, there'll always be half of everything you do.
You don't enjoy there isn't something that you really want to
do but guess what tough luck it just is part of
part of that journey to to get to where you want to get
(16:53):
to and i think you know he sort of put that put that you know across in that
way i'm not great at this if i'm really honest because the more you know it
depends what the motivation is and i think the more you have choice in life
the more difficult it is to continue to do the things that you hate because
you have a choice not to do yeah you can give them to
(17:13):
somebody else to do or how you get over that yeah that procrastination i mean
it's really interesting because i watch a lot of crossfit and there's a very
famous crossfitter called matt fraser who has been like world's fittest man
i think like four or five times anyway when he's in competition like nobody
can touch him he just like runs away and is clearly going to win the competition
right from day one and when.
He's always asked what makes him successful is he says i do
(17:36):
the things i hate like if i'm not good at something then
I do it until I'm good at it because it's the only way to overcome
those weaknesses and you know I must
say actually I've got a bit better at this I have
even been doing like some cold calling this week to try and drum up a bit of business
launched a new product and things got a bit quiet and
I never thought that I would do that
(17:56):
because I'm not gonna lie it sounds a bit dirty doesn't it cold
calling is that what you did Claire well they
were not entirely aren't you a chartered accountant you cold called
well yeah but everybody knows when you own a business actually
what you should be doing in sales and marketing absolutely right so being facetious
yeah good on you it's not easy it's not great
it's absolutely necessary and i probably sucked at it makes a difference i probably
(18:18):
sucked at it as well that's the reality i thought you were brilliant oh thanks
simon but i'm gonna keep doing it because actually no one's gonna come to you
and no one's gonna exactly but i was i was bad at it because i haven't done
it before and And if I do it more, I'll get better at it.
And it won't be my weakness anymore yeah if you think about
the amount of things now that you do with your eyes shut and you
(18:39):
just have to constantly remind yourself could i you know could i do this originally
and the answer would always be no you couldn't and the second time you do it
you get a bit better and the tenth time you do it you get a bit better you know
cool you introduced me to camera i couldn't i couldn't use that at all very
quickly got to use that because i was loving the rewards and the results that
it gave me so brilliant and that leads us nicely into our
next one, which is technique,
(19:01):
technique, technique over everything.
And I think I've seen in the gym so many times, you know, squatting is a classic one.
The form on most, I'd say like 99% of people's squats is a wonder that they're
not injuring themselves,
but they're certainly not getting the benefits out of that workout and the effort
(19:23):
that they're putting into doing that movement that they should because they
just have no idea what they're doing.
And I think we see this a lot in business you know people
do activities without really understanding
what they're trying to do they don't have skill in it and they
don't get the results they want and i think pay-per-click is a really good
example of this or like paid for ads or marketing in general you know people
are putting so much content on social media is it giving them any benefit well
(19:46):
actually no because they don't have any idea what they're doing they don't have
the technique they don't have the skill required to do the tasks that they're
trying to do you're absolutely right and And I mean,
a good example of that in the sales world is things like sales scripting.
You know, people don't call you up from the big companies and just randomly start speaking to you.
They have highly tailored scripts that are constantly evolving and constantly getting better.
(20:11):
They are fighting in what I call the 0.1% for incremental benefit there.
And that is about constantly improving their sales technique.
And exactly what you said about marketing as well, that constant test and measure,
that constant improvement.
Should we change the copy this week? Should we change the picture next week?
And they are fighting in the world of technique, I would say.
And I can remember I had probably been squatting my body weight.
(20:35):
For about two years and I had a
30 kilos in you yeah I bloody wish I had a
PT like a weightlifting coach and we focused
on technique for nearly two years before I
squatted correctly and the first time I felt
that movement it was like nothing I'd
(20:57):
ever felt before and I think when you get it right
the benefits that i got from that one squat probably
outweighed the thousand that i'd done before by far
just because i had the right technique i i got
exactly the right benefit in the muscles that i intended and i got exactly the
outcome that i desired and that is what technique and skill gets you so if you're
not if you don't have skill in things don't try and get somebody to help you
(21:21):
get a specialist to help you get better get better do whatever you need to do
to get better learn learn the skill yourself upskill yourself or pay somebody else to hey Hey,
another good example of this is the archery that we've just done.
And the guy, you know, we did it, we did archery at the weekend for the first time.
And the guy's biggest, the biggest takeaway I took from the archery was he,
he was talking about the stance, the positioning and the technique.
(21:44):
And he said, if you do nothing else, but focus on that, that will be 95% of where the dart goes.
And it was just interesting that he said, you know, if you can be consistent
with that technique, then that, you know, that will give you the rewards you
want in the, in the shot. So another good life example, I think. So next one.
Big one for you, Claire. Track everything. Track everything.
(22:07):
So I mean, like as an accountant, I feel like this is where the worlds collide.
And this is just like Christmas for me. But I have something called a MyZone.
And a MyZone is almost like a little bit like having an ECG.
It tracks your heart rate and tells you exactly how much effort you're putting
in, what your heart rate's doing, whether you can push harder.
