Recently, there have been some pretty significant changes at Chandler Coaches. Namely, there is a new CEO on board and she has a reputation for being pretty demanding. Lali Chandler took her position on March 5, 2011 Since coming on board, staff report large scale changes at the company.
For one, there has been no client service provided since she made her debut! This was a planned stoppage and will continue for the coming months while the new leader and her staff adjust.
Since joining, Chandler has replaced the entire senior management team with her own recruits. Most hail from Canada though one relocated from the US to join Chandler Coaches.
See below for introductions to the new team.
(I am writing this post with Lali in a kangaroo wrap on my chest. This post is really just a trial to see if I can continue to blog as the mother of an infant. It is my third attempt to complete the post over a two day period. And while it looks promising that I will be able to press “publish” soon, I am learing that things can change at any moment. My new little CEO is demanding in a way that only infants can be. Happily, she is adorable and charming which makes “working” for her a labour of love. And I am going to press publish in the next minute or so even if this post is not well edited..it is that or nothing for now.)
For some related posts that are not tongue in cheek ( am having trouble finding good articles..there must be better ones out there?):
My coaching business has been in hibernation for one week. This is intentional as I am due to have a baby around March 4th (that’s in 5-6 days). I have been planning my “leave of absence” for a very long time. At times I have worried that creating a baby and a business at the same time were completely incompatible. At other times, I have felt strongly that they are complimentary projects.
It only occurred to me as I write this post to search for guidance on the net how to put a business on hold. Surprizingly, my search turned up only a few articles (a rarity these days!):
Given the paucity of information, I will share some questions I feel need to be answered in formulating a plan to put your business on hold:
How long will your business be “on hold”??Are you going on vacation? Extended travel? Are you sick? Are you having a baby? If the timeframe can be clearly defined and articulated, it is important to do so. If the timeframe is indefinite, you will need to decide what you are willing to communicate, to whom, and what the consequences might be.
What does “on hold” mean for your business? Will all operations cease for a period of time? Will you still be able to meet some orders or provide some services? What can your customers/ clients / prospects / employees expect while you are away from the business?
What boundaries do you need to set for yourself?What lines in the sand do you need to draw in order to execute the plan you intend? How will you walk away from your business if that is what is needed for whatever your reasons?
What do you need to communicate to others (to set boundaries and expectations for them)? What is your official line? Who needs to know about your plan ( i.e. your clients, colleagues, associates, employees, suppliers etc.)? When will you tell them? Where else will you share the news (i.e. on your website, in your blog, on your company voice mail, in an autoresponder in your email etc.)
Who will support you? Who will support you to stick to your plan? Who do the work if your business is still going to provide some products or services?
How will you manage your finances? What other sources of income will you have (i.e., private or government insurance, savings, line of credit, loans)? Will the business have ongoing expenses even while on hold? Are there new ways to generate income during the on hold period (i.e. referral fees)? Are there any tax filing requirements during the time you will be away from the business? Who will handle this?
What will your current clients and prospects tolerate? Do you have a loyal client base who will accept your leave and come back when your business is back in full tilt? Can they go without your product or service for the period your business will be on hiatus? Would it make more sense to refer them to another business you trust will provide them what they need? Will new prospects who want to work with you/ your business be patient enough to wait or will you lose them to the competition?
What can you maintain?Is there a middle ground that keeps you in the business just to the degree that you can handle (i.e. Can you still post to your business blog? Can you still respond to queries? Can you still attend some industry or networking events?). It is important to know what you still can do while still taking care of your other needs (i.e. looking after a baby or family member, getting treatment. convalescing, travelling etc.)
What is your “come back” plan? While you cannot necessarily expect to turn on the revenue tap the minute you come back to your business, you can plan how you will get things rolling again. Will you come back gradually or all at once? Whom will you contact to let them know you are back? What type of promotional offer could generate the right kind of business faster? Are you able to pre-book any business for when you are back before you leave the business? Might you consider partnering with another business for referrals? Will you need to do other work to generate income during the ramp up period?
How will you course correct? In case you need to do this again in future or want to help a fellow entrepreneur go through this process, how can you keep track of what you’ve done well and your mistakes (your key learnings)? How can you make course adjustments even while you are on leave?
In my case, I am taking a six month leave from my business. I may coach on a very part-time basis after 3-4 months depending on how I feel and whether or not I have a baby that is easy to care for. For the first 3-4 months, I will not do any coaching and I have clearly communicated this to all my clients as well as IMPACT Consulting , a Toronto coaching company for whom I do corporate leadership and business development coaching. While it took me a long time to commit to walking away from my business to take a maternity leave, I am now fully on board and I don’t expect to have any difficulties focussing on motherhood. I started telling clients very early (i.e. last fall) that I was pregnant and would be going on leave. An interesting thing seemed to happen with many of them…they accelerated their own processes in order to be in a good place re: their coaching objectives by the end of February when I planned to wrap up.
For a while, I considered bringing in associates to work under the Chandler Coaches banner. In the end, I decided I would prefer to simply refer work to other coaches whom I trust so that clients would get great coaching and I would not be managing others/ doing invoicing etc while on leave. As my pregnancy has been planned for a long time, I have put in place a plan to manage my finances while on leave.
Some of my clients plan to come back to my coaching practice when I am back. Others have finished their work for now. I will need to continue business development efforts to generate new leads and follow up with existing prospects and former clients.
I am sharing my plan here on my blog and may adjust my work voice mail. In my case though, I am not going to be travelling or in hospital while on leave so I will be able to correspond in a timely way with anyone who contacts me for business.
Time will tell what I am able to maintain. For now, I would like to continue blogging and I may make it to a few coaching breakfasts etc. I am not setting high expectations for myself and at the same time, I want to leave the door open for some part-time coaching before the end of six months if I feel like I am up for it.
So that’s my plan. In truth, I would love to be so inspired by my new little baby that I follow in Pam Slim’s footsteps and have an extremely creative business period post baby.
For now, while I wait for labour to start, I have time to ask you: Have I forgotten anything for my own business hibernation? Does my 10 point list need anything else? Have you got any real life “business on hold” stories to share?I would love to hear from you. ———
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Andy Warhol Shower Cupcakes ..."the idea of waiting for something makes it more enticing". The cupcakes at the other shower were "to die for" too!
This past Saturday I attended Bientôt Bébe, the hospital’s prenatal course, at the Royal Victoria where I will be delivering my baby sometime very soon. I was THE only single woman there among a sea of a dozen couples. The nurse who was leading the course didn’t seem used to having single women in the class and her language the entire day was focussed on the couple. When it came time to practice massage during labour, I was the “lucky” contestant called to the stage to be her guinea pig.
Fortunately, I have thick skin about this stuff. Even still, as we watched the video in which the husband was incredibly supportive during labour (many friends who are mothers would say this is the exception), I found myself feeling sad and very on my own. Certainly, I would love to to sharing the birthing process and my newborn with a loving partner and father. Ultimately though, I chose to have a baby myself because it didn’t feel right to create a family with any of the men I have been in relationships with. As I have told many friends, I have a lot of confidence that I will someday be sharing my child with a loving partner. I am just doing it backwards out of biological necessity. Perhaps my love life will unfold in keeping with this kookie horoscope a friend sent me earlier this week:
“CANCER (June 21-July 22): Your love story has elements of a farce mixed
with a soap opera, fairy tale, and ghost story. For a normal human being,
it might be too intense and convoluted to deal with; it requires so much
willing suspension of disbelief and involves so much letting go of certainty
that no one in their right mind would agree to its demands. Luckily, you’re
not a normal human being these days, and you’re not particularly in your
right mind. That’s why I say unto you: Ride this snaky tale for all it’s
worth. Enjoy every plot twist and riddle as if you’ve been given an epic
myth you can ponder and learn from for the next ten years. Happy
Valentine Daze, Cancerian!”
The flip side to this “woe is me” perspective above is that I have been showered with support through my fertility journey and particularly though my pregnancy. I cannot tell you if I have had more support as a single woman than a woman in a couple would have had but I suspect the answer is YES.
The newly painted baby room and some adorable gifts hanging out together.
If you read my last post, you know I like to make lists. I would love to make comprehensive list of all the support I have had just to see it for myself but I will surely forget to acknowledge someone. Instead I will talk in slightly more general terms: Two close friends hosted baby showers for me in Toronto and Montreal respectively. My Toastmasters group also held a “baby shower” themed evening; another close friend attended many medical procedures with me and will be with me in labour too; my dad flew up to Montreal last week from Charlottetown to do house projects and my aunt had flown up earlier and help me get organized; friends have done everything from sort baby clothes hand me downs to moving furniture and have even painted the baby room from top to bottom; other friends and my sister gave me maternity clothes (and baby clothes); my landlord has been shovelling all the snow; some of my clients have sent gifts; my mom is flying up on my due date to help me for 3 weeks! And I even received a baby book in the mail from my favourite blogger Penelope Trunk, who said I didn’t really qualify for her book give away offer because my baby wasn’t even born yet and then proceeded to send me a lovely book with a yellow bow anyway!
Duck at the Door from Penelope Trunk
And so, what I am learning these days is that perhaps I can have everything I want in life, just not all at the same time. And that having a supportive family and an incredible group of friends, colleagues and clients helps me feel strong. I am certainly not alone in any of this. And I am GRATEFUL.
______________
I have given myself full permission to blog on whatever topic inspires me these days. Generally, I like to tie my posts to some type of business theme. As I wrap up my work to take a few months off for a maternity leave, I am naturally more in tune with my naval and all things baby. Nonetheless, I think there are parallels one can draw to business too. Being an entrepreneur can be a very lonely endeavour unless one is surrounded by a village of support.
——
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A special homemade cake for Rowan's 4th birthday, January 2011.
I haven’t posted in more than a month and I cannot tell you how many times I have planned to post and how many ideas I have had about things I wanted to write about. I was fully intending on writing about what I am most proud of in 2010 like I did last year. And now it’s January 23rd and I haven’t done it. It’s truly ironic because there are so many things I feel so good about in 2010 (like finally succeeding to get pregnant, growing my coaching business substantially, spending some fantastic times with my family and friends, and making this kick ass cake for Rowan).
My close friend (and fellow coach) Tanya Geisler helped me break my writer’s block this past week through a simple reframe (she’s a very good coach):
What if your blog was just for you? What if you stopped writing what you think your readers want to hear and simply wrote about what you are learning?
Shear and simple brilliance! Shifting my focus to making my blog a journal of what I am learning (on any subject from leadership development to making complicated cakes) gives me a lot of freedom to simply write. I was telling Tanya that I enjoy recaping sections of business books I am reading as it helps me to solidfy my own understanding of the topic. Tanya again:
Great! Write to lock in your own learning. There are sure to be others who will appreciate that. But let their enjoyment be a by- product and drop the pressure to write for them.
Last Monday I attended a presentation by C.C. Chapman, author of Content Rules at 3rd Tuesday in Montreal (and yes 3rd Tues was on a Monday as Toronto got him on the Tues.). I didn’t get much from his talk other than “write about what you like and be yourself”. I have heard this message before. Combined with Tanya’s reframe though, it started to sink in.
And so it shall be. I will be writing about what I am learning and taking the pressure off writing specifically for small business owners or corporate leaders or woman going through transition. Maybe I wil change my mind in a while. Maybe my blog will start being all about mompreneurs as offered by my friend Deb Hinton (my baby is due in less than 6 weeks). From where I sit at the moment though, with a decent sized belly, some heartburn and no baby in my arms yet, I actually hope not… but I won’t make any promises. Life as I know it is about to change!
What would you like to be telling me one year from now (on November 29, 2011) in the major areas of your life, career and business? Here”s what I would like to be telling you:
I am the mother of a healthy 9 month old baby and I love being a mother; I am working with amazing coaching clients and my business didn’t suffer because I took 6 months of maternity leave; I am back to my pre-pregnancy weight and have never felt better/ healthier; I have met a great guy and we really enjoy spending time together.
This past Friday, several business owners and professionals came together to “Finish Strong in 2010…and Play a Bigger Game in 2011″. Denise Desmeules and I facilitated the workshop and coached participants to create their own vision.
Since the process works so well, I want to share it here as my holiday offering to you. It’s a 6 step process to Finish Strong in 2010…and Play a Bigger Game in 2011. Granted, it’s easier to do with a coach in a concentrated focus session or workshop AND you can definitely do it on your own:
Acknowledge what you are proud of in 2010- I am proud of my tenacity in becoming pregnant and my courage in business. What are you proud of?
