Issue 2, 2018

Business Builder

FORUM

team-building events or role-specific training (to the required level and above), it is all part of building our business culture. More than that, though, we pay attention to the details of each team member’s individual needs. This includes staying ahead of meeting the legal requirements of employing staff, and also goes much further in terms of listening to their ideas, creating a happy working environment, and ensuring everyone has exactly what they need to fulfil their role to the highest level.

A Business Is Only As Good As Its People!There is an old saying that a bad craftsperson blames their tools. This is not strictly true, of course, because the quality of tools (and in a business, that means things like systems, processes and KPIs) can have a huge impact on the result – so tools are very important. The fact remains, however, that a craftsperson who is healthy, well-trained, and dedicated to the cause will be able to do much more than a disengaged one – given the same working environment (tools). I would even go so far as to say that the people you employ for any role are the most important asset in achieving your goals – and far more important than the tools – if for no other reason than that a good team will also help to improve the operational efficiency of your ‘tools’ while they work.

Always invest in your team

For many years now, here at Meades Group, we have made a point of investing heavily in our most important asset – our team. Whether this is in the shape of great nights out together,

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Continued on page 2 ...

A Business Is Only As Good ... 1Successful Business Owners Are ... 2Google Reviews Are Priceless 3Featured Add-On ... 3A True Story Of Health, Wealth ... 4Do You Aim For The Stars ... 7Introducing Propiteer 8Example Investment Project 9Never Forgotten and Never Again! 10Classifieds 11Book Review - The 7 Habits of ... 12

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Our team has become central to everything we do: if you ask any of our customers what they like about Meades Group, I know for a fact that communication with the team will be one of their highlights.

While self-praise is not always the most attractive quality, it is very important to recognise when you do something well. So, as experts in looking after our own people, we are now providing HR services and support to our clients.

Expert HR support for your team

Just to be clear, here, we are business growth accountants, and improving our clients’ financial and business planning will always be our main focus. We have simply recognised that without good people a business will always be prone to underperformance. And we know from our own experience that good people can be moulded into a winning team by being given the right level of care, attention and HR support.

If you are a small business and you employ people to help you run that business, we would like to help you. We would love to show you how to turn your people into a team and benefit from the cooperative effect of pursuing a common goal. In addition, we can help to manage all of the legal requirements of employing your team and creating a great place where they can work.

If you would like to find out more about Meades Group’s specialist HR support and improvement services, please get in touch with one of our team. Alternatively, if you would just like to talk to one of them about what it is like to work for a company that truly values its people … feel free to do that, too.

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Successful Business Owners Are…People who are not afraid of feedback. Have you ever been in the situation where an outcome is so important to you that you can’t bear to hear the decision? Students refusing to open their exam results envelope, football fans unable to watch a penalty shootout or a businessperson not making that call to a prospect to ask if they have won the tender, are all types of feedback fear.

There is a kind of blissfully unaware comfort in that space between knowing and not knowing. But the crux of the matter is that what will be, will be, and you will have to live with the news eventually – when the outcome is finally revealed. Sometimes, however, taking refuge in ignorance can be highly detrimental to your well-being. You see, it is only when you know about something that you can take any action with that information.

Take customer feedback, for example. Imagine if you asked all your customers what they love or don’t like about your services. You might not always like what you hear – but at least you might be able to save the situation before they decide to take their money somewhere else. Alternatively, they might give you a glowing report, meaning you can use their kind words to attract other happy customers.

Successful business owners always ask, listen and act …

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Featured Add-on

This issues’ featured add-on should be an absolute game-changer for any business owner. It is a simple tool for helping small businesses operate like the biggest businesses in the world. Companies like McDonalds, Starbucks, Apple and many others are successful because of their operational systems.

Sweet Process will free up your time as a manager, by clearly documenting repetitive tasks so someone else can do them instead. It will help to manage the hassle of someone leaving, because all their tasks will have been documented and the steps can easily be followed by their replacement. Basic errors will be reduced or eliminated by the easy to follow procedures, with illustrated screenshots, videos and checkboxes – to ensure no steps are missed. And ultimately, having your business fully systemised will add value to your company – because any business built on a foundation of well-documented standard operating procedures (SOPs) has a higher value, which grows over time.

The fact is that processes underpin every successful business in the world and when they are systemised and automated as fully as possible the efficiencies are maximised. Good systems can save busy people hours of time each day and Sweet Process is certainly making a difference for us at Meades Group. What could it do for you?

Find out more at:www.sweetprocess.com

Designed To Make Your Life Easier

Google Reviews Are PricelessYou know how some brands are 100% synonymous with the service they provide? Brands like Hoover, Jacuzzi and Sellotape show the power of a totally dominant brand. Most people today, when they want to know anything at all (including if a business is any good), simply Google it! They do this because Google has become the global go-to source for information. In other words, what Google says matters a lot! And when it comes to what Google says about your business – its opinion is priceless.

