Rachael Thomas
Hello, I’m Rachael Thomas and I and very excited to have joined the WBN team as Business Manager.
For the past 20 years I have been running, with my husband, Pre-emptive Strike computing and IT Solutions, Strike Point Graphic Design and Printing and Plexus Web Sites and Software Development in Albany.
We have now sold two of the businesses, Plexus in January and Pre-emptive Strike in July.
If you were to ask me what the main lessons I have taken away from my experience as a small business owner are, I would say Number 1 – start with the end in mind.
Whenever developing new products or services or diversifying, keep in the back of your mind how are you going to exit (succession planning), because believe me, one day you will.
The second would be to invest in good staff. If you find someone who fits your business that you can trust, keep them.
Build a culture that is supportive, inclusive and great to be a part of.
Thirdly, build the systems to support the staff and yourself to allow you to step away from the business. This could be something such as a phone system that acts as a receptionist and emails you messages when you are unable to answer the phone. Or a cloud based job management system that allows you to track customers, jobs, interactions and time spent from anywhere.
And fourthly, put in place the procedures and policies to allow everyone to utilise your systems competently and effectively.
At the end of the day we want to be able to give our customers the best service and experience that we can so that they will come back and also tell others about how good we are!