Take a snap shot of your current reality- there’s a great tool called the Wheel of Life (I have also made one called the Wheel of Business) to help you quickly rate your satisfaction with all the important areas. This simple exercise can be very telling. What’s calling your attention?
Transport yourself into your bigger future- I recommend actually moving to a new physical location (leave that current reality behind) and envision yourself one year (or two, or three..you decide) into the future. This phase has no limitations and a dreamy quality. Let yourself go! In each of the areas of your wheel, what do you want to be saying at x date in the future ? Write one sentence about each area in the wheel. Remember…present tense only! By now, one or two areas are likely really standing out as the areas you need to focus on. Pick one area for now and work through the rest of the steps. You can always come back and worth through steps 3-6 for other areas. Bonus step: You might want to draw your bigger future. This can be an image, a symbol, a metaphor or a bunch of powerful words on a piece of paper. The point is to let your creativity run and capture your dream in picture format rather than just words.
Get clear on the benefits and costs- this step is muy importante! List out what acheiving your bigger future will bring you. On the flip side, get good and clear what it will cost you not to realize your bigger future.
Reduce the tension through action planning- the first step here is to state a S.M.A.R.T. goal and then brainstorm possible actions before you narrow the field. From your brainstormed list, pick a few actions that resonate with you and will truly help move toward your bigger future. And for goodness sake, pick a timeline and tell someone who will help you stay accountable to yourself (again, coaching is great for this AND you can do it with a colleague, a friend, a partner…as long as it’s someone you trust).
Enter the land of commitment!- the final step is as important as every step before it. Simply stated: who do you need to BE in order to achieve your bigger future? Receptive? Tenacious? Open-minded? Free? Passionate? You get to decide what quality will serve you best. Again, I recommend actually drawing a metaphorical line in the floor and stepping over it. Once in the land of commitment, you have a much greater probability of creating your bigger future.
What are you proud of? What’s your current reality? What do you want? What will you have when you get it? What will it cost you if you don’t get it? What steps do you need to take to get where you want to go? And finally, who do you need to BE? Your future is waiting. How can I help?
_________
P.S. By doing steps 2 and 3, you create a gap between where you are now (your current reality) and where you want to be (your bigger future). This is good because nature seeks to resolve this tension according to Robert Fritz. Think of an elastic band stretched between your two hands. The tension reduces when your two hands come together. Same deal for your current reality and your bigger future. The closer they come together, the less tension there will be.
P.S.S. It bears mentioning that when I use “bigger future’ it doesn’t mean bigger = more. Your bigger future might mean less responsibility, fewer material goods etc.
More than 40 years ago, McLuhan said, “the medium is the message”. This couldn’t be truer for Couture Media. This budding Montreal-based company offers tailor-made radio for business. What does that mean? Essentially, Couture Media creates custom music compilations with or without verbal messaging that play in retail stores, hotels and other businesses that pride themselves on creating a total brand experience which goes far beyond designed visuals.
Couture Media was born in 2008, the brainchild of Kara Yamich, a former music director at Q92.5 and her colleague Leo Da Estrela, who still works as Assistant Program Director at the same station. These two partners have a depth of experience in terrestrial radio (I learned a bunch of cool radio jargon while interviewing them!) and challenged themselves to create a business from what they originally thought was a “silly” idea.
Their biggest competitor in North America, DMX, has been around for 20 years using satellite radio to offer channels. DMX offers a less custom brand experience but are a very strong and established competitor who is becoming increasingly customized. From the start, Kara and Leo eliminated the limitations of satellite by delivering their content directly via the internet with their data stored “in the cloud” (cloud computing means storing information in the web space instead of on expensive servers); by using the internet as a platform and cloud computing, they can change things very quickly and have the changes reflected at their client sites (i.e. retails stores around the world) about 8 seconds later. It also means they need next to no infrastructure to run their business.
What’s been easiest so far is achieving an international scope. Since the internet is their platform, they can create custom programming for clients anywhere in the world. One of their earliest contracts came from the Golden Tulip Farah in Casablanca, Morocco.
Kara’s already made the leap to full-time entrepreneurialism and Leo is making plans to join her full-time at Couture Media. What has been challenging so far is creating enough cash flow to pay salaries for both of them (who have families to help support).
That they have passion, dedication and a big vision, there is no doubt. They envision Couture Media will be:
The world leader in building brand loyalty through music and being the leader in brand marketing when it comes to music and online channels (eventually branching out into music licensing for commercial, TV and film, consultants in music marketing on multi-platforms and being able to operate the business from anywhere in the world).
What they don’t have is enough sales. While they could likely get some financing to support them for a while, I feel strongly that they need a solid business development strategy and a consultative sales system/ sales process to bring rigour to their pursuits. And they identified themselves that they need more contacts for marketing directors at major chain retailers.
When people who are technically very strong decide to go into business for themselves in search of freedom and making their own way, Michael Gerber in The e-Myth, calls it an “entrepreneurial seizure”. Those who succeed in business recognize that they need to work “on the business” as owners and managers at least as much as they work “in the business” delivering the technical work.
Kara and Leo have learned a ton since starting Couture Media and are working to set themselves up for success on all fronts. A hard focus on business development and cash flow (i.e. making sales) will ensure the future “sounds” great for Couture Media!
If a nutshell, if you are selling an idea, a product, or a service, you had better focus on what will take away pain.
The Heath brothers give some great examples in the article: a book for men explaining pregnancy and the changes their females partners experience= vitamin; What to Expect When You’re Expecting (for women) = Aspirin.
I made up these examples:
A coach selling “values clarification and vision”= vitamin; a coaching selling “be in your dream job by x” = Aspirin
A consultant selling ” team collaboration”= vitamin; a consultant selling “a 50 percent increase in sales”= Aspirin
Sometimes when you get to close to your product or service, you can fall into the trap of promoting vitamins. It might be time to ask some of your best clients* (or the prospects you would love to work closely with) some powerful questions to find out what they need most. Vitamins are nice but if they have pain and you aren’t taking care of it, someone else surely will.
_______________________
*If you work in a company and don’t see yourself as a salesperson, remember that we are all salespeople…we all have to “sell” ideas everyday in our jobs. The vitamin/ Aspirin comparison applies to you too! Ask your boss, your colleagues and other stakeholders powerful questions to ensure you know their felt needs…then come up with Aspirin to ease their pain.
Ian Sherwood plays a house concert at my place in Montreal, Oct 2010
Last night I hosted an intimate and communal experience at my house. Almost 20 people partook and everyone seemed to have a fantastic time. Before you go too far in imagining what I am describing, let me stop you in your tracks. The event last night was a house concert and the artist was Nova Scotia singer/ songwriter Ian Sherwood.
House concerts have been around for centuries (think of chamber music from the middle ages) though the concept of hearing modern music in the home seems somewhat novel. There are some online hubs which create a network of hosts much like the couch suring concept for travellers.
Ian is a good friend of my sister Jill. He and she performed in dinner theatre together more than a decade ago and Ian spent about a month living at my house in Toronto about 5 years ago when he needed a short term rental. When I heard he was passing thru Montreal en route home to Nova Scotia from his latest CD launch in Ontario, we connected and decided he would do a house concert at my place. I had gotten the idea from my cousin Sarah whose boyfriend John Connolly did a recent house concert tour in the west. Ian has done dozens of house concerts and loves them so the idea wasn’t new to him.
Since I am not a music critique (and loved every minute of Ian’s concert last night), I am going to focus instead on the process of hosting a house concert and look at it from a business perspective (as in: the artist as a business person).
With only two weeks lead time and both of us being fully booked with our respective work, we decided we would put the word out via social media (a Facebook event) and that I would send an email invite to my Montreal friends, colleagues and neighbours. We would take whatever response we could get and Ian confirmed it would be worth it for him even if our audience was tiny.
In the end, we were almost 20. Ian played two spectacular sets. He’s an extremely accomplished singer/ songwriter and an incredible storyteller/ entertainer. I looked around the room often and sensed that Ian had really captured his audience.
While my motivation in hosting the concert was twofold: 1) help Ian establish a small following in Montreal and make a little extra money on his short tour 2) host a novel event for friends and neighbours, it’s interesting to look what it took to pull it off and what came out of it.
Inputs:
1-2 hours online creating the FB event invite and inviting people via FB and email;
3-4 hours picking up some groceries, cleaning the house and preparing some food for the concert
Approx $75 on food and wine (with lots leftover because some people brought booze and no one consumed much anyway)
2-3 hours travel and set up/ take down time for Ian from where he was staying in Montreal (and a lot more hours than that to drive back to the Maritimes today)
30 min clean up post concert
Outputs:
3 hours of fantastic music in an intimate living room enviroment for 20 people
Socializing and mingling over a drink before concert and at intermission; perhaps some new connections were formed
Maybe half a dozen CDs sold and an additional $150+ in voluntary donations for Ian
Almost 20 news names/ email addresses for Ian’s database (so he can promote future work/ tours etc.); these same 20 people will remember Ian far better than if they had seen him playing in the background in a bar or coffeehouse
My friend Christina Sciascia attended the concert. She is owner of Shaika Cafe in NDG, a popular coffeehouse that features live music nightly. Ian is welcome to contact her to book a gig.
Smiles on everyone’s faces when they left and lots of praise for Ian’s talent and thanks for my hosting of the event
Net:
Was it worth it for me? Definitely. I thoroughly enjoyed hosting it and hearing the concert. Was it worth it for Ian? He shared my sentiments. He seemed to have a lot of fun and left with a little extra cash and a little bigger following.
Would I do it again? Without question, Ian is welcome to play here if he needs a venue next time he’s in Montreal. I might even host other artists because I have the space and it was fun. I am not plugged into the music scene though so I am not sure where the next artist will come from.
What would I do differently? I would plan the concert a little earlier, sell tickets in advance for a fixed price (as I believe this would generate more revenue for the artist and encourage people to buy a CD the night of the preformance as well), and aim to have 30 or so people in my space (again to make it worth it for the artist).
If this post has sparked your interest in hosting a house concert, I say go for it. You will be building community, encouraging creativity, helping an artist/ solopreneur and you will make yourself happy in the process. What’s to lose?
Here”s a little bonus…Ian performing a portion of Dixieland Dirt Bovine last night from his first album (the video is shot sideways and is very dark. I am a coach not a producer!).
This image is a human embryo five days after a single egg was fertilized with a single sperm cell.
Ultrasound Scan of Fetus at 10 weeks Gestation
This is an ultrasound image of the same embyro at 10 weeks gestation. It already has a beating heart (and had one since 6 weeks gestation).
A view from the outside!
This image, much less clinical, shows the same fetus from the outside. In this image the fetus is 19 weeks old and is the size of a large mango!
And finally…
And if you hadn't guessed already...
Yep, if you hadn’t already guessed…this baby is growing in me. As of today, I am 19 weeks pregnant!
I gave a speech called “Creating a Meaningful Life” last night at my Toastmasters’ Club. I got quite emotional at one point while delivering it. You see, it’s a pretty big milestone for me to be almost halfway through my pregnancy. The road has been long and winding. One surgery, six cycles of increasingly invasive treatments, and 3 previous pregnancies all ending in very early stage miscarriages….this has been the road.
If you had asked me when I was 30 years old what I envisioned for my future family, my answer would have been far more traditional. Now I am embarking on single motherhood (for now). I feel confident the right guy will come along at some point AND I made the decision to proceed anyway because my biological clock was tick tocking really loudly (and yes, it really does become a lot more difficult for many women to conceive after their mid thirties).
Fear, anger, sadness, confusion, uncertainty and even jealousy–these were some of the emotions I cycled in and out of over the past few years. And the doubt. Oh my goodness the doubt! When things weren’t going well I would ask myself,
Is this a sign that I am not meant to be a mother?
Is it time to pursue adoption?
And the most difficult question of all (and one I came to hate because I really struggled with it)
Do I even want to be a mother anyway???
Fortunately for me, I had many cheerleaders along my winding road, most of them mothers themselves. They, in my darkest moments of doubt, affirmed that having a child would be my greatest joy and that I needed to continue on the road to create this in my life. I am so grateful to these women. They know who they are.
We recently read A Million Miles in a Thousand Years for our bookclub. The premise is essentially this: that we create meaning in our lives by the stories we live. Our lives, just like great movies, are more meaningful when the main character wants something and overcomes conflict to get it.
