Matthew Theijssen: [00:00:00] I'm someone who looks for shortcuts and ways to do things, leveraging what I've already done before. And I always go into projects thinking, okay, but like, why are we reinventing the wheel here? Why are we not thinking about ways we've done this before? Why aren't we learning from the experiences we've had before?

[00:00:16] And then in the business context, it's no different, although I read a lot and I attended a lot of seminars and I, I'm never afraid to take on coaches or mentors of my own. I'm always looking for areas of overlap between the messages they're sharing, because I think if you take Chris's perspective or Matthew's perspective out of the equation, and you look at the perspective itself, you'll probably see very similar interests, very similar ways and concepts of explaining something, and those are keys.

[00:00:47]Just in the professional context, I've seen these things happen in technology. Maybe it's because I've grown up in a restaurant environment where, I've been very in the nuts and bolts of ways to do things. And I don't think I'm going to take this water to that table. And then I must come back and take this order to the next one.

[00:01:05] No, maybe it's I must take both these orders because one is on the way to the other. And it's just really looking for those opportunities to streamline systemize, automate my processes so that I'm just running it higher efficiency.

[00:01:25] Chris O'Hare: [00:01:25] Hi, I'm Chris, O'Hare your quick-win CEO. And as the CEO, I run business says founders, startups, consultant brothers never won awards, but in this show, we'll be talking to entrepreneurs and experts. I hope you understand key concepts, the, your business, along with three quick wins that you could take away and apply to your business today.

[00:01:45] And every week, we'll be fine now by the entrepreneur themselves diving into a different but important topic. But have you ever wondered how you could apply software development, methodologies to optimize your business? Management consultant and entrepreneur Matthew Thiessen has done just that.

[00:02:05] Whilst working as an it consultant, Matthew saw the benefit of the software development life cycle, the five stages of planning, analysis, design, implementation, and maintenance it'd be applied to your business. And as an entree, Matthew also tells us about his journey so far describes how he was influenced by his father's entrepreneurial ways, including working in the family's wimpy businesses.

[00:02:30] Back in South Africa, Matthew is very accomplished with a number of impressive qualifications. So it was only a matter of time before he started his own businesses here in the UK. So here we go. Matthew Thiessen. Thanks for coming on the show. Matthew, firstly, tell me the last thing that you read or watched, or did that left an impression on you?

[00:02:54] It could be anything, it could be a Netflix series or funny video or a book you read, or even a quote.

[00:03:00]Matthew Theijssen: [00:03:00] Thanks very much for having me, Chris.  I'll just start with the book. So the first one is the KPI, the key person of influence. Now this book really good for anyone who's looking to start out on the entrepreneurial journey and become a key person of influence.

[00:03:11] So it talks through five stages. And that was really left. A good impression on me. The other one is watching a movie on Friday evening actually is the new justice league movie. And I think the importance yeah. Is the spirit of togetherness as a team rather than working in acting in silos. And I think it's something we can relate to, especially for the content and the topic of today's discussion.

[00:03:31] Chris O'Hare: [00:03:31] Yeah, a hundred percent. I'm really like let's dive into that key person of influence because a book that I haven't actually read yet. And that's one thing that this podcast has done for me is given me a massive booklet. I have so much. And then going on clubhouse. Same thing, uncle tons of books that people were recommended to me that I should go read which it just gives me a bit more of that feeling.

[00:03:52] Now I'm not doing enough for my entrepreneurial journey. I'm not learning enough, but yeah. Key person of influence. Tell me roughly what it's about and is that something that's aligning with your journey?

[00:04:02] Matthew Theijssen: [00:04:02] Yeah, 100%. So it's written by Daniel Priestley and say it for anyone who's listening and wants to find out.

[00:04:07] He runs, I think it's his company's plugins, but definitely go and check that up, but it basically talks about five stages and I'm just going to quickly look up cause I've got the diagram as I remind to behind me every day. So it talks about having a pitch having your publication of ideas.

[00:04:22] And so I think it's around creating content and things that make you stand out from the rest of the crowd. It has productizing. So taking your ideas and the content that you're publishing and then having a product that suits it and aligns to your niche and your target markets. The next one is raising your profile.

[00:04:40] So this is, he talks about if I was to Google you, that you appear on five different channels. So it's just really about, how are you working out as a visibility on the markets. And then the last one is partnerships. So this is, would be a good example because you've got a podcast, I've got a business here, we all working together and it's just really in the spirit of collaboration.

[00:05:01] So if you think through those five PS, so he's spoken about pitch, publish, productize profile, and partnerships. Then a side of it really was an amazing book. So I'm really glad that I read it. That's really interesting. And I can see some of that working with the own clubhouse and the hearing you speak.

[00:05:19] You definitely have those five nailed, I would say.  He's clearly left an impression on you and I've seen Dan priestly on, on the cop house rooms as well, chatting away. So that's really cool that you get to have you actually spoken to him on a clubhouse for him yet? I've seen him at a live event back when those were still a thing pretty pandemic.

[00:05:39]And then yes, I've tried to connect to them again on Instagram. But yeah I'm glad you say I've got it nailed down. When I did the school taste, he has a school called taste that you do, I've got areas to improve on, but I think that's the point, right? Is that no one is perfect, no matter where you are on your journey.

[00:05:54]And there's always areas to improve. So as long as you're making constant steps forward in at least you're making progress and and it has to be the best thing. A hundred percent. I love that. So let's let's dive into a bit about you. Your background, give us the journey of where you how you started got into your kind of career and your current businesses and give us that full kind of run through as you go through.

[00:06:18] Yeah. Cool.  Yeah, I guess it all started once upon a time back in South Africa and I was born to an entrepreneurial family. My dad has stopped and started and stopped businesses and he's had various exits, but was basically in the franchise space. So working in some restaurants back in South Africa I started at a very young age and helping on the till to, to what degree I can't remember, but I definitely remember that was the thing helping to make toasted sandwiches and milkshakes and, obviously would watch and I guess by association, Pay attention to some of the things that my dad was always doing on a daily basis, seeing him come home late from work.

