ChatGPT has been the biggest game changer for Small Business looking for productivity improvements.  There has been a lot of talk about what AI can and can't do and what you should and shouldn't do with AI.

Last week I uploaded our P&L and Balance Sheet because I wanted to get some advice on how our company is going.  I think this will be something that ChatGPT should be really good at.

This podcast discusses the results and what it will mean for the accounting industry in the short and medium term.

Have a listen to the podcast to find out how what advice ChatGPT gave me when acting as an expert SME accountant.

Check out the podcast show notes for more information on this podcast.

This week we look at productivity tips for your Small Business.

Inflation is running wild around the world and Governments are looking for the best solutions to bring it back under control.  Increasing productivity is a great way to do this.  It means higher profits, higher wages and businesses have more resources to reinvest and grow their businesses.

We look at a range of tools and tips that we use at www.extremenetworks.com.au to grow our productivity.  Some of these are cheap, even better many are free.  Some are tools, many are techniques that can pay off big time as you look to increase efficiency and run a leaner business. 

This isn't about working harder, much more about how to work smarter! 

Have a listen to the podcast to find out how this will impact your small or medium-sized business.

Check out the podcast show notes for more information on this podcast.

Artificial Intelligence is going to be our Industrial Revolution.  Already there are huge technical advances - and it is only really beginning.  

We detail the Top 10 AI tools that we are already using in our companies and how you can use them in your business.

Have a listen to the podcast to find out how this will impact your small or medium-sized business.

Check out the podcast show notes for more information on this podcast.

What is AI?  How will it affect your industry?  How can you improve productivity?  AI is going to be our generation's Industrial Revolution.  The changes from this are going to be huge, so all small business owners need to understand the threats and more importantly the opportunities that come from AI.

Have a listen to the podcast to find out how this will impact your small or medium-sized business.

Check out the podcast show notes for more information on this podcast.

For Small and Medium sized Business IT Support visit our IT Company, Extreme Networks.

For Small Business Strategy and Tactics, visit Sun Tzu 4 Small Business.

This week we look at the Message from Garcia, an article written in 1899.

• What was the message?
• Who carried it?
• Why him?

Most importantly - how does this fit into your business?

Finding someone who can take a message to Garcia, or more than one will make your life, as a business owner, a whole lot easier.

We use the message to help us illustrate to our team what we are looking for.  You can too.

Check out the show notes to download a copy of the essay.

For Small and Medium sized Business IT Support visit our IT Company, Extreme Networks.

For Small Business Strategy and Tactics, visit Sun Tzu 4 Small Business.

How can small business owners manage the impacts of inflation?

We look at the impact inflation will have and offer some tips on how to best manage running a business in a high inflation economy.

For Small Business IT Support visit our IT Company, Extreme Networks.

For Small Business Strategy and Tactics, visit Sun Tzu 4 Small Business.

Hiring today is a global issue for Small Businesses.  We look at some of the strategies that successful small businesses are using to be able to hire the right people as well as getting the most out of the team you have.

For Small Business IT Support visit our IT Company, Extreme Networks.

For Small Business Strategy and Tactics, visit Sun Tzu 4 Small Business.

What is the Great Resignation?

How is it effecting Small and Medium Sized Businesses?

What can you do to manage it?

We discuss some of the facts and ideas to move forward in what is a very turbulent time for SMEs

For Small Business IT Support visit our IT Company, Extreme Networks.

For Small Business Strategy and Tactics, visit Sun Tzu 4 Small Business.

How can the Rockefeller Habits help your business grow?

We discuss how we have gone implementing the Rockfeller Habits as we work towards scaling up.

For Small Business IT Support visit our IT Company, Extreme Networks.

For Small Business Strategy and Tactics, visit Sun Tzu 4 Small Business.

I am a huge fan of the Rockefeller Habits and Scaling Up books by Verne Harnish.  We discuss how we are going on our journey of implementing them in Extreme Networks.

For Small Business IT Support visit our IT Company, Extreme Networks.

For Small Business Strategy and Tactics, visit Sun Tzu 4 Small Business.

Firing employees is a really difficult process for everyone - the business owner or manager, and the employee.  

