3 top tips from Sam Stubbs
1. Hire people you trust fully!
Never hire anyone that you wouldn’t give your kids to look after… I mean, you’ve got to trust and love the people you work with.
Be incredibly careful about how you hire because your biggest mistakes will be to hire the wrong people.
2. Keep an eye on your cash flow
Be paranoid about cash flow. Treat every dollar like it’s your last dollar.
3. Just ask
Don’t be afraid to ask for the earth because all people can say is ‘no’.
Don’t be afraid to ask and appeal to people, and in New Zealand we’re terrible at this, we’ve inherited this from the English, in this English middle class weird distance about asking. We need a little bit more American or Australian hutzpah. Don’t be afraid to ask for something. Because you’ll be surprised how many people want you to succeed. Most people will want you to succeed.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, business, simplicity, money, organisations, customer, person, pay, give, volunteer, charity, absolutely, hutzpah, team, fee, life, products, simple, trust, sold
SPEAKERS
Debra Chantry-Taylor, Sam Stubbs
Debra Chantry-Taylor 00:12
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 in 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. Welcome to another episode of Better Business Better Life. Today I’m joined by Sam Stubbs, who is one of the founders of Simplicity, which is a not-for-profit KiwiSaver and fund manager that actually gives 15% of their profits or fees to charity. So, Sam and I met many years ago at Tower, and I’ve been following him on his journey ever since then. So welcome to the show, Sam.
Sam Stubbs 01:10
I’ve been following you too.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 01:13
Awesome. Hey, look, I always like to get started by allowing our viewers to get to know the person behind the mic. So would you mind sharing with us all a professional and personal best?
Sam Stubbs 01:24
Yeah, look, I think, you know, personal best is I think that when you’re a parent, you can’t help and look at your kids, you know that because that’s the unconditional love, you know. And so, when I look at my kids, you know, you’re not in jail. University and you know, they’re doing okay, yeah, the kids are doing okay as my personal best. And maybe that shows you how low the bar is. But that’s the thing I’m most into, and then on the professional one, I think, look, I think when you get to be one of the people that gets together an awesome team, and when the team’s really high functioning. That is, I mean, regardless of what they do, the ability to get together a bunch of talent and help make it really sing is awesome. So that would be the professional best, which is what we’re doing right now. Yeah.
Debra Chantry-Taylor
How many people are in the team now Sam?
Sam Stubbs
There are 22 staff and there are about 67 volunteers.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 02:25
Wow.
Sam Stubbs 02:26
And yeah, so you know, it’s just awesome. It’s just very rewarding. Yeah.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 02:35
Fantastic. So, tell me a little bit about Simplicity and how you sort of came up with the idea and where did it all start from?
Sam Stubbs 02:43
Sure. Well, look, I just think it was a midlife crisis. So, you know, I got to about 47-48. And look, I had a very lucky career, very lucky life. And the last job was working at which is the job you and I, we met, I kind of felt I was looking in the mirror and kind of had a look I’m just making other people rich, rich people richer, myself richer. But I’m a Westie. You know, I come from Sunnyvale. And what I was doing wasn’t really looking after the people where I came from and I had two school teachers as parents and they’ve just got an amazing set of values. I was looking at what I was getting paid versus my contribution. This is what they were getting paid, this is their amazing contribution and actually envied them you know, I said, you know, I’d love to have that feeling so and then so look for things to do went and plant, when the business I was running got sold, I went off and planted trees for a year, native trees, as a volunteer. And then I did a few other things and then decided, look, it’s time to give back and scale. So, what am I good at? The answer was nothing except managing money. Other people’s money, so got a few minutes at a pub, blank sheet of paper said, ‘Look, if we could make the biggest difference in New Zealand, what would it be?’ And that blank sheet of paper, what we wrote down that night is exactly where Simplicity is right now. So, you know, just good old fashioned midlife crisis. Couple of people getting together thinking, ‘How do we now work for purpose and love? Not profit?’
Debra Chantry-Taylor 04:17
Yeah.
Sam Stubbs 04:19
That’s where we are. Yeah.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 04:20
Wonderful. Okay. And so, then tell me a bit about the journey. So, from that idea, you know, four guys at a pub with a piece of paper. How did you actually launch Simplicity? Some of the challenges along the way?
