How Shahzad Nawaz Delivers a Consistent Experience to his Customers and Increased his Company Profits with less Employees!

Last Updated on November 15, 2019 by Owen McGab Enaohwo

Do you want to deliver a consistent experience to your customers? An experience that is predictable, one that they can count on all the time!

In this interview Shahzad (Shaz) Nawaz Managing Director of AA Accountants reveals the steps he took to systematize his company so that with less employees he has been able to increase their output and also increase his bottom-line profit while continuing to deliver a consistent experience to his customers.

Shahzad (Shaz) Nawaz Managing Director of AA Accountants

 

 

Tweetable Quote:


 

In this Episode You will Discover:

  • Why Shahzad had no business education, and how he learned to run a business from scratch.
  • Why Shahzad sought help from his friend when he hit a low point in his business.
  • How Shahzad broke down his business into smaller chunks and created clearly defined job descriptions for his team members.
  • How Shahzad defined the Key Performance Indicators for his business.
  • Why Shahzad’s biggest challenge when systematizing was changing the mindset and habits of his team members.
  • Why Shahzad had to simplify his systems so everyone on his team could understand them.
  • How Shahzad came to realize that the only way he could improve his business was systematization.
  • How Shahzad is able to deliver a consistent experience to his customers as a result of creating systems in his business.

 

Noteworthy items Mentioned in this Episode:

  1. The One Minute Manager by Kenneth H. Blanchard and Spencer Johnson
  2. The Success System That Never Fails by William Clement Stone
  3. The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton
  4. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey

 

Episode Transcript:

OWEN: My guest today is Shahzad Nawaz, managing director of AA Accountant. Shahzad, welcome to the show.

SHAHZAD: Hi, it’s great to be with you Owen. Thank you for having me.

OWEN: And I could call you Shaz for short, right?

SHAHZAD: That would’ve made my life easier and your life easier too sir.

OWEN: Okay. This interview is talking about how the guests on the show have been able to systemize their business so it runs successfully without them. Before we proceed I want to kind of, what will you say is a mind blowing result that you now experience as a result of going through that process of systematizing and automating your business?

SHAHZAD: I think the first and the biggest Owen is that we have less people working in the business and yet the output is bigger. Our turnover’s higher, our profit is clearly higher because we’ve got less staff overheads. And the business is functioning better. The second big thing is consistency. Too often with my own experience of buying products and services from different businesses you receive a different experience every time you buy from them. Whereas once your business is systematized you can pretty much have a very consistent approach, so your customers know what they’re buying from you in terms of the experience they’re going to receive. And more often than not people are buying the experience as oppose to the service or the product in my experience.

OWEN: Awesome. So how would you say your company has been transformed as a result of systematizing your business?

SHAHZAD: As accountants generally we have a very bad picture of boring, dull, in gray suits.

OWEN: My wife is an accountant by the way.

SHAHZAD: Well, there you go. I’ll just praise her and myself.

OWEN: Go ahead.

SHAHZAD: We’re very reactive. We wait for things to happen. We wait for our clients to approach us. We wait for our clients to refer this to us. So what the big transformations for us Owen is that we become very much proactive. We go out there before the event, talking to our clients, suppliers, and our potential clients. So we’re proactive as oppose to reactive. That’s a big one. We’re also working much closer with our clients and we build a better relationship with them. Before we were systematized things happened ad hoc. Now things happen due to a process being in place. And that all is linked with systematization. Things get done on time. Before, things were done but they weren’t always done in a speedy manner. And I think speed stuns. So the quicker you do things the more people value it. Especially in the service industry, because it’s intangible. You can’t feel or touch it. So one of the ways that can assess how good you are is how well you keep in the loop. How well you communicate with them and how quickly you do things.

OWEN: And how is it your personal life has been transformed as a result of systematizing your business?

