Navigating Clarity Challenges in Business with Alan Hegerty

Full Transcript

Note: the following transcript was generated by AI and therefore may contain some errors and omissions.

Sometimes you’re like, well, we just got to keep doing more what we’re doing and hopefully we get bigger and grow. It all comes down to really understanding where you need to go as a business. Well, actually, we could actually achieve this or we could achieve this. I call it the astronaut view, which is where there’s a phenomenon when astronauts go to space and they see planet Earth, they never see it again the same. Even when they come back to Earth, things just look differently. So it’s trying to get that sort of astronaut view and go, well, what could this become?

and what’s the real impact because that’s what’s going to drive you. It’s not the money or those sort of things that are going to drive you. It’s the impact that you’re going to have and the potential impact on the world and the impact for your customers as well. Before we get started, the team here at the Coast and Commerce podcast want to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land where this podcast is created, the Kabi Kabi and Jinabara people. We honour their rich culture of storytelling as we share the inspiring stories of business leaders across the Sunshine Coast. We pay our respects to their elders past, present,

and emerging. Let’s get on with the show. G’day and welcome back to the Coast and Commerce podcast. I’m Ben Amos from Innovate Media and this is the show where we bring inspiring business leaders from across the Sunshine Coast to you so that you can hopefully be inspired to grow your business as well. And one of those leaders that we’ve got here today is Alan Hegerty, CEO of Impactus Advisory. Alan, thanks for joining me here on the show today. Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

We were connected through some mutual people and I think you’ve listened to some episodes of the podcast as well. And when we chatted, I thought this is going to be a really valuable conversation, not only bringing your background and experience from the business consulting that you’ve done and your history in business for many years to the show here today, but also we’re going to talk today about some stuff that’s probably really current for a lot of businesses. And we’ll talk about AI and some things like that as well. So it should be a pretty good conversation. So before we get into that though, Alan, I’d love to hear from you.

What’s your story like? Where did you, what brought you into the world of business and to here on the Sunshine Coast? Yeah, for sure. Thank you. So I’ve been on the Sunshine Coast now for about three years with my family. So I’ve got a couple of young kids, they’re five and seven and a wife. we just, you know, obviously chose this place for the lifestyle and how amazing it is. So yeah, really enjoy being here, but my career has taken me all over. So I’ve had sort of a senior executive career right across the world. So in the UK, in North America.

as well as here in Australia. So mainly focus in financial services world, mainly, but I guess I had a defining moment in my career when I was about 27 and I was working for a listed ASX company, top 50 sort of listed company, and I’d been given the role to bring together two business units that they’d underperform in businesses that they’d bought to turn around. And so being a young and cocky, I guess, executive, I thought I had all the answers. So I sat down and thought to myself, well,

I can sort this out. So I dove deep into the strategy, deep into the numbers, deep into the analysis, the market of exactly how I was going to turn these businesses around. so doing that was, and then what I did is I presented that plan right when we’re about to merge to the leaders of those businesses. And of course I was thinking that I was going to get all this applause and praise for presenting this amazing, amazing plan. But what I could end up happening was, was nothing. I, people didn’t say anything. You could have heard a pin drop in fact. And what I’d realised, this was the biggest, one of the defining moments of my career was I went,

I knew nothing about how to be a true leader. So I knew about strategy and business and the corporate world, but how to actually lead a business and to grow it and to engage its people, you know, that was a shortfall. And that sent me on a journey, which I’ve, you for the last 18 years since that point in time to come up with the answer to that question. What does it take to really grow and to scale a business in a way that, you know, is amazing environment for the people to work with, but also doing amazing things in the world and gives amazing results for customers. And so.

I’ve used that same strategy. You know, I’ve now developed a real model around that and how to do that really effectively for businesses. And I use that to grow and scale my own business. So it was a wealth management platform business that we managed. We grew from nothing to managing three and a half billion dollars. And I, exited that about 12 months ago. And so since then I’ve now been helping other businesses do the same thing and show them how to implement the system to really grow and scale the business to become, you know, to become a big sort of national or even international brand. Yeah, very cool. So

