If you're a business owner looking for the wisdom of the
elders, Will, I've got some of my best bits in this video from
my journey of learning from my dad, listen up as we get
started.
If you're new to this channel today, my name is Pete Moriarty.
I'm the founder of a business called it genius. And we help
small and medium sized business owners get their technology in
shape. So they can grow more successful businesses have
productive teams have more freedom in their lives, whether
it be flexibility, whether it be time freedom, whether it be
earning more profit, whether it be being, you know, just being
in control of your business, rather than it controlling you.
That's what we're all about here. And so check out our
channel, heaps of videos on how we help business owners to get
productive. Now, I'd like to share today some of the wisdom
from my dad, his name's Tim, and he is a carpenter builder. And
when I was starting my businesses as a teenager, in the
early years, my dad gave me a lot of insight and a lot of
guidance in how I shaped how I now run my businesses. Now, I
didn't go to university or anything like that. And so my
dad was one of my most important business teachers. Because after
finishing high school, I literally went straight into
full time entrepreneurship. And that's all I've ever done, I
scaled up my services business, and then yeah, effectively got
to the stage where in my late 20s, I was semi retired, didn't
have to work anymore, had ticked all of my income goals, and now
have a life with a lot more flexibility with time freedom
with location, freedom, and everything that comes with
stepping out of the rat race. Now, I want to honor my dad by
sharing a couple of the important lessons that I learned
from him in this video, which is a bit different to what we
usually cover on this channel. But you know, people will often
ask me, Well, Pete, how did you learn to be in business. And so
I'm going to share three tips, three principles from my dad,
and hopefully they are useful and interesting to you. So first
off, the first principle is about integrity, and how my dad
expresses that is about doing the right thing. Now, it's an
interesting way that my dad expressed this lesson to me,
when he was sharing it with me, he basically said, Pete, for you
to be in business, it's important for you to do the
right thing, even when nobody's actually watching. And what he
said to me was, if you want to be able to sleep well at night
and want to be able to be comfortable, you know, you're
obviously an ambitious entrepreneur, you're growing a
business. And he could say that even when I was a teenager, I
wanted to make money, grow a business have success. And what
he said to me was, any action you take anything you do, you've
got to be willing to stand up in court and a witness stand and
stand behind your actions, you've got to be willing to say,
Yes, I did this thing and swear under oath, and actually tell
the truth about it. And so in the many opportunities where
I've had, let's say, nobody watching in the business, or
I've had an opportunity to do the right thing by someone or do
less than the right thing, by someone to benefit myself, I
always reflect on this, you know, would I be happy to stand
up in the court, not just in a court room for you know, to
answer to the law, but in the court of public opinion as well,
would I be happy to actually stand up and have this action
exposed, and for me, something that's important to me is, you
know, making sure that I'm loved and respected by my peers, that
I'm respected by my community. And so that's something that's
been a really strong guide for me. So I want to share with you
an example of where this actually came into play. When I
was in my early 20s, running a technology consulting business,
we had sold a customer a service system, so it was a storage
array with a whole bunch of hard drives in there. And what the
customer expected that storage array to do was different to
what it was actually designed to do. And so we had this, this
challenge with the customer, where they were saying, Hey, we
don't really want this piece of hardware anymore. Now, that was
all fine. Customers can ask for refunds. But the only problem
was, for us as a business, we had already purchased this from
a supplier as a special order. And so there was no option for
us to actually return the piece of hardware to that supplier.
And what that meant was that we would get stuck with this piece
of hardware. And it was worth about 15,000 Australian dollars.
Pretty crazy, right? And so we were in this situation where it
would be very detrimental to us to accept a refund from the
customer. And because it would basically put us out of pocket,
we were in the position where we decided, well, it would probably
be best if we just hold our ground and leave the customer to
be stuck with that piece of hardware. The only problem was,
was that really the right thing by that customer.
