ADRIENNE AND LINDA, VERCOE INSURANCE

We’ve been working with Zac for 6.5 years and we’ve never looked back. When we started working with him we had 7 staff; we now have 15 and profit has increased significantly. He has truly been wonderful for our business. Our business has grown so much, and we believe it’s because Zac’s given us the support and confidence to keep striving ahead to make the right decisions.

Zac is really good at looking at the business as a whole unit, devising the strategies to grow it, and helping develop a 5-10 year plan. We’ve got a good accountant and networking groups, but where he really helps us is with the future of the business – an accountant looks at the last 12-18 months, your peers look at today, but Zac looks at the future and gives you a path on how to get there. He forces you to look at how you can create a better business long term.

With just the two of us as directors, it’s good to have someone else share new ideas or weigh in on the ideas we have but aren’t sure about. Zac’s amazing to use as a sounding board – he gives us the confidence to back ourselves so we can go ahead and do it. When we have a big financial decision to make, he will back it up with science and data, not just an opinion.

Zac’s suggested many positive changes for our business over the years. Just last year, after being really busy (too busy!), he suggested we get an office manager and free ourselves up from all the admin work. We don’t know why we didn’t do it earlier! He has also encouraged us to be better leaders of the business, and focus on upskilling our staff to be better at their jobs. We now do one-on-one coaching with our staff which we would have never done before.

Zac is really good at getting to know and understand your business — even though he has so many clients, he still remembers the names of all our staff and he’ll remember things about your business that you wouldn’t expect him to.

The best thing about Zac is that he gives you an idea or homework and then holds you accountable and asks why you haven’t achieved it — he’s good at following up and making sure you’ve done it, which is what you often need as a business owner. What he does do is push us out of our comfort zone, especially when we’re tempted to rest
on our laurels. For example, earlier this year we had another meeting with him coming up… and we didn’t want to talk about growth. We were tired. He listened to us and said, “What if we can work out a strategy to have the same income but work less?” Well we were all ears at that point! We didn’t even consider that to be an option.

Do we recommend you work with Zac? It’s a no brainer. Go for it. You’ll get so much value out of it — he will pay for it himself, many times over, so don’t look at the dollars. You’ll wonder why you waited so long.