I do like work and I don’t see work as work because I enjoy 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. I thought this is the way everybody else does it. 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. Because I started very young, so I started my business Owen at the age of 24.
SHAHZAD: Before I used to work between 70-80 hours every single week and I thought this was my punishment for starting a business. OWEN: And how is it your personal life has been transformed as a result of systematizing your business? How well you communicate with them and how quickly you do things. So one of the ways that can assess how good you are is how well you keep in the loop. Especially in the service industry, because it’s intangible. So the quicker you do things the more people value it. Before, things were done but they weren’t always done in a speedy manner. And that all is linked with systematization. Now things happen due to a process being in place. Before we were systematized things happened ad hoc. We’re also working much closer with our clients and we build a better relationship with them. So we’re proactive as oppose to reactive. We go out there before the event, talking to our clients, suppliers, and our potential clients. So what the big transformations for us Owen is that we become very much proactive. We wait for our clients to refer this to us. OWEN: My wife is an accountant by the way. SHAHZAD: As accountants generally we have a very bad picture of boring, dull, in gray suits. So how would you say your company has been transformed as a result of systematizing your business? And more often than not people are buying the experience as oppose to the service or the product in my experience. 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. 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. Our turnover’s higher, our profit is clearly higher because we’ve got less staff overheads. 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. 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? This interview is talking about how the guests on the show have been able to systemize their business so it runs successfully without them. SHAHZAD: That would’ve made my life easier and your life easier too sir. OWEN: And I could call you Shaz for short, right? SHAHZAD: Hi, it’s great to be with you Owen. OWEN: My guest today is Shahzad Nawaz, managing director of AA Accountant. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R.The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action by Robert S.
The Success System That Never Fails by William Clement Stone.Noteworthy items Mentioned in this Episode: How Shahzad is able to deliver a consistent experience to his customers as a result of creating systems in his business.How Shahzad came to realize that the only way he could improve his business was systematization.Why Shahzad had to simplify his systems so everyone on his team could understand them.Why Shahzad’s biggest challenge when systematizing was changing the mindset and habits of his team members.How Shahzad defined the Key Performance Indicators for his business.How Shahzad broke down his business into smaller chunks and created clearly defined job descriptions for his team members.Why Shahzad sought help from his friend when he hit a low point in his business.Why Shahzad had no business education, and how he learned to run a business from scratch.“Even with less employees we are able to deliver a consistent experience to our customers!” –
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