3 top tips from Greg Lipschitz:
1. Systems is definitely the biggest thing that will change your life.
Let go and trust your staff. Enjoy business and have fun. If you feel that you’re stressed out and you’re not enjoying it, go and talk to someone about that, because that’s a real problem. The enjoyment factor should be there.
2. Understand your cash flow.
The way you use points hack your business can actually improve & streamline your cash flow as well, because you’re doing things in a more systemised way. Don’t buy irons and toasters with you points!
3. Spend your points!
Collect all these points and actually go and use them. Don’t just sit on them! Have a lovely holiday, book up the pointy end & experience some of these first class trips out there. There’s some amazing rewards that you can go & get. You’ll probably fly there maybe once or twice in your lifetime, but you’re going to enjoy it. You’ve worked hard for it.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, points, American express, pay, absolutely, linking, spend, people, Australia, staff, rewards, pointy end, buy, airline, merchant, programs, flights, fly, card, status
Debra Chantry-Taylor 00:03
Welcome to another episode of Better Business, Better Life. I’m your host, Debra Chantry-Taylor. I’m passionate about helping entrepreneurs and their leadership teams get what they want out of business and life. On the show, I invite successful business owners and expert speakers to share their successes. They are open and honest about the highs and lows of business and also life as a business owner. We want to share those learnings with you to inspire you, but also to help you avoid some of the common mistakes. My hope is that you take something from each of these short episodes that you can put into action to help you get what you want, not only out of your business, but also your life. Good morning and welcome to another episode of Better Business, Better Life. Today I am joined by the delightful Greg Lipschitz, who is from Melbourne over in Australia. Welcome, Greg.
Greg Lipschitz 00:15
Hi, Debra. Thanks for having me.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 00:16
No it’s an absolute pleasure. I’m looking forward to hearing what you have to say. And I actually met Greg, when we were at a Business Blueprint Conference. And his talk that he did, completely blew me away and I said, ‘You’ve got to come and do this on my podcast, I think our audience will get a great deal of benefit from it.’ So obviously, Greg is a founder and CEO of Summit internet, which is a telecommunications company based in Melbourne. He has been a business owner for over 22 years. So 16 years old, left school, went straight into owning businesses, and has been running businesses ever since. And still going, which is always a good sign. So Greg, tell us a little about your story. Tell us how you got to where you are today.
Greg Lipschitz 00:52
Yeah, well, I started off Debra, I guess it is a bit of, working out of my parent’s bedroom. You know, that was kind of the thing I was a bit of a rebel in my early days in school didn’t really fit me as that original mold. So I went, I found businesses my calling, and started by fixing computers, and then went from fixing computers actually, to working in radio. And my career path was actually originally in radio, but I found that it kind of dragged me in a different direction altogether. And technology was really coming through this was still the days of dial up internet, mind you, and bulletin boards and things like that. So were very early internet days. And the internet, as we know it today didn’t even exist back then, it was very, very early. And through technology I ran an IT business for a number of years and managed to exit that. I had a creative design business, we were very early on in website design and dynamic websites and databases and things like that, and managed to exit that business. And since then, we’ve been running a telecommunications business where we’ve actually built a competitor and challenger brand, to what we know, here is the NBN in Australia, or UFB network for those of you New Zealand listeners. And we’ve got a fixed wireless network that spans over four and a half thousand square kilometers of Victoria, and provide that as a completely independent network to all of the other telco companies here in Australia. And we sell that as both a retail and a wholesale product to other ISPs.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 02:19
Wow. Okay, that’s certainly a brave move, I would have thought so challenge your brand for such a large
Greg Lipschitz 02:26
Yeah, it’s a huge, huge space, the telecommunication space. Like we all rely on it these days, especially the last two years, everyone’s utilization of Internet has shown just how important it really is to have fast internet, reliable internet. And that’s really what we focus on is an internet product that doesn’t rely on the cables in the ground, we shoot the signal through the air, and provide high speed internet to businesses, that really is a completely different experience to what they’re used to by having the fiber delivered through the ground.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 02:56
Wow. Okay, cool. So you’ve got a number of staff, right? So you’ve got 17 staff, they’re in Melbourne
Greg Lipschitz 03:02
Yeah we’ve got 17 staff, it’s one of those things that you look at and go wow, how did we grow that big. We’ve actually been as big as 26 over the years. But through implementing systems and implementing some really good technology tools, we’ve managed to keep our staff numbers, what I would say under control, and keep the scale and the growth there. Then we’ve got our three staff who are our back of house team in the Philippines, they work as our sales administration team.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 03:27
Okay, fantastic. So I always like to ask my guests to give me a little bit of a professional and personal best. So you’ve obviously done quite a lot in your 22 years in business. But tell me a little bit about you, what are you most proud of in business?