SHAHZAD: Before I used to work between 70-80 hours every single week and I thought this was my punishment for starting a business. Because I started very young, so I started my business Owen at the age of 24. I was a [Unintelligible 00:03:42]. Working 78 hours a week it was madness. I used to take 3-4 days off in a year for my holidays because I had to work, and partly because of lack of profits, lack of cash flow. I thought this is the way everybody else does it. Now I work between 40-45 hours a week and I can pretty easily bring that down to 25 hours if I wanted to. But I’m an entrepreneur. I do like work and I don’t see work as work because I enjoy it. So I work in half the time.

OWEN: That’s good. Since then you have systems in place that allows it to run without you. What will you say has been the longest time so far that you’ve actually been away from your business?

SHAHZAD: In one stretch it’s been 4 weeks. But last year I went a 10-week holiday. This week I have penciled in my diary 13 weeks, so that’s 25% off the calendar year, and that’s going to happen.

OWEN: That’s good. So I want to get some kind of context as to what you’re business is all about. What does your company do and what big paid do you solve for customers?

SHAHZAD: I’d love to make it sound really exciting for you Owen.

OWEN: Make it sound as exciting as you can.

SHAHZAD: I can’t. It’s accountancy. We’re number crunchers, we’re bean counter, you just can’t make it sound exciting. But what we really do is we help our clients gain the freedom they were seeking before they started their business. So they had a particular mission, a particular vision. They write their business plan. Unfortunately, the only thing guaranteed in a plan is that things won’t go to plan. So what we do is we help them realize those goals and those dreams. That’s what we do in a nutshell. We just have to be accountants.

OWEN: How many full-time employees do you have?

SHAHZAD: At the moment we have six full-time employees. Previously, before we were fully systematized we had 11 people working for us.

OWEN: Wow. So you end up increasing the output in terms of numbers of employees, but the output is higher. What will you say is the… Is your company profitable and what was last year’s annual revenue and what are you going to expect for this year?

SHAHZAD: Last year’s annual revenue in dollars was around 450,000. This year we’re talking between 550,000 to 650,000. And I would say it’s going to be more closer towards 650,000. Because in the last 2 months of January and February we’ve signed up about $35,000 worth of extra business.

OWEN: That’s awesome.

SHAHZAD: In fact, we’re going to add 200,000 to our top line turnover.

OWEN: Wow, that’s awesome. Take us back to that point in the business when it was not systematized and automated like it is now. What was wrong with it at that time?

SHAHZAD: Before I stared this business Owen I worked for Ernst & Young back in New York, and JP Morgan Chase. I came from the corporate world. I lacked expertise. I didn’t know how to run a small business. In the UK here we’re not trained how to run businesses. So you just have to learn as you go along. So I had to learn everything from A to Z, how to make the coffee, to [Unintelligible 00:07:11], to cleaning the office, everything had to be learned. My expertise was in accountancy. I was your typical bean counter. I knew nothing about operations. I knew nothing about sales, I knew nothing about marketing, I knew nothing about managing people. We were reasonably successful because I was working hard, but we weren’t profitable. And there’s a big difference between that.

OWEN: Yeah. Back then when the business was not systematized what was the lowest point and describe how bad it got.

SHAHZAD: I was working pretty much every hour under the sun. I openly share this with people when I’m audiences. I’ve worked every single hour around the clock. So I would start at stupid times like 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning because I’m up. So rather that lie in bed or go and watch morning TV let’s go to work. And I finished worked at 3 or 4 in the morning as well.

OWEN: Wow. No sleep.

SHAHZAD: Crazy hours. It was 24 hours, around the clock. I’d start 3 or 4 in the morning until 7 to 8 in the evening. If I started later 9 or 10 o’clock during tax season, I’d finish at 2 to 4 o’clock in the morning.

OWEN: Talk about tax season, I know how that goes for accountants.

SHAHZAD: I was owed $180,000 by my clients because we were so busy in servicing them we took our eye off the main goals. We lost focus with the employees were overworked, I was overworked, my business partner was overworked. And I thought, “Good god, why did I ever start this? What did I do wrong that I am where I am today? And that was really the lowest point. I just wanted to get away.

