My name's Andy Sephton and I run The Consultants' Community. As I briefly
mentioned earlier, we're a management consultancy firm that offers our
services for free to businesses. So we work with business owners to help them work
out what they need to grow and develop their business and then connect them
with our members, who are independent consultants and service providers who
can then do the work for them to help them grow. We make our money by the fact
the consultants we recommend pay us a referral fee. So it's
like a mortgage broker model but with business consultants. So that's the gist
of who we are and the reason that I come along to networking events is really
down to, you know, The Consultants' Community is built on two core beliefs
and the first one is "it's impossible for one person to know everything". So I like
to learn new things and I like to hear new things and the best way to do that
is to go out there and talk to people and hear what they're telling you and
you pick up new things all the time you learn new things you get to find out new
things and the other one is that "it takes a community to build a business"
especially as small business owners you know most of us we've got home offices
we are kind of working independently but we've got this great business
community around us. We've got people we can go to for advice, we've got people we
can talk to, we've got people in similar situations you can just go for breakfast
with a couple of times a week and it just makes us feel kind of more involved
with the general community. So those are the concepts that we built on. But
today we're going to talk about the "impossible for one person to know
everything" that's kind of how do you know what you don't know? How do you as a
business owner kind of go about finding out what the gaps in your knowledge are and it can be
quite a tricky one but you just need to kind of start to break it down. So...
...the gist is that you know there are many famous people who have kind of gone
down this route so we've got Socrates with "I know that I know nothing" a little
bit spiritual a little bit over the top you know we do know some basic things so
maybe that's taking it a little far. We've got Confucius "to know to know what
you know and what you don't know that is true knowledge" but again if you don't
know what you don't know you can't kind of know that and then to bring it up to
slightly more modern we've got Warren Buffett - finishes off there which is
"knowing what you don't know is more useful than being brilliant" and if you
ever met Ricky Chisholm who's kind of a presenter and a Sky News guy he
claims Warren Buffett stole that line off him at an event in the 80s so...
you know you've met Rick he's a very memorable guy and he will tell you about
that in detail. So when we come down to it we're working
out what we know and what we don't know there's two camps to look at there's us
as the business owners ourselves as the people who kind of know things and
there's them there's kind of everybody else there's our clients as our
competitors there's our customers. So for the sake of making it sound better in
the bits that are coming up I'm changing that to we because it will make more sense in a second and there's
really only two schools of thought for each of us we either know it or they
know it and we don't know it or they don't know it. So to try and bring this
into into a bit more kind of perspective we'll turn it into a little matrix. So,
the first area that we're going to talk about is we know it and they know it
that common sense. That's just the basics that we that we run our lives by
everybody knows it, that's how the world works. Then we have
we know it but they don't know it as a business that's our selling point that's
our kind of secret sauce that's the bit that we can kind of go out to the world
say look we know this this will help you great. We've also got we don't know it
and they don't know it that's where true innovation lives that's where that light
bulb moment comes on you come up with something that nobody else knew and you
didn't know oh we just we've changed the world. That's your innovation point and
then we've got that we don't know it but they know it and that's where we need to
start asking questions. That's where you need to think you know just because I
don't know it doesn't necessarily mean that they don't know it. When you come up
with an invention the first thing people do when they come up with a great idea
they go and they google it they go "oh somebody's already come up with it", you know you ask
questions of the Internet to find out if it is innovation but essentially this
all makes sense on paper you know if a standard matrix but what it is actually
about is it's all about the questions the questions is the important bit not
who knows what and who knows where. It's asking questions, because if we don't
know it we need to ask questions it doesn't matter if it's common sense
doesn't matter if it's a selling point of is innovation. We need to ask
questions of all of these areas. So, when it comes to not knowing it common sense
is the first one people just assume that's fine but question what you think
everyone knows. Now I've got a personal example of this. My name is Andy
everybody assumes that Andy is short for Andrew because that's
that's what it is but my name is Andy. I was christened Andy. I was named Andy, so
Graham sent me an email from his CRM yesterday with Andrew at the top and I
replied to saying that was not my name it was a common-sense assumption
perfectly fine to assume that everybody you meet who introduces himself as Andy
is probably called Andrew but I'm not. So by questioning it even you
find that out but if you don't question things like that you just assume that
everything you hear out there like you go around telling people "oh you know