Greg Lipschitz 03:40
Oh, look, I think in business growing and maintaining a high performing team is probably the the most proud thing, being able to see that I can step out of the business and the team continues to strive and achieve amazing things. Even without me, that’s certainly one of those things that you know, you look at it, like you’re like your kids, you want to see them grow and succeed. And that really is the same sort of thing with your team. So building a high performing team is certainly something that I’m probably most proud of in the business sense.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 04:08
And you’re saying that you’ve influenced some great systems and processes to make sure that they actually can run that business without you. So, if you were to go away for a number of weeks, I’m assuming the business will continue working? As if you were there. Is that right?
Greg Lipschitz 04:20
Absolutely. So I actually broke my collarbone earlier in the year. And I think I was in a sling when we caught up in Fiji. And yeah, I stepped out of the business for about six weeks and didn’t have to do a thing could walk away knowing full well that everything would run exactly as I was at would expect it to the sales process runs the systems run the technical support the billing and accounting. I don’t have to sit there and micromanage the guys can do absolutely everything. And I could just sit back and oversee exactly what needs to be done.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 04:52
That’s exactly what business right.
Greg Lipschitz 04:55
So literally you want to be working on the business, not in business.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 04:57
And tell me about your personal life. What are you most proud of your person?
Greg Lipschitz 05:02
I’ve got three wonderful children, 16, 9 & 6 years old, so nice age gap there. And my partner too so yeah, wonderful family and I enjoy motorcycle riding outside of work and do a lot with the youth leadership through scouting. So spent a lot of time still involved in scouting for 29 years this year. I’ve gone all the way through Cub Scouts, Venturers, Rovers and now a leader through through Scouting here in Victoria.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 05:31
Nice and tell me about the collarbone. Was that related to motorcycles by any chance?
Greg Lipschitz 05:35
No, unfortunately, it wasn’t, it was an accidental stupid feet going over, walking of all things, on a gravel track. It was just complete clumsiness. But everyday now I watch the footy here in Melbourne and watch these big burly players getting knocked to the ground and go how come they can’t break their collarbones going over like that, because that’s pretty much all I did. Absolute clumsiness. Probably the more exciting if it was doing something exciting on the motorbike.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 06:08
So when we actually met at the Business Blueprint Conference, you were talking about something completely different to telecommunications. Absolutely. And it was all about travelling up at the pointy end of a plane, would you like to give us a little bit more insight into that?
Greg Lipschitz 06:20
Yeah, so one of the things I guess we all work so damn hard as business owners, and we sometimes forget about the things that we can take out of the business that might not be financial, but it might just be being able to travel in style. So one of the things I focused on over the last 22 years is how can I, I guess points hack through business and get additional, what we you know, you call it compensation, you call it benefits? You call it enjoying life? How can you get that out of your business in a different way. So points hacking is something that you learn over time, you can tweak and tune your business processes to be able to go and extract that extra value out of your business so that you can get some personal benefit and reward out of it. And one of those big things is certainly travelling up the pointy end of the plane.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 07:08
Tell us a little bit more about that. Because you seem to have this sort of down to an art form. Now in terms of points hacking?
