New Year Offer: Boost your leadership team for less than $15 a day.

It's the festive season and we feel like giving away some of our time.

For the month of January, SOS Interim is offering regional small to medium agribusiness and food enterprises located ANYWHERE in Australia, the chance to improve the likelihood of success in 2015 for less than $15 a day using our Support Panel service.

A cost-effective and flexible way to get help, this is a complete package including 4 quarterly on-site visits and preparation, access to mentor and coach 24/7 x 365 and includes all travel expenses.

We'll come to wherever you are.

It's that simple to get help. It's that easy to get help.

Most suited for:

• Small and medium business
• Regional business
• New or young business
• Family business
• Agribusiness and food business

Offer limited to the first 5 businesses.

Sounds tempting but why should you seriously consider this offer?

Support Panels support you and your business.

It's a great way of providing a strategic boost to your leadership team.

Running a business is a lonely job.

In a country that is increasingly city-centric, owning and operating a regional business is even lonelier.

Regional business is tough business.

The unofficial source of much trusted advice in the regions is family, friends, accountants, lawyers and other industry peers.

This type of 'buddy' system has good intentions and is seen as a 'safe' environment for getting feedback about your business - but can be very ineffective.

It is often the case that people simply don't understand your business and what you're going through to make it all happen and hold it all together.

Forming your own ideas about the direction of your business then becomes difficult, if based on the opinions of others.

For many regional business owners "no one knows this game like I do" and are not seeking any help at all.

So what have other owners and operators been doing to get ahead of the game?

Some of the best product innovations, business models and new market initiatives to come out of regional Australia in recent times, are from organisations that have formed a Support Panel.

A Support Panel is a small group of independent mentors that use their complimentary skills and experience to provide advice on the strategic direction of your business.

These people do not have formal authority to make decisions on behalf of your business. The structure is flexible and informal.

Support Panels allow owners and operators to step away from day-to-day management issues and focus on the growth and development of their business, using a forum that challenges critical thinking.

Doing things right is always important. But true value for regional business is created when people have the opportunity to ask if in fact the business is doing the right things.

A Support Panel is functioning at it's best when:

• The business owners and operators are open to receiving input from others.
• Input from mentors is strategic, constructive and relevant to the current needs of the business.
• Everyone keeps an open mind and actively participates.
• Communication is open and honest.
• Everyone is being challenged with critical thinking.

Support Panels are a proven technique that serve as an informal guide to help your business learn, grow and perform better.

If this sounds like something that meets your needs in 2015, we would love for you to take up our offer.

Alternatively, please refer our offer to anyone you know could use a helping-hand.

In the meantime, we wish you all the very best in your endeavours for 2015 and beyond.

Cheers.

CONTACT:

Jeremy Lomman

0417 567 148 jeremy@sosinterim.com.au

Blockbuster 2015 ahead for SOS Interim. Here's a sneak-peek.

SOS Interim is looking at a blockbuster 2015 thanks to inspiring clients with amazing vision.

Sometimes owning and operating a business is like going down the Ulanga River on the African Queen.

But despite choppy economic waters and the feeling Australia is lost at sea without a rudder, we’ve plotted the charts for some awesome agribusiness and food projects in 2015.

It’s always a privilege to be welcomed into someone’s business and help navigate a brighter future.

The great thing about interim management is when a doer helps a doer, within a few weeks the business is already achieving outcomes.

Here’s snippet of what’s on the horizon in 2015 for SOS Interim:

• National expansion of fertiliser company
• Launch of food marketing and distribution company
• Food product development for export
• Export marketing program linking local producers with international processors
• Launch of new regional centre for business, trade and entrepreneurship
• A new business model for suppliers of inputs and services to industry

As usual my nose will remain buried in university textbooks to ensure people receive cutting-edge help.

Here’s to all the idea-makers and dream-weavers keeping it real.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Commodity Fetishism

I’d like to introduce you to a common type of fetish you may not have heard of, but regularly enjoy.

It’s called commodity fetishism and was first described by Karl Marx way back in 1867.

It’s having a significant impact on the profitability and sustainability of regional business.

How so?

There are two headlines that continue to dominate the media.

 

They are: households complaining about the cost of living and, businesses complaining about the cost of operating.

We have been groomed with new lifestyle expectations; totally convinced that everything must be had as an absolute necessity.

But as business owners we have also been groomed as consumers of inputs.

Our behaviour as business owners can also drive-up the cost of doing business.

Social researcher Mark McCrindle calls this expectation inflation.

Are we so convinced that as business owners we must have the latest, the biggest or the most of everything?

A tempting proposition.

However, overcapitalising our business beyond its reasonable productive capacity will derail it.

But why would any business owner in their right mind deliberately derail their own business?

