How Networking and Reputation Fuel Small Business Growth; with Geoff Brokenshire – Episode 1

Bernard: Welcome to Go Beyond Busy,

the podcast for small business owners who are ready to slow down, breathe,

and bring calm clarity to the way they work and grow their business.

Each episode offers grounded insights and practical strategies

to help you move from chaos to calm, 

and build a business that truly supports your life.

Here’s your host, Christine Abela.

Christine: Welcome to Go Beyond Busy, the show for business owners who want to fall in love with their business all over again. I’m Christine Abela, a business consultant and tech strategist based in New Zealand, and today I’m joined by Geoff Brokenshire from Rangiriri Consultants, who is a health and safety advisor. Hello, Geoff. How are you?

Geoff: Good afternoon, Christine, and good to be here.

Christine: How long have you been in business for Geoff?

Geoff: Since 2013. 

Christine: 2013. So that’s about 12 years. Yep.

So what’s something that you’ve learned about running a business that you wish you’d known earlier, Geoff?

Geoff: Business doesn’t come to you. You’ve gotta go out and get it. People don’t know you when you start a business and, even if you’re in a block of shops with rented premises, people don’t necessarily know what you do or how you do it. And this is even more so when you’re in a home-based business, your home office. You can set up business, but people don’t know you’re there.

They won’t come to you. You’ve gotta go out and hunt for the business and promote yourself. And that’s changed considerably over the time and over the 12 years.

Christine: Yeah.

Geoff: How’s it changed?

When I started business it was a lot of door knocking actually going physically going into businesses and trying to get past the director of first impressions.

And if you did get past them, you generally ran up against a bit of a wall. What the heck do you want? You’re, a door to door salesman type approach. Nowadays you can do a lot of that using social media and that sort of platform. But, you still have to go out and hunt for the business.

You’ve gotta build a reputation. You’ve got to, get into a recognized organization that supports businesses. So that might be business round table, it might be the Chambers of Commerce. Or in my case it was Business Network International. And and that has been a great platform for me to grow.

Supported me really from my very early days. And and my business grew through BNI, as we know it as.

Christine: Cool. So do you find that with BNI, you still have to go out and do more prospecting outside BNI or is it reduced?

Geoff: Yes. You still have to keep up your traditional type of prospecting. Although through BNI, we get a lot of qualified referrals.

And so it’s not a cold lead. It’s a warm lead. And often the people are already primed for the phone call to come, the introduction, that sort of thing.

And they’re already warm because somebody else has recommended and asked to be introduced, to introduce me to somebody. Yeah. It’s a little bit different to cold calling. Warm calling. You’re already qualified. They’ve already got some understanding of who it is on the other end of the line, who’s ringing, and that actually makes the approach a little easier. Yes, once you get into contact, you have to promote yourself, explain yourself. Build that reputation within that person’s mind that yes, they want to engage with you or whatever it might be. Obviously with health and safety, they have a idea in mind what they need or something has triggered their requirement for health and safety advice.

But. That’s the starting point. And often as a result of that initial conversation other things come out of the woodwork and you realize that you’ve got a major project on your hands. Yeah, that’s how it goes.

Christine: You and I met through BNI with just full disclosure to anybody who’s listening. So you and I know each other through BNI. We are both members of the same BNI chapter. What would you say to somebody who doesn’t know about BNI, who’s thinking about doing something like that? Is it hard to find a chapter that you can get into?

How does it work? What do you do?

Geoff: Yeah. BNI is a global organization. There’s over 340,000 members globally. And we pass more than $US28 billion in business between us on an annual basis.

In New Zealand, little over 3000 members and 500 plus members in Canterbury alone. So it’s not difficult to find a chapter. There are 22 chapters in Canterbury. And there’s another one that has been formed at the moment. The only qualifier is that, there is only one person that occupies a business category within the chapter.

And for some of those categories, they are really hot numbers. And so getting into BNI can be a little difficult. People like real estate, insurance, accountants, those are the really hot ones to try and get into. But in most cases, chapters have got options around the classifications that with a little bit of tweaking we can get most people into a chapter.

Christine: And the chapter that you and I belong to is a little bit special, a little bit different. How? How is that?

Geoff: Most chapters are in person chapters, so they meet typically at 7:00 AM for a breakfast meeting at a hotel or at some venue. BNI Breaking Boundaries is an online chapter. You can be anywhere in the country, you can be anywhere in the world and still meet with the chapter. So we have members that live in Japan, for instance.

