Top 3 Critical Business Lessons from my Dad

If you're a business owner looking for the wisdom of the elders, well, I've got some of my best bits in this video from my journey of learning from my dad. 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 and how I now run my businesses. Find out more in this video.

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Transcription:

If you're a business owner looking for the wisdom of the elders, well, 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 itGenius. 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 courtroom 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 itGenius. Jump on the link below if you're interested in that. And if you liked this video, please subscribe, drop us a thumbs up and we'll catch you in the next one.

To learn more about our Cloud Support Service, or schedule an IT Systems Check, contact itGenius - the Google Workspace Experts