Business Changing

Profit and Growth Specialist

I’ve been working with Zac since 2013 and in that time our dental supplies business has seen year-on-year profit growth and overall growth across all of our divisions. What I’m really proud of is the improvement in our yearly employee engagement surveys because, to me, workplace culture is critical.

Our competitive advantage is our culture and our relationships with customers — those things people can’t take away from you. We have worked significantly on that in terms of engagement and people’s buy-in to the strategy and our values. When we started working with Zac more formally on our employee engagement in 2016 we were in the top 15%, then the top 1% in 2019 and the top 5% in 2020. We were stoked to be rated in the top 0.5% in 2021. This measure is critical to us for our success; it’s our true sustainable advantage.

I initially sought a business coach or mentor to provide a bit more of a helicopter view of the business, to look at the business and provide a fresh approach. Someone who sits outside the business doesn’t have the same barriers that sometimes you perceive as the owner so I knew it was important to bring that in. The breadth of experience that Zac has in the business world means he brings you new ideas and concepts, he looks at things in a slightly different way and he helps you to overcome barriers.

Looking longer term has been a big outcome of working with Zac. He’s very big on working on the business rather that in the business and he’s a bit of a dog with a bone when it comes to accountability and following up on what you said you’d do rather than being distracted by the day to day.

Zac has a really unique mix of strategy and financial nous, which a lot of times people don’t have and you really do need both — you might have the best strategy but if it doesn’t make financial sense it goes down the gurgler.

I’d say the other thing that Zac provides is lots of quality connections. If you’re looking for someone in a specific area to work with, he’s got those connections which are invaluable. We’ve gone on to work with many from his network.

We work with Zac in his TAP Group, we bring the team along for yearly business planning and strategy planning workshops and two of our team have completed his leadership workshop. 

Thinking about working with Zac? Just do it.