I’m interested now with Impactus Advisory, what’s the core of how you help businesses today? Yeah, so it’s, it all comes down to really understanding where you need to go as a business. So we’re here, but what is the business, where does it want to go? You know, what do you want to be from now? So we really take that long lens of, okay, what’s the business need to become three years from now? Or we start, we actually start with your vision and the impact that you want to have in the world, which is kind of your 10 year view. But then we go,

really what’s the next evolution of your business? So three years out, what do we need to be from now? And we focus on the what. So this is what we need to be because the how and the when’s gonna change. Cause we don’t know, you know, we’re in a world that’s constantly evolving and changing and AI is one of those things that you’re not gonna know every step between now and then. But what you do know is the type of business you need to become. And so what are those big rocks and the big things that you need to change? What are the systems you’re going to need? What is the brand gonna look like? What is the team you’re gonna need? What’s the financial metrics?

you’re going to need to get there. And then we get that down really solidly then we break that down. What do we need to do over the next 12 months? What do we need to do over the next 90 days? But it’s all about execution. So then we formulate a system and a structure to execute it into your business so that what everybody does on a daily basis is leading towards that three year goal. Because that’s where a lot of businesses fall down. They end up looking at the business and they’re doing stuff and they’re busy, but they don’t have that clear direction and clarity.

And even if they do have a strategy, it kind of gets written down and then on a piece of paper. And then six months later, they turn around and they haven’t done anything on it because the phone rang and then I went back to this. And so it’s about making, putting the execution in. And that’s the part that 95 % of businesses don’t do. So once we do that, then the business just starts on this growth trajectory. And the other key element that I’m really, really strong on is culture. Because at the end of the day, an organisation is a group of people that are trying to achieve a bigger goal. So the culture is all about

people and how you get the best out of people and how you create an amazing place for them to work. How you give them something to believe in, how you connect the purpose of your business to their core purpose as well and how you then empower your people, give them the structures and the frameworks to do their best work every day, to make decisions and to enable the business leader to step out of the business and not have to be that bottleneck inside the business as well. So they’re the really core elements that really when you get those right and aligned.

tend to grow and the final piece is just helping the leader grow because if the business grows, the leader’s gonna need to change. They’re not gonna be able to be the same leader they are now, so helping them on their journey as well are sort of the elements that you need to bring together if you really wanna grow and to scale your business. Yeah, so you may have potentially just answered the next question that I wanted to ask you, but I’m gonna ask you anyway to see what your response is, but in either the businesses you’ve worked with over your career in business or…

as an advisor, those businesses you’ve worked with around Australia, and even now on the Sunshine Coast, as you connect more with businesses on the Sunshine Coast, what’s the most common that you would say roadblock or barrier preventing growth for those businesses? Yeah, there’s a few things and one is clarity. Where are we going? What does the plan look like? How are we gonna get there? It’s not just, let’s just do more and be busy, because what ends up happening, people just end up.

doing more and lumping more on and going, we should do a bit of this and they’re moving, but they’re actually driving around the block. So they’re doing things and they’re busy, but they’re not going towards their final destination. So having that clarity and clear the mapped out is big. Another one’s around accountability. And then, you know, I hear that a lot around, my team’s not turning up, you know, like they’re not accountable for what they do. And that’s because you’ve got to build the structure and frameworks to allow them to do that and to trust them and to allow them to grow into the role. that’s another key part of it, which is stopping it.

And I think, you know, and I also said the leader oftentimes can become the bottleneck of the business as well. if you’re a leader and we were talking about how you’re about to go away for a couple of weeks and actually turn the phone off. So if you can’t do that as a business owner, if you can’t get away and step away for a couple of weeks, you’re probably the bottleneck from the business being able to actually grow, right? Because the people aren’t able to actually make decisions and drive, you know, to empower them to drive the business forward. But they’re common.

commonly what we see. There’s obviously a lot of stuff you need to do to grow and you need to systemize your business and you need to do these other things, but it comes from strategy, it comes from going, what’s the business we need to be? And then understanding what are the elements underneath that? And once you understand that, you can really get clarity on those pieces that you need to do to grow. It may be little bit self-serving this question, but like you say, just before you hit record here, I was talking about the challenge I have of going away for a couple of weeks here and…

So I’ve set myself that challenge of, you know, disconnecting from the business and allowing the team to take the reins, which, you know, is a bit of a fear thing for a business owner. But I think the other thing that you mentioned there was clarity of direction, right? And I think the bigger picture of that strategy, I get the theory behind knowing where you’re going, right, as a business owner. And it’s great if you have that pinpointed crystal clear clarity of…

Where am I taking this business and where are we going over the next, you know, one, three, five, 10 years, whatever that may be. The reality for me anyway, and hopefully for people listening and watching, is sometimes that’s really hard to get clarity on. You, you know what you’re doing in business today. You know, kind of fuzzy ideas of what you would maybe dream a business could become. But sometimes it’s really hard to get clarity on what that is. Where are you going?

