Future Proofing Your Business Human Connection vs. AI, Cash Flow, and Resilience

Show Notes

In this episode of the Women in Business Radio Show, Sian Murphy and her guests talk about future-proofing your business in a fast-changing world. They explore the power of human connection in an age of AI, the often-overlooked importance of cash flow planning, and why blending imagination with solid strategy is key for long-term success.

Created and hosted by Sian Murphy with regular co-hosts Michele Yianni Attard, Kay Best, Rachael Bryant and occasionally Adelle Martin.

Find out how to be a guest or patron of the show at https://thewomeninbusinessradioshow.com

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Created and hosted by Sian Murphy with regular co-hosts Michele Yianni Attard, Kay Best, Rachael Bryant and occasionally Adelle Martin.

Find out how to be a guest or patron of the show at https://thewomeninbusinessradioshow.com ★ Support this podcast ★

Creators and Guests

Host

Adelle Martin

Host

Michele Yianni-Attard

Host

Sian Murphy

What is The Women In Business Radio Show?

Tune in for fun, inspiration and unfiltered discussions as host Sian Murphy interviews down-to-earth businesswomen sharing ideas, tactics and stories.

Regular features include recommended books, tools, lessons learned and top tips for business.

Welcome to the Women in Business Radio Show with Sean Murphy, connecting women in business around the globe. Hello, and welcome to tune in next week to the Women in Business Radio Show for more stories, ideas, and inspiration to help you grow your business. Well, I have no idea what happened there. Fortunately I have the lovely Paul Andrews is in the studio with me today. I think I must have must have pressed the wrong button. No, no, no, you didn't. Somebody somebody I didn't. Hang on. I just want you to say that, like properly. No, you didn't press the wrong button. Somebody set it to auto play. Ah, who would that have been? I don't know, Sean, I'll tell you what I. Was being so cool as well. I stopped the track earlier. And this is why I don't segue. We nearly made it. We nearly made it on air in one piece. It's it's a shame. When I've been doing this show a bit longer, I reckon, I'll have got it. I'll have nailed it. I'll have sort of got it off. Pat in the second decade, in the second decade, they're going to be wheeling me in here in my bath chair. Anyway, here we are. We are finally live on there for the Women in Business radio show. Who have I got in the studio with me today? I have my co host, Mika Yanniata. Also in the studio, we have the Lovely and also in the studio we have Okay. Now, the reason I have to get them to introduce themselves is I can't. I can't get it. I've written it down, I can't get it right. I've had to write my own name down. I'm charm. So we are going to be talking about We're going to be talking about future proofing your business now obviously looking ahead into the future. We have done absolutely no play on this at all, so it's going to be quite interesting to see what actually sort of comes out of this discussion. I think it's something that you know that the business world, dispecially. I think the world at the moment is moving very very fast. I think there's a lot of economic uncertainty, even if it's not reality, I think people are feeling it. I think people are getting ready, they're feeling uncertain, even if their pocket you know, even if their budget hasn't yet been hit. I think there's a great deal of fear around what's likely to be happening economically with our businesses, with our jobs, with all sorts of I know in the UK we have all sorts of things happening, don't we Affecting employers definitely with increases in sort of national insurance contributions, changes in the changes in the employment laws are making it a lot harder and more expensive for us to employ people. So that affects us. It affects our ability to be of our businesses forward. It also affects employees, you know, it affects people in the jobs wherever they are. You know, we heard I had an interesting statistic this morning where people like some of the major supermarkets and major retail outlets are employing twenty percent of our workforce in the UK. They're responsible for twenty percent of our workforce and the impacts of the recent introductions are really hitting them hard. And so it's you know, it's affecting managers, it's affecting workers, it's affecting employers, and it's affecting us as small businesses and micro businesses absolutely. So that's why we're talking about future proofing. I think also, you know, AI is moving things on a pace. I think as people start to move, you start using more AI, we're introducing more AI. Things are just sort of rattling along. I also think something a trend that I see happening is that as people were looking at becoming a lot more community focused, we're looking at more community type businesses. We want to do more face to face type businesses. We're sort of coming if you're like, not necessarily offline, but we want to know a lot more who we're buying from. And all of this sort of builds a pressure for change on our businesses. And so it's about future proofing. Now. Sometimes when I say something like future proofing, it's almost like I'm consolidating what's here and we're not moving, and it's a little solid lump. But it's not. It's about It's about how can we build in change, How can we build in fluidity, and how can we build in resilience and security? How can we build security into our businesses? And for me, one of the fantastic things about being in business is also one of the worst things about being in business. It's one of the most fantastic things about being in business is when everything does become uncertain, I am not waiting for somebody to do something. I'm not hoping. I'm not waiting for a decision from my employer to you know, who's going to do what? What's going to happen. Are they going to go into this market, are they going to go into that market? Are they going to make people redundant or shut down a branch in an area. I'm not waiting. I'm not sat there sort of waiting for my fate to land. On the other hand, I have to make the decisions. I have to be preempting the situation. I have to be aware of what's happening out there. I need I'm the person who's making those judgments because I'm in control. That's fantastic and it's scary. So what can we be doing to build in our security and resilience and make ourselves feel a little bit more secure so that we are all here in ten twenty and thirty is time not only for ourselves but for the people we employ. Before we get going on that, I do have a couple of shout outs. We have got Remember the Women in Business Big Show of twenty twenty five. It's on the seventh of August. It is at Wilmington Academy. Everybody that's actually in the studio, by some strange