Who is Hayley?
Hayley is helping start-ups and small businesses reach their full potential, utilizing skills, tools and resources to create a fool proof strategy
Key Takeaways
People struggle to understand how they can apply generic advice to their own businesses
Business owners are distracted by the latest tool that looks great but may not fit their strategy
Investing in yourself, investing in your own personal development as part of your business growth is an absolutely key strategy. People who fail to do that fail to understand the the power of developing your understanding to sort of apply to your own business growth.
Valuable Free Resource or Action
Hayley has free resources at
https://www.myriadservices.co.uk/
A video version of this podcast is also available at
Transcript
Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)
Stuart Webb 0:40
Hi again everyone,
Webb here at the complete approach with another one of our five questions over coffee. It's not rocket science, five questions over coffee. I'm here today with Haley Smith from myriad Business Services. Haley is a champion of small businesses. She's provided consulting, education and support to startups and small businesses during their first five years, and that's because she's worked as someone who helps businesses to grow when 70% of businesses fail during that period. And she's passionate about helping businesses get pass up periods. So I'm delighted to have you on the podcast today. Haley, I hope you're doing very well.
Hayley Smith 1:18
Hi, Stuart. Yes, thank you for having me today. I am actually doing quite well actually, at the moment, it's actually quite surprising to see how many people are trying to reach out for help their due date. So let's start with the first of the five questions, what's the biggest challenge your ideal client faces?
It's simple. It's growing their business, it's knowing where to start, what processes to use, and sort of who to go to for that advice. There's a lot of free advice out there, which is great. But often, because it's very generic, people struggle to understand how they can apply it to their own businesses. And that's sort of one of the biggest things that I see from from my clients. And it's also a lack of planning as well, they don't know how to plan out their business and how they should and will be putting certain steps in.
And I think you should have started getting into the second question they're having. So I'll ask it, and you can expand to that the common mistakes that people make when they're trying to solve the problem with actually getting the help that often helps them through those periods. Yeah, so a very common mistake actually is, is shiny object syndrome, actually, they look at all these different things and these techniques and they go, Oh, that can help pay for that, or pay for that or pay for that they should all help me and solve the problem. But it doesn't actually solve the problem. And what really the people should be doing is looking to one person to talk them through different processes, tell them what they need, tell them where they should be and where they are now, and then go right, okay, who do I know, they should then be asking, Who do I need to work with? Do I need to bring in to make everything work as it should be? Yes, we're all distracted by that sort of that latest tool that looks great. In fact, I was actually dealing with, with somebody yesterday that was complaining to me about the fact that their website wasn't working to bring them leads. And I said, Well, okay, so what made you think that that was what your website was going to do? And they said, well, somebody contacted me on LinkedIn and told me that and I went, Okay, and how does that work with your overall business strategy? And they looked at me as if say, Well, I'm really thought about that. And I went, Okay, what made you think that website was going to be the main lead generator that and it was one of those can see where we got into this problem? We we've just gone after the first shiny solution to a problem without thinking through the consequences?
Stuart Webb 3:37
Yes, definitely. And so it's just it's just trying to rein that in and take a step back first to say, Okay, I need to talk to somebody who can look at the entire business and see what gaps are there, what am I missing, but without having their own agenda to say, Oh, yes, I need to sell your new website, I need to sell you this new lead generation tool. And that's essentially what I do. Yeah, brilliant. So what's that one valuable free action or what's one valuable free resource you can direct people to for further help with that problem.
Hayley Smith 4:08
So I actually do have sort of a mini ebooks with a nine page ebook, which is all about tips for growing your business. And it looks at things like your business plan, making sure that you've got to set that sales strategy and and your marketing and some top tips for for selling without being salesy. So it's just some free free tips there, anybody who might need it, and through my website, I do have online courses that people can, including some free resources there as well, that they can access with some free webinars. And just to help anybody that's watching at the moment can probably see scrolling across the bottom of the screen at the link, but that will be in the show notes as they say. And also when we posted podcast, I'll put that link in there. But if you want to make a note of it now, that's the link to go to, which is which Haley's just talked about
Stuart Webb 5:00
So how are you I'm really, really keen to find out what the concept or book that's been most impactful in your experience.
