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Jonathan’s Story
The company was incorporated in March this year but to borrow the term from Charles Handy, it’s really the second growth curve.

It was really a company change and re-branding of the original company that I established in 1996 as a part-time exercise. So FarSight was incorporated in March 2002 to become a full-time and professional structure with which we can service our client needs and, at the same time, expand throughout Australasia.

For background to the business problem, I think I can look at it in two ways.

If I’m looking at what growth is like now compared to what it was before coaching started, it has increased, I would say, 2 or 3-fold. This was primarily through some very subtle marketing and personal contacts – getting the name out there, meeting people, getting the brand out there, and things like that.

In terms of the bigger picture, were still very small and that reflects a number of things – only now are we starting to get into marketing … but I’m also determined to focus on the brand and the knowledge of that brand. I don’t want something that immediately rolls of people’s lips (without a knowledge of what it means) but something that roll of the lips of people who are our target market.

The target audience will be professionals in the same community, because word of mouth is the most powerful from of marketing.

I have a very, very firm philosophy about working as part of a team. There’s plenty of work out there, but the market needs to be educated. I like to be very, very good to other people and to help them in business.

The main challenges I faced before meeting ActionCOACH were 2-fold: one was the lack of structure – the lack of a plan, and the second was a lack of inertia.

I think why I went along with ActionCOACH was an acknowledgment that from a business perspective, that was what I needed to kick FarSight off the ground and get things up and running with a level of steam of its own.

That was one of the reasons why I went to ActionCOACH.

I needed a catalyst to do that and I recognised it. My professional training is in psychology; I understand the benefit of coaching quite well, so I had no doubt.

It was really a catalyst for putting a plan in place, and by acting on that plan, to create a level of inertia. Priorities were made, goals were achieved, things were measured and progress was made.

When I look back, there’s actually no question whatsoever that, whilst I might have been able to slave away to get to this position from where I was 12 months ago, it’s highly, highly unlikely that I would have done so.

I’m on my own. I do intend to build-up without any doubt, but it’s the usual story that every business starts out small and you can’t afford to bring people on board straight away.

People usually want to be part of a concern that’s got a decent client base to give them some security of income, before they come on board, and I can quite understand that.

We all spend an awful lot of time, when we start up a business, chasing our tails and with a good business system in place, you can reduce a lot of the stress and significantly reduce some of the time you spend growing the business.

That doesn’t mean you’re going to be working a 40-hour week; you’re not. You’re going to be working a lot more than that, but there’s a difference between a 60 and an 80-hour week.

You know, I don’t want to be re-inventing the wheel every time it comes to paying GST (Goods and Services Tax) and I’m scrambling around trying to find my receipts. Basically with financial systems, contact plans, and the like in place, you can rather invest your time in growing the business and building relationships or in making products or whatever your strength happens to be.

So its an awful lot of time, certainly, and it affects your work-life balance without any doubt whatsoever. And that’s an area I’m very passionate about. But it doesn’t have to be that way. To a degree, I think in a lot of start-up businesses it occurs, because people are unwilling to recognise the benefit of learning easier and more effective ways of doing things.

ActionCOACH has had a positive effect on the work-life balance I have.

That has been primarily through setting up systems and getting things in place, setting goals and measuring progress.

I often think that as a small businessperson, you try to do everything and then you get to a point where you wonder, “How am I going? What am I doing?”

You become very reactive and need to be able to sit down and think, “Hold on, what is the health of my business? What needs to be in place?”

Before I met ActionCOACH, the business definitely wasn’t meeting the financial targets I was hoping for. I’m now forecasting a 300% increase in revenue compared to the last financial year.

Now partly that’s due to ActionCOACH’s efforts and partly due to other factors as well.

But ActionCOACH certainly helped tremendously by putting those systems in place and he has certainly had a key role in making that easier than it would have otherwise been.