coincidence, is going to be there. We are. I have to tell people where Wilmington Academy is. Wilmington Academy is near Dartford, so thank you Wilmington County. It's up near Dartford's Dartford, Kent, so it's not too far from the crossing. So it's hitting the southeast of England, you know, sort of Kent, southeast London, Essex. Very easy to get to for anybody there. We've got parking on site. It's free for visitors. And what we're focusing on at the moment is actually we've opened up some forty pounds stands. Now forty pounds stands are just brilliant. You know, you couldn't go and buy a nasty chicken and chips with some warm coke in a well known restaurant for forty quid for your family. So you know, this is not a major risk here. So it's a really affordable space. It's also a relaxed space. You don't need to have all the branded gonks and whimsies. Nobody's ever bought anything from a pen with a name on it. You know, you need to come bring along your imagination and yourself and be willing to share what you do as part of your business. You may literally just have started out, you may not be quite sure what you're doing. You do need to be ensured as a business, but it's it's just a really good space to get going and get get started. If you want some information, if you want to find out how you can have one of those stands, Basically, go to the Women in Business Big Show website, the Women in Business Big Show dot com and there is a little form that you can ping on there to come through and we will have a chat with you. Or you can WhatsApp seven nine one six eight eight six three and once again we can have a chat with you and see whether you would like to have one of those stands. So I think that's enough of that, don't you care? I've got something to say. I've got something to say. When you mentioned a certain chicken outlet. I wasn't mentioning any names. No, but I am. I am here in Tendon, which is where I live. We have a chicken outlet called Tentucky Fried Chicken. Can you imagine how long it took them to think of that. Yeah Tentucky, yea Tentucky. And I'm surprised that nobody's picked up on that. So let's hope that the IP people aren't listening in that could will be the end of it. And also Paul Andrews part of our fantastic media team as the host of Eastern Favor really really is as part of the Business Radio himself a broadcaster, So Paul is going to be at the show. He's going to be talking to exhibitors. We will, indeed, yeah, we go every year. We love the Women in Business Big Show. We go every year, and I will be circulating around talking to exhibitors, visitors and sponsors and interviewing them and the interviews will be played out on the Business Monk Show. They will, and they also go out onto the Women in Business Radio show. So it's also this is about experiences as well. So it's about experiencing, about experiencing exhibiting without breaking the bank, without taking a major, major risk. It's also about the opportunity to get yourself onto onto the radio, have you know, get your voice out there and say hello, talk about what you're doing. This is actually what it's all about and Paul is a great supporter of Kent businesses. This is what he does and so I'm very grateful that he also comes and does it at the Women in Business Big Show. Did I mention Michel you're a spot. Michael Jarniatad is the CEO of Future Insight and a sponsor at the event and a speaker as well, and a speaker, and Mark Jennings is he speaks as well. Now and then ye, now and then you never know, some of this like a like a sort of interest comes out. So Mark Mark will also be talking. He is going to be talking about buying your not your first website, but buying your website, making sure that you actually own the thing that you think you're going to be buying, and how you go about checking that you actually own all of the little widgets and bits that go behind the scenes, because you would be surprised how many people do not. Right, Okay, so let's if I if I said a load to if I've introduced, so let's get on with the show future proofing your Business. So I think if we start with Michael, you know Mickel, accountant, owner, owner of a firm financial strategy, property businesses and bookkeeping companies. Really you operate internationally, working in Malta sort of across the globe, probably quite well placed to help us with what we with. I think what we need to be looking at in the numbers for our business, you know, what do we need to be monitoring, What do we need to be paying attention to, you know, where do we need to be focusing to keep that business moving forward and the float? Yeah, definitely. So. I mean businesses that are react late to what's going on, especially in regarding to the budget, are struggling the most basically because they have not put a plan in place. It's you need to plan when you're running a business, You really really need to plan what you know, how economy is going to affect you and how are you going to go forward. So that's what I found on my existing clientele that they're struggling because they haven't put a plan in place. They haven't thought about what's happening in the UK and what's happened in the recent budgets over the last year, and also globally as well, like current trends and things. What surprises me is probably about sixty eight percent of my clients don't have a cash flow forecast or even a forecast or a cash flow. And it's important that they have that. What's the difference between or is it perhaps I misheard it? What's the difference between a cash flow forecast and a forecast? Okay, so a forecast is more like your GPS of your business. Yeah, So basically it tells you where you're heading based on where you are now. Usually people do it for three to five years where they want to go. So it's not so it's not necessarily financial. No, it is financial. Okay, yeah, it is financial, but it's basically where do you want to be within the next three to five years basically or ten years. So it's not necessarily attached to the reality. Yeah, basically I don't mean that horribly. This is where I want to go. But also it kind of see you can kind of see what trend one and when you want to go and employ stuff. For instance, So maybe in two years time you say, right, I'm heading for that. I need to get this amount of sales in order to be able to say, right, these are my costs. How am I going to If I'm going to get employees, that's going to make my costs higher, So what do I need? So it's basically looking at your margins, what's going to happen. That's why you're forecasting it. You're thinking, yeah. So if I put this on a simple scale, yeah, say I said, I'm like website clients. So, for instance, that I wanted my forecast for over the next year was to have one hundred website management clients. But I know that one person can manage twenty five. Therefore, if I want to have one hundred, I