Lessons from the legends Leadership, bucket lists and the perfect diary, award-winning plumber Matt Reynolds steals the secrets from three of Australia’s most successful.
Justin Burgoine:
the business of people There’s a really common pattern to my interviews with successful business leaders; it doesn’t take long before the conversation turns to developing people. Business leaders’ ability to grow their business is tied very closely to their ability to grow themselves and in turn their people. Justin Burgoine is a man who does just that. While building a business focussed on innovation, I asked Justin how he recruits to ensure the culture at Kincrome is maintained. He believes first in developing people within the business, so they generally look within the business to fill open positions. In addition to investing heavily in employee training, the induction process and setting very clear expectations, Justin looks for attitude, enthusiasm and for people who ask good questions. It’s so important, as Justin explained to learn to ask good questions and to continue to grow yourself. Ask about other people’s experience and their successes he advised. The idea is not to replicate them, but to learn and adapt what you can for yourself. 28 | Australian Plumbing Industry Magazine | Spring 2018
Justin’s advice for growing a business: don’t worry about making mistakes, learn from your mistakes, they can be your best mentor.
Stefan Kazakis:
perfect planning
Stefan’s advice on the perfect diary and planning the perfect day – accept that it won’t be perfect at all! To be productive plumbers and (I would argue) happy people, we need to use our time as efficiently as possible. In contradiction to common thinking, that doesn’t mean scheduling every minute of every day to be busy, we need to have more realistic expectations. Interruptions and distractions will happen, so instead of focusing on maximising available time, focus on maximising output. “What would it look like if 70% of your time is focused on your top 3-5 most productive activities?” Stefan asked. There’s no point, as he explained, in shooting for 100% efficiency. We are humans and need flexibility, being too regimented just causes unnecessary frustration and stress. The key to being productive is ensuring you are working on those 3-5 most important activities, then
tracking how you plan your time versus how you actually spend your time. Most of us have a list much longer than 3-5 tasks which we consider really important. The way to shorten that list and get focused is to start with a longer list, your top 10. From there, you need to look for the tasks which offer the best income generating opportunities, which are different for each of us but are usually activities which grow resources. For a business owner that can be developing people, for example, as the returns over time are exponential. The top 3-5 incoming generating activities are the most valuable items you can work on. Knowing your top 3-5, and planning time to work on them ensures you are more productive, even if you’re spending less time attempting to be productive. It’s worth asking yourself; how would your life be different if you focused on growing both yourself and those around you, threw out your to-do lists and concentrated on developing your bucket list lifestyle and worked on making your days much more productive?