And i really like my zone because on
(22:29):
those days where i'm feeling like
a little bit lethargic and i think oh i can't
really be bothered with this there's nowhere to hide when that
bloody fitness tracker tells me that i'm not pushing you know
when i should be in like like 80 heart rate and
i'm down to 60 you know where you are the numbers tell me
where you are black and white what's happening how much
(22:49):
effort i put in how many calories i've burned how long i've been going for there's
no hiding from it on your my zone if i had to put this
into a business contents i would say that if i went
to the gym and i didn't have my my zone on it would be the equivalent
of me receiving my my annual accounts from my
accountant three months after my year end to try and understand how i did that
financial year oh simon i've drummed this into you so that is how i would feel
(23:12):
without my equivalent of running your business without the number i feel with
my my zone is that i get monthly management accounts and i check those management
accounts actually with a my zone i'm I'm getting real-time information,
so it's even better. I'm probably getting flash forecasting.
You're not going by gut. You don't feel like you're working out really hard
when actually in reality you're just a bit lethargic today.
And other times, you know, sometimes I felt like, oh, I can keep pushing, I can keep pushing.
(23:33):
And actually I've been at like max heart rate and if I keep going,
I'm probably going to kill myself. So, yeah. Yeah.
Absolutely track everything track your sleep
track your food track your workouts track everything track
everything and track your numbers in your business most importantly
everyone so and the final one we've got on here is it's not an hour in the gym
(23:56):
it's a lifestyle and what you do outside the gym that is as important and business
is the same i think what you're trying to say here claire is that you immerse
yourself in the business world of the gym world and you you will get results.
So, you know, in the business world, if you immerse yourself with other,
you know, other entrepreneurs, other education, YouTube, podcasts,
all those type of thing, read some great books, then you're going to get better at business.
(24:20):
And it's the same at the gym, isn't it? Yeah, I think those like fitness influences
that we see on the TV and people in magazines and professional sports people
in particular, you know, I think if you've ever.
Watched any sort of documentary about elite athletes, like they don't just rock up to the
gym you know Usain Bolt doesn't just practice running for a couple of hours
a day and then he's really good at it he eats breathes and sleeps it he has
(24:41):
a coach telling him exactly what he needs to do to get that millisecond faster
he's got professional nutritionists putting the right,
food into him he doesn't drink he sleeps
well he does lots of mobility he does lots of stretching he
does lots of active recovery you know his whole entire life will
be about making him better at sports and I think this transfers into business
so well and probably is one of
(25:04):
the things that makes me appreciate you the most Simon is that we immerse our
entire life in business we eat breathe and sleep business we watch business
tv we listen to podcasts together we talk business in the car we've got family
members who've got their own businesses like everything we do is about.
Be more knowledgeable in the world of business and the gym and the gym yeah
(25:26):
learning the lessons i don't know you're talking more about we're a little bit
weighted like a seesaw maybe a bit more business over this side a bit more gym
over that side and vice versa but overall it you know you know we are surrounding
ourselves with it and immersing i keep you healthy and you keep me rich.
And together we keep each other happy indeed indeed well i hope you've uh you've
(25:47):
seen just how close to going to the gym, running a business is.
And I think, you know, you can use this across anything in your, in your life.
And, you know, effectively there's one core message here and that's nothing happens by accident.
Yeah. And I think a lot of people believe that business, you know,
you just need to hustle and work hard in business.
(26:08):
And I think that I probably learned this the most by going to the gym in the
early days is I worked my ass off.
And I also worked my ass off in the early days of my business and it didn't
get me the results I wanted because I wasn't doing the right thing.
Combining the hard work with all of these things that we've put forward, those key elements.
Intention, strategy, technique, consistency and then hard work and I think that's
(26:31):
probably the biggest lesson that I've learned both in the fitness world but
more importantly in businesses that hard work alone isn't what it takes.
Indeed. Well thanks for those insightful comparisons to business in the gym
this week Claire. Let's move on to this week's Profit Cash Growth Extra.
So this week on Profit Cash Growth Extra, yes, I just want you to take your
(26:53):
insurance premium through Confused.com.
Can I just say the irony that we've just spoke for, what, like 20 minutes about
going to the gym and living this like super healthy lifestyle.
People will be like dying to see us thinking that we are like a god and goddesses.
Our bodies must be so amazing if we do this much gym stuff.
(27:14):
But lo and behold, Simon is about to bring you a story all about Greg's. It's only the coffee.
Anyway, Confuse.com. If you order insurance through Confuse.com.
The range of incentives that you get back now is insane.
I mean, my car insurance was literally a few hundred quid, and I've got a free
Gregg's coffee every month for 12 months through the Confuse.com app.
(27:37):
All I do is I show them the app, scan it, and I get one of their coffees every
month, which is fantastic for me because I buy coffee from Gregg's,
you know, four or five times a month anyway.
So that's a saving for me. So I'm very happy with that. but not only
that you can pick another incentive and there was a range
of them on there but the one i picked was a 20 pound gift voucher for
sainsbury's as well which is right in front of us
(27:57):
there claire not yet spent but i'm just waiting to go and get my sushi from
do you know what i was about to say the same thing i think we'll go and get sushi yeah but
seriously check it out confused.com insane how good
some of these incentives are getting now and i know it's all about you know
hooking you in but do you know what as long as you're not overpaying for
the insurance and you've done the checks and you're happy that it's the right thing
why not get a few of these incentives on on top of it as well
(28:19):
so thanks for joining us for this week's podcast hope you've enjoyed
the uh interesting mix of gym and business
as always make sure that you go to profitcashgrowth.com to
check out claire's uh claire's company check out the youtube channel and watch
something on there you can see on facebook instagram and uh if you'd like a
free business review of your business finances please drop claire an email claire
(28:41):
at profitcashgrowth.com and we'll see you for another riveting episode next week.
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