Greg Lipschitz 07:14
Yeah, yeah, look, it’s a little bit of an art form. So I guess the first thing really is understanding the difference between points and status. So one of the biggest things is points is something that you earn by spending. And that might be through a credit card rewards program, or that may be by leveraging some of the extra uplifts and the partnerships that the airlines have with products that you use today. So it might be renting a car, for instance, through a partnership with your airline. And that might get you some extra points. And it might also earn you extra status. So points are the things that you earn, whereas status is the things that you will get by flying with a certain airline, that’s the bronze, silver, gold platinum, that you see. And you might hear them call up certain people to board the plane at certain times. So that’s the status side of things that will get you into lounges, you’ll get preferential treatment when you try and apply for your upgrades. So let’s just give you an example on that one, if you’re a bronze member with Quantas, for instance, that’s the entry level membership that you kind of get when you sign up, you may not get anything particular for that other than a piece of plastic in your wallet. Whereas if you’re at the platinum level, and you apply for an upgrade, you may have bought an economy fair standard Economy fare, but you’ve said okay, I would like to upgrade that that flight to a business class flight, or a first-class flight. The higher the status level you are the more preferential treatment you get when you’ve actually applied for that. So that’s where status comes into play. So it really is a combination between earning the points, but also flying the miles to get the status.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 08:57
Right. And I know that when you first open up, you’re talking in Fiji, you mentioned the fact that a lot of us have got credit cards and things that are linked to things like fly bys. Or yeah, those are things and I always thought that was a really great idea because you could get these you know wonderful things from your fly by store for for doing nothing. But it’s not always the best idea, right?
Greg Lipschitz 09:15
No look, converting points into things like toasters, kettles, coffee machines, or fancy new iPhone is probably the worst use of points. So if you’re actually trying to get points that you can redeem into flights, that’s the best way to do it. When you look at the conversion, one point is effectively equal to about one cent. So if you’ve gone on earn yourself 300,000 points, you’re only getting about $3,000 worth of value. And you see people like ANZ Bank this week has just announced when you sign up for a home loan with them, you get 300,000 points. Now sounds like a really big number, right? But when you look at that on your home loan, you go, Oh, that’s only $3,000 To change your home loan. Is that really good value? Well, that’s the same thing with your points. You’ve got to look at it Go, do these points actually convert to a tangible object in a really good way, if I’ve spent $300,000, but I’m only getting $3,000 of value is that good value? Whereas if I’ve spent $300,000, but I’m getting at $12,000, one way, first class ticket, well, that might be a better value. So you can see that the uplift by using the points with the airlines is certainly better.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 10:25
So what do you recommend?
Greg Lipschitz 10:27
So in terms of points, look, my preference on points is always having an American Express card, the American Express business cards certainly provide for excellent points yield. So that’s the number of dollars you spend, converted into points. So on a business card, for instance, you typically get two points for every dollar, some of them are two and a half points just really depends on what you’re spending and where you’re spending. Things like the Australian Tax Office. If, for instance, if you pay your ATO bill on your American experience, you get about half a point. So you’ve just got to look at where your point deals is going to come from, and where that value is going to come from. The other thing to have is, of course, people don’t accept American Express, which I’d implore businesses to, of course, take it if they don’t already and speak to American Express about reducing the merchant service fee. But something like a Visa card or a MasterCard issued via an airline is usually what’s going to give you the best point yield, because they are going to give you those uplifts and those kickers for signing up with him.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 11:30
Okay, so you would you actually recommend having both an Amex card and a Visa MasterCard linked to an airline program? Yeah, so you’re covered in all.