Well this story, my current story, still in progress, is creating great meaning in my life. And I needed to share it simply because I am looking at my life, my business, and my future though a different lens these days. I am still the same me. I still want to be a masterful coach helping high-aspiration business owners and professionals create their great story. I still want to be a loving daughter and sister and a true blue friend. And I still want to tango.
So don’t count me out. In fact, count me in more than ever. The plot is about to thicken. And so is my waistline!
On Easter weekend, my fit brother and his fit fiancé (now wife) came to visit. Before their visit I had been pondering (ok lamenting) what I could do to increase my overall fitness. Their visit gave me the idea of boot camp as they were regular attendees at one in Halifax.
My fittest times in life have been when I was part of a soccer team or some type of group training program like The Running Room. I no longer had the courage for soccer and who really likes running anyway? So the idea of an outdoor group training program appealed. Well, actually it terrified me but I knew it was what I needed to push myself beyond what I was doing at the gym.
A quick search on the internet turned up two options for Montreal. I contacted both and got a very prompt and friendly email back from Sherry Shaban, Owner of Be Training. And so began my relationship with this small but growing fitness and wellness training company in Montreal. I am certain there were snow flurries during our first workout at Jeanne Mance Park but it served to make us all feel proud and courageous to be there. Every work out took some courage but it got easier and easier and I always felt a huge sense of satisfaction finishing a session.
Of course, Be Training is more than just boot camp. It is a unique in-home, in-office and in-park training company offering personal training for adults and children, nutritional planning and comprehensive wellness programs. You won’t find this gang in a gym or studio. That is because Sherry, a certified athletic therapist herself, believes in using very minimal equipment and the body’s own weight for resistance training instead of expensive machines that only work one muscle group. While Be Training may have a central location within the next year, Sherry insists that it won’t look like a traditional gym. At boot camp, park stairs, benches and the ground where all that we needed to get a heck of a workout.
A Be Training client getting personalized and safe prenatal training
Sherry’s attributes her success so far with surrounding herself with a highly educated and motivated team. Her staff are all certified athletic therapists enabling them to customize programs and train people who have injuries, mobility restrictions, are pregnant etc.
Sherry sees the world as possibilities. She says,
The sky is the limit when it comes to achieving your goals. People find a way to do what they really want to accomplish.
Don’t bother telling her why you didn’t lose the 10 pounds you “wanted” to lose. She’ll counter that you couldn’t have really wanted it or you would have done it.
She’s a living example of what is possible. She launched her company while she was pregnant with her first daughter who is now 20 months and she has since had a second daughter (now 4 months). When I started boot camp in April, Sherry ran some of the sessions. At 7 months pregnant, she could do more push ups than most of us in the camp.
Sherry is not easily discouraged in business. When I asked her what has been harder than she ever imagined she wouldn’t even respond as she said she finds way to surmount whatever obstacles fall in her path. She was willing to share what has come easily:
People’s trust in us has come easily. They find us on the internet and they try us out or they are referred by a current client. We haven’t lost a single client since we started.
This is because clients who commit to Be Training get fit fast, look great and feel fantastic. In my case, I also made some nice friends.
Impatience to grow the company faster than it’s growing keeps Sherry awake some nights (that and her 4 month old baby girl). She is learning that things take time to build in business and she’s learning to adapt the plan when reality proves that it needs to be altered.
Nonetheless, this personable, ambitious and dynamic woman has goals for Be Training and I would put my money on her attaining them. Over the next few years, Be Training will offer a month long “vacation-like” boot camp replete with meals and wellness education and within the next year she will have a studio location. Sherry says,
We aren’t in the personal training business. We are in the life transformation business and we will do what it takes to have people create their best lives.
Photo by Valerie Baron, Montreal Life in Photos Examiner
Take one professional or celebrity chef in a professional kitchen; mix with abundant fresh food ingredients, free flowing cocktails and wine; add equal parts men and women and let them marinate for the evening. This is Cristina Mucciardi’s recipe for CookandDate. And several times a month since 2008, she’s been turning out great results in Montreal. By next month (October 2010), she’ll be doing the same in Toronto and New York.
CookandDate has been covered frequently in the Montreal media since its inception so you can read about it in the traditional media for concept details. Or better still, if you are single, sign up for an event and become a member.
Cristina says, “Press is the one thing that has come really easily”. That’s because Cristina is an entrepreneur who’s found a sweet spot in the market. She created a concept that lines up precisely with her own sweet spot as a people connector and foodie. Growing up in a Montreal Italian family, she is passionate about gathering people around great food. And when it comes to CookandDate, her mission is to help men and women find their soul mates. That she takes it seriously is an understatement.
Cristina is radiant hosting a CookandDate event. Photo by John Kenney, The Montreal Gazette.
CookandDate defies classification as solely a cooking school, a dating service or a social club. That’s because it is all of these things combined in one. It’s way more than this too. As a by product of opening CookandDate, many opportunities arose for private parties (i.e. showers, birthday parties) and corporate events. In response, Cristina is splitting the company into two banners: CookandDate and CookandEtc. The later leaves her plenty of room to expand her offerings in response to the market.
Like many entrepreneurs I have interviewed, Cristina’s biggest failure/ biggest learning experience was getting burned with exorbitant web development costs early on. She says it was due to her lack of clarity on what she needed initially and her naiveté about IT. She’s fixed that now and while she’ll never be a techie, she knows who to work with and how to manage a project to keep a lid on costs.
Her new website will launch this week in sync with a special celebrity CookandDate hosted by Chuck Hughes of Chuck’s Day Off and Garde Manger fame. The new site’s database (3000+ and growing) allows those registered to view all CookandDate members and to see upcoming events. Those who attend an event get chatting privileges with all other members.
The upcoming openings in Toronto and New York keep Cristina awake a night simply because unlike Montreal, she doesn’t know the cities as well. While she will be present at all events, she won’t be living full-time in those cities to get a deep understanding of the culture. Cristina says,
I don’t know whether I need to run events at 9 p.m. in New York because they all work late but I will learn quickly!
This woman is smart and while she doesn’t like to fail, she will be nimble and adjust her concept to meet the needs of the promising markets in Toronto and New York.
When asked what she needs most right now, she says, “Access to large databases”. This could come from partnerships with companies that have a similar clientele.
It occurs to me as I write that I could talk to her about a CookandCoach! A couple of years ago I gave away a “coaching and chocolate chip cooking baking lesson” at a Christmas service exchange party I co-hosted. The recipient seemed to relish the combo so why not? It would be a like CookandDate meets Coach Buffet. It could fit under her CookandEtc banner, couldn’t it?
Well, I might be grasping here but Cristina is not. She’s got a formula that works and a niche that is all her own. It’s a nice place to be.
For years, Stephan Frigon wracked his brain to come up with an idea about how he could make money on the net. One morning three years ago, he woke up with his idea: an online platform to help gay men find relationships.
Stephan is a straight entrepreneur who worked for years in manufacturing businesses. Ironically, I met him via e-harmony a couple of years ago. While we didn’t hit it off for a relationship, we have helped each other in business here and there since. When met him 2 years back, I couldn’t have predicted that he’d become “the saviour” for the gay community!
Stephan first step in business building was market research to test his business idea. He discovered that Manhunt and Gay411 already existed and are very effective for those who want to find a sex partner …and fast. To his delight, what they lack is what he is now providing: GayCompatible, an online place for gays to meet a compatible partner for a long-term relationship. Where the other sites target younger males who focus on appearance and porn-like sex, Stephan is targeting the 30+, well educated, high income earning gay male who is looking for a life partner.
GayCompatible launched in April of this year. The membership is over 1000 already with the majority being Canadians, though some come from as far away as France, Australia and Poland. The potential market in North America is 33 million (3 million in Canada alone). And that doesn’t touch the rest of the gay world. A yearly membership is $200. You do the math. Stephan is 99.8% sure he has created a winner.
It has taken 3 years of research and development and $200K+ to date to launch the business (plus all his own unpaid time) . Somewhat analogous to e-harmony, gay compatible has a matching questionnaire that 3 Quebec psychologists custom developed and tested for Stephan’s site.
Stephan’s biggest mistakes came from his naiveté about how much effort it would take to program the web platform; it took far more time and money than he anticipated. He followed the advice of a family advisor who convinced him to buy a similar web platform and modify it. This solution didn’t work and it cost him months of time and a lot of money.
Stephan will run and advertising campaign this fall on Out TV in Canada and Logo TV in the US where he has the potential to reach 48 million gay and lesbian viewers in the US alone.
A year from now, Stephan says he would like to be telling me he has a few thousand subscribers. This would be growth of 300% in one year. Somehow it wouldn’t surprise me a bit!
For the gay men in your network who are tired of the current online dating scene, send them to GayCompatible. From what Stephan says, they will thank you.
And if you are looking for an investment opportunity, email Stephan directly: sfrigon@galemco.com
The comparisons below are taken from Good to Great and apply to business.
Good to Great companies (GTGC) follow a pattern of build up to breakthrough (an accumulation of steps, one after the other, turn by turn of the fly wheel; it is an organic and evolutionary process).
Good to Dead companies (GTDC) [my wording] skip the build up and jump right to breakthrough, implementing big programs, radical change efforts, and chronic restructuring always looking for a miracle moment or new saviour.
GTGC confront brutal facts; GTDC embrace fads and management hoopla.
GTGC have a hedgehog concept and consistently stay within the three circles; GTDC are inconsistent, lurch back and forth and stray outside the three circles.
GTGC have the right people who follow disciplined thought and action; GTDC jump to action without disciplined thought and without getting the right people on the bus.
GTCG harness appropriate technology to their Hedgehog concept; GTDC run around like Chicken Little, fearful of being left behind the latest technology.
GTCG have internal alignment because their momentum is infectious; GTDC expend energy to align and motivate people to their changing visions.
GTGC let results do the talking; GTDC sell the future to compensate for their lack of results.
It’s been proven that companies that apply the concepts of GTGC eventually reach breakthough. What path will you choose?
Good to great transformations don’t happen in one fell swoop says Jim Collins. Collins uses the concept of a fly wheel (a massive metal disk mounted horizonally on its axle, 30 feet in diameter and 5000 lbs). The first pushes to turn the wheel take a lot of energy and the wheel inches forward. Add lots more energy and many more turns and at some point—breakthrough! Momentum kicks into gear and the heavy weight turns the wheel on its own.
Think of it. World Cup players don’t put on their soccer boots for a few hours a week and go out to score history making goals. Instead they practice, compete and are coached for years (these are all turns of the wheel). Sadly, even the momentum of the flywheel didn’t assure victory for the Brazilians, Italians or Argentinians this time ’round.
The flywheel is pertinent to you and your company. Perhaps you dream of being an “overnight successes” on the net. You think that a brilliant marketing campaign, a great peice of press coverage, a lucky break or innovation will catapult you and your company to riches. This is foolhardy thinking at best. Overnight success is rarely, if ever, overnight success. We just don’t pay attention to the steps that were taken to get there, preferring instead to focus on the tipping point. This kind of thinking will usually put you in Collin’s doom loop rather than the fly wheel. Though with this kind of thinking, you might not even get to be good, let alone great.
So how do you get on the fly wheel and avoid the doom loop? You’re not sure? I wasn’t either. Fortunately, Collins has a comprehensive comparison list. Take an inventory. Face the brutal reality. What path are you on? Do you want to be Good to Great or Good to Dead?
I am spending the summer in a cottage in the Laurentians. It is a working vacation, as in, I am living in a beautiful setting and working. At it turns out, I am surrounded by some other industrious creatures to inspire my productivity. The most noteworthy–a woodpecker!
Since I arrived (it’s been almost 2 weeks already), this crafty little fellow has woken me up every day around 5:20 a.m. by pecking several times on the metal eaves troughs of my roof.
I have only just learned that ritual pecking has a very important purpose beyond getting bugs: to attract a mate. (I would love to say he cuts a mean profile but in truth this photo is from the net and not of him). He chooses my metal roof right outside my bedroom window because it makes a much louder sound than any tree ever could. It seems that when it comes to dating, he believes in casting the net as wide as possible is the best strategy for attracting a nice Laurentian bird.
He is perfectly equipped with the right tools for the job: a chisel-like bill, an extra long tongue to get bugs under tree bark, strong claws and stiff tail feathers to help him prop up on trees (and roofs). He even has feathers around his nostrils to filter wood dust and a special sac in his forehead to cushion his brain from the impact of his pecking. If you are going to succeed in life, you do need the right tools.