Sam Stubbs 04:32
Yeah. So, the journey is tough aye. Like you’ve done it right, you know, and we’re like, so, first lesson, it ain’t easy. Because if it was easy, everyone would be doing it right. And so, it’s not easy, but it’s incredibly rewarding. So, like most things in life, the most rewarding things in life are the hardest things to do. Right? You know, there’s a real sense of achievement. So, look I have two years of planning and cajoling and begging. And we had to get a couple of readings in for a key regulation change to allow our business model to work in New Zealand. So, a lot of lobbying of the government there to get that changed. Basically, very simple thing that just allows you to transfer KiwiSaver online, as opposed to having to go into a branch or, you know, a signature, which would have been very expensive to affect. So, and then, you know, I just became a professional beggar basically just saying, ‘Hey, listen, here’s the idea.’ We don’t have any money, you know, I sold the bach to finance the business and then just by just asking for everything for nothing, and then enrolling people, I guess, in the vision, and then the other three co-founders made it happen. You know, this phrase we have, I do the talking, they do the walking. And so, we sort of worked out what we were all good at, and then owned that bit each and then, you know, I just, I don’t know, it’s kind of chaotic, right? Setting up a business, there’s no formula, there’s no book, there’s no, you know, and people like yourselves get involved in, and I’m sure your advice is tailored to the circumstances heavily, right? It’s just very different. You know, there are a few fundamental truths, but only a few. Yeah.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 06:16
There’s some frameworks and some things that you abide by, but in reality, every business is different and has different needs. Yeah.
Sam Stubbs 06:23
Yeah. And if you get great people together, and you build a framework around them, and you just let them thrive, that way, they can thrive. Amazing things happen. But, you know, Simplicity is nothing like what we expected it would be, you know, what we say it’s nothing like, in this instance, we’re achieving exactly what we wanted to achieve, but the journey is all over the place. Because by definition, if you’re a disrupter and you’re going into a business with large established players, you’ve got to be very nimble, right. You’ve got to turn on a dime you know, to get visibility, distribution, customers, all that sort of stuff.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 07:03
Absolutely. Yeah. So how did you pick the right people? Because that’s always a challenge, right?
Sam Stubbs 07:08
Yeah. Shit that’s such a great question I don’t know if I’ve got an answer other than I looked around, I said, ‘Who do I know that’s really good?’ And then you know you ask them, I mean my partner Amanda, who’s a co-founder she’s a fantastic talent spotter as well so she found some really key people and then we just went to our friends and said, ‘Hey, listen, I know this sounds crazy, but this is what we want to do. Would you like to be on board?’ and what I’ve actually found was really interesting is that the pitch was because we’re a nonprofit right owned by a charity which was not, you’re going to get rich the pitch was we will pay you fairly and as much as we can afford to pay you which is fair, but the purpose is amazing. And here’s the difference, you can make a really quantifiable difference, this is how many millions of dollars we could pick and this is how much we could give to charity. And what I found is that it’s just a massive number of people want that in their lives they actually don’t mind it’s not that they want to get paid the most. They just want to be paid fairly. But you know going into work has to be more than just getting money, right? Yeah. And so, when you say here’s an opportunity for you to earn a fair amount of money but have an amazing purpose and huge in a scalable difference, a massive difference you know, we’re now saving people – I want to add it up now but it’s almost $90,000 a day in fees and we’re giving away over $5,000 a day to charity now. We’ve only just started you know and so you say well you could help make that difference you know so
Debra Chantry-Taylor 08:54
Really, really clear on your why and then attracting people wanting to do
Sam Stubbs 09:00
It was all about the why, how, what, right so the why was giving people dignity in retirement, giving people dignity in life. How was giving them choices and the what we did was make them more money so more money gives you more choices in life, more choices in life gives you dignity and so that’s how we make every decision including things that we don’t get involved with by the way. We’d say no a lot as well, right?
Debra Chantry-Taylor 09:24
So, using that why as a sort of a filter like around what you’re doing and don’t get involved in
Sam Stubbs 09:29
You’ll be absolutely anchor, keeps it very – decision making is very simple when you know why you’re in business. What some decisions are very simple.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 09:37
Absolutely. Okay. Another thing about being compensated appropriately I mean, that’s absolutely spot on. I mean, it’s not necessarily about making millions but it’s about being fairly rewarded right to doing what you love. We love being compensated appropriately.
