This week we interviewed Business Advisor Rob Drage, covering his role at BizHQ, his background, who he meets with and where, how he can help businesses and what business owners need to focus on in 2021 (full transcript below).
Hi there, today we are sitting down for a small little interview with one of our Business Connect Advisors Rob Drage and just going to be asking him a couple of questions and we will hear what he has to say.
Rob, I’ll start off with my first question, what is your current role at BizHQ?
Hi Steve, my current role is Advisor, which involves listening to clients regarding their aspirations either starting a business, modifying a business, growing a business or in some cases selling a business.
We just have those conversations and flesh out those things that are top of mind, or things that can assist them in meeting their needs. That’s the important thing, it’s not so much what I want to see happen but what the clients want to see happen with their business.
Okay, excellent and what’s your background, what’s your experience in business?
In business for the last ten years, I have been running my own business consulting company focusing on the middle tier of businesses, businesses turning upwards of ten million dollars. We are looking the systems, the processes, the sales, the economic footprint, their environmental footprint, what makes the business tick and what makes the customers come back again.
So, for the last ten years I have been working in that area, prior to that I was working for international Telcos in various guises of product management, contract management and even slicing and dicing all those undersea cables that are connecting all the Continents, we would buy a stack of bandwidth of those and resell them. So, it’s interesting insight into how businesses work overseas and various countries as well.
Who do you meet with regularly like on a regular basis, any particular industry or every industry? What do you specialize in?
I guess my specialty is owner run businesses at this point in time, I meet regularly with Business Australia and Business NSW who are the peak body for businesses in an advocacy sense and also in a support sense to look at things that are happening in both Macquarie Street in terms of legislation and regulations and trying to cut through red tape but also talk to our local retailers here in Orange and Bathurst and Cabonne and pop in for a cup of coffee and ask how’s business, that’s where we get most of our insights into what’s really happening on the streets these days. So retail, small manufacturing, small businesses where the owners are intrinsically involved with the business itself.
Righto, so you like to have cups of coffee in Orange, Bathurst and Cabonne. Is that your region or where do you kind of travel to?
Pretty much Cabonne, Bathurst and Orange. I have a few clients in Sydney but we are meeting with those on Zoom under the current circumstances and also clients up at Port Macquarie as well, so a bit of everywhere. It’s really interesting to see what people do to turn a dollar and part of our role is to make sure that that dollar is there at the end of the day for them. The thing I have found is that businesses are just are a box, there’s money flowing in, there’s money flowing out, there’s money that should be flowing out the bottom of the box for the owner and our job is to make sure what happens inside that box creates that wealth and income for the owner themselves.
Okay, so how can you actually help business owners? Do you help them plan or see if there are any problems going on?
I guess the planning is the number one thing, planning involves looking a little bit into the future but also looking backwards as well. What have we done well what have we not done well? What could we do better in the future? What would we like to be doing in the future? Who are our customers? Where are they? How are they changing in their tastes? How do our products need to be modified and our service delivery need to be modified to meet those demands? So that’s the main thing I work with, is that conversations that go around who are we as a business? Why are we here? Who are our customers? Where are they? Why do they come to us? How can they come to us more often?
Here is a bit of a looking forward to 2021, we are forgetting about 2020. What would you recommend to anybody in business at the moment, what should they be paying attention to in 2021?
Number one is paying attention their customers, having conversations with customers on their changing needs, things that their customers have learnt through last year, about their purchasing cycles and their purchasing preferences. Looking at the business to match those needs, number one is if you don’t have a customer then you don’t have a business.
The other thing I looked at before was looking at their cost base, are there things that are costing them that they don’t need to pay for because of the changes in business structure. But also having a very close look at their environmental footprint. A lot of customers now are looking at food miles, if you’re in the food industry, others are looking at one opportunity to recycle, to upcycle and reuse. So, there are opportunities to show customers that you are really really keen to reduce your environmental footprint and in saying and doing so reduce theirs, it’s another compelling argument of why you should do business with a customer.
The key things are listening to your customers, look at your environmental foot print and pay very very close attention to your cost base.
Excellent, very good to know. So, the last question is always if someone did want to get in touch what’s your kind of process? How would you like them to do it? Get in touch first with the reception or?
Yeah, have a look at the BizHQ Facebook page, have a look at the website, go to Business Connect and then search for a Consultant if you wish or even the good old pick up the phone and give us a call. Send us an email. Happy to contact and to communicate in their preferred means whether it be Zoom or face to face or a phone call. Its very much the case of use the digital technology that’s available and all our contact details are on those website pages and Facebook pages and link. Happy to have a chat any which way.
Excellent, alright, thank you very much Rob for catching up, so the website is bizHQ.com.au and that’s speaking with Rob Drage. Thanks a lot Rob.
Thanks Steve.