Episode 321: Business paper cuts
In this episode, Fiona reflects on the effects of small and unresolved issues in business. She also shares how to identify and address these "paper cuts" to find relief and move forward. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
Transitioning into a new financial year
The effects caused by small, unresolved issues in business
Examples of "paper cuts" in business
The importance of addressing these small issues promptly
How to identify your own business "paper cuts"
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
Welcome to episode 321 of the My Daily Business podcast. Today it is a quick tip episode, and that's where I share a tip, tool or tactic that you can implement immediately in your business. Before we get stuck into that, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the beautiful land on which I live and record this. If you're reading this, I'm going to a new house today in the same area. Beautiful North Warrandyte and I want to acknowledge the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the East Kulin Nation as the traditional owners and custodians of that land. And I pay my respects to their elders past and present and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.
The other thing I wanted to mention is that we are officially into a new financial year. If you are in Australia, or if you're anywhere else in the world, we are into the second half of the year. If you are wanting to really understand your financials, get that sorted, understand where your money is coming from, and understand potential new recurrent and non-recurrent revenue streams. Check out our Money Mapping Course. We have had hundreds of people do this course and we had such incredible feedback. It is the first thing I get every single client who works with me to go through, and you can buy it for yourself. It's really affordable. It's just an online course with a workbook attached, and you can find that at mydailybusiness.com/courses. That is called the Money Mapping Course. Let's get into today's quick tip episode.
As I record this, there are two tiny cuts on my fingers. They're both on my right hand. One is on my ring finger just next to the nail, but just in that fleshy part on the top of your finger. And the other one is almost in the same spot, a little bit further down on my middle finger, but right in the centre of the finger. It's constantly hitting the other finger if that makes sense. Why am I talking about these? I'm talking about these because these are the tiniest cuts, the little red spot on my fingers where the blood has come out and dried, is as big as a freckle. Maybe a tiny bit bigger. And yet these cuts have been irritating me for the last week.
They say death by a thousand paper cuts. They're the tiniest things, but because your hands have so many nerve endings and you are constantly using your hands for different things, I use my hands when I talk a lot I'm using them right now as I'm recording this podcast and they're constantly tapping on things. I am washing my hands, I am bathing my children, I am washing the dishes, even though I like to get my nails done, does not wear dishwashing gloves, I really should. I have a million packets of them. I just don't. They're burning when I am putting them into hot water, like bathing my son, all of that. And they have been irritating me. What's ridiculous is that I could have just gone and put some band-aids on and I haven't, and yet I keep complaining about these little paper cuts, not complaining to anyone but myself, but it's a reminder.
Every time I wash my hands I'm like, "Ah", with a little sting. Because whatever the wound is hasn't completely healed yet, even though it's been a week and a bit. Why am I talking about this though? Because I feel like there are so many tiny little cuts that are irritating us in our business and we know what the answer is, but we're just not doing it. We're just not doing it. For me, I know that I could have just gone and put some bandaids on, and believe me, if you have young kids, you have like a whole box a whole drawer full of boxes of bandaids including Marvel bandaid and frozen bandaids and all the other bandaids. It's not like I didn't have a solution there. It's almost like I was choosing misery over just fixing the little cuts on my hands.
Even as I'm saying this, I'm literally looking at the cuts thinking, why haven't I put some bandaids on? Because that would at least help this situation. I feel like we all have irritating things in our business that are small that if we had just put some effort into, which might be 10 minutes, they would get done, they would get fixed, and we would be on our way to a solution. And yet, instead of that, we complained to ourselves, they take up space in our minds. They are renting free space in anxiety, stressed, or overwhelmed when we could just fix them. What am I talking about here? If I'm talking about a business, small little paper cut, let's call them. They may be small things like getting back to somebody's email that would take five minutes and you still haven't, and then it banks up and then suddenly it's three weeks and you're like, why didn't I just reply?
I'm putting my hand up because that's me. I do that all the time, which is why I pay somebody to look after my email and that's why I always say to people, if you want to contact us, please email hello@mydailybusiness.com because that goes through to my OBM and she will hound me until I reply to an email. Whereas if it comes directly to me, I'm not the best. I readily admit that I'm trying to get better this year. This is one of my things to try and focus on. But getting back to you one email, I'm not talking about getting to inbox zero, but maybe there's just one email that's like a mosquito. It's just annoying you and you just want to get rid of it. Just reply. Another small thing could be things like checking your hecs or student debt.
If that's part of what you have to report on in your annual tax return or in when you're looking at your finances and you're thinking, we had a little bit more profit in the business. Where do I want to put that? Maybe I want to take part of that out and pay down my student loan, or maybe I want to give myself a higher wage or a bonus so then I can use that money to pay down my individual student loan or my hecs debt. It could be that you are telling yourself all these things about where you should be with your superannuation, and yet you haven't checked a superannuation calculator or any superannuation table. There are a million of them online. Superannuation for those who are outside of Australia is like your 401 pay, your pension, whatever it is, you've put money aside.
In Australia, f you're an employee of a company, even if you are an employee of your own company, no one else works with you. You are still legally obliged to pay the 10.5% of somebody's pay as super. I will talk about a lot the fact that in Australia, the fastest group that is becoming homeless are women 55 plus. That largely is because they do not have super, but if they do, it's very small. They may have taken time outta the workforce to look after children, elderly parents, and all of that. And they haven't matched super relationships breakdown situations happen with their own children and suddenly they find themselves with nowhere to live, plus no great income coming in. And it's very difficult at that age also to get a job that's horrible to think about, but statistically it is.
We have government incentives here in Australia to employ people of that age and above. However, you may be thinking that one of your paper cuts is that you are telling yourself, I'm so behind on my super, which is totally normal. I would say the majority of small business owners are behind on their super. And not behind, but in terms of your age, your gender, there are a lot of places out there where you can check the average for your age, your gender in Australia for how much super you should have aside or what is the average. You might be telling yourself, I'm so behind. But if you just took five seconds, maybe 30 seconds to go online, look it up, you may find that you're actually not behind, or maybe you are a small percentage behind, in which case, again, if the business is doing well or if you can cut back some expenses, you could take that money and put it into your super to help you down the track.
There are so many paper cuts that we live with day in and day out, and we are not fixing, just like me not going to take the 30 seconds to go into the bathroom, get a bandaid, put it on my finger, that would've helped a lot for the last week, but I didn't. I just put up with the paid put up with every time being reminded of it every single time I wash my hands. It's pointless, isn't it? I want you to think about where are the paper cuts in your own business. I'm not talking about big things that need your entire system need to be restructured. You're thinking about redundancies or anything else? And you need to look at your organizational strategy. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about small things that are irritating you, much like these two little cuts on my fingers right now and why you are not doing something about them when the solution is.
That is it for today's quick tip episode. Consider what are paper cuts annoying you right now and even set yourself a deadline. What can I do in the next 24 hours to get rid of that paper cut? For me, I'm recording this and I'm going to go into my house right now. I get two band-aids, maybe one of them will be frozen. And put them onto my fingers because it's just ridiculous that I haven't done this for the last week. It is actually ridiculous. I'm in my forties, I know what to do. I have bandaids of plenty. It's getting serious with yourself in your business and thinking, where are these little annoying paper cuts? Because if I sat down and just got it done today, it would get done and it would stop irritating me. That is it. If you wanted to have a look at this in text format, you can find that over at mydailybusiness.com/podcast/321. Thank you so much for reading.