We discuss some of the mistakes we've made, how to avoid it, and if it absolutely has to be done, the process that we use.

Obviously employment law differs around the world, so get legal advice first, but this process focuses on minimising the firings you need to do and ensuring they are as fair and painless as possible for all concerned.

For Small Business IT Support visit our IT Company, Extreme Networks.

For Small Business Strategy and Tactics, visit Sun Tzu 4 Small Business.

We discuss the Martech - Marketing Technology - that we use to run our marketing campaigns.  Mostly free and easy to use, these are the tools you should be looking at to see if they fit into your marketing plan, so that it can achieve the goals set out by your business plan and personal plan.

For Small Business IT Support visit our IT Company, Extreme Networks.

For Small Business Strategy and Tactics, visit Sun Tzu 4 Small Business.

We discuss free and easy to use marketing technology that small business owners need to at least know about, if not use, to market their businesses successully.

For Small Business IT Support visit our IT Company, Extreme Networks.

For Small Business Strategy and Tactics, visit Sun Tzu 4 Small Business.

Let us know what you thought of the podcast on Linkedin or Facebook.

This is Part 

For Small Business IT Support visit our IT Company, Extreme Networks.

For Small Business Strategy and Tactics, visit Sun Tzu 4 Small Business.

Let us know what you thought of the podcast on Linkedin or Facebook.

This episode covers the latest ACSC Cyber Threat report.  We marry this up with some real-life hackings that we have seen in local businesses and we cover how you can secure your business.

Have a listen to the podcast and do some marketing to get those customers in.

Let us know what you thought of the podcast on Linkedin or Facebook.

This special COVID 19 Podcast looks at Leadership, Runway and pivoting for small businesses in the face of COVID.

Business has changed massively and runway is now key.  Businesses need to cut expenses very quickly but they are also looking for new ways to grow their revenues as the business and consumer worlds are changed massively.

To help you through the crisis, we have our Free Restaurant Tools, and if you need more help, contact the team about our special marketing assistance program during the Coronavirus outbreak.

Have a listen to the podcast and do some marketing to get those customers in.

Let us know what you thought of the podcast on Linkedin or Facebook.

This podcast looks at some of the tactics you can use to manage your business better with the Coronavirus / COVID 19. 

We look at suppliers, customers, your team and your cashflow with some ideas to help you get through it all.

We have some tips that will definitely help with business continuity and cash flow for Small Businesses.

Check out our show notes for more details on this podcast.

This podcast looks at Small Business Leadership.

Your team will perform better with better Leadership, but for many small business owners, they never get any formal training in Leadership.  What is it and how do you do it?

Check out our show notes for more details on this podcast.

Comms is one of the big tech disruptors in Small Business - have a listen to our latest podcast and get some ideas about how you can drive growth in your business with better communications.

Check out our show notes for more details on this podcast.

I recently received a scary email involving my PORN BROWSING HABITS!?!?  The email threatened me with everyone in my contacts getting a picture of me along with my browsing habits. 

WHAT SHOULD I DO?

We break down what these email means and how they can start to generate emails that can be really scary and fool people into paying Bitcoin with these emails.

One step in looking at these emails is Have I Been Pwned. This shows you some of the passwords that have been breached.

There are 3 layers of defence that youcan use to protect your email.

Firstly, a cloud based email system will check for viruses, malware and phishing emails.  This means that dodgy emails don't even get to your network.

Secondly, a firewall that also checks for viruses and malware.  A great firewall means that a lot less viruses and malware emails will get into your network.

Lastly, make sure you have a decent antivirus system.  We use and recommend Webroot.  We would be protecting thousands of desktops, servers and laptops with Webroot.

These technologies work well and can dramatically decrease the number of issues that you will have, but they don't stop all of them.

We discuss some of the impacts of these emails, loss of productivity, loss of profit, but also the impact on the person who has clicked on a link that they shouldn't have.

We created a video with 7 real life examples that I have received in my inbox and we discuss the tricks of the trade to learn if an email is legitimate or not.

We also have a system that sends a phishing email to our customers which records who clicks on it and who doesn't and for those that do, they are sent to a web page that goes through some of the training to ensure that they are better equipped to avoid clicking on those nasty emails.