Sam Stubbs 09:50
Well, we laugh you know, I have this lie because we how we hire people is really interesting. It’s actually a lesson I learned from the strangest of businesses Goldman Sachs. Vampire squid, right? You think it’s the most aggressive investment, actually, it’s the most collegial place you could possibly work once you’re in, but how you get in and it is you get interviewed by everybody, two or three times, I had 54 interviews to get in. So how are we hiring some listeners, everybody interviews the person, ideally twice. And so, you know, when they come in, and they already know, everyone, they’re working with, and everyone knows them. And we call ourselves a family. So, they feel like part of the family. And everyone has a veto. So, they know that when they come on, every single person has voted for them to work there. So, they just feel incredibly welcome. Yeah. And equally, everyone gets to say no, and that’s okay. And then we’ll go back to also, by the way, it means we hire very slowly to hire one person at a time, right? So, you don’t, because you know, a lot of businesses think it’s kind of like an ego trip to have the biggest office and the most people, that’s the definition of success. To us that’s the definition of failure, because people are cost, right. But you just, but do you want to have the right people with the right attitude and give them a fantastic job to do so you make labour really scarce. You know, you make it hard to get in, and hard to hire. And then in the end, you just get the most incredible people then I mean, they get they come on board, and it’s like they’re family. The day they arrive. Everyone says hi, hi, hi. They know everybody, they know their kids. It’s all that sort of cool. So sorry, I forgot the question. Because you can tell I’m passionate about..
Debra Chantry-Taylor 11:24
Yeah and I can see actually, that’s wonderful. And I was just asking about so how do you make sure you get the right people because you need them in the right seats as well doing the right thing, right?
Sam Stubbs 11:32
Totally, totally. So, we find these people and then we say, we’ll hire your friends. Right? So, we hire its friends, we got filled every seat with the most wonderful people so and it’s just friends, and then we’ll ask our members do you want to come and work and all that. So, then we give, the other way to find really good people I think is when you give them a passion and a purpose, right? But we give ultimate job flexibility. So, we have six weeks a year holiday, 10% KiwiSaver, we say that don’t care where you work, work from home, work from the office, total job flexibility. And you know, people working moms – the classic example people come and say, Sam, do you mind if I leave earlier and I say I don’t care, watch me, I’m going to leave early. You don’t have to ask me, I totally trust you just go, just do the job. However you can, you know, you need to do the job. Outcomes focused right? How you do it is entirely your decision. And when you give that, and by the way, as a manager, that’s so much less grief, right? I mean, micromanaging sucks if you micromanage, but even doing it is hard work too, keeping tabs on where everyone is and trying to pretend that it’s good or bad, or getting the job done or not. Right. So, finding people is actually quite easy. Likewise, as volunteers, we’re only
Debra Chantry-Taylor 12:53
67 volunteers, right?
Sam Stubbs 12:54
So, we’ve only had one volunteer say no. And what we do with volunteers is they’re giving us sort of one to 5% their time, you know, they’re lawyers, accountants, PR people. And I don’t ask lawyers to do sausage sizzles, right? You ask them any area of expertise, and say, if you could give us this, it will make this much difference and part of the family. And people just love helping. You know, most people are really good. Most people are really kind and really generous like you’re an example that you would if someone if I came along and asked you could you do this? For us, it would be a little bit of your time and yours. Of course, you would say yes, right? You’re that sort of person. And a lot of people are like that. So, a lot of people want to have purpose and meaning in their lives. And if they have skills. And bear in mind, of course, when you ask someone to volunteer, it takes 1/10 of the time as a volunteer does as a paid person. You know, so because when you’re a volunteer you just very efficient about how you get the stuff done, right? So, if it’s a legal contract, it doesn’t get drafted from get go just find and replace, right? Someone else. So getting in as volunteers are great, because they feel part of the family. And yeah, so it’s, it means that we’re a very word of mouth organisation, we have an advertising budget and we just did have our first sort of proper ads, but we spend 1/10 of what our industry spends on marketing and sales, just all word of mouth. Because we’re an infinite company, right? We’re owned by charity as a nonprofit profit, that means we will never make any money. That means we’ll never be worth any money. And that means we’ll never be bought or sold. We’re going to be here forever. So, when you’re going to be here forever. You don’t have to do anything in a hurry. You just have to do it right.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 14:36
Right. Yeah, yeah. And in line with what you stand for, which is great. What challenges have you had then Sam?
