Consulting/Coaching

Ray has enabled me to establish a performance driven culture within my business.

The implementation of a KPI system has driven greater accountability among my staff, resulting in increased efficiency across the business. His role as a business coach had been extremely valuable for me as a business owner in making strategic business decisions.

We employed the services of Ray Hodge to increase the effectiveness of our management team and also to assist in our ambitious goal of doubling our business within the next three years. Ray’s work and the associated outcomes have been significant resulting in:

• taking our current management team (who were already good at what they did) to the next level of maturity in their roles and personal confidence. This also involved the clarification and alignment of their future roles in relation to our expansion plans and repositioning accordingly
• dealing with the ‘dead wood’ in the place
• increased clarity on the strategic direction of the company which has resulted in two new acquisitions and one joint venture, improving revenues by a projected 12% in the short to mid term
• approximately 50% shift in our account managers sales performance

It is also worth noting that I have increased time to work on the future of the business given that I now have a team who continue to carry on with the day to day business affairs.

This is a testament to the services of Ignite Business Consulting and more particularly Ray Hodge.

I have worked with Ray for in excess of 18 months for a combination of one-on-one coaching as well as participation in his course, Business in the Cellar. I chose to do both the one-on-one and group coaching to give me a broader range of skills. Rays individual consulting work has assisted in keeping me focused, setting up systems and reviewing budgets to keep my firm’s ‘producers’ accountable. Ray has also assisted greatly in providing advice and support during a transition period where the previous business owner left under unfavourable circumstances. The result for this last financial year is an approximate 25% increase in turnover when compared to the previous 2 financial years. Prior to working with Ray, the business had seen no growth or increase in staff performance. I would not hesitate to recommend the services of Ray and Ignite Business Consulting to any business owner looking to increase productivity and profitability through the services of a supportive and knowledgeable coach

Ray Hodge was engaged to help the directors of Roberts & Cowling analyse their business with an objective party.

In our first meeting Ray asked us to analyse our processes and as such designed a process map. This enabled us to identify bottle necks and design new efficient systems to overcome these bottlenecks. Ray then assisted us to establish and put in place these systems. In honesty we knew some of the systems were needed prior to Ray’s engagement however, having a third party discussing our business made it a matter of priority to put these in place. The third party accountability established by meeting with Ray made sure these systems were established and that we continued to work on the business.

This process helped us, with Ray’s assistance develop a vision statement of continual improvement. All staff have become engaged and business seems so much easier. Ray’s services made David Cowling and I continually evaluate the business, not just working in it doing the same thing day in day out. The business now is growing rapidly with a motivated team that reminds me of why I wanted to run my own business in the beginning. It has brought back excitement and a feeling of self-worth and accomplishment

We recently met with Ray and embarked on his services to help turn our Electrical Contracting Business around from a 2 year slump.

We have used the services of business consultants prior but, while I found this insightful, my husband found it too “wishy washy” for him and did not trust that good vibes and little work was going to turn our business around.

Meeting with Ray was a reality check that sometimes it takes a lot of focus and old fashioned hard work to get the job done. Our time spent with Ray was focusing on positive marketing strategies that didn’t involve loads of cash flow (as in a slump there is no cash flow). This was done in three sessions and has definitely set us in the right direction and mind-set to make this work. We cut back on our marketing costs, which more than covered Ray’s consultant fee, and have 4 direct strategies to work with that are tailored to the direction we want to take the business.

I am pleased to say that we are currently experiencing a “boom” time in our business and look forward to continue putting in place the strategies to continue to grow our business.

When Ray initially began working with us we had significant challenges and bottlenecks in the areas of paperwork and cashflow. I felt like I was behind all the time.

Over a period of a few months, systems were created and implemented, our tradesmen adopted the new way of doing things, invoicing was happening quicker and the chaos started to ease. What is significant that we couldn’t see at the time is that the results in cashflow turnaround enabled us to fund a million dollar job that we could never have done previously out of business funds.

We would like to thank Ray for his support and guidance to iWater over the last three months.

Ray helped us focus our basic and sometimes vague marketing ideas into practical steps, helping us make a marketing program and therefore making it easier to manage, achievable and on target. We are already seeing the benefits!

Ray’s vast knowledge of challenges facing small, family run businesses enabled him to quickly get a handle on our needs and we feel better equipped moving forward.

We look forward to working with Ray again in the future.

Ray Hodge spoke at many of our events in last years industry briefing nights.

I could tell he knew what he was talking about and was able to keep the members fully engaged in his presentation. His speaking led us to request that he work with the association to consult to our sales and marketing department. Apart from the significant improvement from his work with us he also identified key future areas to help us in our ongoing quest for to be the industry leaders.

Our work with Ray, over an approximate 4 month period focused primarily on streamlining our systems and processes, my personal time management, ensuring we had the appropriate employees performing the work that I didn’t want to do, and then the recording of key result areas.

I have to say that having Ray consult to us resulted in a more streamlined business with processes in place that has made it possible to hire office staff and what’s all the more pleasing (given that Ray is no longer consulting to us) is that I am now working less hours per day, overseeing the operations, with the business continuing to do exceptionally well. Additionally when I am ready for the next phase to grow the business to the next level I will be getting Ray back to assist me with this.

Ray’s help has been invaluable...

We have worked with Ray Hodge these past eight months. Our business had grown to a point where we really needed assistance with the systems and related people who interacted with the various procedures.

Ray’s help has been invaluable in that we have achieved a more fully process driven business with significant reductions in turnaround time frames, particularly relating to administration, with quoting times reduced by half. Increased role and responsibility clarification of staff and management along with the introduction of a new job management system Ray introduced us to has also helped this to become reality. His ability to spot the key issues has been immensely helpful and are grateful for his assistance.