If you do click on an email, turn the PC off immediately and call your IT support.  Depending on the type of email, the quicker you act, the less the impact will be.

When in don't call the sender and verify the email.

Lastly, ensure that you have proper back ups and that they have been tested.  You need to have confidence with your back ups.

If you liked todays Podcast, please rate it and leave a review on iTunes.

Don't forget to visit the http://suntzu4smallbusiness.com website and Join the Sun Tzu Army to get the latest tips on building a fast growing company.

Firstly we looked at some of the equipment we use for doing our podcasts.

We use the Audio-Technica ATR - 2100 USB.  This is a great directional microphone that cuts down 

Mackie 802 VLZ4 - We use this mixer to be able to do a mix minus setup to be able to record Skype interviews.  It is a little technical and I am no expert in it, but I tried software like Pamela recording and it didn't produce great audio quality.  We have 2 sound cards in my PC and I find the call quality is a lot better now.

Audacity is the software that we use to record our podcasts.  It is great software and best of all it is free.

We use Libsyn for our podcast hosting.  These guys do a great job of the hosting and statistics that we need to see how many people are downloading the podcast.

We then discuss itunes podcast connect statistics.  The iTunes data covers only some of your listeners, but it gives you some very powerful statistics that you can use to understand what your listeners are interested in.

The iTunes podcasts statistics are really important.  It shows how much of a big deal it is to get your Apple listeners to subscribe to your podcast and it gives you the amount of time that each person has listened to each episode.  This gives you feedback about how interesting it is for each of your listeners.

We then talk about Castbox.  This is an app that gives you rough indications of comparative analytics because you can see the data from all of the podcasts out there.  In general, 2% of listens are on Castbox, so it is a rough indication of how popular your podcast is.  One important thing to remember is that iTunes is country specific as opposed to Castbox which is total audience.  We see this with Podcasts that may have a large global audience which does not rate well in iTunes because, for example, Secret Sauce has listeners around the world, so we don't often appear in the Top 100 podcasts because that looks at listens in just 1 country.

If you liked todays Podcast, please rate it and leave a review on iTunes.

Don't forget to visit the http://suntzu4smallbusiness.com website and Join the Sun Tzu Army to get the latest tips on building a fast growing company.

It can be really difficult to understand how effective your podcast is going.  Podcast statistics are a bit of an arcane art, and it is difficult to understand the relative difference in downloads between podcasts and also there are some great ways that you can find out which parts of your podcast resonate with your audience.

We look at what you can find out about your podcast from iTunes.  How important is it to get into the new and noteworthy podcasts?  What about Whats Hot?

How about getting into the Top Podcasts in iTunes.  What is the algorithm that Apple uses to create these rankings?  

How important are ratings?  

Libsyn statistics - what can you learn from your hosting provider?  How does Spotify impact your Libsyn statistics?

What does the breakdown of geography for your podcast mean?  How can this help you with the marketing for your podcast?

How important is the title of your podcast and how can it help you to create content that is more interesting and compelling for your podcast audience?

Have a listen to The Feed - a podcast by Rob Walch and Elsie Escobar.  They often update the stats that Libsyn see.  We use Libsyn for all of our podcasts, like many, many, many podcasters do and so they have some access to very cool statistics for podcasts.

f you liked todays Podcast, please rate it and leave a review on iTunes.

Don't forget to visit the http://suntzu4smallbusiness.com website and Join the Sun Tzu Army to get the latest tips on building a fast growing company.

Steve Hui, the Points Whisperer, is the owner of I fly flat.   We talk about what the tricks are to using points in your business to be able to fly business class.  Business owners have a huge advantage when it comes to Frequent Flyer Points.  

We recently talked about "How to take a holiday as a business owner."  I think it is really important to travel, partially to unwind and destress from your business and partially to be inspired and be more creative in the strategy and tactics that you have in your business.  If you are going to travel, you might as well travel in style!

There are a lot of ways that you can maximise the points that you have available to you, as well as some traps to avoid.

One of the big mistakes that we were making was that our main credit card was limited to 3,000 points per month.  We applied for a card that was uncapped, which has dramatically increased the number of points that we have been able to accrue.

What is the value of a points upgrade and what is the best way to spend them?