Whanagrei, Hawkes Bay. 

Christine: I’m gonna be in Sydney in two weeks time and attend my

Geoff: yeah.

Christine: meeting.

Geoff: Exactly. And so will I be because, ’cause I’m in Sydney at the same event as you are,

Christine: Coincidentally. Coincidentally,

Geoff: coincidentally Yeah. Not by design. Yeah.

Christine: Okay.

Geoff: We can interact with people from all around the world. This year I’ve interacted through BNI Yokohama in their monthly global meeting.

And from there I have met BNI members and business people throughout Asia and up into Europe. I was speaking to a gentleman from Germany earlier this week. And this was the connection through BNI. Yeah, so we really are a worldwide business environment really, and becoming even more. . With tools like Zoom and online platforms you can do a lot of business without leaving the comfort of your office.

Christine: Tell me about your business. So when we have a BNI chapter meeting, we all do something called a 60 seconds presentation. Can you give me an example of one of your 60 seconds presentations that might explain what you do and what you’re looking for.

Geoff: Yes. How do you start something like that? 

I usually start with kia ora. Now that’s a Maori word for welcome. So kia ora, Geoff from Rangiriri Consultants, your local health and safety advisor. So that puts everything in perspective. Then I will go on and explain something about my business, such as the key building blocks for health and safety is identification of hazards and risks and controlling them.

Everything around the legislation and standards, best practices, approved codes of practice, and all the documentation is there basically to support those two building blocks. My role as an advisor is to interpret all those documents and the legislation and stuff in a practical way so that you, the business person, can have peace of mind that you are meeting the requirements for your business.

Christine: And so what sort of clients would you be looking for?

Geoff: I’m looking for people in manufacturing. construction, agriculture, even home-based businesses. Because health and safety covers everybody who is in business in New Zealand. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a home-based administrative type of business or somebody that’s creating widgets in their garage, right through to the multinationals.

Yeah, New Zealand is a small business country. 95% of small businesses in New Zealand have 20 or less people, and in fact 10 or less people. And these are the folk that often are working in the business during business hours and then working on their business after hours.

And so this is where I can come in handy. I can be that extra pair of hands to help you meet that legislative requirement, the compliance aspect of health and safety for you. I can help you develop your processes and that sort of thing.

Christine: You mentioned that you’d been to some BNI meetings in Yokohama and other parts of the world. So does that mean that you can actually work with people outside New Zealand as well?

Geoff: Yes, I can. There’s an international standard. It’s known as ISO 4501. And because it’s international, I can apply that to any business in the world.

I need to educate myself on local law to make sure that it is customized to the local environment.

The framework is there and I can do that. New Zealand and Australia are based on the same laws and are very close. So there is not a whole lot of difference between New Zealand and Australian conditions.

So it makes it very easy for me to work with Australian companies. Other places in the world, it is really dependent on local law and it’s just a matter of educating and interpreting that local law so that the final product which will be to the standard, is customized in the correct way to meet that local law.

Christine: One thing that I’ve heard you talking about in BNI and privately is that you specialize in, you have a knowledge of hazardous substances. Can you tell me about what’s a hazardous substance and how does that make things different with health and safety?

Geoff: Okay, so hazardous substances are chemicals. Managing chemicals. They’re the things that – they might be gases, they might be liquids, they might be solids – but they’re the things that a lot of us come up against in household cleaners and things like that in dilute solutions. But companies who make these products are making them out of concentrates and they have huge capacity to create not only physical damages, but health damage and things like that.

So they are hazardous to health, hazardous to the environment, hazardous to equipment. And it’s essential to manage those things in the correct way to minimize that adverse effect. And I have a background in industrial chemistry, which makes me uniquely knowledgeable of how to treat these things in the right way.

Christine: Very cool. So how can people get in touch with you? I can put some links under the video, but how would you like people to contact you?

Geoff: You can contact me through my website,

Rangiriri.kiwi.nz.

You can email me again through the website. Or you can phone me there’s a phone button on my website and you can phone me directly from there on my cell phone number.

Yeah.

Christine: Thank you very much. That’s very cool. So thank you very much for joining me today. So if you are listening and you’re thinking you need a bit of help getting your business humming, head to GoBeyondBusy.com to book a business strategy with me. Thank you very much.

Geoff: Thank you.