When Joyce Hayward first started Fusion 4 Business five years ago, she was focused on helping small businesses with their accounting and bookkeeping.

But during the pandemic, the former accountant-general found herself doing almost as much counselling as number crunching.

“Accountants have been very busy during the pandemic,” she said. “We became frontline workers. A lot of businesses did not know how to shift or pivot.”

And she said that in order to access government assistance, small businesses had to prove that they were legitimate in the eyes of the Government. They had to provide business plans, pay their taxes and bring their accounts up to date.

“That turned a lot of businesses upside down,” she said.

To help them, she turned to knowledge she had gained working in banking in the United States at the beginning of her career.

“Because of the banking experience, I was very familiar with business plans and projections,” she said.

To help local entrepreneurs she launched a profit freedom round table.

“Once a week we could talk about things and people could come and give them advice about how they handled this or that,” she said.

She found that it really helped entrepreneurs to bounce ideas off one another.

The round table was so successful that she is now offering regular boot camps, workshops and conferences designed to help entrepreneurs to strengthen their businesses while maintaining their quality of life.

“The pandemic has shown a lot of people what is important,” she said. “A lot of business owners are in the grind, but you have to have some time for your mind to relax or you will get burnt out. I am trying to help businesses realise that you should have some freedom in your life and enjoy it as you are doing and building your business.”

She will be offering a Growth and Profits Simplified boot camp from December 6 to 10 and Growth and Profits Simplified Advanced later in the month.

“The GPS programme helps entrepreneurs get started on the path to greater profitability,” she said. “The four-day boot camp (one hour per night for four consecutive nights) will help business owners see where they may be going in a direction that isn't profitable or is not as profitable as it needs to be for their business to be successful.”

The GPS Advanced programme is for those who need to delve deeper into the areas that were identified in the GPS boot camp. The GPS Advanced is one night a week for four weeks.

Ms Hayward’s programmes contain a lot of the wisdom she has been preaching for years.

For example, one of her recommendations to small businesses is to replant a portion of every dollar back into the business.

“One of my clients called me,” Ms Hayward said. “She had a retail store front. She said when the pandemic came she did not have to worry. She had funds for three to six months of her bills in an account because she had been following that advice. She said, ‘Joyce, I am so glad a year-and-a-half ago you told me about it. Now I am okay. I would have had to close my business but I can make it through’.”

Ms Hayward has hired other people to help her with the accounting while she focuses on developing her programmes.

“In this second phase of my business, I am looking to help people understand that what makes them tick is what makes their business tick,” she said. “They need to bring their energy and greatness to their business. I am looking at how they do that and make sure they are profitable.”

Earlier this month she held her first Profit Freedom conference.

“It went very well,” she said. “I have had a lot of feedback from it. It made me understand even more the importance of the ‘purple’, or personal uniqueness, that I bring for my client.”

She also launched a book in September, Profit Freedom: How to Avoid the Mistakes that Cause 60% of Business Owners to have No Money and No Time.

fusion4business.com