[00:06:52]Anyway, I had this dream once upon a time that I was going to own a company called empty global. And obviously my name is Matthew Tyson for anyone who's listening.  Empty global seemed quite the fitting and the whole dream here was that it was going to be based management consultancy in the world.

[00:07:08]And that's an 11 year old's dream. Fast forward a couple of years, I attended a university study financial management and risks and investments. So that's actually that's on the wall way, which isn't of any consequence, but once I finished that and competed with and started working in the corporate space, so I started at a management consultancy.

[00:07:27] So do we realize the first part of the dream, maybe consulting in the private and financial services space? Yeah. And consulted some of the big banks in South Africa. In 2017, moved over to the UK. Now, I guess before I get onto the UK, it's probably important to mention that throughout my whole life I've been working in and around my dad's businesses.

[00:07:49] So I was working in his Wimpy's which is this, I don't know if you know the word wimpy here. I think actually you, you will notice it they're very popular in the UK as well. It was definitely my era. The Wimpy's before they died down more recently, but yeah, no, I love the good when people are go over there and sane, so I need to make a notation that's wimpy.

[00:08:08] So they're probably even better. In South Africa, it's a very popular breakfast joint. And then yes, you're right. They do the burgers. Now my ad, actually it very well as a wimpy franchisee and actually asked him to come and read kickstart the UK market, which he politely declined because he doesn't like the cold weather, but I've spent my whole working life in the restaurants I was doing waitering.

[00:08:31]I did some of the, again, some of the stuff on the soft serve, operated on the tills. I helped him with the assistant managing and supervising of his stores. And at the end, I also then went to university and did the same thing. So worked in the local pub and restaurant and went on to manage and run the store as the manager for a shift.

[00:08:51]So as a student was getting all that exposure and I think all of this just really reinforced that, I am entrepreneurial minded and spirited in my own. Yes, obviously to have a job is to get income. My aspirations, my passions lie in building my own future. And I think we'll get onto that in a second.

[00:09:09]But yeah, moved to the UK in 2017 came across the famous rich dad put at seminars. And that's when I guess my passion really ignited. So although I had joined a small FinTech company, which for anyone who doesn't know is a financial technology company, and that's just really looking at, your disruptors in tech.

[00:09:29] So if you've got your high street banks, then these are the smaller institutions that challenge those and got very involved with the company there, but equally kicked off my journey into property which got me up and running in, in that space. And then yeah, pre pandemic took a full-time blended into entrepreneurial-ism.

[00:09:48] Was going really well. And then the pandemic hit. So yeah, I've taken a step sideways and pivoted. I know that's not really a popular word in circles these days, but pivoted back into financial services consulting. But then equally do have my property business and more recently an e-commerce business as well.

[00:10:09] It really interesting. And you also had a opportunity at cut Gemini, which is, if anyone doesn't know there are the quite a big consultancy firm especially around the technology space. And so just give us an outline of what you did at cap Jenna Gemini. Yeah. Cool. So I still have started there very recently.

[00:10:25]So that's just working in a scrum master position as part of one of the tech delivery teams, which is very well aligned to what we're going to be talking about today, actually.  Yeah, that's a V a very new venture, as I say, it's a side step back into consulting. But my passion really lies in doing things like speaking reaching out to people, networking.

[00:10:43]And it's actually made me realize that one of my unique selling points is actually run and manage teams or in more layman's terms to help coach and mentor other people, which is what's taken me down this roots of of my most recent and probably my biggest passion, which I avoid is known, but never really articulated is the coaching mentoring and helping people because business is something that I've been born and raised with.

[00:11:10] And that's what I want to share my message with the world. It's really interesting that you spoke about your family and your dad, especially giving you this entrepreneurial spark and that you couldn't not fulfill that journey, that you have to do something entrepreneurial because it was in your blood almost.

[00:11:28] And that's very similar to me. My family are entrepreneurs. I grew up with an entrepreneurial mother and father who had a restaurant and nightclub. And they really showed me from an early age that it's about your own graft. It's your own effort is going to get you results in and you can control your own destiny.

[00:11:48] It also showed me very early on. That it's very hard. And if I want to need the life that I should just go get a job. And I think that's what a lot of people don't realize is that entrepreneurs work very hard. It's they wake up, think about what they're doing that day in terms of the business.

[00:12:04] And they go to sleep with that last thing on their mind and it's that internal cycle. And we don't really even get weekends off because we're still thinking about it. We might have time off, but we might not actually have time off in our heads. So it's constantly, they're constantly feeling like we have to be doing something.

[00:12:23] Do you agree with that? Oh, I'm so glad you said that because that's exactly how I feel. In fact, my partner would actually agree with you and she will always say to me, Oh Matthew, why are you so quiet? And I'm not, I'm just thinking I can be thinking about what you and I'm like, maybe, because it is, it's just so natural, you touched on a very important point there, Chris, and I just want to go back to it is.

[00:12:43]Your there's that perception of getting a good job is what's going to lead you to financial freedom, but actually it's the complete opposite now, but anyone who hasn't read it, Robert Kiyosaki has this enriched and put in, and it's really an important mind shifts between almost where you need to realize that being in a job is neither secure more the road to financial freedom.

[00:13:05] And although you're going through really the pains and it really is an ongoing struggle, or as I like to call it a hustle to be part of business the key distinction there is your time investment and the V attributable value you can get back. So if you're working in a job, the expectation is to do your nine to five, and you're doing 40 hours a week back.

[00:13:28] Okay, fine. But we all know that there's extra work is deadlines is extra responsibility. So you have an increased amount of expectation, but you don't see the attributable. Income and reflection and income. You have to wait for your majors or in the financial years and the performance reviews in order to see you go out.