OWEN: In the story we’ve been talking about so far, when was your breaking point? When did you realize that you had to change things around and systematize and automate your business? What happened?

SHAHZAD: I think as entrepreneurs, it’s a lonely business, it’s a lonely journey. Sometimes you don’t want to share your experiences with others. But I made that wise move of being bold, admitting perhaps I was failing, perhaps things were slipping. So I was speaking to a friend of mine back in March 2009. I said, I have these problems and issues. And he said I should read a book called The E-Myth by Michael Gerber. I read that book and that gave me a rude awakening. I thought, this is exactly what I should be doing, and this is exactly what I’m not doing. So the penny dropped. The puzzle all came together. The missing link was there. My business could be a thriving a business if it was systematized.

OWEN: What was the very first step you took at that time to solve the problems you mentioned during the lowest point?

SHAHZAD: I read the book and then I realized there was a DVD called Small Business Success by Michael Gerber. I watched that and I thought, this makes more sense now. I got my team together one day. I said, “Let’s buy some food. Food is on me.” Accountants don’t like spending money generally so they were pretty shocked when I started spending money, so something must be going on. We watched that presentation together. After watching it we all agreed that this was the best way forward. We had to implement what we’ve just heard. And those 60 minutes changed the way my team started thinking about the business. So we agreed that if this business was to continue, we would look to systematize and make our business process dependent, and that’s what happened.

OWEN: What was the second step you took to solve the problem?

SHAHZAD: I thought this is a big, massive job. I can’t do it on my own. I’m already working between 12-18 hours a day. I’ve only got so much time and energy. What we did was we needed a systems champion. Somebody who’s going to look after helping this business become system dependent, going to basically create our own manual. We found somebody in the team who had that kind of eye for detail for writing systems. He had a low degree. He’s working for me. So he had good writing skills and he could basically build documents. We made him our systems champion. He was in a job to create systems and ensure they’re being followed.

OWEN: What other steps did you take to solve the problem that you mentioned at the lowest point?

SHAHZAD: Basically, we broke down the business into different departments. We had a sales department, a marketing department, operations, finance, and then we [Unintelligible 00:12:07] what everybody does. Because people were doing different things on different days. They were doing what they felt like. So we created clear job descriptions, clear roles, clear departments. Everybody had clarity. Resistance is created through a lack of clarity. Once you’ve got clarity you know where you’re going. Once we have that we were then able to say, now, what are the most important systems? So you’ve got to start with the important and urgent first. We started with the important systems. So we started by writing them down. We started testing them. One person will write them down. Somebody else would test them who’s not involved in the process to make sure that the system worked. And then something else which really helped us change the focus is we had very clear KPI’s. While those KPI’s, or key performance indicators, for anybody who doesn’t know what that means. One of those KPI’s was for us to create a fixed or minimum number of systems every single week or month, then test that, implement them, and then ensure that they’re being followed. Because you combat systems every day. If they’re not being followed Owen then there’s no point in having systems.

OWEN: Speaking about, you said you guys follow the most important systems first and implemented those. I’m wondering, how do you prioritize other steps you take when you came to systematize the business. How did you guys decide on which systems to process and to create first?

SHAHZAD: Okay. We thought who are the really important stakeholders in our business, who we really need to keep happy. First of all obviously it’s the team members. They were happy anyway because we were going through a personal change and they could see the light at the end of the tunnel. And it definitely wasn’t a train coming this way. We thought the focus should be on our customers, on customer service. We should look to improve every single infraction we have with our customers. The team was enthusiastic about this. We spoke to our best customers, they were enthusiastic. So we started with customers service.

OWEN: What was the next point that you guys pointed on?

SHAHZAD: We want to improve this business. We have to have a proper sales and marketing function. First we worked on customer service, alongside that in fact we worked on sales and marketing. Alongside that we thought we’ve got a huge problem here in that, and there’s only so long I can carry on working. Because I can’t keep carrying on business. So we systematized how we were going to collect from our clients. That worked really, really well.

