Last month’s budget came and went. Did anything in it actually move the needle for your business?
If you’re a small business owner like me, probably not much. Promises of “growth” without producers to grow with. Token mentions of small business as if we’re a sector to be managed rather than the people doing most of the actual producing in this country. Nothing in there is going to fix your margins or fill your funnel. The ‘Business Stack’ has however just moved.
Here’s where I am and where I’d suggest you consider being too.
Stop looking at interest rates. Stop looking at budgets like yesterday’s. Stop looking at elections like they’re going to change your life. They might. They might not. But here’s a more useful question: who do you actually trust more right now: yourself, the politicians, or your bank manager?
I know who I trust. And it’s not the banks or the Government.
The pre-2020 game is over. It’s not coming back. If I’ve learned anything in the last five years watching this unfold, it’s that you cannot fix today’s business problems by waiting for yesterday’s conditions to return. They won’t.
Your small business sits at the intersection of what I call The Business Stack. Four layers, all of which have moved since 2020 (in some cases, significantly):
- Your relevance, your value, your profit. These are the things that make a business function day to day.
- The laws of the land. Both human-made (tax, employment, compliance, ACC) and the laws of the universe (cashflow math, physics, time). You don’t get to argue with either without paying a price.
- Your rules. Including your beliefs, your values, your culture, what you’re willing and not willing to do. The guardrails you accepted from family, friends, country, whoever.
- The rules of the infinite game and your ability to stay in it. Break those and the rest doesn’t matter.
The stack pre-2020 looked very different from the stack today. What worked for you five years ago is unlikely to be working now, especially at the smaller end, where margins are thinner and you’re far more sensitive to shifts than the bigger players with the cushion to absorb them.
Here’s what I’m doing:
I’m focusing on the value propositions my customers need NOW, not five years ago. I’m using AI and technology to do MORE instead of trying to make what I was doing cheaper, faster, or smaller. The efficiency gains will happen anyway. They’re the side effect, not the strategy.
If I had staff, I wouldn’t be firing them to replace them with AI. I’d be training them to use AI to deliver more for my customers. That’s a triple win if you end up with staff gaining new skills, customers getting more value, and the business earns more.
· The lazy version is the layoff.
· The harder version is the leverage.
Guess which one builds something worth owning.
And the most important thing: customers WILL still spend. They’re just much more deliberate about WHAT they spend on. If you can deliver what people actually want – and that means solving a real problem at a fair price, there’s still room.
Even now. Especially now!
If you’re thinking “yeah but I don’t have the time or energy to rebuild the business stack right now” well ok. That’s a fair comment. Kaizen.
But here’s my ‘one small step’ challenge:
Spend 15 minutes writing down (for yourself, nobody else) what your customer ACTUALLY pays you for. The OUTCOME, not the deliverable. That single answer often reveals where the stack has shifted under you while you weren’t watching.
Please reach out for more anytime.