[00:13:47] And even then that increases and you're going to be incremental. So it's probably not directly correlated to the amount of effort you put in. And that just for me, speaks volumes for what it is to be an employee. You really need to have that mind shift a mindset shift and realize that although it's hard to work and it really is taxing to be in business, you can reap the rewards for that investment through, that, that time investment versus the attributable value return.

[00:14:20] I completely agree with that. And I love that. And the fact that you had that mindset shift in terms of hard work, it's not hard work, it's a hustle. So I'll have to keep reminding myself. This is really hard. No, it's a hustle. Yeah. Yeah. But definitely. So I'm going to have you definitely on the back of my mind when I'm thinking about hard work next time really interesting stuff.

[00:14:41] Thanks for that, Mark. And in your own words, let's go into the detail of what it is that you do, what your businesses do, or several businesses you do, which you've alluded to. Let's go into each one of those in detail and really understand what each one does. I walked the why you started them as well.

[00:14:58] That'd be quite interesting because I think the mindset behind what you're doing is really important in this conversation. Okay. Cool. So I'll start with the one that I'm definitely got like the fire in my belly for and that's coaching and mentoring. Now, if I was to go take a few steps back and remind myself of the journey there, then what we're saying is, Matthew has been part of community outreach programs.

[00:15:21] Matthew has done training and health training for clients in the professional space. Matthew has been part of initiatives that have trained graduates that have come into programs. But if you now go and fast forward and say what does that mean in the current context? Firstly, I love speaking.

[00:15:37] I've completed my public speaking courses for both Toastmasters and whatever local institutions Africa. Is that the name of it is me now, but my Toastmasters is at beast. Suggested that I do speak and I can enjoy speaking, but then similarly, I really get a kick out of seeing people progress. And now I've had people that I've even helped to train in the gym, just, my gym partners and to see their results and see my results.

[00:16:03] Those are two really nice outcomes. Similarly, to see grads go through the grant training programs, to see clients walk away with their certificates, knowing about a STL board systems and development and some of the things around tick and agile and some of the things we will probably talk about it a bit later.

[00:16:20] So all of that stuff really is like at the core of who I am. And in fact, just reflecting with some of my friends, ask them what do you know me for? They said, Oh, you never shut up. Okay. Point one. What else did you you always ask questions. Okay, cool. So now we're getting on some point of likes to ask questions, likes to find out information likes to help and serve and likes to communicate that message.

[00:16:42] So that's probably. My it and my passion and my calling number two property as safe as houses, as the saying goes, I'm always seeing value in that always recognize that property is a long-term play. My current property portfolio is comprised primarily of rents rent for anyone who doesn't know what that is.

[00:17:02] It's basically an agreement with the landlord. And then to the unknowing mind, you could call it subletting, but it's really not. It's a legal through a company structure and generates a very healthy return for our company. And that's growing faced a bit of a wobbly during the pandemic, but we have recovered and we are on the incline again.

[00:17:22]And then e-commerce that was just to go and learn a new markets, excuse me, then mango and see, what does that look like during a pandemic year? Especially seeing as the property of the property market had gotten a bit had got on that little bit of a wobbly that I mentioned. So it was really just to learn a new skill.

[00:17:38] But, you, can you call yourself a five figure seller? I am a five figure seller and yeah. That's just ticking along really. That's really interesting. And not that term of rent to rent, I've never heard of that before. I like to dive into that a little bit more, so essentially you are subletting, but how does that work?

[00:17:56]Is the margins healthy and how does that work in terms of appetizing? Do you just, are you almost like a property manager in some respects? Yeah. You could call it property management. You can call it to the landlord. You could call it. Somebody I think is definitely not the right term because that's illegal and I would never, ever come down that stuff.

[00:18:13] So how it works is setting up a company and then through the company you engage with, let's take yourself, Chris. As an example, I engage with you as the landlord and say Chris let's work together over the next three to five years. I will guarantee you a rental income. So you're obviously your bricks and mortar, and you need to see return on that's.

[00:18:33] I'll agree with you. It use a round number because I'll pay you a thousand pounds a month and I'll guarantee that to you. But then I take the effect of  management or own it part and not ownership. That's the wrong word to use. But if you can use anyone who can see the inverted commerce or hear him, it's just that kind of notion.

[00:18:51] And then I will go and be the face of that. And you have no expectation except for, should the roof fall down the walls, cave in or the boiler burst. Then that's still Chris's responsibility for everything else. A bit. Change a door handle, repaint a room fix a toilet all those kinds of smaller smaller things.

[00:19:12] Those are my responsibility tenants locking themselves out during the night replace a broken bit. Those become my responsibility and we do act the deal as part of a cashflow calculation and yes, each property returns a very healthy margin.  It does work quite well. There are people that advocate for it and people who really don't like it, but, as someone who's in the paint is doing it, I do see value in it.

[00:19:36] And I see that in my income. So it's great. And what's the e-commerce business? What are you selling it for that e-commerce. Yep. So in e-commerce, there's two different strategies you can follow. So one is arbitrage, the other one is private label. So I focus primarily on the arbitrage side of things.

[00:19:52] And what that is to take, I don't know a pen, but I've got one here and it's almost just to say if this pain, I can source it for one pound, but sell it for five pounds, take away Amazon's fees. There's probably like a two or three pound margin on that and that in passion into the business.

[00:20:10] Yeah, it's just really quite anyone who knows the term arbitrage it's forced to load sell high, and then the difference there is what comes into the business. Okay. That's really interesting. Is there any particular products, are you going on trend products or is it just everyday items or picky Simons and Miguel using mainly.

[00:20:28] Yeah, Amazon. And I do have a few items listed on eBay. Now this is you do have a lot of software and you do a lot of analysis. So it's not just every product will work. You have to find the little nuggets of gold that lie in the product stores. So I've got a VA team that helped to find that stuff.