Sam Stubbs
Heaps
Debra Chantry-Taylor
share some with us? Because people love to help other people, right? They you know, we get taught in uni that you know, businesses grow in that beautiful hockey stick thing and it doesn’t all happen like that.
Sam Stubbs 14:55
No, not at all. It never, I’ve never seen, oh, well, you know, I’ve seen meteors. And I’ve seen – no, I’ve never seen a proper hockey stick. Obviously, look, I think, you know, in our organisation scarcity and necessity is the mother of invention, right? And scarcity of capital, scarcity of money means we’ve had to ask for a whole lot of things for free, that people could reasonably otherwise get paid for. Right? So, it’s hard, man. I mean, you know, whether, you know. So constantly, it’s exhausting getting people to do these things, ask people do things for you, as rewarding as it is, so that’s been one of the challenges. Second one is that, you know, we operate the financial services industry. I mean, these are the biggest, richest companies in the country. So, if they want to squash you, yes, they got a lot of money and a lot of grunt to try and squash you. Right. So, you’ve got to be very nimble, very nimble. I think that the, and also, you know, you, there’s sort of a sort of advice for anyone setting up a business you’ll be paranoid about cash flow and what you spend money on. Yeah. You know, I mean, utterly paranoid, that spend every dollar like it’s your last dollar.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 16:06
I think it’s one of the advantages. I actually at Tower, when I came and worked at Tower, I’d run my own businesses before. And so, when I went in there to look after the marketing team and the marketing budget, I was looking at going well, hold on a second, why are we spending this money? Is it really bringing us return on investment? Yeah, because I treated it just like it was my own business. And I think that’s carried on obviously, throughout everything I do.
Sam Stubbs 16:24
You know what, that’s interesting that you and Elon Musk share a very similar philosophy there, like you think about, it’s incredible how SpaceX is just leaping ahead of everybody. And he said, one of the keys to that is, every issue is an individual’s issue, not a team’s issue. Because if you give it to a team, then it just gets lost. No one knows who in that team asked for that, who thought it was a requirement, you know, who was a give it to an individual than the individual has to own it, it has to be a problem raised by an individual and a solution by an individual. Because if the individual leaves, maybe the problem goes away, too.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 17:04
It is interesting, because we talk about, you know, issues in business, and that’s part of the EOS model that I teach is how do you actually resolve those issues once and for all. And it comes down to having accountability, knowing who is responsible for what, and people actually taking personal responsibility to get things done. So that it makes it easy.
Sam Stubbs 17:22
It’s does aye, so that’s what I do, I mean, extensively on the boss. But really, all I see is mine is just a resource allocation exercise and giving it to fantastic people to own and they want to own these things, right? The right sort of person wants it to be their thing. Yep, wants it to be the very end. And they respond to that very well. Because it’s a fundamentally a relationship of trust, right? This thing about micromanagement, time watching, you know, clock watching is whether that’s just about you and I, you know, when you and I came from the insurance industry, right? And insurance contract is fundamentally a contract of no trust, we the insurance company, going to give you a 50-page document full of exemptions, because we don’t trust you, and you are going to screw us on price and always gets the lowest price because you don’t trust us. Yep, no trust there, right. And an insurance company when it has, if it has $1 it has to pay the claim or pay the shareholder, the claim or pay the shareholder, can’t invent new money, right? So, you’ve always going to have to so you know, there’s always that tension. So, the teams in the front finance industry are full of mistrust. People don’t trust each other, and organisations, big organisations that fail and we invest in 1000s of them, right? Fundamentally, the organisations that make the most money and are the most successful are the most human organisations with the most trust of individuals within the individuals.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 18:52
Yeah, we’re talking about healthy teams, it’s really interesting. My husband actually works for Partners Life is actually quite a different insurance model from what I’ve seen, and what he’s talked about in terms of they are not as old fashioned as the Towers of the world. And those companies are very much a human company, they’re very much about trying to make sure they can pay you rather than not, trying not to pay. So again, it comes down I think it was the leader and it comes down to their, their purpose, their passion, what they’re instilling in their in the team.
