How often do we step into the Abyss? Do we ever know what’s around the corner? The answer to this question, is quite simply NO!

Ok, so we all have to begin at the beginning!  Any new business has to start somewhere. Planning is essential.

Business Coaching is pure and simple, it is all about Questioning.

Socrates, in my opinion, was the first documented Coach and a great one at that!  If I could have sat in the shelter of an olive tree, from the intense Greek heat and listen to Socrates teachings, I would give my right leg to have that privilege. Plato was a genius to document his teachings. Socrates was a genius and his most loyal student Plato, recognised the genius!

‘When the student is ready, the teacher will appear’ ~ Buddhist Proverb

Questions enable us to expand our minds and to seek within us, the Solutions to our Challenges.  We are the experts on ourselves and our business ideas, no one else can provide us with the Solutions to our Challenges. We are the Experts on ourselves the Coach enables you the Expert to set goals and seek the options and opportunities available to you. We have all of the solutions locked inside, we just need someone to come along with the key.  The key, is Questioning.

Some Valuable Business Development Questions

•    What do you want to achieve?
•    Who is your target audience?
•    Is there a niche you can target?
•    Do you have specialist knowledge and skills in order to target a niche market?
•    How are you going to get noticed?
•    Where do you see yourself in five years time?
•    How are you going to get there?

We all have a passion

•    What is your passion?
•    Does your passion reflect the service you are selling?
•    Could this passion direct you toward a niche?

Time to ponder me thinks!

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought.
The mind is everything. What we think we become.”
~ The Buddha

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an
act, but a habit.” ~ Aristotle

“The only good luck many great men ever had was being
born with the ability and determination to overcome
bad luck.” ~ Channing Pollock

“The brain can be developed just the same as the muscles
can be developed, if one will only take the pains to train
the mind to think.” -Thomas A. Edison

“The mind moves in the direction of our currently dominating
thought.” ~Earl Nightingale

EnJoy

The first and most obvious advantage is that the personnel of a company can have access to the firm’s data at any time and from any location, wherever there is an Internet connection. That, increasingly, really means everywhere.

Access is closely linked to security and it is here that one of the drawbacks is encountered. Naturally, the forward-thinking business owner who wishes to consider ‘cutting the cord’ with the grid and opting for the cloud worries about how easily confidential material ‘floating’ somewhere could be accessed.

In order to give oneself the peace of mind that data is no less safe when one has switched to the cloud, find a reliable provider.

Cloud computing services can help with this.Worth finding out from your proposed provider is whether they have an external security standards company monitoring the systems that they oversee for security breaches.

As for fears of loss of data, choose a provider which automatically backs up the online data within your in-house system (space permitting), thus ensuring that a copy exists in the office hard drive.

When it comes to costing the cloud’s benefits, a perceived disadvantage is that with software applications and storage facilities are in the hands of a remote provider unwanted costs may be imposed. On the other hand, savings are undoubtedly made in terms of those programmes (and their subsequent upgrades and new versions) that would otherwise have to be purchased. In the cloud, these are the responsibility of the third party provider who, of course, builds them into their annual fixed fee.

The fact that so many applications existing in the cloud are supplied free is a further cost bonus.

As far as the future development of one’s business is concerned, the elimination of concern about computer space can be interpreted as the  freeing up of IT to deal with more strategic and hence profitable business initiatives.

Finally, as hardware requirments reduce, cloud computing contributes to a more sustainable environment.

Instead let us examine what you are trying to achieve by cost-cutting. What you should be trying to achieve are higher productivity and new and better ways to deliver value to your customers. Across the board cost-cutting may, in fact, impair your ability to deliver both. In fact, you may be required to, actually, raise your expenditure in areas such as information technology to take advantage of the new advances and reduce your own operating costs. Doing more with less sometimes involve a long-term trade-off between selective investments now and long-term cost reductions.

