Most business owners I meet are working incredibly hard. I’ve learned to ask not how hard they’re working, but where that energy goes.
After 30 years of owning and coaching accounting practices, I’ve come to think of a business like a training program. It needs four kinds of energy, and the best results come when all four get attention.
Growth: the fun part
Strategising, planning, dreaming up the next PB. This is where the excitement lives, and where most of us naturally spend our time. There’s nothing wrong with that; growth is why most people go into business in the first place.
Implementation: where consistency turns the plan into results
A plan only matters if it becomes daily practice. Implementation is the systems, the data and the routines that turn good intentions into actual outcomes. It’s less glamorous than planning, but it’s where the plan gets real.
Protection: guarding what growth has built
In a training program, this is the screening and recovery work that stops a niggle becoming an injury. In a business, it’s your structure, your assets, your succession plans and the safeguards around your family’s wealth. It’s the energy most owners give the least attention, until something forces the question.
Compliance: the fitness test
Tax, BAS, super and the ATO. In training terms, it’s the test that proves you’re eligible to keep competing. Getting it wrong can cost you a great deal, but getting it right is only the starting point, not the outcome.
Why we’re speaking up about protection now
Protection has always been part of how we look after our clients. What’s different is how loudly we’re going to talk about it. Accounting and tax are still mostly framed around compliance: lodge on time, pay as little tax as possible, repeat next year. That matters, but it leaves out the bigger question: is everything you’ve built actually protected?
We’re speaking up for two reasons. First, we’re seeing more and more of the cost of set-and-forget structuring: structures chosen at start-up, under time pressure, that no longer fit the business, the assets or the family sitting under them. Second, the May 2026 Federal Budget proposed significant changes for discretionary trusts, including a 30% minimum tax from 1 July 2028. These changes are proposed, not yet law, but they make it essential to look at protection and compliance together, and to do it now rather than in a rush later.
Nobody skips leg day and calls the physio appointment optional. Yet most businesses train only one of the four energies. Protection and compliance don’t become less important just because they’re less exciting. That’s the thinking behind our theme for the months ahead: build it hard, protect it harder.
Justin has already written about why your structure shouldn’t be set and forget. Next, he’ll look at where structure sits between protection and compliance. If you’d like a head start, download our free Entity Structure Guide, or get in touch for a conversation.
Author of the Post:
Samantha Dean
Sam Dean is a Chartered Accountant with more than 20 years’ experience in public practice.
General information only. This article does not take into account your personal circumstances and is not advice. Please speak with us before acting.