[00:20:45]And yeah, we just go and source the products and it's really a simple process once you get it going, but there's a lot of mechanics behind it that you need to understand. Yeah, no, that's really interesting.  I'll definitely come to you if I want to do that. So that's great. Thanks.  Okay.

[00:21:00] We got an idea of what drives you as an entrepreneur. You said the coaching, that high, that sort of thing, but what's that, that feeling that makes you get out of bed, when the alarm hits at 6:00 AM and you go I'm going to get out of bed and you don't want to get out of bed, but then you think about what drives you.

[00:21:17] They get sketched you up. What is that thing? I think it's definitely the problem solving elements. So I love to solve problems. I love to build relationships with people, very personable. So I think, lock that has been very difficult for an extrovert like me because I'm stuck between the four walls of my room and that's the expectation, but, networking, building relationships, helping people serving, like I love that stuff.

[00:21:42] So getting out of bed in the morning is easy. When I remember that those are the things I enjoy doing equally to re remember that, I don't want to build someone else's dreams. I want to be able to build my own. And I know that is, I know that the roots to that is hard work now. So if anyone was to ask me, what am I ten-year goals?

[00:22:00]I'm currently 30 years old. Am I re my retirement plan is 40. In the next 10 years, if I go and reflect on what the last three and a half years, there's no black then to go now say that growth has been quite a steep learning curve. And then the natural order of things is that it will continue to rise.

[00:22:17] So I'm looking for that exponential growth. And I know that it's going to take hard work now, and there's going to be a lot of doubts and self sabotage it on the way. But through persistence and consistency, I will reach the other side. And as long as I have it from, in my mind that the goal is to retire effectively, financially retire by 40.

[00:22:38] That is very achievable because I've got already the mechanics and the momentum. So it's just really about keeping it up and you have down days, but by and large, I get out of bed and probably have way too much energy for my housemates and my family members across the board. Yeah, that's pretty interesting though, that you want essentially a retire at 40, you probably won't.

[00:22:59]But it's just that you want the financial means to say that you could stop working and be okay, and still live a comfortable lifestyle. That's exactly what Jenny and I'm on. So I went from from an agency with staff to essentially being on my own and building passive income streams. And because I knew that was the way that I would like to live my life.

[00:23:22] That if I could literally say, I want a month off, I can go and take a month off. But not only that passive income scales as well. So for me, it was all about service work beforehand. That I have to have. Me doing the work, or I had to be involved in some way, whereas I'd like to be able to sell a product or something, move something on without having my my kind of involvement in that and make sure that it's systemize and the processes are systemized and everything's ticking over, like a Wednesday so I can see why you you've got a lot of experience in that area because obviously you've been brought up with that.

[00:24:03] So that's really cool. Yeah. You've taped them really important and impressive things there, Chris, and those are definitely things I a hundred percent agree with you on. That's amazing. So obviously we've got this Epic topic that we're going to talk about today, which is how we can apply software development, life cycle methodology, to business for the everyday business owner, because not everyone's are software developers.

[00:24:26] And they've got to really understand that. So do you want to give us a rundown of what software that the software development life cycle is? And then we can then start to dissect that and apply that to the business. This development life cycle is really just a series of steps in a process that refer to how you know, new or incumbent technologies are formed and how they work through a process.

[00:24:50] So that on the other side, you've got something that actually works in the market is probably the most layman's terms I can give it. So if you can imagine a series of steps and they entail planning, you've got analysis or requirements analysis, and you've got design, you've got implementation. And then you've got maintenance and we will talk about each one of these as we go through.

[00:25:13] But I think importantly here is to just understand that it is a process and now there's also contention around, is it waterfall or is it agile? And it's definitely aligned better to the agile practice. So what does agile mean? Working agile means it accounting for change. It means adapting to those change, responding to customer needs or customer wants, whereas waterfall for anyone who is not familiar with that term.

[00:25:40] No, it's not the water that goes over the cliff, but it's a very good analogy because what it does say is that there's no going back. So if you can imagine let's take a leaf for example, and you drop it in the river and it goes over the waterfall. It's not going to be able to get back to the top.

[00:25:56] And that's what waterfall is. It's where an idea will say, I want to develop a technology that does blah, blah, blah. But there's no review of that. And you have to go through a series of steps and quite often what you find is that it becomes time intensive. It becomes very costly. And it quite often isn't built to spec because although, and this is the biggest irony, Kane is the only constant, but it's the one thing that people are the most resistant to.

[00:26:25] The SDLC is very iterative. You can incorporate a lot of the agile thinking into it. And yeah it's a pleasure to talk about this because this is something that I really think we can apply to the business context as well. Yeah. A hundred percent. And  the other thing that people should know is that the waterfall is really falling out of favor in the developed software development.

[00:26:43]Kind of world and that's because it's very inflexible and it's very costly in terms of change. So if you change anything like you said, you can't really go back and do anything else, but it's still in use in a lot of areas, especially like military applications or craft applications where everything is very much determined from the offset and change is actually quite dangerous for those kinds of applications.

[00:27:14] And whereas agile is definitely more about reacting to those changes and incorporating them. Very early on. Especially if using something like scrum methodology, it's on a weekly basis, you can bring that back in and incorporate that change before you move on to the next bit.

[00:27:32] And for me, software development, life cycle is actually the development of the software itself. It's not necessarily a project management methodology that surrounds it. It's more about the idea that when you're designing software or you're building software you have these kind of sequential steps that help you ensure the quality around them and making sure that you meeting every one of these things, but also that you can Help plan what's coming up.

[00:28:01] So the different stages are quite clearly defined that you've got the budgeting and you got your timelines as well. So I think that's quite important to give a, an overview of the software development life cycle. But  I've never seen this being applied any other way, overdone software.

[00:28:17] So I'm really interested to see how you can apply the software development life cycle to business management and why it's beneficial.  Over to you, let's kick it off. All right, cool. Yeah, firstly, you definitely agree with everything you've said as well. And I think for everyone, just remember that waterfall is a very archaic method and I think it's just resistance to change.