Sam Stubbs 19:21
Yeah, yeah. And, and you know, and if you charge a high fee or a high price, and you’ve got more wiggle room, they’re right to do that. So, and you know, you can, that’s the that’s the deal, and it’s the product you offer, and that’s the understanding that you have that’s really good. We have a particular challenge because we charge the lowest fee by far. Yeah, and we still try to maintain that. Right. So, you know, can you provide the best service at the lowest price and we do actually.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 19:50
Tell me how that works. A little bit without giving out the secret sauce.
Sam Stubbs 19:54
Yeah, look, I think, you know, it’s interesting customer services. I think there are two, really well, there are three really cool things that we do. None of which by the way are all attributed all to me, it’s what these teams do. The first is that we’re called Simplicity. So, we keep things really simple, simple products, easy to understand stuff. I think there is a tremendous desire in all organisations to, to create the new. Right. That’s why, if you apologise, I’m going to get in trouble with you here. That’s why we don’t have a marketing department, because a marketing department has to create new ideas all the time. That’s what they do. They’re in the business of, you know, generating work. If you have an idea that works, just run it till it stops working. Yeah, you know. So, we keep it really simple, simple products, simple easy to understand, send your one fee for all products, really simple product. One minute, 44 seconds to sign up Simple, Simple, Simple, Simple. Because actually, people have very complex lives. And in in any one decision that they are making, they have 1/100 of spare bandwidth, as a customer than you have as an internal person who does it for a job in a living, to spend about thinking about buying this product. Yeah. So, I think that 99.9% of products out there are too complex, invented by people who were in job justification mode. Really cool people, really nice people, but internally, you just create too much complexity. That’s first thing. Second thing is huge reliance on technology and automation. So, if we can get you to do it online, easily, we absolutely do that. So, we are, it’s constant Kaizen, you know, once again, no new ideas. Why is the Toyota so bloody reliable, it’s because for 50 years, they’ve been improving their processes, right? And keeping an efficient, so we just constant focus on that. It’s the second thing. And automation is your enemy, or your friend, we make it the customers’ friend. And, and the third thing is, is whenever you have to talk to somebody, here, the people that you’re talking to are the absolute best, they’re senior, they know what they’re doing, they will call you, they’ll resolve the problem. And that means, in fact, in our business, we have you know, the 22 people, but the customer services team are right in the middle of the business. Everyone hears what they’re doing. Yeah, everyone is close to them. So, you know, we can get we get a lot of IT development, which is just because customer service person leans over and says hey, can you just change that field, you know, you know, you have to go through at Tower, the right? 15 phone offs, and nine months, squillions of dollars, just make it into a bit of refit. So, if you keep the business proposition and the product, very simple, constantly improving it and making it even simpler and easier to use, from a customer point of view, and then but when they need service, they get fantastic service. So, for example, the call center, we don’t have a dial in and we’ll keep you waiting. So that’s basically, you know, if you keep somebody waiting, you know, what you’re saying is that your concern is of insufficient importance to us for us to create as well we’ll get to when you want to speak to us. So, what we say is, please just give us a number and a time to call and we’ll call you back, which means that you’re not wasting your time. I mean, look, if you had a call if you had a call waiting service that had vintage champagne served by male and female supermodels and a stand-up comedian, it might be an OK experience. You might want to be there. But otherwise, you hate it right? So why would you do that, just give us your number, we’ll call you back. And the person of course, you bet will it’ll be a fantastic experience. So, we have customer resolution 99% of time and we win every customer service award.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 23:55
You have senior staff, it’s a false economy, it often isn’t it, to have junior staff because it will save the business money, it can actually end up costing an absolute fortune because they don’t have the experience, they don’t have the ability and the technical expertise to actually you know, resolve issues.
Sam Stubbs 24:10
You don’t save money they’re very destroying. If you have a bad customer experience with a human being. Remember they represent the brand the other person talks to, no matter how good your marketing story is, your advertisement is the person you’re talking to who is solving the issue that you have ain’t good. Well, good luck. You know, this is why all of these decisions made to outsource call centers, to other countries and overseas with, you know, all of these things are driven from a cost perspective, not an experience perspective. Not a customer’s experience. That’s just so stupid.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 24:44
And we’re actually on the same page. So, my version of marketing is not about advertising promotion. It’s about really understanding what your customer really wants. In a commercial environment that you know, works for both parties. So yeah, yeah, and the simplicity thing, my tagline is always been the best means it’s in the simplicity. You know if we can simplify things down, we as humans tend to overcomplicate things. Corporates are the worst for it, but even can do it. Yeah.