Now what ended up happening was, thankfully, the customer
actually suggested an alternative solution that might
work for us, for us to both work together on it. And we actually
paid for the alternative solution out of our pocket. So
as a way of repairing the goodwill with a customer and
doing the right thing by them. Obviously, we were looking for
ways that we could try and find something else to do with the
server to be able to resolve the situation with the customer. But
in that case, we actually got lucky that the customer actually
suggested something that would work for both of us and we ended
up paying out of our pocket to make it good now where that was
comfortable for us and where that felt good for us was we got
to a solution in the end that didn't mean that anyone was
grossly out of pocket. Yeah, we had to meet in the middle little
bit, they were a little bit frustrated that didn't get
exactly what they wanted, we were a bit frustrated that we
paid more than we wanted to as well. But in the end solution
worked out great principle number two, do it right the
first time, and my dad literally has this written on the back of
his truck. Now, when my dad's building house or retaining wall
or you know, taking care of an extension or something for one
of his customers, well, he tends to work a little slowly, and he
is happy to admit this. Now what his ethos is, is it may be
slower, it may be more expensive. But if it's done
right, then you're building something that is going to last,
and are a particularly take this philosophy into how we approach
working with software or working with technology or working with
businesses, because I'm very much of the opinion of doing
things light and simple is going to make sense over slow and
expensive. Although what we do go very slow on is how we
actually build our own business. And what I mean by that is, we
take a long time to map out our strategies, we look far into the
future, we look five or 10 years into the future and where things
are at. And we decide to make slow movements in the right
direction, rather than zigzagging superfast like many
entrepreneurs like to do. Now, it's exciting to chase new fads
to jump on to the latest and greatest that's happening, or to
look for an opportunity and jump into that gap. Yet, for many
entrepreneurs, they'll find themselves continuing to jump
between different stages of business between different
industries between different products. And for me personally
doesn't really vibe with me, I prefer to build something that's
going to be repeatable builds something that's going to have
value over a long period of time. And particularly
considering we're in the business of recurring revenue.
That's something that when I build it once, I can harvest
that multiple times. And so for me, it's all about Yes, doing it
right the first time, but also making sure that we're building
the right kind of momentum that's going to last as well.
The third principle that I'd like to share with you, is about
playing the long game. And we've had many relationships in our
business where this has been very, very important to me. Now,
my dad always told me to never burn bridges, you know, never do
wrong by anyone, because even though there's hundreds and
1000s, and millions of people in the country, well, you never
know what might happen or who may reappear at your life in
some point in the future. And so it's always been important to me
to foster long term relationships. And no matter if
I hold some kind of judgment, or have some kind of incident or
dispute with anyone in particular, to not hold grudges
or hold on to, you know, destroying that relationship
with that person. Now, what that has afforded me and what I've
been very lucky to receive from that ethos is many
relationships, both in business and personally, that have lasted
for more than decades, and have been very fruitful to me in
doing business together. Now, what I can say is that from one
of my clients who I was doing business with, as a teenager,
doing tech consulting in my local suburb, I nurtured a
relationship and worked with him over many years. And when it
came time for us to raise capital, one of those people who
I met when I was 17 years old, actually helped be a part of the
investment and capital raise of our business. And that is a
massive, massive win for us as a business. And what an amazing
tribute to the relationship that we had built over time. And so
fostering relationships over time playing the long game with
those relationships, without any particular intention or without
any particular need or desire to have some kind of goal with the
relationship. But just to keep good relationship with
customers, with partners with suppliers and with those that
you're doing business with is something that is likely to
reward you now I've got many customers that I've been doing
business with for over 10 years, and we're in business to be in
the long game. I really don't fundamentally believe in the
businesses where you know, you're taking one customer in
today, and you don't care about them tomorrow. For me, it's all
about building that long game. And we know with the products
that we work with, like Google workspace predominantly, that is
an ecosystem that businesses will implement. And it may stay
in the business for 510, or even more years from there forward.
And so everything we're building is about building that
relationship and taking customers along the journey. We
are failing if we have customers come in the front door of our
business, and then a week later or a year later are exiting out
the back door. And I'm very happy to say we've got very low
churn rates, our customers stay with us for a long time. Now
this video is a little out of the ordinary for what we usually
cover on this channel. If you're new here, we usually cover
technology, scaling teams, scaling businesses, and
everything that you need to know to make sure that your team and
systems are productive, so that you can build a better business
have more flexibility and more time. If you're interested in
our growth roadmap. That is our roadmap for businesses going
through the different stages of growth in their business, and
helping to educate you on what types of technology are going to
be important for you as you move through the different stages of
business. Now, if you're interested head along to our
channel in the playlist section, we've got videos covering each
stage of business, and it would be a good idea for you to start
there. If you're already a Google workspace customer, you
might be interested in our transfer in offer. There's a
link to that just down below. And what that gives you access
to is our team for some basic level support.
You get an amazing library of videos inside Google Classroom
to train you and your team on how to get the best out of your
investment in Google workspace. And you also get access to
preferential discounts on Google workspace when they're available
doesn't cost you anything extra. You just need to transfer your
billing to it genius. Jump on the link below if you're
interested in that. And if you liked this video, please
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one.