OWEN: You guys now moved into the point of looking at rules and responsibilities for each person and systematizing what each individual does, right?

SHAHZAD: Absolutely. Once they got clarity on what they’re doing then they can do that to the best of their ability. Nobody comes to work thinking, I’m going to really do a bad day. I’m going to make sure I annoy my boss. Nobody wants to do that. But if you give them clarity, you tell them what the boundaries are, they’re more likely to help and support you achieve the best in your business.

OWEN: How did you document procedures and processes for your business at that time. What tools did you use?

SHAHZAD: I was working with an organization in the UK who Michael Gerber had worked with. They had a system software called System Builder. And on there you can basically store every single system that you had. And then you’ll give the team members unlimited access or full access depending on their access rights. You could search for any system by typing in the key word. So the name of the system had to be obvious. And then the key word would pick it up.

OWEN: At that time when you were working on systematizing the business, what books or mentors had the most influence on you and why?

SHAHZAD: In terms of systematizing, it would definitely be Michael Gerber. Because his book in plain English makes a lot of sense. Since then I think I’ve shared at least a hundred copies with my client’s friends and associates. Every single owner has improved their business as a direct result. I think Mike has probably sold over at least a million copies of his book. That was fantastic. Another book which helped me change my focus was the One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard. Fantastic book, most people say…

OWEN: I have to check that book out because I keep hearing about it.

SHAHZAD: A lot of people say, “I don’t like reading books, I don’t have the time.” Ken makes it really easy. That book is really easy to read. I read it one sitting. One evening I read the whole book, that’s how good that was. A book by Jim Collins which is called Good to Great. That was fantastic as well.

OWEN: What would you say at the time you were creating this system. What was the biggest challenge that you experience when you try to initially create the systems and how did you solve them?

SHAHZAD: The biggest challenge I think in any organization, small or large is trying to change the focus, and perhaps try to change your people. Because like Michael Basch of FedEx said, “People don’t mind change, they mind being changed.” So that was our biggest challenge, trying to change the mindset of our team members. That was our biggest challenge. The second thing was to help our employees or team members become more enthusiastic, to motivate them. In our KPI’s every single person had to read one book every single month, and they had to either go on a seminar or a webinar every single month. And that helped them change their mindset. Once you changed people’s mindset then you’re making progress.

OWEN: I know how you mentioned initially, you got them watching that video so I’m sure they weren’t excited. But the thing with excitement and motivation is that you need to keep pumping it with [Unintelligible 00:18:41] otherwise before it’s going to finish, people are back to grumbling about changes. I like that, pumping them with seminars and books that keep that [Unintelligible 00:18:51] going forward.

SHAHZAD: And something which is very instructive, positive thinking is great. You can pretend to be happy by being positive. That doesn’t last long Owen. But if you can create a reason to be happy. If you can create a reason to be positive, that lasts longer. And that only happens if you change your mindset.

OWEN: What would you say was the second biggest challenge that you experience while you were trying to create systems initially and how do you solve it?

SHAHZAD: The second biggest problem or challenge I’d say was to change people’s habits. Because once people are used to do doing things in a particular way then they’ll carry on doing it that way. So it was trying to ensure and encourage our team members to follow the system. That initially was a challenge, was hurdle, but we soon overcame that. Once you persisted, your team get to realize that these new changes are here to stay. So they can either join the team or they’re going to have a tough time [Unintelligible 00:19:58] they leave. We started tracking number of mistakes, so how many mistakes are we making on a particular job, and having that kind of accountability in transparency helped our team members, because they knew if they were doing their job properly. A client somewhere was losing out, and that wasn’t good for the business. But what we also did was we started rewarding people for exceptional behavior, for doing a good job. So we track bad behavior and we start rewarding good behavior. If you did really well, you could take half a day off every single month on a Friday afternoon. We went on team events, team meals, so the culture changes, rather than everybody working individually we were a team in the truest sense.

