Step 6 of Building a Better Business

Anna Stubbs • August 2, 2023

Be a better leader; build a strong workplace culture

Being a better leader and building a strong workplace culture is crucial to having a better business.



Have you ever considered whether your workplace is toxic? With the average person spending more than 40,000 hours of their life at work, a workplace should be an enjoyable place to be.

We all have bad days, but if the following bells ring… your workplace may be toxic.

1. A lack of trust between owners and the team.
Is there a sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’? Everyone should feel part of the team.

2. No Core Values.
Or, worse still, Core Values which aren’t being lived into.

3. After meeting meetings.
Those chats after a meeting where team members go on to discuss the meeting or criticise decisions made.

4. Highly stressful interactions.
Disagreements will happen from time to time, but these should be the exception, not the norm.

5. Team members and owners mistreating each other.
They may be working in self-serving ways rather than benefiting the team and business.

6. No team buy-in to the core purpose or the business's goals.
Or, an absence of purpose or goals completely.

To create a stronger and happier workplace culture, consider the following points:

  1. Develop your Core Values, with help from your team.
  2. Define your purpose; why you exist for your customers - and make it clear to your team how their roles deliver on your purpose.
  3. Make your Core Values and purpose highly visible so your team know them and hold each other accountable to living into them.
  4. Set annual and 90 day goals for each team member so that the sum of the individuals’ goals can deliver on your overall Business Plan.
  5. Celebrate success and recognise team members for great performance.
  6. Meet regularly with the team and give everyone the chance to be heard.
  7. Avoid being held ransom by toxic employees by showing them the ‘door of opportunity’.


A toxic culture will inhibit the success of your business. Take an honest look at your culture and make changes to help build a strong workplace culture.


Need help developing your Core Values or your purpose? We can help!


“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” - Peter Drucker

By Anna Stubbs October 6, 2025
It can be lonely at the top when you're running your own business. As the owner manager, the buck stops with you and that can result in all the pressures of financial management, people management, strategy and business performance ending on your shoulders.  To ease this pressure, it's helpful to have a business coach. A coach can look at your business objectively as an outsider, will act as a professional shoulder to lean on, and can help you to focus on and enhance your business ideas, strategy and longer-term tactics as an owner.
By Anna Stubbs October 6, 2025
Keeping on top of the financial management of your business can be hard work. It's possible to have a profitable business that is struggling to find the cash flow to pay expenses and fund growth. Likewise, you could have positive cash flow but are not turning a profit, particularly if you are scaling. Turning a profit is at the heart of running any successful company But without an even and predictable flow of cash into the company, you can't cover your overheads, you can't pay your employees and you can't run your day-to-day operations – let alone think about expanding and growing the business. In the end, you need both. But if you’re going to be in control of your financial destiny, it’s important to get your head around the important process of cash flow management.
By Anna Stubbs October 6, 2025
A solopreneur running a complete and viable one-person business is no longer a pipedream. Sam Altman, the co-founder of Open AI, was recently quoted as saying that a one-person, billion-dollar business could be possible by 2026-2028, using tools like GPT-5 and the other generative AI tools that allow individuals to create and manage AI agents. The idea that one person, a solo CEO and entrepreneur, could generate that kind of capital on their own, would have seemed crazy less than a decade ago. But with the power of AI and the accessibility of flexible coding tools and AI agents, it’s actually a real possibility. Let’s look at how a one-person business could work, and how the basic business model differs from the traditional tech start-up model that we’ve known for so many decades.