Hayley Smith 5:13
So me in my experience, it's been, I go out there and I talked to other experts, I go out there and I find other experts to talk to, I go to exhibitions, listen to what other people are saying. And then I go back, and I do the research. And I look into other things. So I mean, the first thing that was most impactful for me, was actually somebody called Natalie trice. And she has a book called PR school. And reading through her book, that actually helped me realise what I needed to do, to create my name more to go out there, and meet me the expert in my field. And I, you know, since reading that book, I now have a speaking gig at the PA show in London, at the excellence, which I'm very excited about. If I've been it talked to their conference delegates, and there are more coming through thick and fast, which is great to hear that I can hopefully pass on some knowledge, some information to other people growing their businesses.
Stuart Webb 6:18
Haley I present with you, I think investing in yourself, investing in your own personal development as part of your business growth is an absolutely key strategy. People who fail to do that fail to understand the the power of developing your understanding to sort of apply to your own business growth.
Hayley Smith 6:35
We should never stop learning every day, we should be learning learning something new, even if it's one youth today, one new task or one new way of doing something, we should always try and learn one new thing a day.
Stuart Webb 6:46
Yeah, I'm a great fan. It's part of my morning ritual. Nowadays, I get up for 30 minutes. First thing in the morning, it's very quiet, I don't have the email on I don't do anything about that. I sit there and I just read through our user, one of the services that sort of reduces the speed that the time it takes me to read a book, but I can absorb somebody else has 20 years of experience in 1520 minutes, why wouldn't you take on 15 or 20 years worth of somebody else's experiences and try to apply them in your own business? I absolutely applaud you for doing that. That's brilliant. So what's the one question that I should have asked you up to now that would give great value to our audience? And if you don't mind not only answering the question, what's the question? Give us the answer to the question.
Hayley Smith 7:30
Probably, you know, it probably would be surrounded like, you know, who, what do I do in terms of managing my own business? How do I manage my own business? Because obviously I help other businesses, is how do I manage to do that for myself as well? And the answer to that is I outsource. So I outsource to experts. If I need somebody to do accounts, I'll do I'll get somebody to do it. I wouldn't try and do it myself. Because at the end of the day, I'm not an expert in that. So why would I do it? It saves me time to work on those valuable aspects of my business, those lead generating tasks to source tasks, like some social media, or accounts, you know, email marketing, yeah. All right, he sent it over, can you just stick that out to me, please, you know, these are amazing. So much so that I actually have a VA agency now because there is such a core that I now have specialists in different areas that are helped businesses I work with, I would say to any, somebody who resonates your business, and outs what you can, so you can concentrate on bringing in those money making activities and doing what you do best, lets them take care of the rest
Stuart Webb 8:41
to brilliant strategy, Haley couldn't couldn't back it more myself. I mean, the one thing that I've often said to people is, you know, I speak to a lot of business owners who turn around and what I use what I call the path of least assistance, because their thinking is, if I if I have to spend time explaining this to somebody, it's quicker and easier if I just do it myself. And you know, why spend 10 pounds on something when I can actually do it myself and it only cost me nothing. Both of those are absolutely false economies. Because if you've explained it enough to somebody you can let them do it again and again and again and again. You never have to worry about it again. Even if you take take time to explain it twice. You never have to explain it again. And for goodness sake, it's not free Your time has a cost. You've just paid down
Hayley Smith 9:27
debt that people do forget that a lot. You know, if you're going to pay 10 pounds to do something, what could you have made in that time? a hell of a lot more than that in spy spent 10 pounds on somebody else to do an hour of your time.
Stuart Webb 9:42
Yeah, too many people think their time is freed their time is not free. It is an opportunity wasted. So well done for taking on that and making sure that we're all reminded once again that we should be valuing our time and making sure that we're outsourcing to other people, the things that actually you don't like but They do, which is a benefit to them as compensation. Thank you so much for your time. I'm just gonna remind everybody I'm now going to put on the screen below. If you want to get more of these videos, you want to hear more about what we're doing. If you go to this link, which is HTTPS, colon forward slash forward slash to know I have to keep saying that post ITC a dot FYI, forward slash subscribe, that's tcaa, your FYI, flash guy that gets you onto the mailing list that allows you to sort of we tell you about what's coming up who we're talking to people like Haley, come on to give us great and valuable business business advice like that. Haley, it's been great talking to you this morning, I really hope that you have more and more success with that. And that's Hawking September. Well, if I was able to go to that conference, I can. But unfortunately, right at the moment, I'd have let me in I'm not a very good virtual assistant. So probably not be there. So but I wish you very much success with it. Thank you very much.
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Five Questions Over Coffee with Hayley Smith | Myriad Services (Ep. 24)