OWEN: Is there any other challenge you experienced at that time?

SHAHZAD: Yeah, because we had one person writing the systems, somebody has to comment for that system isn’t always easy. The person who’s writing it is writing it because they understand what they’re writing. Somebody has to come and read that and they may infer or come to a different understanding. So we had to really dumb down the systems, the writings. So the whole thing was written for a 7-year old. And if a 7-year old can read, understand, and follow this then we’re doing a good job.

OWEN: Given all the challenges that you’ve experienced earlier, when did you stay committed to the goal of systematizing your business?

SHAHZAD: I started researching at large corporation, organizations, the truly successful people. And what I saw and realize was there’s a link. One of the change in those links was that they all had systematized businesses. So I realized that systematization was the only way we could improve our business. I was also exposed to a guy called W. Clement Stone. And I read his book, The Success System That Never Fails. So it’s very apparent to me that Clement Stone became successful because he had a system. I also realized, like I said, all large corporations rely on systems. There was no way I was heading back. Either we were going to be a systematized business or go home. There was no way I was going home.

OWEN: In that story, taking this step forward, at what point in time did you feel like the business was systematized and it could run without you?

SHAHZAD: My initial calculation, which is a very foolish calculation, the worst that it would take us 18 months. Little did I know it would take us much longer. To become fully systematized, although I don’t think you ever become fully systematized because it’s always… You’re always improving, you can’t stand still. But it took us around 3 1/2 years to get to a place where we had every single system in place. But even now we’re improving Owen. We’re always improving our systems, we’re finding better ways, working on innovative ways to save time, to speed up the process, to add more value. So it’s an ongoing process. As technology changes, so like you’ve got fantastic software which wasn’t available all those years ago. If it was it wasn’t known to me. So as technology improves you’ve got to improve your systems as well.

OWEN: Yeah. Just to give the listener a kind of a behind the scenes look into your business, I want to know what are the different parts of your business that you have… Let me picture this way for you. Imagine that on one part of this conveyor built is a potential customer who need some clarity to the finances of their business and needs accounting help. On the other end of this conveyor belt is that same customer who has been transformed and you guys have delivered the service to them. They’re raving about your guys and even referring customers. But behind the scenes there are different parts of your business that work together to make that happen. Let’s go behind the scenes and talk about the different parts of the business.

SHAHZAD: First of all, it’s very clear to understand what your customers want. In order to understand that you’ve got to have a very good sales system to capture that data. So sales and marketing is part of that conveyor belt if I can call it that. Then you’ve got finance, operation, customer care, and people management. And then you’ve got to realize what are the really important USP’s, your Unique Selling Propositions and in the field of accountancy speed and efficiency is very important. So we realize we’ve got to do things quickly. In the UK people take on 40-80 days to turn around a set of accounts.

OWEN: Wow.

SHAHZAD: Whereas if you’re turning them around in 20-25 days, it takes us 25 days. But if we do it in less than 30 days that’s a noticeable difference. So we had a target of 25 days, we’re achieving 25 days, now we’re working towards breaking it down to 20 days. It’s about mapping out the journey of your customer and thinking how can we add value to that process. Did that answer your question?

OWEN: In a way it does, because early on you mentioned you had sales and marketing, which is marketing is putting the word there about what you guys are doing, sales is converting the leads as they come in. And operations would be the accountants doing the work, right? Finances will be people managing your building and all that stuff to make sure you guys get paid for the work. Customer care is probably making sure that operations is delivering on time and following up with the customer to make sure everything’s getting done, basically being the eyes of the customer within the company, make sure that customer experience is what it needs to be.

SHAHZAD: You’re right. I’ll make it very simple. So if I was to make it simple and easy to understand there’s three parts to a business, and like I said this is simplified. So A, open number one is lead generation. Number two is lead conversion. Number three is fulfillment. And pretty much every section of your business will fall into one of those three categories.

OWEN: Awesome. What systems do you have in place that enables your employees to know exactly what they need to do now.