Greg Lipschitz 11:40
So the American Express card, I would recommend getting American Express issued cards. So that’s not something like a Quantas card, that would be something that you would directly apply for with American Express in regards to the Visa or MasterCard, either a bank issued card with a good rewards program, or an airline that you would fly with regularly, that has good points yield, return on that card. And then, and then you’ve got things like linking you mentioned before around linking to get those benefits. So in Australia, we’ve got things like FlyBuys, where you can actually link your FlyBuys card to your Virgin Australia. And then you can get status credits for spending. So usually, you only get status credits for flying. But the FlyBuys partnership actually gives you 10 points per month maximum, for doing nothing except spending. So if you shop at Kohl’s or Woolies or Bunnings, or any of these stores that are affiliated with FlyBuys, you can get status credits for just shopping. Okay, yeah, cool. Especially after the last two years, no one’s really been flying. So maintaining status has been one of those difficulties, it’s really, really difficult. And then a big thing that we hear all the time, and I’ve touched on it before is we don’t take American Express. So there’s other ways to get that value. And one of them is certainly linking it to something like PayPal. So you can say to a lot of businesses, hey, do you accept Paypal? And they go, Yeah, we accept Paypal is like great. So linking your American Express card to your PayPal account, and then paying them on your Amex via PayPal, is what can actually yield you a lot of points as well. So it’s getting a little bit creative about where you use it and where you link it to get that most value.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 13:23
Any other good tips?
Greg Lipschitz 13:24
Yeah look if you’ve got people who say, You know what, we don’t want to take American Express, but we’ll give you 30 day credit terms or in 60 day credit terms, ask them what the cost of money, it’s because in business, we all know, cash flow is king and cash is queen, right? But a lot of businesses go here will give you 60 day credit terms unsecured, and you might pay them in 61, 62, 90, 120 days. But what’s the cost in their business of actually providing you that cash credit term? So 17% is about the average going rate these days of an overdraft and then managing that, and then the collections process and all of that, whereas they could go to American Express, take merchant fees, pay about 1.5 to 1.8% and get mixed a business settlement.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 14:15
Now, you were saying before to you, they actually are open to negotiating those fees, too, aren’t they?
Greg Lipschitz 14:22
Yeah, so years ago, they were sort of around that 3.5%. And even these days, you’ve effectively got two rates, you’ve got the interchange rate, which is what the banks effectively pay to have the transactions going through. And then you’ve got the fees that the banks put on top of it to account for these rewards programs. So Visa and MasterCard interchange rates about point three of a percent and then the bank is going to put sort of half a percent on that to make their money and then the base rates about that point seven 2.9. Then you’ve got on top of that things like if you’ve got a goal card if you’ve got a platinum card, or if you’ve got a super duper Platinum Card, what you don’t see when you swipe the card is what the merchant actually pays. So your debit cards are going to be around that point 7%, because there’s nothing really attached to it. Whereas your superduper, gold, platinum rewards card, the merchant often will pay anywhere between 1.8% and 2.9%. Just for you having that card, because someone along the line has to pay for those rewards fees, American Express, they charge anywhere between about 1.3% and 2.5%, to you, as the merchant, but again, comes back to are you going to pass that on, and how much volume you’re doing. So if you’re a small business, who does say $10,000 a month on your merchant services, you might be paying 1.8%, if you’re a business that’s doing a lot of transactional volume, so we do about $200,000 on our Merchant Services every month, ours is down to about 1.5%. Now, American Express, of course, are trying to encourage people to use their cards, because it’s good for them. And it’s good for the merchants. So they’ve actually increased the number of merchants in Australia by about 75,000 In the last 12 months. And they’re encouraging that by merchants not charging that fee through to the consumer. So if you actually agree not to charge that through to the consumer, American Express will all of a sudden say oh, we’ll give you a kicker, right? We’ll give you that little bit extra off. Because you’re not going to pass that through.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 16:25
I like it. It’s actually really interesting, because I assumed Amex was dying. Well, I had an Amex many, many, many years ago, and I assumed it was dying, because other people don’t accept it. But you’re right. It’s definitely back on the increase again, isn’t it?
Greg Lipschitz 16:36
Yeah, well, look, American Express, people don’t even realize where it started from. But remember those pesky traveler’s checks that we all used to go and get when we traveled overseas. That’s where American Express started, they were a travel company, they weren’t a credit card company, they’ve just evolved into a credit card company. Because the way that we transact with money now is the piece of plastic in our wallet, not the not the traveler’s checks that we used to go in debt. So American Express from a travel point of view, they’ve got some great programs available, things like their foreign exchange program. So again, you can get if you’re transacting overseas, and you’re buying, say, stock from China, you might do your FX today through your bank, just by changing the way you do your FX, through American Express, you can actually get really good FX rates, as well as getting points for doing the business that you’d normally be doing. So it’s just about changing the way that you think about who you do business with and how you do business that will actually yield you these extra points.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 17:32
Yeah, and I just say that whole thing about the value of cash and what just is, again, something we don’t have to think about, we get caught up in these little small amounts of, you know 2 3% of our fees. But yeah, what is the cost of actually having to fund cash flow that time, it’s really interesting, okay.