Try it now. Go to the world’s favourite search engine and type in your company name, or the name of another company that you might be thinking of using. If you can’t think of one, try searching for Meades Group. On the right-hand side of the screen you will see an information box about that business, and right at the top will be its Google reviews.

We are on a mission to turn the lovely things that people say to our faces into online reviews because, while we love a real-person compliment, we recognise that Google matters. We encourage you to do the same with any clients who love what you do for them.

If you are a Meades Group customer we’d love it if you could leave a review the next time you visit the font of all information. And, if we’ve used you, please drop us a line and we’ll get some of the team to return the favour.

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lifestyle targets to achieve, just like the rest of us. But he believes that, if every single person in the UK was prepared to just try his products for three months – it might add years to their lives and change everything…

Let’s start at the beginning …

Jonathan Smith had worked hard to achieve his ambitions and, by the age of 24, he proudly added the tag ‘PGA Golf Pro’ to his name. Then, in 2005, he landed his dream job, as the head coach at one of Germany’s premier golf clubs,

in the perfectly picturesque Palatinate region. But, after four fairy tale years, his whole life came to an abrupt halt when a mystery illness blighted his new-found paradise. It started with bouts of dizziness and sickness, then he quickly descended into a state where he could barely stand or walk. To add to the distress of the situation, his wife was expecting their first child and the increasing severity of his condition confined him to the sofa. And, from that lonely perch, he worried about their future as he watched his baby daughter learning to laugh, play and crawl.

With the benefit of private health cover, he tried everything: doctors’ examinations, specialists’ opinions, body scans, blood tests, alternative treatments, online research, offline reading and exploring every avenue. Nothing worked and no one seemed able to diagnose, let alone treat, Jonathan’s debilitated state.

So, in 2010, with a young daughter, and his wife starting to suffer from arthritic problems herself, they decided to return to England and throw themselves on the mercy and love of their family.

A True Story of Health,Wealth and Happiness Sometimes a business story breaks the boundaries of commerce, entrepreneurship, or even creating the lifestyle that you have always dreamed of having. Occasionally you come across a story which is born out of incredible hardship and takes you on a journey that might just have the potential to change the health of the world.

To be clear, Jonathan Smith of Youngevity doesn’t actually have ambitions to transform the entire human race into long-living, disease-free, superhumans. Neither is his venture purely altruistic – he has a family to provide for and

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From paradise to mum’s floor!

How could everything have come to this? High-level sports professionals, like Jonathan, are used to identifying targets and training hard, day after day after day, until they reach their potential. Giving up, slowing down or taking a back seat in life is simply not in their nature. So, when they are faced with a situation where no one can tell them the goal or the solution, or even identify the cause of the problem, the frustration is just amplified to the maximum.

Going from living his dream to sitting, lying and crawling around his mum’s floor (even as his daughter had now advanced to walking) wasn’t part of Jonathan’s plan. With no income, no idea of what to do next and still no diagnosis, hope seemed like a fading dream. The UK doctors eventually arrived at a verdict of ‘chronic fatigue syndrome’ and prescribed antidepressants for what Jonathan was still convinced was a physical problem.

There is no money in the cure

Determination, a change of diet, physical effort and various other measures eventually saw a slight improvement in Jonathan’s condition, but his wife’s situation now meant she could no longer work. During their research, they had come across Dr Joel Wallach’s work on nutritional mineral and vitamin supplements. With nothing to lose, they decided to try the Youngevity products that Dr Wallach had developed.

After just ten weeks, Jonathan’s wife was enjoying a 95% improvement in her arthritis. Jonathan, too, felt a huge difference in his general health

as a result of the supplements. Around the same time he bumped into one of his old golf students, who complained that she’d been unable to play golf for months due to intense tendinitis in her elbow. He shared their story and she also gave Dr Wallach’s products a try. Two months later she got in touch with Jonathan, excited to tell him she was back on par – totally recovered.

Youngevity was starting to get Jonathan’s attention …

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One of the big lessons of note at this point is that five years of investing time, money and heartache into finding a solution had done nothing! It seemed, to Jonathan, that the medical industry was more interested in trying out expensive medicines to treat symptoms than actually getting to the root cause and effecting a cure.

But maybe, now, he had stumbled across the solution.

Sitting in the fairway and heading toward the green …

Jonathan quickly regained full health and was looking forward to starting work again, and he realised that he could combine helping others with growing a business. He learned that there was only one other main UK supplier of the Youngevity range; he set up a website in 2016 and by the following year he had bought out his competitor. The testimonies of his customers – having tried the supplements and enjoyed the results – were flooding in, and the rapid growth of the business was all the science needed to prove that it was working, both from a business and a customer satisfaction perspective.