What you should be concentrating on is getting the maximum value for your money by improving asset productivity, getting more value for your dollar and maximizing the quality of service or product delivery. A tempting way to start cost-cutting is to try and save money on the employees at the bottom of the ladder. Instead, start cost-cutting at the top and demonstrate to your employees that you are acting out of principle and not convenience. Make sure you understand what the results of the cost-cutting are going to be. For instance, stop traveling first class and look for cheap flights for senior management wherever possible.

And make sure that your employees understand that you are all in the same boat that you sink or swim together. Once they see that you are committed running the business efficiently, and that it is for their own good, you may be pleasantly surprised by the constructive suggestions that they can come up with.

Whether it’s losing a major client, folding a business or not getting a job that you’ve interviewed for, the repercussions on your confidence levels can be devastating.

The internal dialogue can haunt you for a long time and the little voice in your head can scream failure at every new idea you have.  Your thoughts scan every decision made, every conversation had and question your belief in yourself; ‘why did this happen to me?’

Success, however, is not without risk and a successful person has had to overcome temporary defeat at one time or another. Richard Branson is a prime example of someone who has failed multiple times but has bounced back, setting himself a larger and larger challenge every time.

Jo Geraghty, managing Director of “Beyond the Ladder” and one of the UK’s leading coaches for executives and entrepreneurs, is not immune from failure either.

“The first time I lost a client, I was in total disbelief. I quizzed myself; ‘I have lots of happy and satisfied clients who are achieving their objectives, making their targets and are happy with the positive influence I’m having on their life so why did this happen to me?’. I felt that I was using my “guaranteed success formula to coaching”. So, why hadn’t it worked this time?  After this incident, I listed three things that I could do differently next time and decided that my own failure would actually lead to much greater future success. And it did.” explains Jo.

So if you’re dealing with a “failure” what do you need to remember? Jo has three key pieces of advice;

1) You get results where you focus
Your project/business/career/relationships etc. need a 100% of your attention to succeed. If you’re not totally committed to what you’re doing then don’t expect others to be. Focus and refocus on your goals and the steps that you need to turn them into a reality. Taking your eye off the ball is the first step to your downfall.

2) Ask for feedback & accept the need to change
We know what we’re good at, we have case studies galore of things that have gone according to plan but the world evolves, as does the market and our clients. We need to know that we’ll be as good tomorrow as we are today.  Constantly ask for feedback and if your employer/client/partner wants something different, the key to success lies in our ability to adapt.

3) Use the full toolkit
Alas there is no one model or formula for success. You need to use the most appropriate style, skill or technique for each, individual situation. Just because one method may work with one client, don’t assume it will work with all.

Nobody likes to feel that they’ve failed but it really is the only way that we learn. We refine our internal model and do something different next time. Failure is really the very first step to success.

During a presentation to some senior managers on time management the trainer said “OK, it’s time for a quiz.”

He then put on the table a large wide-mouthed jar.  He set this next to a plate of  large rocks.  “How many of these rocks do you think we can get in the jar?”” he asked.  After the delegates had made their guess, he said “OK, let’s find out.”  He set one rock in the jar…then another…then another until the jar was full. He then asked, “Is this jar full?”.  All the delegates looked at the rocks and said, “Yes”.

He then said “Ahhh.”  He reached under the table and pulled out a bucket of gravel and then poured some gravel in and shook the jar and the gravel went in all the spaces left by the big rocks.  Then he grinned and said once more, “Is the jar full?”.  The reply back was “No”.

He said “Good” and grabbed a jug of water and began to pour it in.  He got something like a pint of water in that jar.  The he said, “Well what’s the point?”  Someone said, “Well, there are gaps, and if you work really hard you can always fit some more things into your life.”

“No, that is not the point.  The point is this; if you hadn’t put these big rocks in first, would you ever have gotten any of them in?”

The ‘big rocks’ are, of course, a metaphor for the important things in your life and that if you don’t consciously make room for the important things, they will be overwhelmed by the less important things.

What are the ‘big rocks’ in your business?  Your customers, your marketing, your employees?  Whatever your ‘big rocks’ are, do make sure that these are the things that you prioritise and put into your schedule first.

Carole Davidson is an Executive Business Coach