Just yesterday I met with Christina Mucciardi, owner of Cook and Date. She has both the tools and the formula for success. She hosts events to help singles meet. Her events have a welcome twist: Montreal chefs, a beautiful Viking kitchen, divine food, an equal number of men and woman of a similar age and flowing wine. I suspect she’s likely had some woodpecker types attend her Cook and Date over the past couple of years.
I continue to wake up way too early every day, probably in anticipation of that loud hammering sound. And I think it might be for not. You see it has been two days since I have heard my man Peck. Perhaps he found his Laurentian bird!
Sometimes the work day doesn’t unfold as planned either.
So far today, I have written 2 blog posts from Cafe Sportivo in the heart of Montreal’s Little Italy. The owner (I think she’s actually the owner’s daughter) is a spirited woman with a great sense of humour. I enjoyed an excellent expresso and biscotti for $3. When I said “It’s only $3?”, she said, “What, you wanna pay more???”. I have also kept my eye on World Cup action (Uraquay is up one vs. Mexico).
I did not intend to spend my time this way today.
Au contraire. Today I intended to meet 2 prospective clients and also a business owner to discuss how our businesses are complimentary. It was to be a productive day in the city, a stark contrast to my new country setting.
My first meeting was booked for 8:00 a.m. To make it on time, I came into the city yesterday, slept at a friend’s house, got up at 6:30 and drove 30 min in traffic to get from NDG to Little Italy on time. Before, I continue, I want to make it clear that I do not feel sorry for myself. I am simply detailing what it took to make it to the meeting. 8:05 came and went, then 8:10, and 8:20 with no sign of the duo I was to meet. It’s 11:00 a.m. and I haven’t heard from them. Meeting #1 remains a mystery(12:30 p.m. – Mystery solved…the person simply put it in the calendar for tomorrow rather than today. We will rebook. No hard feelings).
On to meeting #2. I was to meet a prospective client at 11 in another part of town. He had a family urgency come up so we are rebooking for later this week or early next. It happens.
Meeting #3. It is scheduled for 2 p.m. with another prospective client. As of now, the meeting is on. And with any luck, at the end of today,I will be saying 1 out of 3 ain’t bad. I would be lying if I said that I won’t be dissappointed if none of my scheduled meetings come off.
But for today, I am listening to Roger Ward Babson who said,
If things go wrong, don’t go with them.
What about you? How do you react when things don’t go according to plan?
A few days ago I wrote an exuberant post saying goodbye to my city office. I remain exuberant as the cottage is a dream. It’s got everything I could imagine wanting or needing this summer –games, a docking station, a row boat, flowers everywhere, and even a rolling pin for making pies. It even has space for me to set up an office area in a way that doesn’t infringe on the cottage vibe. What is doesn’t have, is internet access.
My excitement about writing blog posts from my dock using the Rogers rocket stick was a bit premature. The brutal reality, which isn’t really brutal, is that the stick doesn’t work at the cottage. Not on the deck, not on the second floor, not on the dock and not on the huge rock outside (that happens to look like a beached whale). Nope. It doesn’t work.
It does work at the end of the road and up the hill if I want to work in my car 3 km from the cottage. And it works in the tiny town that is 5 minutes away, which happens to have a tiny and welcoming internet cafe anyway.
I have to admit, I like the challenge this poses. It means it is not business as usual. I have found that in life, when things get too routine, I change them on purpose. So the idea of subletting my city place and living and working in a cottage full time for 3 months this summer was partially born from my need to change things up.
Changing things up comes with its challenges. It’s like a minature hero’s journey. Emails slip in willy nilly on my Blackberry with no rhyme or reason and I cannot email out; I have no voice mail (yet) on the country phone line; and I need to come to the city for meetings at least once a week to keep building momentum in my business.
I say bring it on. I am betting that the type of clients I most want to attract to my business–high aspiration entrepreneurs and professionals– will overlook the technical glitches in favour of focusing on the fact that, like them, I too love variety and challenge. When I am sitting at some picnic table writing blog posts in the rain, I might change my tune. For now, I remain delighted.
Yesterday Seth wrote Goodbye to the office. His timing was good. I a have sublet my city place and tomorrow I am moving to a cottage in The Laurentians until mid September. My cottage will be my summer office (and playground too).
I will be packing:
A Rogers rocket stick for internet;
My laptop and printer;
A decent long distance plan for telephone coaching;
My hard files and office supplies
I am happily giving up:
My current routine;
Access to the Metro 5 min away (I will drive to the city weekly to see propects and clients…it is only an hour’s drive)
Full time city living, for now;
Because I am gaining:
A lake to swim and a dock to write from each morning;
Tall trees, flowers and country air;
A fun place to host friends for long weekends and colleagues for some collaborations;
When you need to have a meeting, have a meeting. When you need to collaborate, collaborate. The rest of the time, do the work, wherever you like.
My “wherever I like” is an office on a dock. It’s my place to do things differently for 3 months…to expand my village. If you want to reach me there, email me for details. I’ve packed my rocket stick.
Me coaching Marie-Claude Pelletier, President, Les Effrontés; photo by Phil Carpenter, The Gazette June 6, 2010
Hey, look who is featured today! What a pleasure to wake up and read the great coverage on business coaching (and my coaching!) as today’s feature on the front page of the business section of The Gazette: When to call the coach. Thank you Alison MacGregor for writing a balanced and comprehensive feature on business coaching.
Thank you, Marie-Claude Pelletier, my client and President of Les Effrontés for your openness to being interviewed for the article. Les Effrontés offers an amazing styling/ shopping service for busy business owners and professionals. Yes, I am biased AND I recommend them without hesitation.
Admiral Jim Stockdale was a prisoner of war (POW) in Vietnam. Jim Collins writes about him in Good to Great. Stockdale was imprisoned for 8 years from 1965 to 1973 and tortured over 20 times. As a prisoner he did everything in his power to create conditions that would increase the likelihood that he and his fellow prisoners would survive unbroken (i.e. he created rules to help people survive torture sessions, an elaborate internal communications system etc.). He was much loved by his fellow prisoners and went on to win the Congressional Medal of Honour in the US. When Collins interviewed Stockdale, he asked him “Who didn’t make it out?”
“That’s easy”, said Stockdale, “The optimists….they were the ones who said, and ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas’. And Christmas would come. And Christmas would go. Then they would say ‘We’re going to be out by Easter’. And Easter would come. And Easter would go….they died of a broken heart.
Stockdale’s message: You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they may be.
Where in your life/ business do you believe you will prevail in the end?For me, I know I can build a successful and enduring coaching company. It is happening right now. Every day I see evidence of it. And the brutal reality is:
It takes effort every day to develop business and coaching is hard to explain and sell to those who haven’t tried it;
Professionals and business owners take a long time to make a decision that they need a coach and many might never make the investment;
Being an entrepreneur is lonely at times;
It takes a significant investment of time and money to train as a coach and build a business from zero; leaving a lucrative sales management job impacted my revenues;
A lot of coaches give up before they “make it” or make up the difference by training and consulting.
Today a business owner client of mine cried during our session and told me how thankful she was that I made the decision to train as a coach. She said that if I hadn’t become a coach and been connected to her, she wouldn’t be where she is today, living her life in such a profoundly different way.
I don’t hear affirmations like this every day but it sure helps me keep the faith that I will prevail, regardless of the difficulties. And I am willing to confront the brutal facts of my current reality.
Collins says that if you are able to operate from both sides of the paradox, never letting one overshadow the other,
You will dramatically increase the odds of making a series of good decisions and ultimately discovering a simple, yet deeply insightful concept for making the really big choices. And once you have that simple, unifying concept, you will be very close to making a sustained transition to breakthrough results.
So where will you prevail? What are the brutal facts you need to face? How will you live in the duality of the paradox?
One of my friends is dating online. Currently, she’s despondent, confused and depressed.
The way I see it, online dating is like managing a sales system. You pour a bunch of suspects into the top of your funnel and take steps to weed out all but qualified leads. You talk to/ meet with the most compelling of them and through some strange mixture of art and science called dating all the while trying to ascertain if you are both advancing down the funnel. By the time you get to closing the deal, you need to feel very confident that you’ve now got a true fan who wants to do all his business with you forever amen! (which eliminates acquisition costs of a new lead yet could create other cost centres!). (more…)
While I may be a solo-preneur, I have involved family, friends (and some of their spouses!), mentors, advisors, coaches, consultants and even tango partners in my business. They are my village. I am even dedicating a page on my soon to be revamped web site called “About We”. (more…)
I share the ingredient list simply to show you the choices we made and what we had to work with. It was like Christmas morning as we unveiled our lot; we were both impressed by the diversity of choices and the potential for the meal. Interestingly, our first take at a menu was a very safe pass. It was easy and predictable to group the oranges, grapefruit and limes as a great light dessert to accompany a bite of chocolate and to decide that the dates could be stuffed with the Stilton etc.
Quickly though, we realized we weren’t actually integrating our two sets of ingredients at all. So in the true spirit of the challenge, we threw out the idea of ”safe and proven” and moved to true innovation. It was really hard to let go of the idea of making a great tasting meal to focus instead on creating something new. Yikes, did we really have to risk good taste and use $100 worth of groceries just to prove our creativity? Yes, we did. The result of our more wild/ less safe meal was delight and pride:
Dates stuffed with Morbier, cashews and speck bacon
Frisee with Mango ginger Stilton, blood oranges, and curry vinaigrette
Farmer sausage with pink peppercorn chocolate sauce and mushroom chilli slaw
Mussels with papaya chutney, lemon grass, cilantro, and speck bacon
Citrus chutney salad with oatmeal crisps
While we aren’t likely to be invited to Iron Chef anytime soon, I think we were punching above our weight this time around.
Before I get all heavy about what I learned from the challenge, let me state emphatically that the day was a blast…fun, fun, fun from start to Fimo finish. That’s right. As if we hadn’t made enough food in our five courses, we then moved to creating miniature Fimo quesadillas and PEI strawberry shortcake with Tanya’s daughter while Greg did the dishes.
And so, the learnings (according to me):
We are most creative when we aren’t attached to a specific outcome
When you think you are being creative already, step back, turn up the volume even more and take another pass; there is always room for more innovation
When stuck, it is a great time to take an entirely different perspective/ approach that may seem totally unrelated to the problem at hand (i.e. this food challenge for a Coach Buffet problem)
In a business partnership, making playing together as important as working together
Have a support team; in our case, one husband (procurer of wine, food critique and dishwasher) one five-year old (who is fascinated by food made from Fimo) and two coaches (Tanya and me) who would have driven you crazy with all our “noticing” throughout the day!
And about that espionage….while shopping earlier in the day, one of us had a huge urge to look into the other’s bag while she had stepped away for a few minutes. If you do this challenge, don’t be suprized if it happens to you too. And if it does: stop yourself, get curious about what is going on for you, and tell on yourself the minute your partner is back. Your trust in each other will grow and you’ll have a good laugh too.
Tanya and I agreed to not read each others’ posts this week to avoid group think as we reflect on the learnings of our challenge. But if you are really curious about the almost espionage, I am betting her blog will tell you whether it was Ms. Morbier or Ms. Stilton who wanted to peak!
As a business coach, my niche is small business owners. Of course, all small business owners are not created equal so I continue to refine my focus. To help me do this, I find it very helpful to conduct 1:1 interviews. During these interviews I learn what keeps business owners up at night, what they typically do to address their “pain” and how they go about finding help.
I so appreciate the time these entrepreneurs give to me to help me build my business that I offer a complimentary “no strings attached and I mean it!” coaching session to them or another business owner they want to pass it on to. I also sometimes write blog posts (see sample) as a way to spread the word about their business and their story.
And so, what’s the point? Simply this: if you are a small business owner who fits this profile and you are willing to spend 20 min on the phone with me (or have coffee in person for those in Montreal), I would love to hear from you soon:
Criteria:
Have been in business for 3-5 years++
Have at least 5 employees or associates
Work in any industry (though I have a preference for food, marketing, fashion, professoinal services/ consulting etc.)
Feel free to forward this link to someone who fits this profile. I look forward to hearing from you or someone in your network. Email me at lisa@chandlercoaches.com Thanks!
