For years I ran my business off one number. Whatever was in the bank account that morning. If it was up, we were winning. Then a tax bill landed that nobody had warned me about, and I realised I hadn’t been looking at my business at all. I’d been looking away from it.
I did the same with my body. As long as nothing hurt, I was fine. I had a gym membership I never used and every excuse under the sun.
The two guests in this edition make their living on the things the rest of us refuse to look at. One reads the numbers. The other reads the body. They told me the same thing.
The two episodes below will change what you do with the thing you’ve been avoiding.
I sat across from Ben. He runs KHT Accounting and Wealth, a Perth firm with a team of 20. He has spent 14 years building it, and in January he started a YouTube channel that teaches business owners the strategies most accountants keep behind the boardroom door. It has already passed a million views.
I asked him the single biggest mistake owners make with their numbers.
He told me they don’t look at them. Then he admitted he does it too. When he knows it’s been a quiet month, he doesn’t want to open the report either. The difference is he opens it anyway.
Then I sat across from Samantha. She’s a physiotherapist who walked out of one of Perth’s biggest hospitals, learned her craft on a ski slope in Japan and in clinics in Singapore, and built Summit Wellness from a business that started out selling strapping tape.
I asked her the biggest misconception we carry about our bodies.
She told me we ignore the alarm bell. We sit on a niggle for months because we can’t afford time out of the business, until the injury takes the time anyway. And it always takes more.
Here’s what I’m sitting with.
Not looking feels like protection. It’s the most expensive habit we have.
Whatever you’re avoiding right now is already costing you. The quiet month doesn’t get worse because you open the report. The niggle doesn’t get bigger because you have it checked. It’s the not looking that lets them grow. Looking is scary. Not looking is scarier. I used to be like this too. The bank balance instead of the numbers. The excuses instead of the run. Not anymore. I made the change on both, and my life is better for it. I’m a healthier, more aware business owner than I was.
So the homework I’m giving myself, and you, is small.
Name the thing you’ve been avoiding. The numbers. The niggle. The conversation. Then give it 30 minutes this week. Not to fix it. Just to look at it properly.
You knew which one it was before you finished reading that sentence. That’s the tell.
One will make you look at your business. The other will make you look after the person running it. Ben first.
EPISODE 145: Ben Elliott
With Ben Elliott, founder of KHT Accounting and Wealth and the Ben Elliot CA YouTube channel
Ben wanted to be a surfboard shaper until his idol told him to go to university instead. He bought into an accounting firm at 29 knowing everything about tax and nothing about running a business. 14 years on he leads a team of 20 and gives away the advice most accountants charge for, on an educational YouTube channel that passed a million views within months of launching.
What you’ll take away:
- Why he’d rather you pay $1 million in tax, because a business making $1 million profit sells for about $4 million, while $300k profit only fetches about $700k
- The Garmin question that stings: you track every single run on your watch, so why aren’t you tracking the numbers in the business that pays for everything
- The “one extra” rule from his early mentor, if you think you need four people, hire five, and why at a team of 20 he’s now thinking 23
▶ Listen here: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout
▶ Ben’s YouTube channel: @benelliottca
Same diagnosis. Different profession.
EPISODE 146: Samantha Elder
With Samantha Elder, physiotherapist and founder of Summit Wellness
Samantha spent years inside the hospital system watching preventable conditions take pieces of people. So she left, went overseas to learn, and came home to build a practice around one belief, exercise is medicine. She also speaks openly about losing her baby girl at 26 weeks, and what it took to rebuild herself and the business after it.
What you’ll take away:
- The 27 year old patient who came into Fiona Stanley for amputations, and the day Samantha decided prevention mattered more than the hospital system
- Why your pain is never just physical, what you believe about it changes how you heal, and what treating patients in Japan and Singapore taught her about that
- How she found her way back after losing her baby girl at 26 weeks, and why she says you have to be vulnerable to heal
▶ Listen here: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout
P.S.
If the thing you keep avoiding is your brand, the one you know isn’t pulling its weight, talk to me.
I keep a handful of free Brand Discovery sessions aside each month, just for TRBLC listeners. One hour, with me. We look at where your brand is actually landing and what’s holding it back.