[00:28:38] As long as you remember that people are not open to change and that's my nature, people can go into organizations will be all agile. Y no, cause we have a morning standup now. I'm not going to get into the nuts and bolts of all of that stuff. But if you are interested, just go and read up an article on scrum and how the scrum framework works.

[00:28:57]But it's, it is a big mind shift change that needs to happen across the board. But anyway, that's a whole nother conversation, but let's talk about the SDLC. So the first one is the planning stage. And now here, what we're often talking about is performing together and having, scope of the project.

[00:29:13] You've got  you've got various artifacts that come out of it as well. You get your indicative views of, what do you cost the estimations? What do you think is going to be planned scope and stuff? So you're developing the I it's the ideation phase. I can call it that.

[00:29:27] Now let's talk about the business side.  You've got a business, you'll wake up in the morning and you say, I have a dream to do blah, blah, blah. And you'll have that vision very clear in your mind. Also, you will think, but what you really want to do is go and break that down. So you go and think about things like your vision statement, your impact, what are your values?

[00:29:46] What's your unique selling point? So already you're beginning to start to form some of the ideation of this idea. The next one is building out a business plan. So we spoke about artifacts and having a project plan. But what about a business plan? So you've got very clear headers. They're going into a business plan and deep dives into some of the things that you need to start thinking about.

[00:30:07] So once you've got those there, you're now saying, okay who does the serve? So what we will go and do it in the SDLC through the planning and say, okay, I have this customer persona. Okay. But in the business context, you also have a customer persona. What's your ideal client and that's who they all, where they live, what they like.

[00:30:27] And more importantly, how does your product or service aligned to their values and why should they care about it? Once you've got this, you've got a vision, you've got a mission, you've got objectives of what you want to do, your unique selling points. You're understanding more about your client.

[00:30:44]You also then need to have a good idea about the numbers. Okay, cool. So now you're doing a cashflow forecast. You're having, that indicative view of what are my upfront costs to start this. So I need working capital. I need to have investment into the business. Do I raise the finance on my own steam?

[00:31:01]Do I have a joint ventures with people? But ultimately it's to know the numbers. So you're already beginning to flex that muscle and say, okay, I know that I need to have X, Y, and Z in place, but I see X, Y, and Zed return coming in the future. So that's very important as well. I think once you've got that, you formed, you've completed on the planning stage.

[00:31:23]Yeah.  That's the planning stage in a nutshell, right? You, but the things that relates to SDLC and you've got the things that relate to the business context. Yeah. A hundred percent. I love that. And cause obviously in software, it's about the scoping of the project, the plans and schedules and all the rest of it.

[00:31:39] And essentially that is very similar to the business side of it. Why do you think we haven't really looked at using the software development life cycle before when it comes to applying for business. Because what you're telling me is very apt that men were only on the first stage. I get that, but why do you think it's so apt?

[00:32:00] Why do you think it so closely aligned? I think it's just, I say this to a lot of people that I speak to that, the nuts and bolts of business apply. It's not really like niche specific. Okay. They will be nuances around it, but. Again, I just think it's the wool over people's eyes. People that are in an employee, excuse me, in an employee mentality are very focused on being employees or people that are in business are very focused on business.

[00:32:27] And quite often there isn't an overlap. The things that you might think are obvious to one person are not obvious to another. So this is just an observation I've made. And I think through unpacking this process, I just do see a lot of synergy. And I see a lot of ways. I'm always reading and watching and thinking about ways in which, you can make connections between things because I will give a test to being the smartest person in the room.

[00:32:51] If I am, then I'm in the wrong room. Grant Cardone famously said that. If for me it's just really about seeing opportunities to leverage things that we already know because that's the, in a shortcut. And if I'm not having shortcuts to do things faster and I'm not going to be failing foster and failing foster means learning better.

[00:33:10] And that's just something that I embrace as part of my everyday life. So I don't know why people haven't done it, but I have, I love that. That's brilliant. Thank you. Thank you for that. Let's move on to the next stage then. So the next stage talks about analysis now. Yeah. In the SDLC, you'll talk about requirements analysis, and that's really where you go in and understand, what are some of the features that this thing needs to have?

[00:33:32] So if it's, let's take a simple example since we've spoken about a restaurant already, but let's imagine that we've got a ordering system, we have an iPad on the table and you can order your food and it goes direct to the kitchen or those direct to the bar. And then prepares your order and then all you need is somebody to bring you your order.

[00:33:52] So what you've now come up with is a system that you now need to implement. So when we go and look at the requirements, we're saying, yeah, firstly, I need to be able to place an order. The second thing is I need the kitchen to receive that order. I need the ball to receive that order. I need to be able to work out if it's a kitchen or a ball, or I need to be able to notify a staff member when the order is ready.

[00:34:15]I need to allow a customer to pay and you can see that these are all forming what we would call the backlog of requirements. All right. So it's really now going and unpacking each one of those. Okay. So what does that mean for the technology? What do I need to do? How do I do that? And you start asking all those questions.

[00:34:32]Now looking on the business side again, What we're saying here is doing things like market research. So going out and asking customers, I want to do this thing. Does this make sense? I want to have this business idea. What are your thoughts? And you're always testing to see whether or not this is going to be a valid or valuable proposition that you're designing.

[00:34:57] And ultimately you're defining your MVP which is your minimum viable product or your proof of concept. You're trying to work out what is going to work, and you can do this by being loud on social media. You can do this by speaking up in forums, you can get onto podcasts. You can speak to people that are in need and you can start to identify.

[00:35:16] We've already spoken about your niche, but you can now start asking that niche. Is it something that they actually want? And I suppose the purpose here is to start getting the feedback, to know if it's implemented well, actually, which is something we'll talk about a bit later. So what other things you can do is like surveys, polls, customer engagement, but really just asking the questions and ultimately defining the requirements.