that when people are in space the only thing you can see is The Great Wall of China." It's
not true they interviewed all the Apollo 11 astronauts. The only man-made thing
you can see from space is electricity. You can see electric lights in cities
you can't see the Pyramids you can't see The Great Wall of China. A satellite can
take a picture of The Great Wall of China from space but you can't see it. So
it's just these things that we kind of, we go through our lives going look, this is
it, this is common sense. If we question that that's when we can really kind of
shift up our business so especially with kind of the people that we work with if
you go "oh I can do that" and "it doesn't take me too long" and "that's just the
way I've always done it" but find somebody who is better at it and can do it in
half the time you've got more money to run your business and just by questioning
common sense you can kind of take that next step in your business. The
other one, which is a tricky one as well, is your selling point because as we said
earlier your selling point is kind of what you know but what they don't but if
you want to use it to sell you've got a tell everybody what it is. You've got to
make it common sense so if you're building a business on the fact that
you're going to do well because nobody else can do what you do and you're
selling something it's gonna fall down at some point you've got to tell
everybody what it is. This is my secret sauce this is why you want to buy it you
can't kind of get everybody to sign an NDA you want to buy it or wants to talk
about it, you know? It's the whole point of a selling point is that's the start
of your marketing strategy and that's you know that's being first to market
that's telling everybody about it but your goal is to make it common sense or
everybody says look that is the way that I do it you know if I want to be a
better salesperson I get my DISC profile done and I start to understand that
process. That's it. But DISC is kind of a secret sauce but if nobody knows about
DISC why would I want a DISC profile? I haven't heard of it. It's that kind of catch-22
so and innovation again is an interesting one where we will...don't
discard an idea just because you can't answer if you've got a great idea and
you go out there and you talk to people and they say "that sounds really good but I've never
heard of it". Go and find people who can help you
build it. So I had an idea for an app for my business. I can't build an app.
I have trouble with a spreadsheet on a good day you know. So I went out and I
found a company who specialises in building apps and I spoke to them and I
talked through what I wanted and they can do it and they've done it and the final version's just been
sent through to me on this morning on the way here. Looking great I'm really
excited about it but initially when I said I'll build an app I thought "well I can't
afford that it's too expensive it's too complicated" it goes in the too hard pile
but I spoke to these people the price was a tiny amount of what I thought it
would be the whole process has been simple all because I just kept asking
questions because questions really are the key to all of this and it's it's
asking the right questions because the question is more important than the
answers sometimes you'll ask a question you can't get an answer to but it'll
start a discussion it'll start the debates you'll go off on a tangent
you know brainstorming is great. Things like this are great where you get an
opportunity to kind of meet with a group of people just shoot an idea off them
you know speak to people outside of your industry and outside of your comfort
zone for that kind of third party point of view. You would be amazed how many kind of great
ideas I've had from my business from sitting down and chatting to a mortgage
broker over coffee who doesn't do anything through as management
consultants or marketing but they just go oh have you thought about like this
and it's such a refreshing point of view when you're kind of and you're not
inside everything you can just kind of take a second and step back and just
appreciate it all so... I can't read the last bit...and don't be afraid to ask for help
that's the thing you know we as smaller business owners we don't have we don't
have a massive infrastructure we don't necessarily have a Board of Advisors we
don't have that but ask for help in the local business community just just talk
to people they'll talk back I mean people who come to events like this know
none of you sat around the table when you said why you wanted to come to
networking events oh because I want to sell more stuff none of you said because
I'm here too you know David didn't say all want you to design a new house and
you're gonna have to use me yeah we're here because we want to connect with
business owners we want to share ideas we want to help us grow as a business
community so just ask for help talk to people in the community most people are
very generous with their advice they'll they'll give it out for free and they will
help you because generally mostly are decent. I mean I suppose that's
the end of the presentation it's really just if to find out what you don't know
just ask people talk to people and just kind of be happy to stretch your
boundaries and then that's it basically that's what we've built the consultants
community around we that's why we provide a free service to businesses
that's why you're a business owner we'll sit down and talk with you and work out
what you need to do next before we even suggest anybody who could do the work
because I don't like / I'm not a fan of people who kind of sell advice I'm a fan
of people who sell results and I think advice should be given freely and
results should be rewarded appropriately thank you for listening
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