Growth Newsletter

One of the best things about family business is the presence of family. One of the worst things about family business is the presence of family. Confused? You shouldn’t be.

Around six weeks ago, there was a horrific level crossing accident in Central Western New South Wales. Two men died when their B double truck, carting gypsum, collided with a freight train. It was late afternoon and investigations are still continuing as to the cause of this tragedy.

I’d finished a client meeting and as I piled into the car, I flicked my phone onto my Spotify playlist and hit shuffle. With more than 1800 songs on my list, there’s a wide variety to listen to, from the ‘50s to now.

As we finish up the first quarter of 2021, the news is overwhelmingly positive in Australia and a stark contrast to what we were all experiencing 12 months ago.

My wife and I recently took a nine day trip to Port Stephens, three hours north of Sydney. It’s an old family holiday stomping ground from the days when our sons were youngsters and Trish’s Mum, Peggy, would join us for a week by the beach. We made the decision to venture back to somewhere we’d not spent a lot of time at since 2007 as a combined result of:

Sadly, most people have no idea what parts of their business generate a profit and what parts generate a loss. Whilst monthly, quarterly or annual financial statements might report a Profit or Loss, all that tells you is the totality of the business performance for the period. It doesn’t actually show you how the profit is actually generated..

It had been a year since I’d visited clients, in person, in Melbourne. COVID 19 and the disruption it brought meant that, from late February, 2020, it was all on Zoom, pretty much like everyone else.

Today would have been my mother-in-law, Peggy’s 95th birthday. Sadly, she passed away in March 2012, the effects of dementia finally taking her. It’s often why I’ve called the disease “the long goodbye” as it takes it’s toll on the body and the mind of the individual and the spirt of those around them. Perhaps one day, the wonders of medical science will find a solution to this condition.

It’s profit reporting season for some of the big corporates at the moment, and the large banks in particular are showing some remarkable turnaround in their financial results.

The 5.0 litre V8 in my 2016 Ford Falcon XR8 Sprint has 345 kilowatts of power at its disposal or, in the old language, 462 horsepower. To put that in perspective, the Ford Mustang V8 Supercar that my team, Tickford Racing, will run in the 2021 Supercars Championship pumps out 447kw. So, the beast sitting in my garage has 77% of the power capability of a racing car.