Have a think about how much you have going through your credit cards.  Can you increase that amount?  It is really important to make sure that you are paying off your credit cards every month, otherwise those points that you accrue are really expensive.

Some credit cards will allow you earn points on government payments, like tax bills.  This can dramatically increase the points that you earn.

As a business owner, flying Business Class is pretty important because:

• It allows you to work a lot easier while flying.
• It allows you to land refreshed after the flight and adjust to the time zone a lot quicker.
• You deserve it!

I have been lucky to fly Qantas business class a few times now and it is a very civilised way to travel and I find I am very productive when relaxing in the nice comfy seat, a glass a whisky and the Laptop set up.  There are no distractions from the internet or the phone and I can concentrate on the big strategic questions in our businesses.

I was recently able to reach Platinum with Qantas and one of the great advantages is access to Platinum lounges.  These are a fantastic experience, a great place to relax and do a little work.

Keep an eye out for the best credit cards and the Double Status credits promotions that airlines run.  These can make a big difference to the way that you travel.

Contact Steve at I Fly Flat for more information on how to fly like a boss!

Don't forget to send us a photo of you on holidays if you've used any tips from the podcast to take a holiday!

Meeting effectiveness is a problem in businesses large and small so we tried a new approach to improve the productivity to come out of our meetings.

We look at Slack.  This is an awesome communications tool, which has a free plan (that is the plan we use).  It helps decrease our huddle meeting time, provides an easy way to get information quickly and bring the team closer.  It is especially important when you are building teams in different locations.

We detailed in experience with the Amazon 6 pager memo before, and we included a sample of the memo that we've used in one of our meetings.

The big issue with the 6 pager memo is the creation of the memo.  The amount of work in creating the memo is not a small task and a lot of work and skill is required in creating the memo.  The memo was 2,700 words in length and a lot of time and effort, along with research was required to create the memo.

We found that the memo format was great from the point of view of getting input from everyone.  All of the team members contributed and some of the insights and ideas came from team members who usually don't speak a lot in meetings.  For a cross functional team point of view, this was really important.

We released the memo at the start of the meeting and gave everyone 30 minutes to read the memo.  This meant that everyone read it all and understood what was required from them in the meeting.  

We discovered some of team had differing levels of insight into the problem.  

We had 13 people in the team and the meeting went for 2.5 hours. 

We had a lot of insights that we normally don't have from our meetings and there was a lot of insights as well that were more useful than we normally get. 

The challenge would be getting other people with the capabilities to write the memo.  There is probably 8 hours or more involved in writing the memo.  The number of people in the meeting was too many and that is why the meeting took so long. 

We had a lot of great action items coming out of the meeting, so we started putting those action items into the 

Our quote for the episode is from Carl von Clausewitz.  "Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is very difficult."  That sounds exactly like running a small business!

Creating bespoke software for your small business has never been easier or cheaper than it is today and it can make a fundamental difference to the productivity and profitability of your business.

We look at Google Analytics.  Do you know how to use Google Analytics?  It tells you some key metrics for your website.

Most small business websites get around 500 to 1,000 visits a month.  Where are they coming from?  What are they looking for?  Is the site mobile optimised?  What content do they look at?

For App Dev, we use a cut down version of agile development.  We look to build a series of minimum viable products.  This is something that you can get in front of customers.

We look at inputs, outputs and processes.

Inputs.  How does information get in?

Outputs.  How is information displayed in the app?  What are the reports?

Processes.  What are the business processes in the application.

We like to think about these for long enough so that people really understand the inputs/outputs and processes for an app.  We will often do this on butcher's paper, or in excel.  These are easy to do and through away as you realise that you have made a mistake.

The more time that you spend with this before coding, the cheaper the application will be to make and the quicker it will be to create.

Applications can be great at bringing together silos of data and cutting down on double and triple handling of data.  I hate human interaction with data because it can introduce human errors into the system.  Apps can make these processes in your business faster and more accurate.  

We talk about getting the data that you have in your business and creating data Komodos.  

We discuss the agile manifesto and how it works with application development and the minimum viable product.

The application development process is often a journey and building smaller iterations enables an organisation to learn during the process and this makes a better final product.