How do you think the businesses can overcome that lack of clarity? Because I believe it’s not for lack of wanting to have clarity. Sometimes it’s just not really knowing where you should be heading. Does that make sense? Yeah, no, it does. It does. And sometimes you’re like, well, we just got to keep doing more of what we’re doing and hopefully we get bigger and grow. And see what comes. Yeah. And it’s really coming down to connecting in back into purpose and the purpose of

of you as a business owner or the leaders in the business and what’s the impact you’d like to have on the world and what might that look like? And so that’s why we sort of start with that place, but it’s very important that that’s linked to you as the owner or the leaders in that business so that, and then you can start to feel, what could this become? Or what is that wider impact that I’d love to make? And so I have process we take people through around trying to get really in touch with that and then things just start to evolve and to come out of that in terms of, well,

Well, actually, we could actually achieve this or we could achieve this. And so it’s just about taking the thinking a bit differently at it and not just looking at this is what we’re doing in the business and actually sort of thinking more. I call it the astronaut view, which is where there’s a phenomenon when astronauts go to space and they see planet Earth, they never see it again the same. Even when they come back to Earth, things just look differently. So it’s trying to get that sort of astronaut view and go, well,

what could this become and what’s the real impact? Because that’s what’s going to drive you. It’s not the money or those sort of things that are going to drive you. It’s the impact that you’re going to have and the potential impact on the world and the impact for your customers as well. Yeah. There’s a saying I often refer to around the idea that you can’t read the label from inside the bottle. And sometimes I think that as business owners, you’re very much inside the bottle of your business and you can’t really see what’s on the outside until you have some sort of outside perspective.

Sometimes you get that outside perspective from taking time out of your business, right, and allowing the business to hopefully flourish or grow without you. But also sometimes that is getting that outside perspective from someone like yourself who can help you think about things and look at things in a different way. Do you see that when you work with businesses that sometimes their eyes open to, you know, potential opportunities that they haven’t seen before?

100 % and that’s probably the most rewarding part of my job is like when we you know, we initially work to really get that strategic roadmap down and so when when you have these workshops and you have used bringing these other ways to think about the business and and and there’s there’s certain things you need to dive into a strategic evaluation, but I won’t go into all that detail now, but and you bring tools into look at it and there’s always these aha moments like Why didn’t I realise that I’ll see that or you know, whether it’s a strategy that we’re just not using or potential another, you

big way to open up a whole nother avenue of the market that we didn’t realise or just having that clarity on, well actually this is the type of business that we really wanna be and that’s probably the most rewarding part. you need that external, even in all the businesses I’ve had, I’ve always had external advisors or people around me that can give me that clarity, like can give me that other view I should say and the clarity moving forward. So think it’s a really important part of it. But then another important part is I see a lot of

you know, other coaches or I’m not a coach, I don’t call myself a coach, but they give you great ideas, which is amazing, but it’s that execution piece. I see a lot of businesses that might get some outside help, but it never gets translated into actually happening in the results. And I think that’s the critical piece. And you don’t know that until you’ve been and done it and grown a business and you really understand what that side of it takes. So I think that’s critical one. And I think one other point I just wanted to mention about regionally here about Sunshine Coast, well,

you sort of asked that question was that one of the big things is talent acquisition here. And that’s one of the critical, one of those key things that comes up here, how do we attract the good talent? But I think having real clarity where you can show people, this is where our business is going, this is what our culture is, this is what it feels like to be part of our company, it attracts people. And I’ve actually had some companies successfully manage to bring some people up here that took big pay cuts because they could see, they could actually see the future of the business here. I think we’ve got some other.

issues and things as a region in terms of, you know, growing pains because we are a fast growing region here. But I think the more you can be show that to people, the better you’re going to be able to attract talent. And we all need all businesses here to be growing and to attract those talent because then there’s more opportunities for people and there’s more reason for people to come here and there’ll be more other really qualified, highly quality people already here working in other organisations that, you know, that might be ready to step over into your organisation. Yeah.