[00:35:40] If I'm going to launch this business, what are some of the things that I need to pay attention to? Or what are some of the things that I must avoid? And for me, that's the analysis thing. I love that. Wow. That makes a lot of sense. We had a great guest on talking about prototyping and he basically said, if you're not prototyping, you're not doing it properly.

[00:36:02] And it's so important that we get out there and start to ask our audience because there's so many businesses that I speak to. I go have you spoken to your target audience? Have you also what they want? No, not at all. So this is such, I would say this is probably one of the most important steps are all of them.

[00:36:19] If you're going to spend time on something, this is the thing you spend time on because they leave it, tell you to keep going. Or tell you to stop, right? And there's no one or the other, right? You have to pause and you'll say, is this worth it? Is this worth the time? Is this worth the energy? And if it's not, then you stop.

[00:36:38]You pivot that would, it's getting a bad rep now, but pivot by city means you failed, this is what people will say. You failed, you haven't solved something. So it's the ultimate state look that right. Okay. If we pivot, maybe this is a better direction. It's got a bit of a bad rep, but I think it makes, still makes a lot of sense in the entrepreneurial world of pivoting.

[00:36:57]I want to hear the next one. I'm excited to hear this. Sure. So before we do, I just want to say pivoting is me. If you imagine a tree in a water or a rock in the water, it's how the walks that goes around over with, through that. And, I have nothing against pivot. It does have a bad rep. But I think if you're good in business, you sometimes do need to make subtle changes because that's what we're talking about.

[00:37:19] Anyways, your adaptability and being able to absorb and respond to change. So everything I think does have an unfair bad rep, but I think it's you're right, because it has the notion of it. Yeah. That's even questionable. Okay. I can. Cool. So the next stage is designed. So now what we've done is we've defined our requirements and we now know that we need to bring this together.

[00:37:42] So in an emergent technology, we're saying that you need to understand the structure, how it comes together, how will those requirements perform together? So we've got performance elements, non-functional requirements architecture. We're starting to bring it together and wait, even having, various diagrams and artifacts that will show how does this thing work as a viable solution?

[00:38:04] But what we're saying in business is having understood what we want to achieve as a business. Having tasted some of the ideas with the market, it's now saying, how does that all come together to be the value proposition that you're trying to deliver? So if you're a product business and you're selling, I don't know, handbags, then your handbag is going to be, is it made of this Lander or that, does it come in this shape or that shape is this design or that design, is it this color or that color?

[00:38:31] How many colors do we have? What is the price range of my niche? And you're starting to work that out and now you've got to work out things like suppliers. So already we're beginning to form the value chain and the supply chain of this idea. So it's really just taking all the feedback you've gathered in the previous steps and then saying, okay, so what, how does that come together in business?

[00:38:53] And I think here it's an important observation is to, again, continue to test and learn and see do things work. He based on an improved, does that mean your business Pat needs some refining? Have you accurately done some of your numbers? We still don't necessarily know the final answer to that, but what we can do is backward.

[00:39:11] Look, because again, we're responding to some of the change and saying, is there something we can learn or have learned through this process? And then, rebased on and improve, we can start to set up structures and processes. We can work out that end to end supply chain. And then really define if it's the product or the service.

[00:39:31] What does that look like together? And ultimately here, we're getting ourselves ready for launch. So in the it world, you'll talk about mock-ups and you, maybe you have a degree of front end as well. So what does it look like from a user perspective? And again, out in client, in the business context, it was really important to be front and center of this design.

[00:39:52] We've got a lot of information, but how are we bringing it together and what are we ultimately going to serve them with? And that for me is the design phase. Yeah. I love that. And I think it's more about the readying up. That's what I really love a lot about that is that you're about to go live.

[00:40:11] You're, you've got putting your ducks in a row essentially, and making sure that you've got all your bases covered all your box is taped so that when you start to implement you are systemized. You have essentially your standard operating procedures, you have everything in place that once you start scaling and moving forwards, it's less of a headache.

[00:40:34] So I think that's really Epic. So thank you for that. So next stage. Cool. So the next one is implementation and then you can also throw in testing here. Excuse me. So what we're saying here in the it context is that you're now beginning to do you're building, you're starting to put the code together to actually bring these requirements to life.

[00:40:53]Do you have quite a well formulated set of steps and now it's really about making the product. Okay. You also now starting to bring in some metrics and you're starting to do some performance monitoring. You're starting to see do the things conform to what the specs or the, what would you actually specified as part of the department as it actually work.

[00:41:13]And you're starting to build a technology that you can go live with. And I think the important thing is going live. So in the agile context, we'll always talk about or at least in the scrum framework will always talk about having shippable product. So at the end of the cycle, and you had alluded to it earlier, Chris, you're saying,  it's ultimately a two week piece of work at the individual on something that's shippable.

[00:41:36] Okay. But in the business context, it might not be two weeks, but ultimately what we're saying is let's go live, it's take this thing to market and let's see what's going to happen now because you formed your value and your USP. You've got important feedback and you've defined process where your product or your service, but now you're taking it to market and now it's go time.

[00:41:56]How are you attracting sales? What is your marketing approach? How are you reaching out to your customers? What customers is it actually aligned to your customer avatar? Is that the audience that you're attracting do you have sales income? Do you have sorry, your sales income versus your real income, so you can have a gross income, but after you've taken off your expenses, which your costs of sales, of course, how are you getting down to the real numbers and seeing what is the real income for your business and is that a profit or a loss?

[00:42:28]You're also then seeing your types of growth strategy. Is it organic growth that you're achieving or are you being like a marketing campaigns to achieve the growth there, but ultimately it's having something in. The market and again, and very careful attention to how that those metrics are working.

[00:42:49] You'd start to see areas for improvement, refinement. What are some of the structures that you need to work on? You'll see that I'm always referring to change on voice referring to adaptability. And as long as you're conscious of those things, then you're constantly able to refine, which is why going back to it, agile, scrum, working through this review process.