need to make sure I'm sort of potentially okay for the first twenty five. However, as I start going over that towards the fifty, I'm going to have to get somebody else. Absolutely I may not actually be able to fully fund them because a client number twenty seven, we're now stretched, yeah for people pressing buttons if you like, and doing sleep. On the other hand, we have to get up to fifty. So it's sort it's that sort of thing going, Okay, if I want this many clients, I've got to have this many people. I need this many vans trucks to take that wherever. Okay, And I always talk about margins, so people say, what is the minimum and my gross profit in regards to margin against my sale and my cost of south so to speak. So really try not to go any lower than thirty eight percent, okay, because when you've got all your overhead overheards will wipe you out on average, So it's better to make sure that you stay at, you know, fifty percent or sixty percent if you can. But the minimum should really be thirty eight percent. Okay, I think you were going to. Say, so, Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. Some years ago, in one of my businesses, which was working very well at the time, we did a long range four cast of where we were going based on historical growth perpetuating into the future. And what it informed us was in two years time, we'd need to double the staff. But of course that also has a knock on effect because we then learned if we've got double the staff, we need a new office. Yeah. Yeah, So basically you then have to go we'll hold on a minute on carrying on this trajectory. If we get there and we've got double the staff, a brand new office, more equipment, are we better off or worse off? Yeah? And that's where you have to plan, and that's where the cash flow forecast comes in as well. Exactly, Yeah, you have to go. It's okay having these grandiose plans, but have we got the money definitely to make that happen and to sustain it if we get there? Yeah, definitely. I think one of the things that sometimes gets lost in business is how much imagination you need. Yeah, you know you need it work. Yeah, it's not, yes, guess work, but you need to. I mean, what we've just described here is really quite a simple scenario, isn't it. You know, you know you you're going to do twice as much stuff, so you need twice as many people. But actually it isn't always like that, is it. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it doesn't sum up like that. But there's a lot of stuff that you need to sort of spend time just thinking about. Yeah, you know, consequences that aren't aren't in a book somewhere that you you have to you have to spend your time imagining what if? Yeah, yes, yes, yeah, what if this happened? Yeah? Okay, god. And it's also something that politicians never do, which is correct impact analysis, Yeah, because they never take into account ever behavioral economics. No, they don't. Yeah, that's what My hype is about that exactly. Yeah. You know, politicians make a decree that says we're going to do X, but they don't take into account what the effect of that will be. You know, they do part of it. They go, and we're going to put taxes up, which means we're going to make another ten billion pounds. But I don't go, but what about all the people that choose not to pay the tax? Yeah? What about all the people that move their business overseas? What about all the people that go, It's not worth me being in business anymore. I'm going to shut down. And they've come across this big time with the vot on school fees. Their analysis of that was completely wrong and has already been totally undone. That's because they had a really poor impact analysis of the behavioral economics behind it. As a business, you need to think about that as well. You know, just one of the scenarios I gave you with one of my businesses many years ago. We were growing an almost exponential rate, which was lovely. You know, We're going, yeah, oh, you know, brilliant company from ours all round that got any jobs going? Yeah, But but it has impacts, you know, and you have to think about the impacts of that in terms of if you are going to kind of double your revenues and increase your profits by forty percent and increase your staff. It's not it's not a it's not a straight line. No, it is. You know, at the moment, we've got twenty staff. In two years time, we're going to have forty staff. I mean, am I still going to be able to manage forty staff on every day? Absolutely, because you'll need managers and supervisor. And stuff that goes around it. Absolutely. One of I'm not going to name. I'm not going to name the local authority. No no, no, no, I'm no, I'm not going to guess. No, no, I'm not. But but this is a scenario that I saw happen, and I remember this announcer was made, and I'll see sitting there and sort of looking at each other, if you like, we were in the audience and listening to this person pontificating on this new income sort of generating thing. We're sort of looking at each other thinking that's not going to work, is it? And it was around the collection of bulky waste. So bulky waste used to be collected for free, and you could have this number of bulky waste collections a week or a month or whatever. And so what this idiot decided was that based on and this was to be a new income stream, was that there were it's a thousand bulky waste collections a month in the borough. What they do is they would charge for all of those bulky waste collections at thirty pounds time, and therefore you would have this thirty thousand pounds a month income. What actually happened was that the majority of people who were previously having bulky waste collected were dumping their sofas now on the. Pay right the flight fields, but they were flight tipping stuff. You know, the thing with fly tipping is you sort of need to either see it or there needs to be something on the duck on the waist that you can actually go, oh joe blog stump that. Of course it's sofas, freezers, not things with people's names and addresses on them. But you know, that is such a good point because so if you if you retrospect it to analyze that they were anticipating thirty thousand pounds of income in our fictitious example. So they've gone, well, we'll pay fifteen grand for people to put this in place, so we're going to make fifteen grand profit. And then everybody starts flight tipping. So you don't make the ford, but you don't make the thirty grand because most people don't pay it. Only half of them pay it, and you've got a hard double of people to go and clean up the message thousand. Yes, yes, Actually you're in the miner and you know, you could sit there and thinking, I can't wonder how long it's going to take before the penny drops. But you know, and the thing is, I think that sometimes for a lot of us sat here with a reasonable amount of imagination, you can imagine that happening. It was so obvious. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, definitely. You just have to see how people behave and that to be funny. We're now being funny. It's one of the greatest skills of small business owners. It is having acuity. Yeah. I always remember you ever come across a guy called Tom Peters? I guess you guys are all probably too young. Our friend, Yeah, it's now. Tom Peters was an American management consultant, and he wrote a book in nineteen eighty called In Search of Excellence, and he it was the very first management book that ever won, ever became number one and the New York Bert Seller lists because in Search of Excellence, and he identified a dozen companies that he considered excellent, and then he identified traits that made them excellent. And one of the big traits that he identified was acuity. And acuity is the ability to look at a situation and analyze it in depth from every aspect as they see the ins and outs, that the upside, the downside, the unthought of side. And he talked a lot about acuity. He was actually, I actually I was very lucky enough to speak on the same platform as him once at the q E two Center, which was brilliant and it still makes me laugh. There was it was an audience of four hundred senior IBM executives in the audience and Tom was going on about taking risk and doing all kinds of things, and one of the guys in the audience said, yeah, yeah, but if you do that and it goes wrong, what happens? And he rounded on him and he said listen, son, He said, if you haven't been fired by the time you're thirty, you're just not try. Absolutely I think one of one of the things that I keep forgetting about and then sort of coming back to, is, you know, looking at sort of future proofing you feel like, and looking at the types of products that we sell, and it sort of comes in. This does tie in a bit, is whether what we're selling and what we're doing is a vitamin or a pill. And I think we need a mixture of vitamins and pills, absolutely And if you we all tend to think out what we offer is absolutely marvelous, isn't it. And very often we're looking at it from our point of view, whereas people are looking at it from the other side. And actually I can manage without that, actually and it easy. Once again, it's that ability to sort of move your mind's eye around to the other side of it. But ask you question, ask this question, is this a vitamin or a pill? And I think you need a mixture of two to keep yourself going. You need a pill where somebody is in an urgent state of I need this now, I really do need this. And an example could be so bankruptcy help. You know, if you're going bankrupt, you need bankruptcy help, and you need it now. You don't need it next year and next when you want that help now, and that's a pill. On the other hand, if you want financial management and you want to improve your situation and increase your wealth over the next year, that's a vitamin. You need it right now. But you need to moving forwards, and I think you need to have you need to be aware of what you have and have and have a mixture if you like, of what you can offer. Absolutely absolutely I can agree more. I mean maybe later on in the show, you're going to ask me my thoughts on future briefly and a business, and my very first thought is actually a conflict. I'm going to give you two things that actually conflict with each other. Okay, go on, then I'll tell you what We'll do it now, Okay, I do it. The two biggest things that I see at the moment. And I'm talking that this this applies to every organization, but I'm particularly interested in small and medium sized organizations. I'd lecture on NBA class at the London Square of Economics occasionally, and a group of NBA students asked me about eight months ago if I were starting out in business, now, where would I look? And I have a complete answer to that, which is anything that involves a human being providing service to somebody else. And so my conflicting thing is if you run a small business, you need to use all the digital and AI tools that you can get, but you need to be human and have human service because the thing that's failing at the moment is every organization puts in place really daft technology that doesn't help and sends the customers round in circles and ends up lowering productivity because you waste a day trying to answer stupid questions of digital systems that have no interrupting them. You go round and run in a circle, and you can't break spin out and go with your website. You what digital service does not cater for my question? So how do I get my question answered? And that is a problem that happens everywhere. So for me running a small business, the single biggest difference you can make is having contactable humans. It's funny you should mention that because we have just been reviewing what we do in Stormchases Digital and how we do it. So we're talking through a WordPress management, website development, that sort of thing, and basically that and one of the key things that we would not compromise on is having a person at the end of the phone. Now agree with when I say phone, in reality it's actually whatsapph. So there is not somebody sat there waiting for your very call, but there is a person that you are going to speak to. There is nothing on the website that says, oh, you know that pops up and says how can we help you? And it's a personal thing for me. I just get so cross and frustrated. I couldn't agree more. It's key. I was on a big businesses website and the other day trying to get information and it was just sending me round in a loop chat with this bot. There's no phone number, couldn't answer my question. And especially when you have something like things that deal with people on what can be emotive subjects, and you most not think that somebody's business website is an emotive subject, but it is. If the thing goes down and you don't understand the language, and you're being expected to type something reasonably technical into a bot thing, and all you really need to do is speak to somebody and go, look, this thing that normally pops up isn't popping up. And now I don't know why it's not and it's when it's blue. And do you know who is you know it's the Financial Institute and hm LC. It's so annoying. You go to the bolt first, go to our website first. But the people just want to talk to a human being, a HMRC. You know, at the end of the day you've got a pressing and the BOLT is like oh, and then the automation on the telephone. It's just crazy. You just want to talk to someone. And our clients are getting stressed about it. They come to us. But there's certain things an accountant can do. But if it's like a money plan or you're paying off your VAT and installments, guess what you have to make that call with HMRC and go through that marigma. I've been waiting an hour, you know, and