I definitely want to kind of focus in on some of that aspects of growing a business here on the Sunshine Coast as well, because we’ve definitely had some great conversations and shout out to some previous episodes of the Coast and Commerce podcast here where we’ve really honed in on culture and talent acquisition and things like that. So encourage people watching or listening to go and, you know, tune into some of those episodes for deeper conversation around that. But I would love to explore the idea of as a regional business here on the Sunshine Coast or in regional Queensland or elsewhere.

you know, what are some of the challenges that you see with having a growth mindset or innovating and moving forward and staying current and definitely regional businesses and I’m generalising here, Alan, but you do get your fair share of lifestyle businesses, people who maybe come here or start a business because they just want to chill and just have lifestyle and not work for the man, right? Things like that.

But that’s certainly not the case across the Sunshine Coast in many cases. There are businesses here that do want to innovate, grow, become best in Australia. So let’s speak to those guys. How can we change that conversation around being original business and having that growth mindset and having that innovative forward thinking approach? Yeah, absolutely. think now more than ever, with technology and the way it is,

you can have a business anywhere that’s able to grow and become national. And it’s probably getting your growth or your mindset, as you said, out of that saying, well, I’m based in a region or that’s, you know, and causing, you know, putting up roadblocks yourself as opposed to saying, well, no, I can, we can grow this thing from here and we can become a national or an international brand and having that mindset towards it. And then it’s about, what is it going to take to get there? We’ve actually got a great number of assets here on the sun showing.

Obviously we’ve got the airport here and hopefully that can become an international airport again as well. We’ve got obviously the sea cable, you know, the underwater cable that comes here to shore as well, which presents some opportunities. We’ve got a multi-billion dollar new city centre that’s being built here as well. So there’s lots of opportunities. We’ve got some fantastic businesses here. And it’s going to be, it’s a case at the moment of, as I said, that rising tide lifting all boats where the more businesses that can be focusing to become national brands,

the more it’s gonna highlight us as a region, the more it’s gonna bring good talent here and the more it’s gonna enable the businesses to grow and scale. But you need to, being regional, you do need to be inventive on the way that you’re gonna employ your people. Maybe you’re not gonna be able to attract everybody here. So how do you have structure in place where people can be working remotely but really, really effectively as a team? You might be able to attract a really good quality executive that you might need, but they might not be able to or want to move here. So how do you…

make sure you’ve got those sort of be flexible that way on how you make that happen as well, I think is a critical one. And I think we’re doing a lot here as a region on the board of something called Silicon Coast, which is all about developing the innovation ecosystem here on the Sunshine Coast. And we run a big festival called Ford Fest every year, which is around that. that’s, you know, we’re really trying to help lift up, you know, certain industries here in Australia about, where can Sunshine Coast be known for and be the leader at here? And we’ve got some,

we’ve got some really good advantages in things like food and agriculture, in health, in advanced manufacturing, amazing business there as well. Sort of critical infrastructure style things. So there’s definitely areas that we can lean into. And I know the council’s very supportive of that here as well. And we’re trying to get the state government involved because if we can bring more funding and become known for those things, then it’s gonna attract the companies. It’s gonna attract the people and talent. It’s gonna enable all the businesses to grow as well.

You mentioned FWDFest there and even in the name Forward Fest, it’s kind of lending itself to the idea of innovation and moving forward as a business. you know, FWDFest is an example of some of those regional activities that are driving or encouraging that forward momentum for businesses across the region. So when we look at the individual business level, obviously attending things like FWDFest is a great way to get that mindset and that inspiration. But for those just, you know,

I say grinding in their business and, looking to stay current, looking to innovate, to move forward. you know, how, how do you think that businesses when they’re in the day to day can be focused on looking for opportunities to stay current, to develop, to move forward, to innovate? It’s really comes down to the strategic, how you look at strategy. Okay. So how do you, so for a start with all the business we work with, it’s about

understanding your strategy three years out, but then a year and then the next 90 days. So you’re constantly iterating. So you’re constantly reevaluating the strategy and is this the latest thing and is this the best way to go about it? Because you need to be agile because things are moving very fast. absolutely. So you need to have that agility, you need to have built into their structures for your people to be human too. So to really do those things like, you know, to have critical thinking time, to actually look to waste innovate, to have a voice, to say, hey,