Greg Lipschitz 17:47
And then we’ve all got, as we touched on earlier, 17, staff will 17 staff go out and buy, you know, milk for the office, or they might go and buy some stuff from office works, or they’ll take a client out for lunch, or they’ll go and buy a cup of coffee? Well, those staff reimbursements that we do have now changed into providing every staff member with a card. So rather than doing reimbursements, they just put in their claims through an app. And all of a sudden, we get that points yield as a business, rather than having to do reimbursements. We’ve also done some work, or I’ve done some work with another business where we looked at their sales team. And we said, Okay, what is stopping your sales team going out and having wining and dining and having lunches and going and actually engaging with with clientele. And when we actually got to the crux of the real root cause of the problem. It was staff didn’t like the reimbursement process, that HR in the accounts team and put into play, because they would have to go and spend their money, taking the client out, wining and dining, and they get correct, and then fill out the form and then say, Oh, we went to this restaurant, and it would cost a little bit more than I would normally spend and more it was my money. So or maybe I don’t go to that restaurant next time. And because of that, they the staff didn’t like it. So we were like, okay, so have we turned the sales cycle on its head? And how can we look at the friction points in a sales cycle? And what we worked out was, what if we remove the friction point of the dollar spend by the salesperson. And we put that back on the business where all of a sudden, they weren’t questioning where they were taking the customer. And this was a high high cost product, it wasn’t a transactional, you know, pair of headphones or something like that this was high transactional high value product. How can we increase that? Well, if we take the client to a nice lunch, and we don’t have to worry about the bottle of wine and we don’t have to worry about the bill at the end, that friction with the salesperson was removed, and therefore, the close time was reduced. Something as simple as that, or by providing a company credit card.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 19:55
Yeah. So it wouldn’t have been afforded to you. Absolutely. Yeah. It would change their whole sort of energy as well. In that meeting with the client in terms of not sitting there worried about what there?
Greg Lipschitz 20:04
Yeah, yeah. And it says that cultural shift a lot of people get worried about, but ‘what if they spend too much? And what if they spend money on the wrong things?’ Well, that really comes back to your values and your culture in the business. If you trust your staff to do the right thing, and they’re doing the right thing, and they’re going to get the right results that are going to benefit the business. Well, you’ve got to have that level of trust there. If your staff aren’t trustworthy, well, you’ve got to be going, geez, I don’t know what is that? Are they the right person to be doing this with? That’s right, you’ve just got to look at your business and go, where are those friction points within this was a sales cycle? So how can we remove that to increase the sales value, and reduce the sales time?
Debra Chantry-Taylor 20:45
Perfect. And of course, with all the reporting as it comes to these credit cards, it also gives you some fantastic tools to monitor what’s going on, they see what you’re doing.
Greg Lipschitz 20:53
Yeah, itemized billing is now standard, across most of these sorts of platforms. But then you’ve got all of the apps now for doing expenses and justification around expenses as well. And that holds people accountable. And really, it comes back to if people do the wrong thing. You’ve got to do those, have those hard conversations. And if they do it once you go, Look, don’t do it again? And if they do it a second time, well, then they’re probably going to get us back on the wrist.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 21:18
Yes. And the third time? Well, who knows? Yeah, absolutely,
Greg Lipschitz 21:21
there might not be the right the right person to be in your business. The other thing that we really love with having the points is being able to reward based on giving people holidays. And we look at that as a business and you go, you know, we give everyone four weeks of annual leave a year in Australia. What can we do to increase the value of the relationship not only with the employee, but with their family. And if you say to employee, hey, I know you’re looking at taking some time off and going to Queensland, how about we pick up the tab for the airfares as the business, you just let me know when you want to travel and the flights you want to go on? And we’ll pick up the tab for those flights. Now, to the employee, they sit there go, Oh my God, you’re amazing. That’s just saved me, you know, 2 to $3,000 off my holiday bill? To you as the business what’s it really cost you? Well, it doesn’t cost you anything. Cost you it’s bought you some loyalty? Absolutely. But in terms of the spend, you’ve already spent the money, you’ve already got the points, all you now need doing is banking those points and getting a hell of a lot of that loyalty back from your staff. And that makes a huge difference.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 22:27
Fantastic. That’s great. Cool. Any other last little tips that you can do?