then you just get an automated service or like you say, bolts. Or. You're on the phone going through the navigation and it only has the time thing ye up an hour and it goes and. Sometimes it doesn't understand what you're trying to look for, like you're saying, what is your question? It's really difficult though, having having been involved on the other side of this, but a long time ago, when the technology was very string teens. I was head of Internet banking at City Bank in nineteen seventy nine, which was before the PC and before the Internet, and we had online banking and one of the things that we've came across very quickly was customers not understanding what they were doing when they were doing it. So we put a lot of effort into thinking about that. The problem is, if you just give people the option to speak to a human, they will always pick that option, yeah, no matter what, So that invalidates all the tools that you've put in place. So what you need is to think through very carefully how you use the technology. So I'm going to come back. You know, there's no hope for corporates. There's just no hope for corporates and big government. It's just a waste of time, it is. But if you're running a small or medium sized business, you need to think about how you deployed the technology. That you deploy And I think what I'm hearing what I'm hearing from this is that if you want to future proof your business is to look at how you can build in a personal connection, a personal I don't like the word touch point, but where somebody can easily reach and speak to a person. Now, I don't think that has to necessarily be immediate. Sometimes it might need to be, but for a lot of businesses, it may just just be like I say that you're able to type a message into whatsappened and say I'm not quite sure what's happening. This is going wrong? You know? Can I speak to somebody please? And then somebody comes back to you that is a person. Yes, yeah, I had exactly that today. I was trying to do something on a website. It wasn't letting me doing it. It wasn't doing what I wanted to do, and it said, you're struggling with this, can we get an agent to help? Yes, please, that's exactly what you need to do. And it wasn't it. It was a bot and it went, let me understand what you're trying to do. You're trying to do this, you're trying to I was trying to inform someone that we were moving house and we needed to pay the final bill your moving house. Yes, you need to go to the moving house page. Now that's my whole point. It's got a four oh four on it. For those who don't know, is where basically the page the pages you go there and it's just a white page. Yeah, definitely, it's got a four oh four on it. Uh? Is that your meat to reading? Now? Look at how you can build in that personal touch into into your business, because that's the way that it's going. But still use digital tools. I'll tell you what you need to draw the map first before you try to implement the tools. Exactly, using digital tools and using them to communicate with your existing or potential clients is a totally different thing. Absolutely, just it's it's not it's not the same. And it amazes me that people aren't able to make this distinction. I don't I don't understand how people do they get over enthusiastic. Do they think it's going to save the world. Do they think it's going to save the money. I don't want to dominate this, but can I tell you a story of some I was engaged to a few. I used to work as a management consultant, which is why I come across a lot of these things. And are you familiar with to think called an IVR box, which is an interactive voice response box. We kind of got past them a little bit now, but for many years, when you rang someone there was a box that said, you know, do you want to pay your bill? Pressed? Well, yeah, yes, I remember those. Bizarrely, I was employed by a company that actually wore the biggest manufacturer in the world of IVR boxes, okay, and I was employed to have do a review of their customer service, which was getting really bad reviews. And then why report? I said, the biggest problem you've got is you use your own products. And they went what I went, you're using your IVR boxes and you're using them as a weapon. Yeah. What you've done is you've implemented them to stop customers talking to you. That is exactly it, isn't it. You know, when there's a barrier of you have to jump through certain hoops, so they're protecting the staff answering the phone. Why because because potentially that's the disruption, isn't it. I Mean, let's be if I sat there and every three minutes the phone rang, I would never be able to get anything the center. I don't understand, because that's what you've been But it doesn't always work like that, does it. I Mean, the problem is you're quite right, Yeah, you know, but these things are a journey many years ago when IVR boxes first came along, Charann's absolutely right. So what they then did is they went, let's let's build a call center. Yeah. So I built a call center and that became expensive to run. They went, well, let's move that to India. Yeah. Yeah, and then all of a sudden and then everybody was working from home. And then you know, it degrades over time. But what it does is it builds in a rate determining step. So it builds in something where it doesn't matter what time I ring up. There is a process that I have to go through that means that from the time that the call is answered, if you like, it is going to be thirty minutes before I get to somebody in the call center. And they're controlling it. I don't actually know this. I'm just imagining they're controlling that that weight speed, because if I spend thirty minutes here, it's thirty minutes longer. They're going to loose some people. And it's like it's like this is a game to actually get rid of your clients, to stop them talking to you. Absolutely is they put you in a queue because it then becomes self filtering. People go, I can't be bothered to wait in here anymore. I'll find some other way. To I'll tell you what. I hope, I really hope I never get to the point in my business where I am avoiding. I have so many clients and I care so little about them that I am putting in barriers to them reaching me. So I think, and that's where I think Mark is entirely right about how you plan these things. Yeah, yeah, definitely, Yeah. And you've got to You've got to You've got to go about this as a business benefit, not as a how do we stop these people annoying us? And I know from my own personal experience, I really do think that this is a key, a key benefit. And I think over the next sort of months years, that it's going to become a differentiating core. It will. It's between It's something I hope, so because that's what I've identified for my business as as what works. It also serves a multi purpose for you because it provides content for your website