can we do this better? So they can sort of not just do things because that’s always the way it’s done. Innovating at the end of the day is just doing something in a different way. So there’s ways you can innovate right throughout an organisation and every person in an organisation can be innovative. you give them that, if you sort of show them how to do that or you have the environment which encourages people to do that. So it might just be someone coming up with a better way to do this one little process but it ends up saving time for the whole business or it might be giving them the…

giving them the space to be able to work on a project that they want. know 3M, obviously the big company, they’ve got a philosophy where they give every one of their employees, I think it’s half a day or a day, to just work on their own project. So something brand new that’s not part of the day-to-day role, and that just encourages forward thinking, I think, to operate differently. And if we get into the AI conversation, think AI is probably the first technology that actually has the ability to enable us to work less.

So we had the internet and we had email and iPhones, all those things that they actually put, know, they generated more work really. Whereas this actually has the ability to take work away. So the businesses that can utilise AI, yes, to just be operationally efficient, because that’s what it’s good at, doing things in a faster way than a human can, especially, you know, those sort of processing tasks or data driven or, you know, even some marketing things to an element as well. understanding, you know, where you then can free up your people to be more human.

So to have those, you know, to actually think critically, to be creative, to innovate, that’s how you’re going to win out of AI as a business is to provide those structures for your people to be able to do that. Yeah, I think it’s a really interesting mindset shift when it comes to growth and innovation that it can be something that a business can structure. You know, it can be very deliberately encouraged and structured.

a former business coach that I worked with in business, like encouraged us to set up structured kind of time for innovation and things like that across the whole team, not just for the business owner, which I think business owners kind of get the importance of having that critical thinking time about the bigger picture, but to actually allow that for your team as well, to encourage that culture, going back to what you said at the start of this episode of a culture of innovation is something that you can

structure. Do you believe that every business should have some sort of structure that encourages time for innovation and growth and critical thinking? Absolutely. And it’s one of those things that you’ve to change any, you know, behaviour or to get outcomes. It needs to be consistent. So you need to keep with it and you need to have those in place. You can’t just expect people to automatically be creative and innovative if you haven’t provided that and be consistent with it. If you think about human behaviour.

You know, we have results that we get in our lives, or success we have comes from our results that we have, and our results really come from our actions that we take, which comes from how we think, and so our thinking determines our actions. And so to really get different results or to change, we have to change the way we think. And you can’t just change the way you think overnight. You can’t just go, I’m just going to think like this now, and that’s the way I think. It takes repetition and time for us to be able to do that, to change our mindset.

into different ways and you need to be committed to it. And the same thing with an organisation. So if you want for your organisation to get different outcomes, then obviously, you know, and achieve different results, then you need to encourage different behaviours inside and you need to encourage different thinking. allow people to think differently about and have that space and time to actually think critically about what they’re doing and ask them the questions, you know. A simple methodology is they’ll, you know, start, stop and keep. So as a manager, you know, talk to your staff and go, what should we…

What should we start doing that we’re not? What should we stop doing that we are? Or what should we keep doing the same? And just ask them, because you’d be amazed how many ideas and thoughts they even have, but they need to be encouraged and it needs to be embraced too. And if someone does give an idea, you can’t just say, sorry, I’m not interested in that. You need to embrace it and explore it and think about it so that they’re encouraged to keep coming up with them. You might not do everything and that’s okay, but you need to encourage them. Yeah, it’s amazing.

the insights that can come from allowing that freedom within your team to experiment and to have innovations and to think about the bigger picture. Sometimes as a, either as a business owner or when there’s a business partnership, it’s quite insular as in like, it’s just that leadership that are doing that sort of thinking or feel it’s their role to do that sort of thinking. But I think you’d be surprised, and many businesses would be surprised about some of the ideas that can come from, you know, even the newest, you know, youngest.

member of the team, you know, absolutely. have a, you know, and for whatever people believe about like having value statements and things like that in a business, right. we went through an exercise, Innovate Media here a couple of years ago where we refined and really kind of solidified our values as a business. And they’re up on the wall here in the studio and things as well. but one of those values is that there’s always room for play. And that for us is not just about play for fun.