The three newest members of the MR. POTATO HEAD family offer tons of imaginative fun for playful toddlers. The charming PRINCESS SWEET POTATO figure comes complete with tiara and frog prince for royal adventures, and FRYER FIGHTER tater is ready to squelch flames with his handy fire extinguisher. Swashbuckling spud CAPTAIN POTATO CHIPS figurine has a peg leg, eye patch, and hooked hand and is eager for action-packed expeditions.
The Potato Head Family of Fredricton, NB!
It is all about Mr. Potato Head today because I had the pleasure of creating a whole Potato Head family while playing with my cousin’s toddlers—Aidan and Morgan—during the holidays in the maritimes. I created a replica of their family in potatoes and was so pleased with my rendition (very loose!) that I took a photo. Of course, the significance was lost on Aidan and Morgan who were too busy pulling them apart.
So what do the Potato Heads have to do with business or coaching? Not much in a direct kind of way and a lot from another perspective. Creativity is essential for business innovation but we business owners often get so immersed in the day to day of our operations that we squelch it in ourselves and our employees too.
Fast Company recently published the results of a long-term study on business creativity (entire article here) by Harvard professors Teresa Amabile and Leslie Perlow in which they bust a number of myths:
Myth: Creativity comes from creative types.
People who are tuned into their work, whether in accounting or production, have the best ability to tap into their creative process.
Myth: Money is a creativity motivator.
People are most creative when they care about their work and when they are stretched. Any entrepreneur will attest to this. Of course, the same entrepreneur, when stretched too much due to overwhelm, financial worry etc will tell you that his creativity goes out the window.
Myth: Time pressure fuels creativity.
People are least creative when they are fighting against time and there is a hangover effect of reduced creativity for a couple of days after people are crunched to be creative under pressure.
Myth: Fear forces breakthroughs. Love and joy spur creativity far more effectively than anger, fear and anxiety. When people are excited about their work on one day, they are more likely to “hatch” ideas the next, after sleeping on it.
Myth: Competition beats collaboration. The best ideas come from sharing and debating. Competition and secrecy to protect ideas does not give creativity the best chance to lead to business innovation.
Creating Potato Heads with kids, some journal writing and conversations with family about my business issues and a good dose of Rock Band passively filled me with great ideas for Chandler Coaches in 2010. Who knew that some of the best ideas would come while stepping away from the business and eating too much fruit cake?
Note: There was an important snowman involved in this creative process too.
My business partner (and dear friend) Tanya Geisler recently pulled off Coach Buffet Toronto on her own (I was feeling under the weather and couldn’t travel). As if that is not enough, she also managed to get Coach Buffet featured on the front page of the Life Section in today’s Globe and Mail! Check out Speed-interviewing: On your marks, get set – hire! by Globe writer Zosia Bielski.
So today we are celebrating being on the front page of the Life section, perhaps the most popular section of our national newspaper. Not bad, Tanya! Coach Buffet is on its way to becoming a household name!
The Globe article speaks of an increasing trend to speed hire (i.e. employees, babysitters, doulas and coaches!). Our inspiration for Coach Buffet came in part from the notion that putting participants and coaches in a room for a high energy evening of coaching would be efficient à la ”speed hiring” AND it was much bigger than that too.
You see, as coaches ourselves, Tanya and I know the power of coaching, even in short 15 min segments. We set out to create Coach Buffet as a way to help coaches offer real coaching to show how they help clients create incredible possibilities in their lives and businesses.
Equally important to us is that Coach Buffet participants (prospective coaching clients) receive real value on the spot, perhaps by getting unstuck in an issue they have been grappling with or by finding a way to look at the situation through a new lens. While we would prefer that participants leave the Coach Buffet event wanting to hire one of the coaches from the buffet, we also see it as a great positive when participants leave feeling inspired and with their eyes opened about the potential of coaching.
Come see firsthand what I am talking about. Our next Coach Buffet Toronto is on Jan 26th and Coach Buffet Montreal is Jan 28th. There is no better time than January to get off to a great start and I feel extremely confident that Coach Buffet can help.
Most of us go on hero’s journeys in our lives and businesses. The idea of the hero’s journey or monomyth originally came from Joseph Campbell and had 17 steps. I learned about a 7 step version on a group coaching call this week and raced to draw it for you (I still love that grade 6 feeling of using markers and Bristol board).
So dawn your metaphorical cape and tights. As you read through these stages, think about your current business and life journeys. Plot where you are right now. I would love to tell you where I think I am in my life and business journeys, but I would rather keep you guessing.
The promised 7 steps of the hero’s journey:
1) Innocence-your life or business is ticking along. It might be dull but it’s safe and things are working.
2) Call to Adventure- you start to hear a calling to make a big change and it gets louder and louder (i.e. quite your job, buy the competition, climb Aconcagua…this is a plug for Coach Ian Renaud and his Project R.I.R.E…it is in French only)
3) Threshold Guardians- as soon as you decide to heed the call, guardians or protectors are sure to emerge. Their goal is to send you back to innocence (i.e. your wife who doesn’t want you to resign, your mortgage, your own sabotaging voices that tell you that you are crazy and you will surely fail)
Many people return to innocence at this stage, too scared to go on. Or as my mentor coach says, “they buy a big screen TV” and forget about the call altogether (although life becomes shades of grey even if the TV is in HD).
4) Road to Adventure- you made it past those powerful threshold guardians. Congratulations. You are on a journey of challenges, excitement, intrigue, and learning (i.e. you are building your business, traveling the world). Times are good. You feel free and full of hope.
5) Principal Ordeal- and then…seemingly out of the blue, you start feeling confused and trapped. You have come too far to go back to safety and yet you don’t know how to go on. This stage is not called the Principal Ordeal for nothing. It will really test your metal. You don’t know how long you will be stuck here and how you will go on, but go on you must (Hint: you need to get really quiet when you are here…the answers are inside you somewhere).
6) Flight/ Return- Yippee! Somehow you got silent. You found your way out of the fog. Your purpose is clear again and you know what you have to do to get the proverbial treasure back home (i.e. redefining your business offering, moving to a new city). Whatever the ordeal is for you, you found a way out of it and now you are on your flight to freedom again having “slayed the dragon”.
7) Celebration and Service- You made it. Perhaps you are hometown hero. Perhaps it is just a quiet victory. Whatever the case, you get to celebrate your success and share your treasures/ learnings. Revel in the victory and innocence of this time of celebration. Serve others. And keep your eyes and ears open. If you are true hero, your next call to adventure won’t be far away!
Where are you in the hero’s journey of your life or business? Tell us by commenting.
Rivers Corbett is a force. His entrepreneurial story is epic. He’s a charismatic, experienced business leader and his passion for helping entrepreneurs is contagious. Read on to find out why the interview with Rivers was special for me.
We will pick up the story around the time when Rivers borrowed $1M as a young man to buy out his father’s hodge podge of businesses (an old marina, convenience stores, a nursing home and a wholesale meat operation). The loan enabled him to return to New Brunswick, the province he loves, as an entrepreneur with an income right off the bat. In hindsight it was a good decision although it was not without its pain including a hostile takeover by the board of directors of the nursing home.
All those original businesses have since been spun off or closed. Rivers’ main business is now The Chef Group which just celebrated its 10 year anniversary.
The Chef Group is like the Ford modelling agency but for chefs in the Atlantic provinces. We create culinary adventures and push the envelope on food delivery and food education.
Even the Chef Group story is epic as Rivers lived through embezzlement by his now ex business partner which was uncovered just last year. Fortunately, The Chef Group (now with 15 full-time employees) has come out strong and this year’s focus is on maximizing efficiencies to increase profits.
For an entrepreneur like Rivers who likes to chase shiny lights, buckling down to focus on efficiencies to increase ROI takes discipline. Fortunately, Rivers knows how to keep focus on his main business and indulge his passion for new business by helping other entrepreneurs through coaching and mentoring.
Named as Entrepreneur of the Year in 2005 by the Fredericton Chamber of Commerce, Rivers is a life- long advocate for entrepreneurs as he believes they are the backbone of our economy. Beyond the award, his most proud moments came when he reached a million in revenue for the first time and successfully battled depression twice.
What’s come more easily than he ever imagined is his willingness to expand his risk. He’s had colossal successes and failures in business and each time his confidence has grown through his learning.
I can now say with confidence that I will never have to be employed by someone else again. The money for my kids’ education is in the bank. I could never have gotten to this place without taking the risks I did. Each time I had to manage my fears in order to move forward. Now it gets easier and easier to take smart risks because the rewards are so great and I know I will survive.
Rivers has three themes that have served him well as an entrepreneur:
1) Attitude-he works a lot on personal development and surrounds himself with positive people including a business coach
2) Cash- he is always looking for access to cash (i.e. credit) for a day when he needs to put it into play
3) Team- he creates a team not only among his staff and suppliers but also among his family, friends and business supporters like his coach
I have booked Rivers for 39 minutes to share his top 8 things you have to do to survive and thrive in business beyond year five. Join us for this complimentary teleseminar on December 9th at 8 p.m. EST. Click here to register for 39 Minutes with Rivers Corbett.
Rivers and I have also teamed up to offer a mentor coaching program for start up entrepreneurs called The Business Success Train. I couldn’t think of an entrepreneur I would rather partner with for his depth of experience and passion are so compelling. It doesn’t hurt that we share maritime roots. We are both so very excited to help start-up entrepreneurs (from year 0-5 in business) through our Business Succcess Train program……join us on the train to your success!
I am writing this by way of reprimanding myself!! Just 5 minutes ago I sent out a reminder link on Facebook that I have 5 coaching spots left for my one time ”Business Success in 2 Hours” year end coaching sessions. The minute after I sent out the link, I clicked on a video posted by Start Up Coach Alain Theriault entitled “Top Five Things You Should know About Social Media”. Ouch. I know this stuff. Sometimes it just becomes irresistable not to spread the word via Facebook about things I am offering in my coaching practice. Sometimes, it is entirely justified. Other times it is simply a way to have a feeling of accomplishment at the end of a busy day!
There, I posted my year end coaching offering on Facebook. That’s good. I am sure some people will read and some might forward it on and perhaps someone will call…or will they?
NOT GOOD ENOUGH according to Mikal E. Bellcone, author of Social Media Advisor and contributor to Entrepreneur Magazine. Watch the video for yourself….it’s worth your three minutes.!
I have a background in marketing and sales so you could say I know better. But to err is human. And to be an entrepreneur is to take on the world and fall into the occasional trap of trying to be expert marketer, expert business owner and excellent coach all at the same time.
So back to the Top 5 Things You Should Know about Social Media. I have summarized the key points for you here:
It’s called social media, not social selling
Don’t forget what you already know about marketing
Choose the right niche
You have to engage
You have to have goals
The #1 mistake: Selling in social media…first be part of the conversation and opportunities to sell will arise.
The #1 tip: Be goal oriented; develop a strategy and know your ROI on every marketing expenditure. Set objectives ahead of time and measure!
I would add that taking the medium to longer term view in terms of building your brand through social media is also a good perspective to hold.
Last night I was invited to Challenge Your World as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week (thank you Martin Lessard!). Guy Kawasaki was spectacular as the keynote speaker. For the most part, Guy’s top 10 tips for entrepreneurs make a ton of sense. There are only a couple I dispute. My comments are in italics.
Build what YOU want to use- in other words, skip the market research, make the product or service and get going (see #8 too); build your product/ service with a partner for the lowest cost possible and ensure your partner has talents and skills different than your own.
Pay $0 for tools- WordPress for blogging is a prime example. I was given this sage advice when I started Chandler Coaches and it has served me well to date.
Pay $0 for marketing- there is no longer a need to hire a PR company pre launch or spend $$ on advertising. Agreed and I think you do need to spend a bit of money on a talented graphic artist who can create your company/ product identity…something people will recognize on your website/ blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc.
Suck down or across (not up!)-the person who will make your product a success is a “nobody” who will tell other “nobodies” how much he loves your product/ service. Because you don’t know who the nobodies are, you have to reach a lot of people. Forget about sucking up to stars and other influencers. This makes a ton of sense AND if you can find a way to get the Oprah Effect too, that won’t hurt!
Use Twitter and Tweetmeme- there is no better way to reach the masses. It is brilliant and it is free.
Pay $0 for people-get help from people who are willing to do internships or work for free. Sure, this might be fine when you are truly a start up with $0 cash flow. After that, once you are making $, it is not ok, in my opinion, to make $ on someone else’s back. Share and you will be rewarded. And what about hiring a start up coach like Alain Theriault (who is top of mind as I saw him last night) to help a bit on the front end? And then hire me when you are more established and I will help you grow in the direction you want.
