Hey, welcome back to Vision Pros. I've got Hector
Bassett with me today, all the way from New Zealand.
Hector, welcome to the show. I'm thrilled to
meet you. Would you introduce yourself a little
bit, please? Thanks very much, Sue. It's great
to be here. Yeah, I'm Hector Bassett. I'm Managing
Director of Davidson Fraser Limited. Davidson
Fraser is their family names. I started the business
about 15 years ago. It's the middle names of
our two oldest boys. And we started the business
before we had our third son, who's now starting
to ask me questions about why his name isn't
in the business. The Davidson also has family
connotations through my side of the family and
Fraser through my wife's side of the family.
So part of my vision was to have a business that...
worked for me and that served people but worked
for me um and as a lifestyle so uh the name was
important to um keep my bigger context in mind
all the time oh that's great what a great reminder
then if you're hearing you know part of your
mission statement or your your motivation for
building it if you're hearing it every time you
say your company name that's pretty cool yes
yeah yeah And so briefly, the business, my background's
in tax accounting, so we help small businesses,
even though it's different in the US, excuse
me, even though it's different in the US, the
principles are the same as far as tax goes. I'm
also a business coach, and part of the issue
with tax is that people's efforts to try and
save tax is counterintuitive to actually... being
more profitable for themselves. So I kind of
really enjoy the conflict and the challenge of
encouraging people to focus a little bit less
on tax and more about generating more revenue,
which is not about the money itself, but it's
about being of service and being good with your
business. Oh, that's great. That makes great
sense. And you're right, there's that tension
always. The best way to pay zero tax would be
to make zero money. That doesn't actually work
so well. It's not a good solution. Well, let's
talk a little bit about this first. So what is
your vision for those people that you're serving?
Look, my vision started about 20 -something years
ago when I was baptized, actually. prophetic
word about being it started off as a leader of
men and the reality is my vision is still an
outworking process and I think that probably
where I've got to with it is I want to help people
be better with their money and it's and it's
partly my faith as well right because there's
a lot of my Christian brothers and sisters think
that money is evil and I don't believe that for
a second it's just how it's just how we measure
so many things whether it's a perfect measure
or not is a whole other question but especially
for business owners if they can get their head
around the money because quite often what happens
is as a trusted advisor they chuck stuff at me
and they want me to take care of everything the
reality is that's very hard to do and what I
try to do is educate people to understand their
finances a bit better understand their money
and There's kind of at least two dynamics going
on at the same time. With money, you've got the
practical outworking of it, money in, money out.
And there's some complexities to that, but really
it's not complex and I can teach that. The other
dynamic that goes on at the same time is what's
going on in here and in our hearts. And the reality
is people have bizarre relationships to money,
including myself. I'm excellent with numbers.
I've always been good with numbers. They've always
made sense to me. Unlike the written word, that's
a bit more complex for me. And how to speak,
sometimes that's a bit more complex as well.
But just because I was good with numbers didn't
make me good with money. And as a young person,
I was terrible with money because I didn't have
a particularly good picture of who I was internally.
And look, I'm not a psychologist or a therapist.
But I've done a lot of that helpful work myself.
And so it's a real challenge to keep focused
sometimes because the reality is how you get
good with money is to look after yourself mentally,
emotionally, physically. And if you're in business,
there's so much to know. And you can't be ignorant.
You have to either learn or buy and get people
around you that are going to help you. So be
good with money is kind of the essence of it.
But I think even just in this brief conversation,
you can see how it's a very dynamic conversation.
But the cash flow in particular, more so than
the profit and loss, the cash flow is a much
more objective view of what the business is doing
as opposed to just the profit and loss. We accountants
can give you the number that you want just about
when it comes to profit and loss, depending on
different accountants will come up with different
profit and loss figures, but cash flow is fairly
a bit more objective. Yeah. Oh, that's amazing.
Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. No, that's
great. And I love that you're addressing the
whole person on this. So it's not just, all right,
yes, I'll take care of your books. It's all done,
the tax. There's so much more. I can imagine
that that vision for serving people, that probably
came from something very deep in you, realizing
there's so much more that they needed that you
could actually provide. Absolutely. See, that's
the thing. I realized, again, about probably
five or six years ago, in my marriage, I was
the one who managed all the money. That's my
wife. Lesson makes more than I do. Brought more
to that. But I managed it all. I knew where it
was all going. And so I got to a point in my
life where I had more money than I ever had.
But it didn't stop me getting stressed every
month about paying my bills and the business.
So it was just a reminder that it's not about
how much you have. It's much more about your
relationship to it. The reality is while there's
a lot in life and in business that we can't control,
there are things that we can control. And having
things like a cash flow forecast and a budget
and thinking about where your money is going
and how you're going to earn it and making some
plans, those are all things you can do something
about and those things all absolutely help. Oh,
that's great. There's definitely a need for that.
A lot of entrepreneurs are very, very, very stressed
over this. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, that's wild.
And then let's talk a little bit about what is
your vision long term for your business? It's
probably a little bit in flux at the moment.
It's been, as we talked about personally, there's
been I've had a lot of. personal circumstances
shift with a separation so I'm refocusing exactly
where we're going but I'm still very keen to
I've developed a cash flow program called Master
Your Money and it's a very fundamental and it's
you know begged and borrowed and stolen from
everybody else's processes right back to sort
of old homestead sort of accounting which is
putting money in different tins and I find with
having different bank accounts people can understand
you know you have if you've got ten thousand
dollars in one bank account you can think you've
got ten thousand dollars but when you actually
start to look at what your commitments are already
you realize there's actually really only a thousand
or maybe actually you might be a negative you
might be in a negative situation to pay your
bills and to taxes etc so My vision for the business
is to continue to develop that process and find
people that really want to engage with it. Because
the reality is, like I said, it's a very practical
process that we're teaching, but the aversion
to it is very much an emotional... and a mind
game kind of thing. And the reality is some people
aren't ready to engage with that. And right now
in New Zealand, like a lot of parts of the world,
economically, it's a strange time. And people,
so you've got to deal with all that stuff. So
the vision is to continue to develop the cash
flow program. And I think there's a different...
As much as I'm a bit of an old -fashioned geezer,
there's some technology that I possibly need
to engage with. But, yeah, so I'm just in the
process of, in particular, the coaching services
and exactly how we offer those so that we can
really help more people get better with their
money. Oh, that's fantastic. How are people finding
you? Well, we've got a website. And again, we're
in a state of doing a little bit more on social
media. I'm sure I'm not alone in this. The whole
COVID experience really messed with many, many
businesses. And being someone who cares for other
business owners and a soft -hearted kind of feller
anyway, The last five years have been massively
challenging, massively challenging. And I've
gone from having the business be mostly just
local people and dealing with face -to -face.
So for the best part of three years, you couldn't
really make plans to see people. And so I've
kind of... Again, my old -fashioned style has
gone kicking and screaming into the online world,
and I'm starting to embrace that a little bit
more. So, yeah, we've got a Facebook page, and
again, reluctantly, we've got an Instagram page
and Pinterest, so I can share that information
with you if you like. Oh, that's great. That's
good. Wonderful. Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision
Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing your
reactions as these episodes continue to move
forward. This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a vision pro yourself.