A driving force behind commodity fetishism within a business is risk appetite.  Financial literacy is a key measure of risk appetite – normally.  But when commodity fetishism takes hold, we make purchasing decisions the implications of which we don’t understand.

Tammy May of My Budget fame has a simple yet thriving business helping those who have ‘overcapitalised’ the household budget.

Interestingly, the Regional Australia Institute identified that poor financial skills is potentially the single biggest factor negatively impacting the prosperity of regional business.

As we hang-up our stockings and think about spending, perhaps as business owners we should make 2015 a ‘socks-n-jocks’ year.

DIDO employees are shrinking regional economies.

I write a fortnightly column for a newspaper based in the Mid North of South Australia.

We tackle all things rural, regional, agribusiness and food.

Some pieces are light, topical and trending.  Some dig deeper, exploring life as a business based in the regions.

As with any of the articles or opinion pieces I’ve had published over years, there’s the anticipation of at which point you’ll touch a nerve.

A recent column that raised the issue of DIDOs in our region did just that – hit a nerve.

So I wanted to share it with my broader network and hear peoples’ feedback.

What are some examples of economic strategies to mitigate the impact of DIDOs?

With the magic of hindsight, it’s easy to see that our region was totally exposed to the creeping phenomenon of the DIDO worker.

Millions of dollars generated / provided by the region is extracted (paid) and spent elsewhere.

That money is no longer circulating in our local economy and the result is stark.

What happened in your region?  How did you mitigate the impact of DIDOs?

If you are a DIDO, what would it take for you to live where you work?

What’s worse – a FIFO or a DIDO?

Is it just me or are things pretty stagnant at the moment?  I can’t help but feel we still struggle to hold our towns together, under the weight of so many pressures that ultimately fall onto the shoulders of a shrinking pool of individuals – as is the case in rural and regional communities.

The tension is mounting.  Do you get a sense that we are the poor buggers that have been left to carry it all on?  People are getting tired, worn out and penniless.

I have a theory.  It’s about micro economics and its importance in bolstering regional communities.  You could call it grass-roots economics.

Economically we’ve lost our mojo.  Let me explain.

Everyone has heard of the FIFO – fly in fly out workers.

I’ve invented a new one.  The DIDO – drive in drive out workers.

DIDO’s draw vast amounts of money out of regional communities; money that leaves the region to be spent elsewhere.

Arguably, there is several million dollars that no longer circulates in our community.

The slow creeping effect of money leaving our communities with DIDOs has been devastating.

It’s easy to see how this region was uniquely positioned to be directly influenced by the inevitable DIDO phenomenon.

We needed an economic strategy to mitigate the impact.
 

But what if those leading the economic strategy for a region are DIDOs themselves?  Will they see what hurts those left behind in small communities?

Not an easy subject to tackle; but I think it’s important we all understand the dynamics influencing our region, as it has a direct bearing on how well we plan our economic future.

A challenge for the new councillors and one they should be allowed to sink their teeth into.

BTW - Please do not go out and round-up all the DIDOs into the triangle with burning torches.  We are all guilty of by-passing local business now and then.

Business failure is not evidence of market failure.

I recently joined the Global Food Studies program at the University of Adelaide.

We have only scratched the surface on the mountain of economic data and reports to be analysed about the global agribusiness and food industry.

One thing that is already glaringly obvious is the increasing challenge of managing the relationship between the agribusiness and food industry and Government.

The economic rationale for Government intervention in the agribusiness and food industry is very complex, especially now that food trade is almost completely liberalised, globalised and monopolised.

Long story short, most often the best financial outcome for all participants in the food chain is for Governments to simply get out of the way.

Competitive markets will create the most efficient food system. For this to happen markets need to be imperfect, because no one makes any money in markets that are perfectly competitive.

Imperfection means that some businesses will always fail or be absorbed. The fact that businesses fail is not evidence of market failure, requiring Government intervention.

There is a tendency for the agribusiness and food industry to ask for Government intervention to address the symptoms of imperfection.

Should this be the Government’s role? Will it improve the situation?

Leverage is a pre-condition for improving food systems, because it recognises the interrelationships that exist along the food chain.

A leveraged industry is well-capitalised. A well-capitalised industry is capable, productive and profitable.

This shifts the Government’s role to pulling the right economic levers locally, that improve the overall ‘investment setting’ of the agribusiness and food industry.

In today’s world of global business, it is important that individual participants of the agribusiness and food industry work towards improving their position, by understanding the global economic forces now impacting their business.

This is a key area of economic development for regional business in Australia. We need to know what to ask Governments to do. And to be clear on what we don’t want them to do.

Better understanding will help reset some old paradigms about the conversation we need to have with Government, in turn helping Government improve the application of its role.

We can turn our attention to effective policy, rather than the symptoms of being in business.

For what it’s worth, the entire world is currently grappling with this issue.

That just means more reading for me.