for their FAQs and things like this. This is questions that people that either are our customers or our potential customers exactly you should be using it exactly, pushing it away. Yeah, no, that's true. So building so that people can speak to you know, so that your customers and your potential customers or clients can actually speak to a real person and get the questions answered, and that they don't have to give formulaic answers, and that they can actually sort of speak in the language that they understand. You know, I think that's so important. We can't expect people to talk to us in web design language because they're not web designers. You know. It's a bit like me ringing a mechanic. It's so good, the wig nut that goes under the thing. Could you repair that please? I expect to be able to ring a mechanic and go that don't work. It's making like a clunk, making a cluk when I go around the corner. There's no way that you can build in everybody's discription in the language that they use of something that's quite a technical product if you like and expect and expect everybody to be using the language that the body is going to understand. True. So I think it's it's a turnaround, isn't it. Let's embrace our clients, Let's give them the support that they want. It does cost more, It cost more to provide that sort of service, but perhaps we need to charge more. Perhaps if there are people that value that, they will pay for it. Absolutely. But I come back to Mark's point, and I think it's absolutely spot on. You know, the tools exist to do things, you just have to deploy them in the right way. You should be deploying the tools as an asset to help you manage your business, and that's what it should be doing. Yeah, and then what you have is an escape clause that says, if none of these tools are working for you, give Paul a call, because they all to answer it out for you. Absolutely, And it is that simple. It's about building relationships with your customers. You need to have customer services with your customers you or you're not going to grow basically because. They're going to go elsewhere and they're going to give them that. Customers you've got are your best ambassadors. Absolutely, because they're going to tell words of mouth. Hey, guys going to speak to Paul, Mark McHale, shann't. I used to I used to teach customer service a million years ago, and one of the stories I used to tell was about a mate of mine that went into a shop and bought a bar of Cabre's fruit and nut chocolate. Okay, and he opened a bar up and instead of it being whatever they were, raisins or sultanas, it was a dead fly okay. And he wrote a really snotty letter to Cabrisa, And about two weeks later a box arrived with a letter and it said, we are incredibly concerned that this happened to you. We are so sorry. We have completely decommissioned that line and cleaned it out. As a token of our appreciation for bringing this to our attention, please find a complimentary box of like forty bars of chocolate. Wow. Right. He went around. This is a guy called Gary. He went around telling everybody this, what do you think happened? Millions of people were going a shot and buy chocolate. There's no flights in this and sending it back. Right. Okay, let's move on to actually maybe go back Michael, did we finish on the cash flows? We didn't on cash We did the forecast and we did, I mean very quickly. We cash mentioned it, didn't you, Paul? About cash flow? So cash flow is not determine what your profits are, so you could be a profit rich, but it doesn't mean that your cash flow is rich. And the factors of that is people that still owe you money. Yeah. Yeah, you've got to pay staff, You've got to pay Hm, Marc, You've got to So cash flow is so key and it's you know, I find when I speak to people. I did a seminar recently about cash flow and I asked people to put the hands up. There were small business entrepreneurs and I said, put your hand up if you do a cash flow. Do you know what? Only five people out of forty people put the hand up and said, I do cash flow. And the thing, it's so key to the business to understand what's coming into your business. When are you're expecting your debt is to pay? When are you going to pay out your rents, your bills, those sort of things. A twelve month cash flow is keyed to It's the lifeblood of your business, and not many people are doing that. So I think what we're saying here is that really your sort of starting point is knowing is having a forecast and having a cash flow, getting that nailed and a business plan. And I'm not sure what or do you do those in Probably the cash flow will be if you're already running the business, get your cash flow going. You do it an ex sale and there aren't tools out there, Like I mentioned. Tools that there are so many tools to you know, this is why I'm not anti tool. There are so many tools to help you do this. Yeah. I mean with with my business, I've got I've got a banking app which breaks down what I spend exactly. But I've also got, because of the type of business I've got, I've also got a till app okay that actually tells you, minute by minute how much money you're taking and what you're taking it on absolutely, and then you can do an analysis. Now I look at that every day, and so I look at my banking app, I look at my square up app, and I know where our major points are. So the VAT bill is due this quarter, that's it. My outgoings are this month, the staff are paid on the last four days square up. I didn't know that we have square Yeah, I've. Many tools. We only use it as as events for taking what I'm going to call cash payments. Were largely an invoice business. Yeah, whereas we take card payments by the hour. Absolutely, yeah, yeah, but whatever tools you use, yeah, exactly. There are tools available to help you manage the cash flow. Absolutely. Just a simple Excel spreadsheet. There's so many. Go on to Google Google and just say template Excel a cash fly there's so many. So customer focused, speak to real people. Know your cash flow forecast, know your forecast, have a plan in place, Look at whether what you're offering is a pill or a vitamin. Is it just going to drop off everybody's radar when the times get a little bit tough. All of your customer is going to say, actually, we can probably live without Phillip Steak. And if you don't sell rump Steak, if you don't sell rump Steak, are you are you done? Are you out of it? Talking about technology and wanted also just to talk about AI and if you like SEO search engine optimization, and you know, I don't know if Paul and I were talking just before we came on air. I cannot remember the last time I looked at a search engine because I can't be bother faffing around with it or yeah, you go on to chat GPT, you go, I want to know this, that and the other, and you get somebody, you get the answers back in, and I go scrolling through different