Greg Lipschitz 22:31
Well, one of my favorites is of course access to the to the lounges so, you can get you know, some of the best lounges in the world just by having the right cards. I do harp on about a mix. I’m not I’m not paid by American Express in any way, shape, or form, I should just remind everyone that you’ve got to go and do your own financial investigation on all these sorts of things. This isn’t financial advice. But you do get some amazing lounges. As part of some of these programs. One of my favorite is certainly the the AMEX Lounge in Hong Kong. Beautiful, fully stocked bar there, great facilities. And that’s really what it comes down to a lot of these long flights we go on, all we want to do is have a clean toilet and a shower and somewhere to sit down and have a cup of coffee. And that’s really what some of these beautiful lounges provide, you’re not sitting out in the lounge in the waiting hall, waiting for your next flight and paying exorbitant amounts for food and drink. So you do get some really great benefits there.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 22:31
So somebody is considering kind of changing things around switching things up a little bit to see what better benefits they can actually get. Where would you suggest that they start?
Greg Lipschitz 23:39
What I would suggest is go and have a look at the rewards programs that are out there in your country. Every country has different programs that they have available. So American Express don’t run the same rewards programs across all of their countries, they are very similar, but they don’t actually run the same programs across all of their countries. If you’re in Australia, you can certainly use my referral which is bit.ly/getamexpoints. And I’ll give you that link to pop in the show notes as well. At the moment, you get a bonus 300,000 points just by signing up, which is a really great way to get started. But there’s certainly some amazing programs that are in all of the countries with American Express on their business programs. And they’ll offer you upfront rewards to get started. And especially if you I know that they were offering a linking of your merchant services as well. So if you picked up as a merchant, they were giving giving some additional points there as well, which is really useful to get started started. But start looking at different websites around points hacking, if you just Google points hacking. There’s some great resources in all the different countries in all the different regions around the different airlines. Of course, every airline is going to have their different alliances with different things like car rental companies, hotels accommodation, but look at where you spend your money today. And look at how you may change your spending habits to get you the biggest rewards that may be something as simple as changing where you put petrol in your car. So it doesn’t doesn’t stop you putting petrol in your car, it just means rather than going to shell, you might go to BP, rather than going to BP, you might go to 711. And it’s just looking at which one’s going to yield you the best points return, which means you get to fly at the pointy end.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 25:18
Excellent. That’s really good. Hey, look, I always asked my guests to kind of finish off with a few top tips for them. I guess there’s a couple of elements for you. First of all, this whole point taking thing is fascinating. But also, as a businessman, you’ve been through a lot yourself, what would you say the three top things you could share with our listeners who are themselves
Greg Lipschitz 25:36
In business, I would say, systems is definitely the biggest thing that will change your life. Let go and trust your staff, and enjoy business, have fun. If you feel that you’re stressed out, and you’re not enjoying it, go and talk to someone about that, because that’s a real problem. And I see a lot of business owners get to that point where everything else is working. But the enjoyment factor is not there. And I really think you need to be enjoying every day, you’ve got to wake up and and want to go to work every day, the day that you stop wanting to go to work, have a chat to someone because it shouldn’t be that way.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 26:07
Yeah. And you do a lot of work with actually helping people to get the exit strategy together and get out of their business, if that’s what they want to do.