Sam Stubbs 25:09
Yeah, and you know, simplicity is hard. Yeah, it’s hard to achieve. Because you’ve got to put yourself in the minds of the customer all the time and say, why, why, why would you do that? Why are you doing that? Why are we asking you to do that? What does that really mean? Because internally, I’ll give you a classic example, when you do a contact, an enrollment form for anything. The best ones are one page. And they are distinguished not by the information they give you, but the information they don’t ask you for. Right? Because internally, it’s always, I just think that will be really useful to get that data point. The board would like to see that on a report, and all that sort of thing. I don’t know if you’ve seen that great thing going round. The guy who wrote to the Australian Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the form we had to fill out, he said, ‘Why the fuck are you asking me? For my birth date? I filled this out 15 times, you know my name, you know when I was born? It’s on the tax records. Why are you asking me where I was born? What does that you know that already, you know, as a government is spending as a government right?’ Now, you can imagine how that form was done. So, simplicity is really hard. Because you got to say no, savagely. No, no, I realise you might like that information. But every single time we’re asking someone to fill it out is, you know, detracts from simplicity.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 26:33
Fair enough. So, in terms of growth, you know, it’s often easier when you are a smaller organisation, although you’ve got quite a number of people you’re looking after. But in terms of growth, it’s for implicity, how will you continue to keep it simple?
Sam Stubbs 26:47
Really good question, because you get pushed into complexity all the time, don’t you? Well, I think that was interesting. We have an interesting, we have a fantastic business model. Being a social enterprise. And a nonprofit means a couple of things. When you make more money. When you grow, and you get more cash flow in. Most businesses are encouraged to try new things, or supercharge what they are doing. But as a general rule, it funds innovation, right? That sounds lovely, doesn’t it? But often, innovation is just new stuff, new stuff that you want to sell to your existing customers, which complicates the relationship you’re having with them. We’re saying, I know you thought about us as being this. But now I want you to think about us as being this and this and this and this, right? So that’s the temptation when you grow. When you’re a nonprofit and a social enterprise. What you’re saying is how do we make people richer? Well, if it involves this, yes, but if it doesn’t, no, in fact, what we’ll do is we’ll use that money just to lower fees, or we’ll pay more to charity. So, we have more options. I think, also, when you’re a social enterprise, the fact that none of us get paid any bonuses, there’s no incentive to make more money out of the customers, there’s only incentive money for customers means we go down a completely different mindset. So, we look at, you know, so, Jeff Bezos from Amazon has this great phrase. And I’m not a particular fan of Jeff Bezos, but he has this great phrase, your margin is our opportunity. Right? So, when I look at the financial services, industry, as you well know, a huge margin everywhere, right? So, there’s heaps of opportunities there. And so, we will provide additional products and we do like mortgages and so on. But we’re not growth for growth’s sake. We’re not incentivized by growing the top line at all. We’re incentivized by making more money for members making a very different mindset, a much easier way to operate a business by the way, and much more authentic.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 28:51
Beautiful. Hey, look, I’ve really enjoyed learning a lot about, I’d no idea you’re a Westie, for a start. I’ve learned lots of things today and hearing how Simplicity works has been really good. Before we go away and shoot off, can you give me perhaps three quick tips that you would give to anybody who’s either starting out in a business or who’s got a business kind of hit the ceiling and feels like they can’t grow beyond that? What would you say? What would be the three top tips you’d give?
