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The Golden Circle

Anna Stubbs • April 14, 2023

Do you understand your ‘why’? Does your team understand it? How about your customers? Your ‘why’ is why your business exists for your customers (and it’s not to make a profit!).


Your ‘why’ forms the centre of The Golden Circle - a concept developed by Simon Sinek in his book, Start With Why. The Golden Circle challenges us to examine the emotional core of what makes our team and customers buy into a company. The next layer is your ‘how’ and the outer layer is your ‘what’.


Everyone knows what they do, some know how they do it, but few actually know why. Success is more likely when we think, act and communicate from the inside out, starting with why.


Your ‘why’ is simply the most important message for marketing your business. It’s your purpose. You should be able to articulate this in seven words or less and it should be broad enough to reflect what you do but not be specific to your current product or service offering. In other words, your purpose should still apply in 100 years.


Consider Tesla’s purpose as an example: to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. This doesn’t limit them to electric vehicles and allows for growth opportunities within the whole sustainable energy industry. When you’ve defined your ‘why’, you can then move to the next layer of The Golden Circle - ‘how’.


Your ‘how’ is your unique selling proposition; what makes you different from your competitors. In other words, how you deliver on your ‘why’. Perhaps yours speaks to quality, delivery speed, cost effectiveness or other reasons why a customer should choose you. Your ‘how’ is what customers can expect every time they do business with you.


The final layer of the circle is your ‘what’. This is obvious to your team and your customers - the products or services you sell. It’s easier to articulate your ‘what’ than your ‘how’ or ‘why’, hence most businesses focus on this first.


By focusing on your ‘why’, you’ll develop an emotional connection with your customers; and they’re likely to buy based on emotion. By acting, thinking, and communicating from the inside of The Golden Circle out, you’ll attract the right fit customers who will become raving advocates.


If you need help implementing The Golden Circle in your business, get in touch.


“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” - Simon Sinek

Making Tax Digital to be extended to more sole traders and landlords

By Anna Stubbs • April 9, 2025
Hiding in the HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) announcements published on 26 March was a technical note entitled ‘Modernising the tax system through Making Tax Digital‘. This note announces that the income threshold for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax & Self Assessment (or MTD for ITSA) is to drop to £20,000 per annum for sole traders and landlords. If you fall into this category, this means moving your tax completely over to digital by April 2026. But don’t worry, let’s see what MTD for ITSA is all about.

Reducing the uncertainty: financial forecasting and planning

By Anna Stubbs • April 9, 2025
Uncertainty can be a major threat to your strategic financial planning. Being unsure of what lies around the corner makes it difficult to make those important financial decisions around operational budgets, investment and growth funding. But by using forecasting and scenario-planning, you make it easier to manage your finances and reduce some of the financial uncertainty.

What's new in Xero (Spring 2025)

By Anna Stubbs • April 9, 2025
Some great new enhancements have come to Xero in the first few months of the year, here's some important features that have been released: Enhancements to the new invoicing Keyboard shortcuts. Drag and drop attachments. Date Picker quick select. Exchange rate adjustments in the invoice. Tracking categories for invoices. Automated bill entry The ability to upload bills directly to Xero, create one or many bills by dragging and dropping multiple files. Xero creates draft bills with the key details, and the original document is attached. Other important features (region dependent) Bank feed updates (Australia adds Suncorp Bank, United States gains PNC Commercial). Simplified whole operations with improved sales orders (United States). Easier 1099 reporting and filing (United States). Streamlined tax workflow and compliance (United Kingdom). Easier reporting (United States Schedule C compliance report, New Zealand not-for-profit tier 3 & 4 PBE reports). For the full breakdown read Xero's update .
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