Having taken back control of his family’s health and now enjoying the enormous satisfaction of benefiting his customers’ well-being, too, Jonathan finally felt that his life was back on track. He was sitting squarely in the middle of the fairway, on a beautiful sunlit day, far away from the bunkers, with a perfect view of the lake and a straightforward drive onto the green.

The perfect putting partner …

When you have come through genuine difficulties, it tends to make things that others might find tough more of a simple hurdle. So, when Jonathan began to lose confidence in his accountant, the answer was obvious – find one

who gets to the root cause rather than reacts to the symptoms.

He was introduced to Meades Group via the parents of one of the girls in his daughter’s gymnastics class. ‘The difference was palpable, as soon as we met with Paul and Debbie,’ Jonathan said, ‘and I was amazed at how the previous firm were Xero users, but hadn’t told us about any of its features.’

The team at Meades Group quickly tidied up what was a very messy looking accounting system, corrected several thousand pounds worth of invoices that were showing unpaid, and optimised Jonathan and his wife’s drawings from the business. And that was just the start of the improvements they made.

Looking back over the journey to date, it seems that there have been many lessons to learn and Jonathan is looking forward to the business getting even stronger, straighter and truer in the future. It is like anything in life: often we are told one thing is the answer or that there is no answer – but it is not until someone shows us that there are other options, and provable, practical alternatives to choose from, that we can really hole that final putt.

(If you would like to feature your business in this newsletter, please get in touch with Paul on 01923 800444.)

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Example Investment Project

Michelangelo once said, ‘The greatest danger isn’t that we aim too high and fail, but that we aim too low and succeed,’ or words to that effect.

How’s that for a challenging statement? Surely SUCCESS is always better than FAILURE!

Well, not really, if you think about it, because both are only subjective judgements. Each person’s idea of success or failure is based on a target, set in line with an opinion of what can or should be achievable, and dependent on the circumstances at hand. Or, in other words, ‘success means different things to different people at different times.’

EXAMPLE: If John set his sights on reaching a score of 200 and missed it by 3, he would easily beat the overachievement of Bob, who hit 103 having aimed for just 100. So, which one of these men was successful?

I accept that often in life the measurement of what is deemed as successful may be set by someone else or be outside of our control. But I am really looking to engage your sense of self-achievement here and encourage you to push the boundaries of what you want to accomplish. The key is not being afraid to fail.

Once you allow yourself to see ‘not hitting a target’ as an occasional hazard of life (albeit not a habit and certainly not a secondary goal), then the fear of failure becomes less potent. There is, of course, a danger here that this sort of thinking will make your targets become unimportant and unchallenging – and you should guard against that. But it is an important step in attaining your definition of success.

Aim for the stars or the moon? It doesn’t matter!

When setting your personal targets, think big, be bold and be ambitious – maybe even set them a

little higher than what you consider reasonable. Then plan and prepare ‘like your life depended on it’ – or your pride and reputation, if that makes you feel a little more comfortable. (I’m not just suggesting this for dramatic effect: The more important the motivation, the more likely you are to succeed.) Then, with your mind firmly set to the can-win and will-win positions, go out and reach that goal … as if failure is not an option!

Approach each personal, business, fitness, financial, emotional, or any type of ambition in this way, without even considering the possibility of not being successful.

After the event (all SMART goals must have a deadline) simply evaluate your results. Don’t judge yourself, put yourself down, or let yourself feel bad if you didn’t achieve the targets that you set. The key here is to create an environment where you do your best, without fear. By evaluating the result (success or failure – it doesn’t matter) you can learn from the experience and set a smarter, but equally challenging target next time.

Michelangelo knew what he was talkingabout …

Imagine if the great artist had only finished 90% of the Sistine Chapel during his lifetime. History would still have recorded his genius and celebrated his work, far more than that of the guy who painted the ceiling of the tiny chapel next door in magnolia.

Do You Aim For The Stars or Settle For The Moon?

The latest projectP R O P I T E E R M O U N T S T R E E T O N G A R L I M I T E D

• 1% monthly payments • 30 month project •

info@propiteer.com or call us on 01376 505286

RISK WARNING

Asset Structure Values Details

Gross Development Value £8,790,000

Bank Finance £4,400,000 Development Loan from Hampshire Trust

Member Bond Available £2,500,000 Members paid before asset team funds

Asset Team Investment £550,000

Minimum Investment £5,000

Total Bonds Available 500 Corporate bonds

Exit Terms Timescale Terms

90 days

Full term 30 months

Returns % Terms

Annual Return 12% 1% paid monthly

Overall Return 30% Based on full term annual returns

• The asset’s Gross Development Value £8,790,000.