websites, looking at other people's interpretations of stuff, looking at how they've optimized stuff. So Mark talking about sort of the SEO side of things. What do we need to do now people are starting to stop using search engines. Well, we've already mentioned FAQ's, which is a really good way because that's the questions that people are asking. So you have an audience already. How do they ask about what you do? A lot of people, especially small businesses, and it's probably due to cost to start with, they'll have a website that has a services page. You need to split that up if you have more than one service, put it on separate pages, and then put the FAQs on the separate pages. So you get asked questions about your chocolate bars, it goes on the chocolate bar page. So you're making it easy for chat GPT because it does come up with websites, doesn't it. You're making basically I suppose it's normal SEO. If you like, somebody's asked a question, a keyword question, and you've got a web page actually answers that question. You're making it simple for the technology to understand what the page is about. Yeah, and you can do that just with the words on the page. Then there are technical things that you can do in the background as well. So there's a thing called schema which again helps the search engines understand what the page is about and just write for people. Yeah, and if things change, change it. And so your FAQs you bring on a new customer, they've asked you a slightly different question on the page. So you know, before with SEO, it was like things like page speed and all if that sort of thing mattered. Does that mean we don't have. To worry That's still we don't. Have to worry about that anymore. Yeah, it still does matter because obviously that the AI to a degree is working the same way as the search engines, which is, I want content that's relevant, but I know that people aren't going to wait for it, so they want to deliver it quickly, So bear that, am I. Yeah, So. It's about you know, I come across quite a few people go, I don't own use AI, you know, Oh, no, I don't know any of that. I'm not a social media Well if you're a business, you go, oh, I don't like social media. I'm not on it, or you assume that because you're not on it, nobody else is on it, you're not using AI or chat GPT, therefore nobody else's And actually that is just not the reality. I don't think we can make those assumptions anymore about AI. I think we might have been able to say a year, a year or two ago that you know, if you were if you were looking for somebody wanted healing or buying jewelry or whatever, that they weren't looking for anything technical. Maybe yeah, they weren't a technically savvy person, that they probably wouldn't be using AI to search. But that is not the case. Now I see little old ladies typing things into into chat GPT. Yeah, it's interesting. I had an argument with a bloke last night. Made me laugh because I've got two blogs about the downsides of AI. Guy. Now, I didn't write them, somebody else wrote them and I just published them. And they're very if you actually read the whole thing, it's very cognizant. It's saying you know by all means you what you say, but be aware of this, be aware of that, don't don't do this. Yeah, well I posted one of them last night that be Wary of AI is. It was called that the bloke didn't read the blog. He just read the headline and started to shout at me, and I'm going, you're a mug. Yeah, you need to read the whole thing. But like anything, you know, technology can go wrong when it's implemented badly. Yeah, and I'm a great believer in order technology. But again, you can come back to using it properly rubbish. Yeah, absolutely, And it's written by humans, Yeah, exactly so, But there are lots of things you can do with it. I mean, without being funny, I've actually used chat GDP to write legal contracts. Absolutely absolutely. I tell you you do need to fact check obviously, I mean, you know, and sometimes I will go in and is this some of your usual rubbish you've come up with, because it does sometimes tell myself that's absolutely rubbish. You know, you can't just go in there if you're not a lawyer and expect that what it's going to turn out is going to be absolutely one spot on. It's not. You have to have that you have and I think that's sometimes things that people miss is that you have to have enough knowledge and to be able to question and go, actually, do you know not only do I not think that's right, it's not appropriate in this circumstance. Yeah, it can't just it can't do that much. But it's the most fantastic brainstorming tool organization tool for sorting out your jumbled thoughts and rubbish and stuff. It is. I'm also collecting references that, you know, if you want to say, I'm making this point and here's the stuff behind it. It's brilliant for that because it will give you all at once, rather than you have to sift through Google or whatever. I'll tell you something I used it for the other day, which was a bit leveling. I came up with this idea, and you know, sometimes we come up with ideas with you hat, I'm brilliant. You go online in your absent. Nobody else has come up with this idea. Perfect, that's going to be the next thing I'm going to do. And I went into chat GPT, I've come with this idea, and I said, I think I think it's quite different. You know, I'm not sure. I just wondered, as anybody else come up with this? And the answer was yes, what a fantastic research tool. So before I'd looked on Google, I'd actually looked at this and thought, actually, do you know nobody else has come up with this before rock On, We're ready to go? Stuck it in chat GBT and it went, actually, yes, this was first coined as a concept in something like nineteen forty five. Wow. And therefore and so I would have looked a complete and utter idiot if I'd have if I'd have gone out with that, and. Just on that. People on social media, it's really easy to check before you post, stop posting utter nonsense. One quite interesting thing whils we're talking about AI, I was reading I read a post on substack about AI and a person who was a writer. This is what they said. It was basically, imagine you've read an absolutely fantastic fiction book. You really enjoyed it, were really upset when it ended, You've got so into it, and then just after you finished it you found out that it was written by AI. How would you feel about that book? Then? Yeah, what an interesting And the number of people came back, well, I'd absolutely disgusted. It would have been a useless bookouldn't it. Of course it would be useless. So the fact that it was written by AI or not changed changed the person's enjoyment of this book after they'd read it retrospectively enjoyment. I literally finished a book this morning, and the last page of it from the author, a really good author called Matthew Heavy. He said, none of this