[00:43:09]Very important. And that for me is the implementation process. So the last bit you covering the optimization element of building and creating your products is probably another really crucial part of this. And I'm assuming that's going to be the next step. I'm in an anticipation but I'm assuming it will wait.

[00:43:28]And that's the thing. It's a, it's taking notes of all the little things that have gone wrong. All they, all the business elements that you thought you could make better and improve on. And then making taking that down, jotting those notes down as you're going through the process, there's a lot of times you get, you feel quite overwhelmed with everything that's going on, that you don't create head space or time to, to look to improve.

[00:43:53]It's like that, that, that age old motto, you work on the business, not in the business they ask really apt for that particular stage. So next stage. Yep. Cool. So just a quick little recap, we've done obviously planning, analysis, design and implementation. So the last step is maintenance now in the business context.

[00:44:13]Sorry, in the it context, what we're saying here is it's looking at areas to improve that this piece of functionality work as expected, where there may be some bugs that we need, it wasn't actually fit for purpose because remember you only know what you know and what you don't know, you discover.

[00:44:32] So as long as you are understanding that they didn't, it context, you can reform the requirement with an enhancement or a future release to make sure that it does actually achieve the customer outcome that you want. Customer experience is really important. It's got probably a bigger highlight in more recent years than in, in the older days where it was very like enterprise driven and the business value was head of the customer value.

[00:44:59] But the whole point of a customer experience is to just shut that mindset and to have the outward in looking rather than the inward outlooking. So as long as you understand that from maintenance, it's now to maintain the system. Yes, but also to see areas for improvement on future releases. All right.

[00:45:18] Let's look at the business context now. So what we have seen is that through this whole process, we've defined a business product or service that is going to be offering customers some value. Perfect. But if you've been paying attention to what you referred to earlier, the standard operating procedures, how are those working?

[00:45:37] All they working well, are there opportunities to improve? If you're going to be maintaining, it means you're going to want to scale and grow because the only way a business can go is up. If you stay static where you decline, you die. So how are you going to grow and how are you going to scale? You're probably going to need to bring team members in.

[00:45:55] So if your standard operating procedures are well defined and you've, I dunno, recorded how you do things where you've got, screen shares and video recordings to show how you're operating your business. Then those are things you can then very easily hand over to a team of people that can start to help you do that.

[00:46:12] So you can focus on the growth element and the scale element and allow them to handle the operations and the administration. The other thing is there might've been very manual processes that you do, and it's maybe now starting to bring in a, an example, you've got a recording of sales in an Excel document, but maybe there's a way you can bring in a customer relationship management tool, a CRM, and you can start to record all of that stuff.

[00:46:40] And you can now start to see it almost like automates and systemize as part of the process. And then equally it's looking at your customer base and saying, where are the opportunities and how are we attracting new business versus how are we serving and maintaining our current business. And again very similar reflections of what you would do in the it context versus what you would do in the business context.

[00:47:04] That's great. Great stuff. Wow. Thank you for enlighten us on that. And I think actually, the more I think about it, the more I'm going to start applying these five stages to my business advice that I give out as well. Cause I just never saw that the tie off between the two to what made you first think about it?

[00:47:24] What was it that just, this is a no brainer. Obviously you've got experience in both. What was it that you saw that you could apply it? Yeah. Again I'm someone who looks for shortcuts and ways to do things, leveraging what I've already done before. And I always go into projects thinking, okay, but like, why are we reinventing the wheel here?

[00:47:43] Why are we not thinking about ways we've done this before? Why aren't we learning from the experiences we've had before? And then in the business context, it's no different, although I had read a lot and I attended a lot of seminars and I, I'm never afraid to take on coaches or mentors of my own.

[00:47:59] I'm always looking for areas of overlap between the messages they're sharing, because I think if you take. Chris's perspective or Matthew's perspective out of the equation. And you look at the aspect of itself, you'll probably see very similar interests, very similar ways, and concepts of explaining something.

[00:48:19] And those are the keys. Just in the professional context, I've seen these things happen in technology and maybe it's because I've grown up in a restaurant environment where, I've been very in the nuts and bolts of ways to do things. And I don't think I'm going to take. This water to that table.

[00:48:36] And then I must come back and take this order to the next one. No, maybe it's, I must take both these orders because one is on the way to the other. And it's just really looking for those opportunities to streamline systemize, automate my processes so that I'm just running it higher efficiency. And when I saw this happen, when I just, I had an idea, I have an aha moments and I realized this was something that could really work.

[00:48:58] It might even have been Eucharist. I might've just even, listened to you and you your profile as a person. And then just thought, that this is actually makes so much sense or it's just something that I've always known and adapted to my own life. But the more I explore it, the more I think about it, the more I talk about it, the more it makes sense and you're right.

[00:49:17] It is something that we apply to our businesses or something that I certainly do apply to my businesses anyway. I completely agree. And I'm glad you you came on the podcast to share that, but as a management consultant, what are your top three business management and quick wins that you'd like to share with the listeners?

[00:49:35] So I think for anyone to use, and I'm going to talk specifically in the business context, because I think, the purpose of this discussion is not really as much about the it's more about what does it mean in the business context. But I think for anyone who's just starting out or you're further down the road, if you're listening to this and you thought, Hey, hang on, I've learned a lot today.

[00:49:51] I want to just go and challenge your mindset anyway, because mastering mindset, excuse me, is so important from the onset. So a quick win number one, you need to understand what's going on in your head. If you're not spending time to write goals, if you're not spending time to quiet some of the mind, Jay Shetty talks a lot about the monkey mind and the monkey mind.

[00:50:11] And I think really to realize that society. Very much is geared towards the monkey mind and that's distraction, procrastination. TV, television. I'm trying to think about how the saying goes, but it's basically just how it, it is robotic. It almost like it's, you're just thinking in a very single-minded Trek, but books and seminars and audio and podcasts, et cetera, will open up some of your periphery.