or play for enjoyment in the work that you do, but also play means as in like experiment, try new things. And by having that as a culture that we’ve literally got on the wall here as a value in the business, it does kind of remind me as a business owner that I have kind of given permission to our team to pick up say an AI tool and play with it. And even though my initial thoughts might be like, that’s not the work you’re employed to do, know, stop wasting time, but actually I’m

you know, when you embrace that, you’re like, actually, this could be something really helpful to us if we play with that a little bit. You know, what do you think about that idea of allowing room for play? yeah, I love it. And I love, you know, that you’ve got those values and you’ve stuck by that because I I think values are critical in the business. And again, you know, there’s a bit of a stigma around it, but what they’re about is they’re telling your people how to think, not what to think. So how do we turn up here? How do we treat our customers?

what do we expect and you expect fun, know, like so embrace that as part of it. I think it’s absolutely critical. Fun, we’re here having, we’re here in this life having this existence, we all want to have fun, right? And so why can’t business be fun as well? So I think that’s a fantastic value to have and yes, encouraging people to look at things differently and have fun with it and come up with new ideas as well, I think is really, really good. so, using those values as well as a, it’s a way to actually help.

coach your people and so if someone’s sort of not performing or they’re not doing things, you can point to, you’ll be able to see where they’re not living up to those values and you can have those conversations in a really constructive way. go, well, this is who we are and this is how we turn up to work and you’re not sort of living up to that. So what were you thinking? And you can really use it that way as a coaching tool as well. And so I think the values are really critical. And I love that idea about fun and thinking and there’s a great saying saying, hey, why are you,

We pay you to come to work to think and while you’re here, maybe you could do some work too. like, because the businesses that really empower people to think and to have fun with it are the ones that come up with the great new ideas, are the ones that can innovate and are the ones that can evolve as the world evolves. Well, let’s be honest when you think about the fast moving pace of things like AI in business, which will, whether we like it or not, have an impact on every single industry. Everyone listening in business today.

if they haven’t already felt the extreme impact of AI, they’re going to feel the impact. But that’s not a negative impact, I feel, and I think you agree with me here. And, you know, it often comes down to, like you said, if you think about your people as you’re employing your people to think, then if there is tools and there is technology that can make their job easier whilst they still are thinking, then that’s a good thing, right? And AI plays into that. So…

for those businesses that are maybe feeling a little bit overwhelmed by the fast pace and innovation and changes that AI potentially brings, what would you say to them? Yeah, I think at the end of the day, AI is going to be a tool to make your business more efficient. Okay. it will no doubt, everyone’s going to be using AI in some capacity. There’s no doubt about that. I think what’s important is it comes back to having that clear strategy. We want to become, what are the things we…

we need to do to get there. And part of it will be, well, we need to get better at certain areas and we need to be more efficient in these areas. And then that’s guiding your decision as to what type of AI you want to be looking at, what things that we need to be more efficient around. And then you can start, you know, investigating and looking at it from that perspective and not just jumping on it because it’s the latest trend or jumping on it because, you know, we think that’s what we have to be doing. Come from, what’s the end result that we’re trying to achieve?

And what are the tools that are going to enable us to get there faster and better? And AI is going to no doubt come into those conversations. And so when you start from that place, at least then you know what you should be embracing. I think for a business too, they need to, AI is here, okay? So you need to be talking about it, even if you’re not using it technically at the moment. And you need to be having conversations with your staff because there’s a lot of studies that have shown that, how many businesses are actually using AI? I think it’s probably maybe only 30,

40% of businesses, but it’s up to 70% of the employees in businesses are using it. even if you don’t think you know, even if you don’t think you’re using it, you could have staff using it to just type emails for them or to produce something quicker. So you need to be wary of that because if they’re using certain tools and they’re portraying your business in a certain way to customers, then that’s something else that’s driving your business and driving your brand now, not you. And that’s why the values we spoke about become really important as well.

and looking at that from, well, any use of AI needs to be done inside our values. so I think having those cultural elements about values and vision and purpose, they’re going to become the base layer of any AI model that businesses have, because all businesses are going to end up having some sort of AI tools and probably closed circuit ones where you’re choosing what’s chosen versus the big large language models, which are just giving you everything that’s ever been published on the internet. So having those in there as the base model, then

that you build upon and saying, everything in here is going to, this is how we think about the world. This is the impact we want to have in the world. So I think those things are going to become even more and more important. But for business, just start talking about it. Think about an AI policy. And I know recently I saw a post that you’d done an AI policy really using your values as well, which I highly commend you for. So I think that’s the way to start. Have the conversations with staff, set a bit of a policy around it, and then look at AI as, well, what do we need to execute our strategy? What do we need to become that business?