Greg Lipschitz 26:13
Yeah, absolutely. So my advisory firm six plus nine advisory, we help those businesses go through those different stages. So the build and the scale, and then the exit. And really, it’s about extracting that value at the end. Because we all have an end goal in mind, whenever you start in business, you always go, what’s that magic number that someone’s gonna write on a piece of paper and slide it across the table to be one day. And that’s, that’s my number, but everyone’s got that number. So it’s about being able to extract the value along the way so that when you get to the exit, you can actually make sure that you are getting that that value out. So too many businesses focus on the now, but they don’t focus on the what’s next.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 26:51
But it’s still you know, even if you are paying to silver, you still want to make sure you’re actually doing what you love every day with people. Absolutely. Because there’s different roles you can play within the company. If you’re not enjoying the role you’re playing within it, what else could you actually be doing?
Greg Lipschitz 27:03
Absolutely do the things that you enjoy doing. And if you don’t enjoy it, systemize it and get someone else to do it. Love it, okay. And certainly on the point side of things, look, understand your cash flow and the way that you can points hack your business. Don’t buy irons and toasters, that’s certainly the you know, the number two and use your points, you collect all these points, go and use them. Don’t just sit on them. When you’ve got millions and millions of points and you’re sitting there looking at it, go and use your points and go and have a lovely holiday book, up the pointy end, go and experience some of these first class trips out there. There’s some amazing rewards that you can go and get. And you’d probably go and fly there maybe once or twice in your lifetime. But you’re going to enjoy it. You’ve worked hard for it. So where’s your where’s your favorite place that you’ve actually flown to? Oh, look, Singapore would probably have to be one of my favorites. I’ve really enjoyed Singapore. Hong Kong was probably another one. I spent a couple of layovers in Hong Kong, but also made sure that I had some time to go and walk the city. And so between Singapore and Hong Kong, that was probably the favorite. Both culturally and just to soak in, you know, the dynamics of the of the countries. One thing that fascinated me in Hong Kong was the OH&S that we apply here in Australia, versus what they apply there is completely different. We’ve got amazing scaffolding and OHS. And they were using bamboo poles and sticks still. And it was that acceptance of risk. And I look at that, as business owners and we accept risk every day. That’s just one of the things we have to do. And that was fascinating to me to go. Yeah, this is this is their acceptance of risk.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 28:41
But also that element of personal responsibility as well. I mean, because no matter what you use as your scaffolding, it’s the fact that the people are actually bought into making sure they’re looking after themselves, right? So I went over there and he was something well, but in actual fact, they’re just they don’t have any more accidents because of it.
Greg Lipschitz 28:57
Oh no, they probably are safer, because they’re aware of their surroundings and aware of the risk.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 29:02
Exactly. Cool. Hey, so if anybody wants to get in contact with you Greg, what will be the best way to get ahold of you?
Greg Lipschitz 29:07
You can email me hello@sixplusnine.com. Or you can find me on LinkedIn.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 29:13
Perfect and so your surname is spelled LIPSCHITZ, is that right? That’s right. Yep. Okay, wonderful. Hey, well, thank you so much for your time. There’s definitely a better way and you don’t actually have to change much to realise the benefits when we’re still buying the petrol. We’re still buying the same things we normally buy. We’re still accepting payments from people, it’s just using that to the best possible advantage, right?
Greg Lipschitz 29:40
Absolutely. And a lot of the times it can actually improve and streamline your cash flow as well, because you’re doing things in a more systemised way.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 29:48
Yeah. Great. Hey, look, I really appreciate your time today. Thank you very much for sharing your tips. Look forward to putting them in action myself.
Greg Lipschitz 29:55
My pleasure Debra. Thanks very much. Thank you.
Debra Chantry-Taylor
Professional EOS Implementer | Entrepreneurial Leadership & Business Coach | Business Owner
#betterbusinessbetterlife #entrepreneur #leadership #eosimplementer #professionaleosimplementer #entrepreneurialbusinesscoach
Professional EOS Implementer New Zealand
Professional EOS Implementer Australia
Professional EOS Implementer UK
Professional EOS Implementer NZ
