“Running and growing a business is tough when our natural tendency as skilled individuals is to stick to the day job and ignore the “boring old admin” that keeps the company ticking over. The first step is realising you need help and finding the right person for the job. How lucky I have been to have Julian Weekes so close to hand.
Before working with Julian. I had some businesses success, but in some ways I was a busy fool: despite having a good relationship with clients, I was finding I was unable to cope with the workload and was letting them down, but was unable to make the business profitable enough to hire another member of staff. What’s more, I had no work/life balance to speak of.
The first thing Julian did was to get me to identify and write down all my goals for my business; not to beat myself up if I didn’t achieve them, but to use them to analyse, learn and adapt.
Whilst it’s still early days, Julian has already helped enormously in identifying areas that need work and development in the business. Although Julian has not only brought financial advantages to my business, they have made a significant difference: he made me better see my own worth and charge accordingly, weeding out areas that simply did not make financial sense. He also showed me the value of outsourcing what I didn’t need to do, so I could undertake more of the profitable work I needed to be able to do to hire a new employee.
The result of these changes is that my cash flow has increased significantly, as have my turnover and profitability, mainly through Julian helping me to improve my operations and focus on increasing the quality of my clients, not just the number (although this has risen slightly as well). This got the business to the point where I could afford to take on another employee, with his DISC assessment (personality profile) giving me great comfort in knowing that I was employing the right sort of individual.
Julian has an uncanny ability to make you answer your own questions and problems without seemingly suggesting anything. His logical thinking and prompting gets you to where you need to go, but you never feel that not achieving a milestone is a failure; Julian provides an opportunity to learn and improve. He can sort through the most chaotic processes and problems and quickly helps you to focus on what really matters.
I look forward to working with Julian again to get my business to the next stage in its evolution and would thoroughly recommend his services to anyone else that feels they or their business could do with a push to succeed. Not only has he helped my business’s current financial situation and future prospects, he has greatly improved my life as a whole, as I now have time to see my wife and daughter. And he’s a thoroughly nice chap with it!
Graham Brown
AffinIT Ltd