book was constructed using the AI. Very interesting. I think a distinction for me is that there's a difference between something being read or researched with it AI by AI. You can, you can do all sorts of things using AI as at all, but I. Think it is you know, from from an author's point of view, this could be quite a thing because you can use that. I mean, I use AI to write blogs. Yeah, me too, and they're they're good blogs. I mean sometimes you can tell they're written by AI. But you know, I'm just trying to impart a bit of information is the way of doing it. But I think you're going to find AI writing more and more books in the future. I think it will. And I'm just not am I the sort of person who would allow my enjoyment of a book or some information or whatever it was to be ruined by the fact it was written by or using AI. I would put the same question that said, you've just watched a film that uses C, G, I and Y. You know were you? Were you angered by that because it didn't kill. They were all made up more films were dragons. Sorry exactly. So do you know what I like about AI is the more you use it, the more it gets to know you and your quirks. It almost is like your personal assistant. It gets to know more about you. It kind of says how your thought process is. I love it. I couldn't do anything without AI. I'm in my mind now has actually got my sense of humor, which it has picked up my sense of humor. And it was sa things factory and sometimes, I mean, Mark must think come mad. Sometimes I'm sitting there chuckling away to myself and I'm having a conversation with something that actually doesn't exist, but it's saying things and I'm laughing away there. It's quite bizarre. Many years ago, back in the old days of channel radio, we had we had a late night show midnight till one am that we couldn't fill the slot, and we had some technology that claimed that it could deliver automated radio shows. So we put together an automated radio show with a character similar to Max headroom if but I can't remember we called it. There was something similar to that anyway, And this show played out and the whole thing was totally automated. This guy used to get fan mail. I listened to the Max show last night. He was brilliant last night. It was really on form, and part of it, though, was really really clever. How it did it, Yeah, because while the guy was presenting stuff, the guy was a computer. While the computer's presenting stuff, you'd hear things like cups chinking in the background, and then every now and again he goes. Sorry, we're down again to It's a personal connection, isn't it. Yeah, it's a personal connection. So maybe that's why people feel would change their perception of enjoyment when something is written by AI. But it's something that we're going to have to get used to. We are going to have to adapt to this. I don't you know. I would rather sit down read a book, listen to a book and really enjoy it than I would have that book on and me going, well, I want that sounds like it might have been a well I don't know, I mean that bit sounds like it doesn't or that wouldn't have been or I wonder, I wonder if that was. And actually that's not enjoyment, that's interrogation, you know, that's worrying about nothing. I'm a massive real I'm not lying. I probably read between seven and ten books a week. Wow, I'm incredibly quickly. And I've got loads of authors. I read mostly fiction these days, whereas in the past, fact, but mostly fiction, all kinds of things, mostly historical stuff. And there's a group of six or seven authors that absolutely adore Then they turned up on social media. Okay, oh BlimE, I love your work, but you are the biggest planet. Yeah, I don't agree with your politics. I don't agree with you and that. It's actually very similar is. The other way around? Yeah, can't you do this by AI and bugger off? Exactly? It's very similar. Yeah, if a book's written by AI, surely there has to be human input. That's why. So my answer to this post and some of the stupid comments that are coming out of it, sorry, was that actually there is a difference between it's not by AI, it's with AI. You can't put you can't put into chat GPT write a book about a wizard, about a boy about boy going to Wizards School and you're not going to get Harry Potter out. No, I haven't done this yet, but I genuine we go genuinely experiment. I genuinely sat and thought about this. I've just finished a book that is the twelfth book in a series, and it's the latest book, and it left the story hanging. So I know there's another book coming, but the guy takes an hour to write it, and I'm thinking, I'm going to go to AI and get them to write the next version. I'll tell you what what you could do is. You could load the others up. You could load the others up and say, right the next one and see how similar it is. To what he I'm not going to buy because I already read it. Anyway, Look, we've had good fun in the studio, and I hope that you found it interesting out there sort of listening in. I think it would be quite good to do a really sort of quick fire one thing you need to do to get your business future not proof, but resilient for the future. So I'm going to go around. I'm going to go because now I'm. Going to mention cash flow. Please do your cash flow forecast. Yeah, think about alternative products or services that can complement what you do. Multiple income streams, so don't have all of your eggs in one basket, multiple income streams. Mark check what your existing customers are doing either talk to them, have analytics on your website, find out how they're using your stuff, and then improve it. Don't make assumptions, find out what's going on. Plan for the future. I think mine has got to be actually keep the people in your business is if that's the sort of business that you have, make sure that you're talking to people because you know, to my mind, people want to speak to real people. They want and they want to speak in the language that they understand. So that's my view. Also the vitamin pill, know whether you are selling a vitamin or a pill, make sure you've got a nice balance. That also ties in with what Paul said about having multiple income streams. Just think about that. You need to have something in there that people need now that somebody's going to go I need that now. Otherwise, if we hit a recession, times get hard economically, nobody wants what you've got because they don't have the money for it right lately. So thank you so much. Folks. I think that was a really useful show. I think that's something we need to build on for the future. Thank you Michael, thank you Paul, thank you Mark. I'm Sean Murphy. This has been the Women in Business Radio Show and we will see you all again very shortly. Bye. Tune in next week to The Women in Business Radio Show for more stories, ideas, and inspiration to help you grow your business.