SHAHZAD: I read a fantastic book called the Balanced Scorecard by…

OWEN: You know what I noticed about you, I love the things you say. It’s like you read a lot of books. I need to read all these books that you’ve recommended. I love them. Go ahead.

SHAHZAD: It’s a book called the Balanced Scorecard by Kaplan and Norton. And I think around 70%-80% of the Fortune 500 companies use that model in their business. So we came up with something similar called a business one-page plan where we track 14 KPI’s, three or four are around sales and marketing, so they’re our sales drivers. Three or four on average are your cost drivers, and three or four are your success drivers. So we use that alongside that we have personal 1-page plans. So these are personal key performance indicators for every single team member. Then what we have is we have a day focus because is only achieved if you break it down day by day, and it’s only achieved if you know what success looks like. So every single morning all of my team come into my office and we spend a maximum of 10 minutes standing up, writing down on a white board exactly what we’re going to achieve today. If we achieve that we’ll be successful. We also share what we achieved yesterday. So it gives transparency and accountability to the process. Everybody can offer help to each other, and we all know we’re making progress.

OWEN: How do you track and verify the results being delivered by your employees?

SHAHZAD: We use our business 1-page plan where we record absolutely everything in relation to those 12-14 KPI’s. We track the average score for our customer happiness. So we have a target for how many customer feedback forms do you want to receive every single month. Then we have an average score for the kind of score want to achieve. So with the last year, in under 2014, our average score I think was 9.35 out of 10.

OWEN: Wow.

SHAHZAD: Which is a pretty high score. We make sure that our goals and objects, and our targets are smart, and I’m sure you’ve come across that SMART acronym.

OWEN: Can you explain that to the listener just in case?

SHAHZAD: Yes. So the S, the goal or target is specific. The M is measurable. The A is agreed. The R is relevant, and the T is trackable. So there are 4 or 5 different words people use for that acronym, but that’s the one that’s widely accepted.

OWEN: No that you have all these free time in the business, which areas of the business do you now focus on and why?

SHAHZAD: I don’t do account anymore, I don’t do any tax anymore. The only thing that I focus on is sales and marketing. I think most if not all business owners should be looking at working on sales and marketing. My role is not offer account services, my job is to market account and services. That’s the number 1 role of a small business owner. That’s what I’m enthusiastic about. That’s what I enjoy, and that’s the only thing that I do. I work with lots of clients but I help and coach them through similar challenges. I’ve had just over now, 2,300 business consultations in the last 12 years, Owen. That’s working really, really well. And it’s an added benefit to my business. So something which I think your listeners would benefit from it, think about what other services do my clients or customers’ needs that we can offer possibly at a very low cost but a very high perceived value to our clients. That makes a big difference.

OWEN: What will you say is the next stage of growth for your business, what do you plan to achieve next, and why?

SHAHZAD: I think we’ve got a beautifully old reaching system, or beautifully automated business, and it’s just a case of growing that as big as we like. So we’ve got two master business, one is accountancy and taxation, the other one is coaching. And it’s growing at a pace which we’re comfortable with. That’s our plan, [Unintelligible 00:31:37] exciting but it works for us. I also I have three businesses Owen. This business, I have a day care business, and I have business bridging to the car industry. I’ve pretty much systematized all three, and all three worked very well. I wrote two books. I’m a key blogger, and I am a professional speaker. So I’ve been able to blog, write books, and explore my speaking opportunities because I’m freed of time from doing the day to day tasks in my accountancy business.

OWEN: That’s awesome. As we’re rounding up, can you summarize the entire process step-by-step, what the listener should do to transform their business so it runs successfully without them?’