Put everything in “the cloud”-this was for techies re storing data on servers
Ship, then test! Create a product or service that is good enough and get going. Don’t aim for perfection or anything close. “Cash saves all”. My partner Tanya Geisler and I recently did this with our new Coach Buffet concept and we got great feedback on our first two events. We couldn’t know what we know today if we had held off to refine the process.
Avoid venture capital (VC)-bootstrap your company for the first few years instead of looking for investors. When you have a proven product/ service and want to scale up, VC can be an alternative.
Niche thyself- be the unique/ high value player. And if you are the marketer, ask how you can convince the world you are the unique/ high value player.
Guy’s Bonus: Don’t let the bozos grind you down. In Guy’s world, the dangerous bozos are the rich, famous people whose opinions are given more weight than they should be. Resist the naysayers, especially if they are where they are in business/ life because of luck/circumstances and not intelligence.
I am hitting on a theme lately: woman entrepreneurs who have given birth to new businesses around the same time as starting their families. I just interviewed Alysia Melnychuk, owner of Savon Populaire, a Montreal based organic cosmetics (soap etc.) company. Like Kim Fuller of IDG Communications, Alysia started her business just before the birth of her eldest child more than six years ago. And like many entrepreneurial moms, she used her maternity leave time to further develop her ideas so that when she returned to work she was rearing to go.
And she has been going strong ever since. Even the birth of her second child almost 5 months ago hasn’t stopped her. Though this time, she wishes she could pull back more. Her biggest challenge has been finding a way to replace herself. Her solution, by necessity, has been to farm out various aspects of her role to four different people on a part-time or project basis. Not surprisingly, no one person had her entire skill set. Parcelling out her roles and caring for a small baby has necessitated that this entrepreneur truly assume her company management role, leaving technician type soap production issues to others. As it is, she is putting in 20-25 hours a week still (often at night when her children go to bed).
It is hard for me to let go because I pride myself on creativity in our soap making and on quality. This is forcing me to do it and it’s good practice.
Her current situation also made her question her ability to continue with the current company set up. And selling is not an option as Alysia is too excited to walk away as the company is poised for a growth spurt. After very careful consideration, her answer is to create a co-operative.
Over the coming months, Savon Populaire will become a co-op with 3 partners who have an equal voice. There will be a lot more “letting go” to come for Alysia. Fortunately, her passion for creating body friendly, environmentally friendly products and her love of working in collaboration with people instead of in a boss/ subordinate role will continue to drive her. Savon Populaire will be all the better for it as one of the new partners is a herbalist who brings many innovative ideas and know how. Happily, the third partner is a current employee who is being groomed to step into a partner role.
The biggest risk Alysia ever took in business was to start the company in the first place. She did it with no capital and no cash flow. There were some very lean years at the beginning where Alysia’s resourcefulness is all that kept her company going. She told me of how she retrofitted a clothing iron to be her product sealer in order to save $300. It seems there have been many ingenious moves like this. She’s most proud that she has created something that now has worth in terms of brand equity and company assets that she could sell.
Alysia’s biggest failure (and greatest learning) came from realizing that remaining foggy on details where money is concerned is a recipe for big problems. Her initial naïveté didn’t serve her well and she’s now very careful to stipulate clear terms when money is involved.
Soon Savon Populaire will move from their Montreal Parc Extension workshop and manufacturing shop to new larger retail location (TBD) with local shopping traffic and launch a whole new product line. With two new partners, a new retail location, a new product line and a great deal of enthusiasm for what is possible, we can expect to see great things coming from Savon Populaire in 2010.
Kim Fuller is the mother of three. Her oldest is a corporate communications company called IDG Communications. After giving birth to IDG ten years ago, she went on to have two sons, aged 9 and 6. It was Kim who said her business is like a child that she “raised” from conception to maturity. She makes parallels to the dedication required, the thousands of hours spent, the messiness, the nurturing and the tough decision making along the way.
Having two real children while building her communications company was the biggest risk she has ever taken. Interesting, she links her biggest risk to what she is most proud of: controlled and steady growth. Kim says that the attention her children demanded required her to be steady and cautious about how she grew her business. And the controlled growth is what created a rock solid foundation that she and her team are building upon ten years later.
And rock solid it is. Now the clients are more prestigious. And they come with bigger budgets, wider scopes of work and bigger expectations. Meanwhile, IDG Communications stays quiet about their successes. You won’t see them self promoting at awards shows. They are too busy serving their clients and creating deep business relationships that ensure that the marketing work they create truly works for their clients. Some of their most rewarding work is done through Phil Communications, a division of IDG Communications focussed on the not-for-profit sector.
If up until now you are thinking that Kim is a quiet, risk averse mom, make no mistake. She’s a driver! She told me about wanting to reach a place of stability in business and then quickly self-corrected when she realized how the entrepreneur part of her would actually find stability quite uncomfortable.
Her biggest lesson came in year two when a major account ended and necessitated that she let go most of her staff to stay afloat. She not only learned to diversify, she also learned to stand up for herself and the company. The big account was keeping the company busy but was too demanding to be profitable. In asserting her company’s needs, she lost the account but opened up many new opportunities to do things differently.
Finance has been a challenge for Kim who has a degree in Fine Arts and not Accounting! To respond to this gap, she surrounded herself with smart people and a management accountant who is integral to her business success. Ten years later, she may still be a creative at heart and she knows her ways around her books too.
She’s most amazed at the trust her staff place in her decision making ability. I reminded her it is not by accident that she garners trust. She has proven herself time and time again and her people know they can count on her. She calls her current team a “dream team” which says to me it is time to systematize business processes to ensure that if key people leave, the business is not vulnerable.
These days, Kim is more business development (BD) and less art direction and creative. BD is the hat that is needed and she’s more than capable of wearing this hat.
2010 will see IDG launch a new offering that helps their clients through the marketing process. Her team likens it to a microbrewery who carefully crafts their brew with careful attention to every step. I won’t reveal more. You can check out their offering early in 2010.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Tungle CEO Marc Gingras a few months back. Tungle is a free calendar accelerator… that helps you schedule meetings online and publish your free/ busy calendar (so your clients and colleagues can see when you have free appointment slots, for example, without having to call or email you). This short video on Tungle’s capabilities will impress you:
While Tungle is a great fit for any business professional, I see a fantastic opportunity for coaches and therapists who run a busy practice and want to make client appointment scheduling much easier by having clients book their own appointments online.
For Marc, Tungle is his way to positively change the world. His goal is to have all business people using Tungle to schedule their meetings. His biggest obstacle is the status quo. Changing people’s entrenched behaviours is challenging so his team works to make Tungle easier and easier to adopt.
The key to running a successful business, according to Marc, comes back to people almost everytime: having the right people in the right positions, creating a “get it done” attitude at Tungle, and aligning all the people (management, employees, the board and investors) toward the same objectives.
Getting the right people is not about technology, marketing or the competition; we need people with the right attitude and we have to put them in the right spot so they can shine.
Sometimes the people who are great at the start up phase are not the people who can build a successful mature company, Marc has learned.
Letting go of one of my initial start up people was the hardest thing. The reward is that the company turned around 100 percent so my decision was the right one and it was confirmed right away.
He’s proud of the team he has built and how he has transformed Tungle from a successful start up to a successful company.
Marc started his web career in 1998. During the time the tech bubble burst, he was managing a team of 30 at another company. While he feels that he let them down as he didn’t see it coming, he knows he won’t get caught like this again. He’s rounded out his finance and R&D expertise with sales and marketing know-how, surrounded himself by amazing people and now pays close attention to financing and budgets. Business lessons are painful AND effective!
And now what would Marc like most? Having more money to enable things to move faster and having more people using Tungle to reach a tipping point toward Tungle’s objective of having all business professionals scheduling their meetings through Tungle.
Be a part of this tipping point. Save yourself time every time you schedule a meeting . Avoid the time jungle. Tungle.
Bonus: Marc’s book recommendation for CEO’s on the move: From Good To Great by Jim Collins
Soup is your metaphor for the week, Cancerian. Symbolically speaking, it’s the key to your personal power and a model for the approach you should take in everything you do. On the most basic level, you might want to eat some soup every day. That will make potent suggestions to your subconscious mind about how to mix lots of ingredients together so that their value and beauty as a totality are more than the sum of their parts. Not just in the kitchen, but in every area of your life, blend little miscellaneous things into one big interesting thing.
You might think it flaky for a business coach to start a post with her kooky horoscope. Not so in my books. Metaphors like this are rich and are not to be overlooked.
In my case, the biggest soup I have been cooking lately is Coach Buffet. My co-chef is Tanya Geisler. We hosted our first ever Coach Buffet in Montreal last night. And late late, after everything was wrapped up, with our mouths yawning and our eyes half closing, we read evaluation after evaluation. The verdict: Coach Buffet #1 was a resounding success.
The recipe:
Creativity to dream a vision the guts and drive to make it happen
A business partnership and coaching every step of the way
Participants (professional and business owners) who, as early adopters, showed up fully…hungry for coaching and possibility
Friends and family who supported us through our first event (i.e. for registration, time keeping, photography/ design, spreading the word, access to venue and encouragement)
Openness to the miscellaneous things that will make this “soup” better and better and better
Back to the horoscope. I haven’t been eating soup daily. Frankly because I like making it for others far more than I enjoy eating it myself. Coach Buffet was this for me. We made the metaphorical soup and while others feasted, we were nourished.
Now, metaphors aside. We are building a scalable business franchise model. You will hear more about Coach Buffet.
Coach Buffet Toronto takes place on Tuesday, November 17th. Register online.
They are Chinese and Indian many other ethnicities. You often find them in hotels and on cruise ships. They are often overflowing with plenty, and some would say they are wasteful. Many people overeat at them. What are THEY?
Buffets, of course. They sound like a great idea when you are really hungry and you often regret it very quickly after when you have eaten too much and realize the food all tasted the same.
Why, you might ask, am I discussing the merits of a buffet in a blog focussed on coaching for small business owners and professionals? Some of you know the answer because I have been talking about it incessantly for a number of months now! Yep. Coach Buffet. It’s a new kind of buffet. Coaching is on the menu and we are serving possibility.
My partner Tanya Geisler and I are launching Coach Buffet as a new format for coaching (and a new business venture for us) to show professionals and business owners the power of coaching and to help prospective clients and coaches find a great coaching match in a very short time.
So if you will be in the Montreal area on Thursday evening (Oct 15th) and want to deal with a real life or business issue in a fun and meaningful evening out, join us at the buffet! Our line up of Montreal coaches—whose flavours range from start up business coaching to intuitive life coaching–will leave you feeling full of possibility and no regrets.
Coach Buffet hits Toronto on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009.
I have been dropping hints all summer about a new coaching concept my friend and colleague Tanya Geisler and I have been developing. So it is with great joy and anticipation that I let the proverbial cat out of the bag. The “cat” is a concept called Coach Buffet and it’s coming soon to a city near you…well, if you live in Montreal or Toronto, Canada, that is.
On October 15th, we will host Coach Buffet in Montreal followed by Coach Buffet Toronto on November 17th. I could leave you to research it it on your own but I am far too enthused to let you go so quickly.
The bottom-line version is that Coach Buffet is an innovative event that is designed to bring a dozen powerful life and business coaches together with participants for meaningful one-on-one coaching conversations in a social evening format.
Coach Buffet is ideal for professionals and business owners who feel stuck in some aspect of business, career or life in general and who are looking for possibilities.
For Montreal, our line up of coaches is extraordinary (by mid September, you can read all their bios on the site) and our venue is exquisite. I can assure you that powerful coaching will take place and strong relationships will form. As we say at Coach Buffet:
Many a business is born of a passion that has commercial possibilities. For Karen Kerk-Courtney, giving birth to her first child Ben in 2004 intensified her passion for healthy living. And when she couldn’t pronounce any of the ingredients listed on the hospital baby wash container (some of them 26 letters long!), she decided in that instant to clean Ben with water alone and committed to finding healthier alternatives.
So, you could say that her business was born with her baby though it took two years of extensive research and recipe creation before Bare Organics was officially launched in November of 2006.
For Karen, Bare Organics represents the ideal of what we all need to move toward—reducing over-consumption of unnecessary personal care products, making informed purchasing decisions and choosing all-natural, organic skin and baby care products.