• provided by Hampshire Trust.

•

• Corporate bond giving a return of 1% a month.

•

• Pro-rata returns if completed early.

• £1,055,179 equity headroom.

P R O P I T E E R M O U N T S T R E E T O N G A R L I M I T E D

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Never Forgottenand Never Again!The tragedy of someone you love dying too young is always made heavier by the ‘what if …?’ of regret. When something ‘could have’ been done it intensifies the pain. So, on Saturday 23rd June, The Glitz and Glamour Party Night is planning to make a difference.

On Saturday 27th May 2017, Lynne Goode had a heart attack and passed away while on holiday with her family and friends. Lynne, who had never previously shown signs of having a heart condition, was a fun, bubbly, happy, generous and kind soul, who loved life and whose family adored her.

Lynne’s family soon learned that her condition was not uncommon and others had suffered similar losses of loved ones. To support charities working hard to promote the prevention of sudden heart attacks/cardiac arrests, those that loved Lynne are putting together a charity dinner in her name. All proceeds from this event will go to Heart Research UK and Heart Research Institute (UK).

We plan for this night to be the best event of the year and one where we can raise some money for these charities and raise the profile of the work being done to stop undiagnosed heart issues. We believe that a screening or test should be mandatory for everyone when they reach a certain age. And, the tragic fact is that if Lynne had been diagnosed by such a test, she would be alive today. So, you are invited to join us on what is certain to be a night to remember – because maybe you have someone you don’t want to forget, or maybe you don’t want to lose those you love too early.

It will be a seriously posh event, held at Watford Football Club, with a three-course dinner and fabulous live music.

You can find out more or book ticketswww.buytickets.at/shadingspecialistslimited/155305

IN MEMORY & CELEBRATION OF THE LATE LYNNE GOODE

at

Watford football clubon

Saturday 23rd June 2018 Three Course Dinner

Exceptional Live Entertainment Silent Auction

Ticket prices £85.00 per person

Dress to Impress/Black Tıe

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C L A S S I F I E D S

Our newsletter is distributed to all our current clients by post and reaches even more people electronically. Would you like to feature your business here? Simply get in touch with Paul Meades for full details paul@meadesgroup.com

To get your ad placed here call 01923 800444

If you want to advertise here please contact Paul on 01923 800444

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Meades Group 39 The Metro Centre Tolpits Lane Watford Hertfordshire WD18 9SB

Newsletter design by dave@deadbunneh.com

CONTACT01923 800444www.meadesgroup.comexperts@meadesgroup.com

The information in this newsletter is intended for guidance only. It is based upon Meades Group’s understanding of current legislation and is correct at the time of going to press. Meades Group would always recommend you contact

of the information detailed in this newsletter.

First published in 1989, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is one of the most famous and best-selling business book ever written. In many ways it is much more than a business book and has applications that will benefit every area of life. In this short summary it would be impossible to

do the book justice, so we are going to focus on habit number two: Begin with the End in Mind.

Before we look at habit number two, however, here is the full list for reference:

1. Be Proactive: realise that you can make a difference to your life and that blaming outside factors will not help you2. Begin with the End in Mind: unless you have absolute clarity on where you want to be, you will never get there3. Put First Things First: make sure that you identify the most important things in your life and prioritise them4. Think Win-Win: understand that both parties winning is the best outcome and the only route to lasting success5. Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood: learn to listen first, then your communication will be effective 6. Synergize: see the value in other people’s perspective and let their views shape and strengthen your own ideas7. Sharpen the Saw: devote time to renewing yourself physically, spiritually, mentally and socially

Begin with the End in Mind

‘It’s incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the busy-ness of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover that it’s leaning against the wrong wall.’ Stephen Covey

Most people find it easy to just be busy. It is self-gratifying and helps to waylay the feeling of not actually achieving anything in life. But being busy, for busy’s sake, is not a smart strategy. Anyone that is just ‘busy’ simply does not have a clear view of their intended target, or at best they have forgotten what it was or why they had actually got out of bed that morning.

The key to productivity, over mere activity, is to start with a clear destination. That way, you can always check yourself as you go through the day, week and month, to make sure that you are doing the right things.

For us, here at Meades Group, we are particularly conscious of this rule when it comes to budgeting and personal income planning for our clients. To do this effectively and ensure that the client receives the best outcomes, we have to know what the targets are before we start. Only then can the journey be designed and monitored accurately.

If you haven’t read this book, we recommend you do, and as soon as possible. We believe it is an absolute must for every entrepreneur and can guarantee that you will leave its pages with more value than when you entered them.

Business Book ReviewThe 7 Habits of Highly Effective

People: by Stephen Covey