Better Business Coaching

Is It Time To Change Your Business Approach?

Where would we be without the World Wide Web and Modern Technology?

You would not be reading this business coaching blog and we would all be oceans apart in terms of accessible information in relation to many areas of our lives.

For Better or For Worse, In Sickness and in Health

Libraries would be busier, local high streets would not have so many empty shops,  obesity and heart disease may not be such a threat to our nations health; outdoor leisure and exercise would be more entertaining than a Wii! Divorce rates would not be so high – last year, it was documented that 50% of Britains divorces were as a result of social networking sites!

Grammar would be better, rather than abbreviated writing as written English; children would be out playing and their interpersonal skills would be more advanced; public houses would not be closing down at an alarming rate – thanks to social networking sites and instant messaging. Also, we would not have to listen to peoples conversations on their mobile phones when on a train, albeit, some of them are quite entertaining, just to help break up the journey! These are just a few of the downsides to modern technology!

Now for the bonus sides – We do not have to go out shopping in the pouring rain or snow and we can make purchases at more competitive rates. We can bank and pay bills on line. We can access valuable information at any time. We can visit many countries from our living room in order to decide where we want to holiday. We can study at home. We can contact friends and family abroad. We can listen to a wide variety of music. We can read any information we desire. We can catch up on current affairs. We can advertise our business’ much more easily, in fact, we can click away to our hearts content.

We need to change, change is inevitable, therefore, we need to consider how we adapt both in business and personally with an abundance of consideration for the consumer and for our loved ones. Everything is temporary and we need to adapt in order to survive to the ever changing world of modern technology.

E Commerce will be the Future!

Whether we like it or not, technology is the future, in our life time anyway, as long as our fuel resources can cope and we are most definitely buying more and more on line.  Can your business cope with this change, or do you need to change your business approach in order to adapt?

Business Coaching Questions

• What do you need to change in your business approach in order to adapt?
• How will your consumer benefit from the changes?
• Do you need to update your skills in order to adapt?
• Does your company have a website? If so, how do you advertise your website?
• Does your business name reflect what your business sells?

Fail to plan, Plan to fail. Be cautious in your decision making processes and take your time and research the trends that match your business ideas. SMART planning is the way forward.

The Steps To Success

1. Have yourself a goal.

2. Take Action

3. Notice what is working and what is not working.

4. Change direction if it is not working.

5. Never lose sight of your goal.

Fear Of The Unknown

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

It is well documented and recognised that the UK has become a Service Industry. The Industrial Revolution is a part of our history and many skilled workers have needed to adapt to the current service industry trend, along with the business world. By acknowledging this need to adapt to the changing environment, many people have needed to learn new skills or up-skill their transferable skills in order to survive.

Have you ever stopped and considered the skills you are selling to your customers?

Products speak for themselves and advertising plays a huge part in selling products, but skills are less evident, if you do not sell them well enough.

Culturally, we are not comfortable with being confident with our skills. We have received many negative messages in regards to celebrating our skills confidently, for example; ‘Who do you think you are?’ or ‘Nobody likes a show off?’. Well employers and the consumer DO like a ‘show off’, because how on earth can you gain others confidence or respect by being a ‘shrinking violet?’.

There are an abundance of skills you possess and need to acknowledge daily and celebrate openly, in order to gain the confidence of the consumer to buy into your service.

Skills Analysis

Write down a list of your skills, no matter how great or small. Then write down your Strengths, then your Attitude and finally your Areas for Development.  Once you have acknowledged all of these, you will be able to sell your skills and strengths more enthusiastically. You must also consider you Attitude to your business and then also enable yourself to work on those that need developing. Life is a journey of development. We are what we think. Our attitude to ourselves and our service/products are paramount for success.

I continue to inform my clients that we all have an abundance of skills we now take for granted. We all learned how to drive a car or ride a bike or communicate our needs or learn a skill specific to our business. Do we take these skills for granted now we do them without due care or consideration? Our skills base are our biggest asset, along with the skills base or any employee’s.

It is important that your skills match the need of the customer or employer you are targeting.  Positive and Confident Skills Matching, is the key to your success.

Confidence Conditioning

Remember you have been conditioned to be quietly confident or not confident at all. This is not what the customer wants. They want to buy a confident service provider….so come on all you quiet confident people out there….get loud and proud. Sell your skills and more importantly, connect and be consistent with your Confidence.

Self Limiting Beliefs

You were born Confident and throughout your lifetime, will continue to make many mistakes and will pick yourself up, dust yourself down, and continue to thrive, only if you consider what your Self Limiting Beliefs are. Once you have recognised them, can you begin to overcome them.

Here are a couple of common Self Limiting Beliefs:-

I am not as good as others.
I am never going to make it.
My dreams are just dreams.

Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent. ~Eleanor Roosevelt

Muhammad Ali always told himself and the world….“I am the Greatest”. “I am the World Heavyweight Champion”. He continued to repeat these messages to the world before he became exactly that….He was the Greatest and became World Heavyweight Champion. ‘What We Think We Become’. Ali’s beliefs were solid in his mindset, due to continual Positive Conditioning from his mother.

I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was.
Muhammad Ali

We must not continually rely on others to provide us with continual Positive Conditioning. We must rely on ourselves 24/7 and become independent in our Belief and Goal setting.

Positive messages to our minds are fundamental for physical and emotional wellbeing along with ongoing Personal Development and Success.

What are you waiting for?

When weighing up the pros and cons of running a business using cloud technology, the main issues to examine are accessibility, security, cost and impact on the environment. To take these in order, let us consider the benefits in terms of how the cloud makes access to computer data and software easier, since with the cloud everything is reached and stored on the Internet, rather than on one’s personal computer or office server.

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.

After years of profligacy fueled by cheap and easily accessible debt, the pendulum has swung to the other extreme, and the new mantra is “cost-cutting”. In the current climate, it is true that cost-cutting is extremely important, but it cannot be an end by itself. Moreover, without a clearly defined objective, you could easily end up cutting muscle instead of fat.

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.