Did you know that 60% of what you put on your skin can get absorbed into your bloodstream and that babies and children are especially susceptible? asks Karen.
Karen is proud to have created products people look for and are happy to use.
Like most bright and ambitious business owners, Karen says that hardest part of her business is finding enough time.
Everything takes 4 times as long as I imagine. Nonetheless, I am finally developing a schedule for manufacturing and packing and starting to carve out planning time but it’s orders that pay the bills so that is always the priority.
About six months ago, having reached a saturation point, Karen hired a business coach to help her see her blind spots and to hold her accountable to taking the business to the next level. She’s pleased with the work they have accomplished so far.
What’s been easier than she would have thought is fitting “family into business” and “business into family”. Even Liam, her 2.5 year old, speaks about Bare Organics when he’s with her on business errands.
Pursuing the development of an organic clothing line for kids turned out to be her biggest failure and her greatest lesson to date. She invested in large quantities of simple unbleached fabrics and production only to find that a competitor was offering much cuter fabrics and styles. She hadn’t done any market research and she paid for it. Fortunately, she recognized her mistake early enough and pulled the plug before she got in too deep.
Three years in, the next steps for Bare Organics are to get full organic certification (an involved and expensive process), launch a new brand and expand the retail base. Karen doesn’t hesitate when I ask what she needs most:
What Bare Organics needs most right now is cash for new product development and the organic certification process.
So any angel investor with a penchant for a healthier planet and healthier people can contact Karen to discuss how an investment can create an even healthier bottom line on many fronts.
As I write, my face is enjoying the natural oils of Bare Organics Serum and my legs are soaking up the moisture from Bare Organics Natural Massage Bar . While I have never been one to over-do it on beauty products, I am very drawn to the simplicity of a few quality natural products for all my needs. And knowing the woman and the story behind the brand made my purchasing decision very easy!
Thank you to my friend and strategic communications expert Deborah Hinton of Hinton : for sending me the following tips from Seth Godin:
1. Go where your customers are.
www.greentruckonthego.com
Jacquelyne runs a tiny juice company called Chakwave. I met her in Los Angeles, standing next to an organic lunch truck. Like the little birds that clean the teeth of the hippo, there’s synergy here. The kind of person that visits the truck for lunch is the sort of person that would happily pay for something as wonderfully weird as her juice. And the truck owners benefit from the rolling festival farmer’s market feel that comes from having a synergistic partner set up on a bridge table right next door.
I have had an intuition to locate myself in/ near Chateau St. Ambroise to be easily accessible to the many interesting small and medium sized businesses there. I even found a partner who will rent me commercial loft space in a very flexible manner. There is nothing stopping me…except me. Time to jump in!
2. Be micro-focused and the search engines will find you.
My friend Patti Jo is an extraordinary teacher and tutor. Her new business, The Scarsdale Tutor doesn’t need many clients in order to be successful. This permits her to focus obsessively and that gets rewarded with front page results on Google. Not because she’s tried to manipulate the seo (she hasn’t) but because this is exactly the page you’d hope to find if you typed “scarsdale tutor” into a search engine. Could she do this nationwide? Of course not. But she doesn’t want to or need to. Living on the long tail can be profitable.
I had lunch with my friend Tricia van der Walde, a Montreal massage therapist, this week. She said the same thing. She’s coming up first in Google for “Montreal lymphatic drainage”. It’s a speciality. People are finding her.
3. Outlast the competition.
I was amazed at all the empty storefronts I saw in LA on my last visit. On one particular block, three or four of the ten lunch places were shut down. And the others? Doing great. That’s because the remaining office workers who used to eat lunch at the shuttered places had to eat somewhere, and so the survivors watched their business grow. A war of attrition is never pretty, but if you’re smart about overhead and scale, you’ll win it.
A number of my coach colleagues –Tanya Geisler, Minnie Richardson, Ian Renaud, and Marie-Claude LaPalme – are building their businesses during this recession. Each of them has been cautious about taking on big overhead. Each of them is growing organically by word of mouth and through other promotions. the point is that all of them are growing. So am I!
4. Leverage.
Rick Toone runs a tiny guitar-making operation. His lack of scale makes it easy for him to share. When others start using his designs, he doesn’t suffer (he can’t make any more guitars than he already is) he benefits, because as the originator of the design, his originals become more coveted, not less valuable. He leverages his insight and shares it as a free marketing device.
Michael Port, in his best sellling book Book Yourself Solid advises small business owners to “give away so much value that you think you’ve given too much and then give more”. He descibes a college friend of his used to order his hero sandwiches saying “put so much mayonnaise on it that you think you’ve ruined it, and then put some more!”. Think mayonnaise and as Michael says, “invite prospective clients to experience what it is like to be around you and the people you serve”.
5. Respond.
This is the single biggest advantage you have over the big guys. Not only are you in charge, you also answer the phone and read your email and man the desk and set the prices. So don’t pretend you have a policy. Just be human.
She describes her Synkro event as a Tour de Force…an opportunity to make people feel good and dance more. And it is. And so is she! She’s the M Girl– Annie Cremont–owner of ExperiencesM and creator of Synkro.
Part of Synkro’s charm is its mystic. My friend and coach colleague who invited me to Synkro in May said she had no idea what to expect but she “expected” it to be very unique based on her exchanges with Annie. You can say that again! I was amazed how quickly M-Girl and her team created a “let your hair down” space for the room full of 30/40/50 somethings. And that was just the beginning. We danced, and danced and danced. And at the end of the evening, I felt like I had been coached and cleansed. My head was clear and my heart was calm.
Dancing makes people feel good. It helps them get in sync with their mind and body. It is my personal mission to make 1 million people dance in the next three years.
I know she will succeed. But in case you think Annie is another Where the hell is Matt?, she’s not. While they both have big visions, an international focus, and a love of getting people to dance, Synkro is a a fully integrated, tested program that helps initially self -conscious people to get in touch with their own unique rhythm as a form of communication.
It is the perfect program to open or close a big conference or corporate meeting. It is also a perfect event to raise money for health and wellness because it helps people be in touch with themselves.
At a recent convention in Phoenix, Arizona, for the National Speakers Association (NSA), a show case for North America’s top speakers, many eyes were turned her way. She believes her timing to enter the US market is perfect.
As the economy comes out of recession under Obama’s leadership, the US is more open than ever to doing things differently. The US needs to dance!
M-Girl knows what she is talking about and she knows how to sell her concept. In 1999, fresh out of business school at HEC, Annie created Station M, an advertising and marketing agency. That gave her almost a decade of experience and a very large network. In 2008, she made a life altering decision to wind down Station M operations and pursue her dream to develop Synkro. She followed her gut when she realized that the 2-3 minute dance portion she added into each presentation she did on selling was the highlight for her and her audience.
Annie Cremont, the M-Girl, is a spectacular example of someone who is following her dreams and living her life aligned to her values. She radiates energy; she is smart and generous and she is going to make a million people dance by 2011.
If you would like to have a Synkro experience in Montreal, check out Annie’s special invitation for Monday Auguest 17th. She’s running a pilot and the costs are on her. If you miss out on the 17th, you can register for her next live Synkro which will be held at Gallery Art Avenue in Old Montreal on September 30th.
I have had a number of no show coaching clients in June. I could take it personally (and admittedly in the moment when it happens, I feel a certain disrespect). But I know better. It is not about me and my coaching. It does, however, impact my coaching relationships and it certainly affects my business (though not in the dollars and cents way you may think). For you see, my clients pay in advance and when they miss an appointment without giving 24 hours notice, I still get paid. I don’t write this in a “laughing all the way to the bank“ kind of way. On the contrary, as a loving business woman, it actually pains me to be paid for a session that never takes place. And I have a hard time understanding how it can happen with regularity.
No-show clients affect many industries (think services like health care/ dentistry, beauty, restaurants etc.). Reasons range from the most benign (forgetting) to the most serious emergency and everything in between.
In coaching (or therapy for that matter), one tends to attach more meaning to the no-show client. Talk to any coach or therapist and he will tell you that clients who are up against something big/ on the verge of a breakthrough will often “forget” to show up for their appointment or will find themselves in an “urgent situation” that could not be avoided.
While this stock photo from Fotosearch shows the frustration I sometimes feel, I can assure you I do not do this when I have a client no-show!
I approach missed appointments with curiosity (and do my level best to keep the “ X*&^%!!” to myself!).
Client, where else are you not showing up in your life? What is a metaphor for this missed appointment? What are you avoiding?”
Pain in the ass questions?…perhaps. Important to ask?…definitely. There is juice here. And sometimes the missed appointment really is just that. A miss. The client’s daughter had an ear infection and her routine got thrown off because of it. End of story.
Of course, it’s not the end of the story for the business owner. For a massage therapist, one no-show per week is equal to thousands of dollars of lost revenue annually, not to mention the resulting unpaid time in follow up (i.e. contacting the client, rebooking, collecting a cancellation fee).
Per Se, a New York restaurant, supposedly charges $175 per seat for reservation no shows who do not cancel three days before. The most sought after restaurants can do this while less in demand locals will alienate their client base. In fairness, restaurants purchase food supplies to match the volume of meals they will serve and a few empty seats can be the different between surviving and profitability.
In the twists and turns of life and business, there will always be no-shows. Here are some ways to reduce the number of them in your business:
Have a missed appointment policy and stick to it- it is great to have a flexible backbone but don’t be a jelly fish;
Clearly communicate your missed appointment/ reservation policy at the beginning of the client/ customer relationship and at every relevant opportunity;
Handle each missed appointment promptly by dealing directly with the client- a stitch in time saves nine;
Keep track-missing one appointment is human. Two is a trend. After two missed appointments, well known money coach Morgana Rae says “You’re Fired!”
You are in business to serve and to prosper. Respect yourself and your business and your clients will follow suit.
Andrea Shepherd left her full time job as an editor at the Montreal Gazette to follow her childhood dream of opening a dance studio; her partner, Wolf Mercado Alatrista, who maintains a full time job at the YMCA to keep their family afloat during their start up phase, is also following his dream. Together, they are the founders of MonTango a thriving tango studio in NDG, Montreal.
Andrea and Wolf
All totalled, Wolf and Andrea have danced Argentine tango for more than 20 years. They taught together before deciding to open MonTango. Now, a year in, they see how their ability to “dance in the moment” with each other on the dance floor and in life helps them run their business. Andrea manages operations, communications and instructs. Wolf focuses on the client experience and instruction.
While MonTango’s initial mission was to teach people to tango, it now expands to creating community. Andrea says,
Bringing people together and creating friendships wasn’t our original purpose but it has become a wonderful by-product and is so rewarding.
You have only to spend an hour at a Sunday afternoon Cafe Croissant Tango to see that they have succeeded wildly on this count. And it is not by accident. Wolf and Andrea, and their teaching staff, regularly dance with beginner and advanced students, giving freely of their time, their enthusiasm and their instruction.
Of course, one doesn’t live on goodwill alone and dance studios are notoriously risky businesses. Expensive rent for studio space, competition, and changing dance fads can wreak havoc with the business model. Happily, social dance has never been more popular with shows like So You Think You Can Dance. It helps that Montreal is the tango capital of North America and that interest in tango, the most complicated and wonderful of the social dances (emphasis all mine!) shows no sign of slowing down. Even in a down economy with a lot of competition for students, MonTango has doubled its student number since last year.
The current supportive climate and endless hours working on and in the business have ensured their general trend in revenue is upward. Nonetheless, their dance in business has not been without hiccups. Some near misses have taught them:
Everything takes longer than expected (time management/ priority setting is key);
Word of mouth/ referrals are their key to successful growth because other marketing can be expensive or inefficient;
Hiring help in their areas of weakness (i.e. accounting) is necessary;
Finding teaching staff that will embrace their mission and follow their MonTango methodologies can be time consuming but is essential to ensuring students have a MonTango experience;
Preventing the business from creeping into all aspects of their family time is an ongoing challenge and a work in progress.
April marked MonTango’s one year anniversary. We celebrated by dancing tango to live music by Ensemble Montreal Tango. More than 120 tangueros/ tangeuras joined in the festivities. For MonTango, we, tango aficionados all, are more than clients. We are a community of friends. And what business doesn’t need friends?
So….If life is a tango, will you sit it out or dance?