Sam Stubbs 29:17
I said, never hire anyone that you wouldn’t give your kids to look after that you wouldn’t get you know, to look after your kids. Yeah, that means I mean, you’ve got to trust and love the people you work with. So great businesses are just an idea, money and people. The ideas are everywhere, on smartphones, the money is everywhere. Now there’s more money, people, people make businesses. So, that’s first thing, be incredibly careful about how you hire because your biggest mistakes will be to hire the wrong people. For sure. Maybe the first thing second one is I think we just mentioned be paranoid about cash flow. treat every dollar like it’s your last dollar and also the third thing I would say is don’t be afraid to ask for the earth because all people can say is no. Don’t be afraid to ask and appeal to people, and in New Zealand we’re terrible at this, we’ve inherited this from you lot from the English, in this English middle class weird distance about asking, you know, we need a little bit more American or Australian hutzpah. Don’t be afraid to ask for something. Because you’ll be surprised how many people want you to succeed. Most people will want you to succeed.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 30:21
And that’s really interesting. My father always taught me that and he’s British, but he’d say to me, you just need to ask the worst they can do is say no. And what difference does that make? And also, I think that people forget, I always challenge people, I go, when you help somebody, how does it make you feel? And like, I feel amazing. I feel great. So why would you deny somebody else that feeling? You could help them? Or you could you could allow them to help you and they’ll get that feeling? Which is great. Yeah.
Sam Stubbs 30:46
Yeah. Yeah, it’s amazing. So, you’re quintessentially British. In that example, you’ve got a lot of hutzpah for a pom, you know, but it’s sort of it’s the, I’m half English too, by the way. So, you know, you’re absolutely right, you’re absolutely right. People love helping, I mean, what amazes me is with all of these volunteers, we have some of them like, we have a volunteer Chris who runs a charity, this guy would walk over broken glass, for Simplicity, he probably puts in 40 hours a week, and he does work purely for the love of doing it. You wouldn’t ever think in a million years to ask somebody to do that, but that’s what he does. And he knows he’s utterly amazing. And so, you know, it’s incredible the satisfaction that people get from helping you right, from helping and just feeling useful, you know, feeling like they’re making a contribution
Debra Chantry-Taylor 31:36
Or a particular difference
Sam Stubbs 31:38
That’s what it’s all about. It’s making a difference and that we’re just appealing to people’s better angels and that sugar and that seems to be working. And by the way, our members you know, I mean, we just have an army of people who recommend us to their friends, which is fantastic.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 31:51
Hey, I actually signed up a few months ago with you and it was really easy so a little plug there. Cool. So, if somebody wants two things if somebody wants to sign up to Simplicity what do they do?
Sam Stubbs 32:01
Just go to simplicity.kiwi
Debra Chantry-Taylor 32:02
Yep, perfect.
Sam Stubbs 32:05
One minute and 44 seconds and my phone numbers 021491547. Give me a call.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 32:11
Wonderful, hey how many seconds you say takes to fill out the form?
Sam Stubbs 32:15
One minute 44 seconds, on average and going down as we close in and improve it and prove it. And we do you know, we do non KiwiSaver funds as well. And we now do first home mortgages with the cheapest first mortgage in the country as well for members. We’re a member lead organisation, once you join in any form, then you get everything available to you. And everybody always pays the same. It’s really simple.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 32:38
Love it. Look, thank you so much for your time sharing and for making a difference in people’s lives. You know, helping people get wealthier I think that’s really, really important. So thank you.
Sam Stubbs 32:48
Thank you too, because I know you’re helping an awful lot of organisations get, you know, better and bigger, right? Yeah, absolutely. So awesome.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 32:58
Hey, Sam. Thanks again. Look forward to seeing you soon.
Sam Stubbs 32:59
Okay, see ya, thanks to everybody.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 33:02
Thanks again for joining us on Better Business Better Life with me, your host Debra Chantry-Taylor. If you enjoyed what you heard, then please subscribe to this podcast. And let us help you to get what you want out of business and life. Each week we release a new short episode which will give us success story and three takeouts to put into action immediately. These will help you take your business from good to great. The podcast is also supported by free resources, templates and useful tools, which you can find at Debra Chantry-Taylor.com. I am a trained entrepreneur, leadership and business coach, a professional EOS implementer and an established business owner myself. I work with established businesses to help them get what they want. Feel free to contact me if you’d like to have a chat about how I might be of help to you. Or if you’d like to join me as a guest on this podcast. Thanks again to NZ audio editors for producing this podcast. See you on the next episode.
Debra Chantry-Taylor
Professional EOS Implementer | Entrepreneurial Leadership & Business Coach | Business Owner
#betterbusinessbetterlife #entrepreneur #leadership #eosimplementer #professionaleosimplementer #entrepreneurialbusinesscoach
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