[00:50:40] So the first one is mastering mindset. The second one is being very clear about the goals that you're trying to achieve in your business. So if you're saying I want to do business because I want to be an entrepreneur. You're probably not going to get very far, but what if you all sitting down and saying, that I've got a five vehicle I've got, in fact, I've got a one year ago, a three-year goal, a five-year goal and a 10 year goal, and you're now breaking each one of those down and working backwards.

[00:51:08] And you've got the end in mind and we quite often refer to that as your exits and as long as you've got your exit in mind, and you're very clear about where you want to go, and that's going to put you in very good stead for your business. So the first one mindset mastering mindset, the second one, having goals and being very clear about the end said, you can work backwards from there.

[00:51:29] And the last one, just having a good understanding and a grip on your finances. So often I see people and especially with some of my clients, they've got all their businesses wrapped up into their personal affairs and personal account. Now this can become very problematic when you have to do tax returns and you have to dictate.

[00:51:47] Personal income versus job income versus business income versus, you can just imagine how that can become, and now you have to unravel that becomes very complicated very quickly and can probably land you in some very hot water. Not only that, but your businesses survive ability to survive is only as good as how clear you are about the profit numbers.

[00:52:10] The actual costs, the gross income, the cash flow for us, the Salesforce us, you need to have be very clear about those and how they break down into real terms so that your business can survive and thrive. So yeah, that's number three, having good understanding and grip on your finances. Oh, I love those.

[00:52:31]I agree with all of them. Are there? No. Great. And I love that you you named John Jay Shetty as well. Cause I thought that was really good as well. And not a lot of people know of him in the Western world unless you stumbled across him on Facebook or some crime yeah.  Great learnings and teachings.

[00:52:46] He gives us and the goals working backwards. I was just having a conversation with someone yesterday. Exactly. That what's your five-year goal and how you work back then set the the steps individual steps to get the, and then at least, you're on the right path when you're thinking about those goals that you're setting.

[00:53:03] So really good stuff to how can people learn more about like this business management that you're talking about and how they can support the business with these skillsets? What resources. Yeah, sure. Of course there's reading books, attending seminars going on to house just really make Google your friend.

[00:53:21] And I'll never forget moving over to this kind of Jamie Egan. So I have to go eight. There is a, is that a premium? It costs a lot of money to have. And I was like, yeah, my sister, how do I get to point a to point B? And she says, Oh, Matthew, just Google it. And I took that completely for granted because growing up in Africa, it wasn't the thing.

[00:53:40] But since coming to the UK, I certainly Google everything. So there's books, there's seminars, there's clubhouse, there's Google, but importantly, yeah, just to align yourself with people that are like-minded. And if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. So what you need to do is you need to align yourself with business mentors, coaches, advisors, people who have walked down the path, because if they, if you're trying to go in alone and I see it all the time, people are like, Oh, I'm not going to make that investment.

[00:54:08] I'm going to do it on my own steam. Great. I understand where you're coming from. However, you're going to make the mistakes that all of us who've been down that path have made and it's going to slow your progress down. So if you're serious about learning about business, if you're serious about understanding how to move yourself forward, if you want to get started on your journey, you need to align with people that have done it before people who know what it's talking about.

[00:54:35] And it's not to say that everyone does, there are a lot of people who don't, but don't be shy to invest in yourself because if you're not investing in yourself, the biggest mistake people make is to say, Oh, but it's too expensive. And when will I see results rather than looking at it? How can I invest in myself?

[00:54:54] And what am I going to learn through that experience? If you can shift your mindset to understand that it's not an expense, but an investment Robert Kiyosaki, again, to drop another name, there is he always talks about Good debt versus bad debt. And I think always investing in yourself is always good Gates because even if you don't see a return right now, what you will do is plant seeds that will take you in the right direction.

[00:55:20] Even going back to your goals. If you've got an end goal in mind, it's only by setting that intention and moving towards that goal. And the rest of them, the laws of the universe will bring those things forward. If you're consistent and persistent in your action taken. So that's probably my biggest thing.

[00:55:39] If you're really serious and you want to learn, you need to find the right people that can help you and take you on your journey a hundred percent find a mentor as well. I think that's a good, that's a good one. And I'm sure that lots of people after this podcast are going to think, Oh, this Matthew Guy he's he sounds all right.

[00:55:57] So how can they connect with you if they want to do that? I'm hoping that everyone that's listening to this has probably got access to Instagram or to Facebook. So if you just literally search for the real business coach, you'll find me. I've got a very simple avatar across all the platforms.

[00:56:14] It's a not too well articulated version of myself behind, but importantly behind me, there's half South African off British flags. I quite often label myself on clubhouses Matthew between two entries. So if you just want to find me, look for the real business coach, alternatively, you can look for [email protected].

[00:56:35]And those were also points you in my diary. Great. Thanks Matthew. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. So thank you for all your teachings today. Oh thank you so much for having me, Chris, and I really love what you're doing. So keep it up. I'm seeing a lot of good things coming out of this podcast and I look forward to seeing many more.

[00:56:53] Thank you.

[00:57:02] It was really good to hear about how Matthew developed his hard working mentality or how he refers to it. The hustle mentality, working inside his father's wimpy restaurants. What did you take back use quick wins, quick win number one, mastering your mindset is very important and that could be spending time on writing goals or quieting the mind through meditation.

[00:57:26] Jay Shetty talks about the monkey mind and the monk mind quick win. Number two, is that a long-term goal? Be very clear about the end result and work backwards from there. Quick win. Number three, make sure you have a solid understanding and grip of your finances, but what was your favorite bit of the show?

[00:57:48] You can tell me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, tick-tock YouTube or clubhouse, where you can find me with art had this joke. I remember there are several other podcasts available to listen to which you can find on Apple podcast, Spotify and YouTube. Why should I be so grateful if you could subscribe and write a review, but until next time, I'm your quick Quincy threatening out.

 

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