and start investigating from there. There’s 200,000 or something different AI tools currently in there, they’re growing by the day. you know, which one is, you know, how long is a piece of string, I guess. So you really got to just focus on, well, what are we trying to achieve out of it? And let’s find, you know, which is going to be the one that’s going to work for us. I think that’s a critical thing there, Alan. And it’s right back to where you started in this conversation today around having that strategic direction and that understanding, but then how that filters through into the culture and what your…

you know, how you’re developing your people within the organisation. And I think, you know, AI is here. You know, there’s a saying that I’ve heard in a few different iterations, which is the idea that, you know, AI isn’t going to replace you, but someone using AI probably will, you know. And I think for anyone in business, if you’re not currently looking at AI as an opportunity for growth and for innovation and for forward thinking in your business, then potentially…

you will be feeling it as a threat, right? But I love the way that you frame that around. Thinking of it as an opportunity to, you know, allow your team to improve and to do things differently and to get better and to allow them to do better at their job is a really good thing. And I just want to shout out here as well. If you want to see our AI policy in the blog post that you talked about, we’ll have that in the show notes as well. So just on that.

Do you think that’s something that businesses should develop? Yeah, I do because, know, at the moment, anyone can go and use any tool and it’s open to everything, right? So I think educating your people on how to use it, even if, and making sure that it’s in line with how you want as a business and how you want to be portrayed. Because if you don’t, you’re just sort of letting your people out there doing anything, they, know, whether it’s…

know, or not, but they’re they’re designing things or doing pieces of work on it that’s not, it’s not coming from within your organisation, if you know what I mean, it’s actually from outside. So suddenly you’re really blurring the lines between, well, is this work being done by us or, you know, or not by us, if that makes sense. So you really want to ensure that you just have that policy in talking about it with staff and what you expect and that you’re looking at it and to make your staff comfortable that,

I was not here to take your job. It’s just, it’s going to change. And I think there was a, I think Microsoft, I think had done a, they do a World Trends sort of some data showing that, you know, I think the common perception is about, you know, 65 % of what we do in our day-to-day jobs is going to change between now and 2030. It’s not going to replace our jobs, but it’s going to change what they, what our jobs really look like. you need to embrace it and you need people to be comfortable that, that…

you this is something to be embraced, but as long as it’s, you know, sort of within our guidelines of how we want to utilise it. Yeah, and ultimately, like any changes in an innovative kind of steps forward, if you don’t know where you’re going with it, if you don’t have that strategic clarity and direction, and chances are you’ll just be swimming around in circles, right, like you said before. Yeah, and spending money on things and doing things that aren’t going to actually get you to where you need to be. Yeah, excellent.

Alan, this has been hopefully a really valuable conversation for people listening, not only to have them think about the importance of that strategic direction and planning and, you know, having some outside influence looking at their business, but also taking the time to play and to have that opportunity for innovation and moving forward so that you don’t stay stagnant as a business or you don’t feel stagnant and not know how to get out of that stagnant-ness. That’s not a word. You know what I mean? Yeah.

But also, you know, I think AI is an opportunity for every business to consider. So, Alan, for people who are interested in maybe getting some support with their strategic direction or growing their business, what’s the best place for people to maybe connect with you further? Yeah, you can obviously jump on my website, which is Impactus, which is impactusadvisory.com, or you can email me directly at alan@impactusadvisory.com as well.

I’ve got some, there’ll be some upcoming workshops and things I think through, through Forward Fest and some of the other industry bodies here that’ll probably be running some, you know, some strategic workshop for businesses. So keep an eye on that on, on my website as well if you want to come along to those and learn a bit more about what we do. Excellent. Cool. So my encouragement to any business watching or listening today is to, know, you are a regional business, you’re here on the Sunshine Coast, but we’re capable of big things. And there’s a lot of businesses on the coast punching above their weight.

many of them we’ve had here on this podcast as well and hope to have more of them. So, you know, keep doing what you’re doing, move forward, innovate, grow, get advice with people like Alan. And yeah, thanks for joining us on today’s show. Alan, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. It’s been great. Thanks And for you guys watching, hit subscribe on YouTube if you’re watching on YouTube or hit follow on your podcast player so you don’t miss the next episode of the Coast and Commerce podcast. See ya.