SHAHZAD: The first thing is clarity. Clarity on purpose, clarity on where you’re going, and clarity on how you’re going to achieve, what you’re going to achieve. And in order to have that clarity you’ve got to write things down. Write down what is important to you, to your business, and to your life, and what do you really want to achieve. Once you’ve got that clarity and you know what your business is going to look like then set out your vision and mission. So think about if I had a magic wand how would i create my business. You know very well I know if I was to start again, what would I do? And once you have that clarity everything else fall into place because clarity is the foundation…

OWEN: Is that like starting with the end in my mind? Knowing the end of the business or the place the business is to be like. It’s from there starting backwards?

SHAHZAD: That’s a line that you pitched over from Steven Covey in Seven Habits of Highly Effective Successful People. So you got to start with end in mind. What will my business look like. But you also got to be careful what’s important to different people have different things which make them happy, which make them feel like they’re successful. So have clarity on those things.

OWEN: What will you say is the very next step for the person who’s listening to this interview all the way to this point to take in order to transform their business so it runs successfully without them?

SHAHZAD: I think the first thing they should do is have a very cheap investment, that is to buy Michael Gerber’s book, The E-Myth. The second step would be to speak to their team members to get them on board and to share that new vision with them. The third step is to break their business down to different departments which we’ve spoken about, say it’s about finance operations, etc. And then to have a very clear rules and responsibilities. And then there’s only one thing they’ve got to do which is pick up the phone or call you guys and buy your software. Seriously, because that way they had systematized their business. I did exactly the same thing by working in the UK with a company that Michael Gerber had worked with, and use something which works and I know your software works pretty well. So that’s what they’ve got to do. Invest in their business.

OWEN: Thanks for the plug. Is there a question that you were wishing I asked you during this interview that I did not ask. If so, post the question and the answer. Or if not that, if you think there’s something additional that we need to cover to make this interview even more valuable based on what we were talking about. Feel free to share theat.

SHAHZAD: So, is there a question that is related to being a business or not. Or is it a question…

OWEN: Whatever you think will even add more value to what we’ve been talking about so far.

SHAHZAD: I think you should have asked perhaps a question based on purpose. So why am I in business?

OWEN: Go ahead, why are you in business?

SHAHZAD: I’m in business to change people’s lives, to leave a positive impact, to help them achieve their goals and aspirations. And I’ll do that by being their trusted adviser and looking after their financial affairs.

OWEN: I like that. It basically takes the accounting title and just makes it even more sexy. Because you can say that or you can say you’re an accountant.

SHAHZAD: Exactly.

OWEN: Which one is going to make them open their wallet and say, “I’ll hire you.” It’s the one you just said just now. What will you say is the best way for the listener to connect with you and thank you for doing the interview?

SHAHZAD: I’m on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. So they can find me there. That’s Shahzad Nawaz. I have my own weekly blog or my accountant website. They can find me there. Both of my books will be on Amazon soon if they want to have a look at those books they can have them as well. There’s quite a few different avenues which are all linked with social media.

OWEN: Okay. Now, I’m speaking to you the listener. If you’ve enjoyed this interview you can do us a favor by leaving us a review on these two places. On iTunes, to do that you go to sweetprocess.com/iTunes. If you have an Android phone you can leave us a review on the Stitcher app by going to sweetprocess.com/stitcher. If you’ve enjoyed this interview, I’m sure you have other entrepreneurs as colleagues that you feel will also enjoy this together I want you to refer the interview to them. Finally, if you’re at that point in your business where you’re tired of being the bottleneck and you want to document step-by-step how you get tasks done, well so that on one hand you’re able to document procedures and processes for your employees to know what you know. And on the other hand be able to assign and delegate tasks to your employees and monitor their progress all the way to completion then feel free to sign-up for a free 14-day trial of SweetProcess. Shaz, thanks for doing the interview.

SHAHZAD: You’re welcome my friend. Thank you for having me. Hope your listeners find my experience useful.

OWEN: And we’re done.

 

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Here are 3 Steps to Take After Listening to the Interview:

  1. Get clarity on your purpose, where you’re going, how you’re going to get there and the experience you want to deliver to your customers.
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  3. Set out your vision and your mission; consider how you would set up your business if you could wave a magic wand and make it a reality now.

 

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