If dance is your reply, MonTango invites you to try one of their free introductory lessons, from June 22 to 25 at 6 p.m. at 5588A Sherbrooke St. W. (corner Marcil). They will also hold tango dancing at NDG Park (across the street from the studio) every Friday from June 26 to Aug. 28 between 6 and 9 p.m. For info, click here or call 514-486-5588.
About five years ago, George Thompson, President of Headcan Health Education Media, gave me a reprint of a Harvard Business Review (HBR) article that he was exuberant about. We were focussing on client satisfaction and the article—The One Number You Need to Grow– cut right to the chase (you will have to pay Harvard Business Review if you want to read the whole thing). George’s enthusiasm and the message still resonate. In fact, I believe I have integrated the notion into my very core.
Simply stated, one can take a very blunt and important measure of customer loyalty by asking two simple questions: the first about the quality of their customer experience and the second about whether they would purchase again/ recommend you (your product or service). The results of these two questions enable you to zero in on your most valued customers and leverage your sweet spot.
Today I was reminded of this concept –repeat customers who are willing to recommend your product/ service—as I read a report from Upwardly Mobile, Inc. This US group has created an online career management system by reverse engineering the networking steps taken by elite professionals (those earning $200K+) to build their careers. See their just released report on networking and career advancement. The key message here is that networking is not optional for career/ business success. Furthermore, it is about farming all the time rather than hunting in desperation when the economy drags your sales down or you find yourself job searching.
It strikes me that it all comes down to the same thing. For long term success, it doesn’t matter as much that you have 300 people in your LinkedIn network (though the optics are good) or that you have many customers with whom you have a shallow relationships. What matters more is whether these people will actually stick their neck out and recommend you to others.
Whether you are building and nurturing your network or focussed on client satisfaction and loyalty, here are a few points I believe in:
Help your network/ customer base without attachment to results or payback;
Be attached to what your network/ customers do for you; if there is no return over time, stop investing in them (hey, if Seth Godin can give contradictory advice, why can’t I?);
Refer clients to your competitors (if your competitor will serve them much better based on a specific need they have that you won’t serve as well);
Be brave. Once you feel there is some trust, ask your contact/client/customer if they will recommend you. If they aren’t comfortable recommending you, find out what their discomfort is and what you can do to turn it around.
And remember: to accelerate your business/ career/ life, there is only one number you need to grow. Don’t wait for a rainy day.
A 15 hour work week and days off in between to kayak and rejuvenate or be with one’s daughter. This is the schedule of Dan Quinz, philosophical engineer and entrepreneurial business owner of Acacetus Inc., a small Montreal consultancy working on embedded systems.
Dan places a very high value on freedom, solace and being an amazing dad. His rewards seem obvious but what has been risked and what is the secret to a 15 hour work week?
For starters, Dan is no ordinary engineer. He built his first circuit at the age of 9 and his first computer at the age of 11 in his basement. His career has spanned about 35 years. Some rough math shows he has invested over 60,000 hours practicing engineering and related fields. If it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert, Dan has done it 6 times over. This was not risk so much as extreme dedication and sacrifice. Though in looking back, Dan says he was driven by passion and internal drive and didn’t see it as sacrifice then.
En route to racking up those 60,000+ hours, Dan eventually saw that marrying engineering and applied philosophy would help him deepen his understanding of the world we live in. Naturally curious, he reads widely from many disciplines and names this as one of his key success factors. He once solved a highly technical robotic control issue by modelling it to behave like an ant colony. Unlike the Ph. D educated researchers he was working with at the time, Dan felt he could take risks and trust his intuition and this provided the free thinking space needed to solve the problem.
Now, rather than being “the technical solutions guy”, he is more often hired as a mentor coach for entire engineering teams and executive management. His in-depth knowledge of philosophy and psychology has him so attuned to people, and engineers in particular, that he is able to observe/ assess and gently guide teams to synergy, innovation and vastly higher productivity.
In Gladwellian fashion, if we step back to look at other advantages that have favoured Dan, we find that in 2005, listening to his intuition, he set out to create the perfect tool to enable a car’s computer system to talk to a PC. Shortly after building his prototype, he found himself working on a contract where his solution would be the perfect one. He offered it up as a trial and a few days later was asked to quote on manufacturing thousands of units. He now sells and licenses it in the US and other countries which helps Acacetus be diversified.
But lest you conclude all this has paved his way to financial freedom (and his 15 hour work week), I will stop you at the pass. Dan once had an opportunity to license an operating system he had designed to a client for whom he was consulting. In his position of trust, he could have recommended his proprietary solution but he knew the impact for the client would be neutral at best (i.e. his client didn’t need it). At $1-$2M units a year this client was selling, he would have earned very well. Enter integrity. Saying no to this deal increased the trust of his client tenfold and shortly after he was invited to advise the president of a $400M US parent company on the brokering of a deal with a large (non bankrupting!) car manufacturer.
It is not who you know, but who knows you. I make sure the people who can best help me attain my goals know me well. I do this by serving them best and being honest at all times.
Even when it means walking away from millions.
Taking one more step back in Dan’s life reveals an ended marriage and an isolated childhood. These can hardly be considered life advantages. For Dan though, being alone created a lot of space for study at a young age. His marriage (ending with a custody battle), taught him to turn anger and despair into curiosity and resilience and showed him that no matter what, he would always uphold his integrity. These lessons had a high price tag. That Dan even shared them with me speaks volumes about his authenticity.
Today, Dan is a technically brilliant, emotionally mature, insightful and compassionate leader. His favourite reward is watching people develop and seeing the smile on their face when all of a sudden “they get it”!
And as for risk/ reward, Dan put in his time, listened to his intuition and had the courage to innovate over and over again. He continuously reinvents himself and his business processes. And now he chooses to limit it to 15 hours a week!
My learning and self discovery en route to coaching certification has been an extraordinary experience for me. I have been rewarded with amazing clients and coach colleagues. I delight daily in seeing my clients shape courageous actions in their lives and businesses. And I am continually inspired by my many coach colleagues with whom I share a vision of bringing a higher order of consciousness to the world.
Tango at the South Street Seaport, NYC, as taken recently by Christian Boulay (Montreal tango dancer)
When my clients reach a milestone in their lives, I coach them to pause and come up with a way to celebrate. So often in life, we brush off our successes and immediately set our sights on what is next. This Sunday I will move the furniture, put on my tango shoes, and raise a glass with friends and colleagues as I host a Tango BBQ to mark my certification in coaching.
What are you celebrating in life and business? How will you mark the occasion?
The notion that business problems are personal problems in disguise I believe can be traced to Thomas Leonard, the father of modern life and business coaching. It’s simple. Businesses are run by people. And as you know, people have problems from time to time. On the surface, it is easy to accept that some business problems are personal problems but all business problems???
Before you dismiss this idea out of hand, put yourself is this business owner’s shoes and explore with me some examples.
The hypothetical scenario:
You are a 40 year old owner of CityBike, a retail operation in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, that is about to expand to online sales of custom manufactured urban bikes.
Obvious connection between business problem and personal problem:
You hired a Director of Marketing a year ago to help you grow. He is going through a marriage breakup. Your company repositioning/ website revamp, slated for end of March to launch your new line of custom manufactured urban bikes, is now slipping into late May (if you are lucky). In this case, his big personal problem= your big business problem.
Less obvious connection between business problem and personal problem:
In 2002, you predicted a huge upswing in bicycle commuting in cities and this vision compelled you to start your company five years ago…a retail bicycle store. After four years of steady growth, you pressed go on manufacturing your own urban bikes to sell online and in your retail operation. This was your original vision but it took you four years to truly commit to it. In the meantime, a much bigger competitor has just come out with an urban bike that is selling like hotcakes, even during the recession. Your fear of committing to your business vision= your current business problem.
Downright subtle connection between business problem and personal problem:
Early on, there were some issues with the accuracy of the bike production samples from your Chinese manufacturer. This added frustration, time and expense that you didn’t anticipate. Surely I won’t try to make this a personal problem too? Well, I might. After all, your Chinese suppliers are people too! Who knows what was happening with your Chinese engineer and her team when she was developing your prototype.
Bottom-line:
You’ve built a very solid business. You are employing people. You are contributing to the economy and what’s more, you are helping protect the environment and improve people’s health with your urban bikes. Certainly, you cannot predict or prevent all personal problems (yours and those of your employees, suppliers, customers etc.) from impacting your business but you can learn to spot them earlier and learn to coach yourself and your people through them.
As we increasing makes links to personal life in the business world, one day I will be able to write a post entitled Business Success= Personal Success in Disguise!
Yesterday’s topic was company values (see The Value of Red Velvet Cake). Today I am on to the value of having a red velvet rope to keep non ideal clients out! Yes. You heard right. The idea belongs to Michael Port, business coach, and author of the widely read Book Yourself Solid.
Port conjures up the velvet rope you may encounter when you attend a high end, invitation only party. You show up and the bouncer only lets you past the velvet rope if your name is on the guest list. Port’s idea is to treat prospective clients’ metaphorical entry into your business this way too. He recommends becoming crystal clear on who your ideal client is in terms of their qualities (not their pocketbook) and going so far as to fire your “dud” clients–the ones who drain your energy and prevent you from being your very best with your ideal clients.
For my business coaching practice, you will get past the the velvet rope if you are:
a creator-you already know that it’s up to you to create the business and life of your dreams.
a natural partner-you are living proof that partnering on ideas, projects, goals and desires is a surefire way to manifest them.
fully alive- you are awake to possibility and your energy is palpable.
a connector-you get great joy out of connecting people to ideas and other resources.
a believer- you already know the power of business coaching, you have faith in the process and you know things will work out great.
If on the other hand, you are a victim of circumstance, a sole operator (in the sense that you are scared to involve anyone lest they steal your ideas), flat, a disconnector and a skeptic…my velvet rope will not be opened for you. Of course, it’s not likely that you will try to crash my party anyway.
You have made a decision to let a longstanding employee go because she no longer adds value to your company; your number one supplier is slipping badly and if they don’t improve, you are going to contract with another supplier; you need to tell your wife you are going on a week long golf trip with your buddies (and you neglected to consult her…ok this isn’t a business issue per se but business and life all blend together anyway, don’t they?). Whatever the situation, knowing you have to face it and have a conversation makes your stomach turn inside out.
There’s good news. You can take the sting out of these dreaded conversations and greatly increase the probability that the outcome will be good. Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most came out of the Harvard Negotiation Project about a decade ago. Lest you think it is outdated, I can tell you I dug it out last week to help me through a difficult conversation and it made all the difference. While the book itself is a little cumbersome, the approach has worked for me everytime I have used it.
I am confident that without planning my difficult conversation, I would have gone into it angry and blaming. I expect I would have come out of it angry and blaming too! Instead, I followed the wisdom of discussing what matters most and came out with much more than I expected. While it makes for a less interesting blogpost, I won’t give details to protect the innocent! What I will give is a list of tips on having a difficult conversation. This represents a blend of things I borrowed from the book and my coach training:
Prepare.A difficult conversation by nature means the stakes are often high. Invest time planning what you want to say, what your impact might be and what you want to achieve.
Check your motivation. What are you hoping to achieve? How can this be about learning, sharing and joint problem solving instead of finger pointing?
Outline three conversations. There is your version, their version and a “third version” which is more objective. Walk thru each version as you see it. For the third version, come up with a more neutral “factual” version that strips away the emotions and baggage of the first two stories.
Be face to face. Make a point of getting in front of the person. It shows you are serious and gives you both access to a lot more cues than email or telephone conversations.
Share and invite. Share your purpose. Invite the other to join as a partner to sort out the situation.
Explore.Start from the third story and then get to your story and theirs. Bring your curiousity. Acknowledge feelings behind arguments. Drop defensiveness.
Distinguish intentions from impact. Tease things apart. Their intention was likely good. Maybe the impact of their action/ or inaction was not. They may feel the same about your intention and impact.
Invent. Come up with options that meet the most important concerns and interests of you both. Borrow from labour relations and use interest based bargaining to go for a win-win.
It’s not rocket surgery or brain science as my good friend likes to say. It’s plain old common sense. It’s just hard to see in the heat of the moment.
Here are some other takes on how to have a difficult conversation:
So you have a long “to do” list and a few of the same pesky items keep showing up week after week. You just can’t seem to knock them off your list. Maybe your reoccurring list looks a bit like this:
· Update contact management software (but you hate IT stuff!)
·Call people you met at recent Board of Trade breakfast (but what will I say?)
·Decide yes or no re: PR proposal (is it PR I need or should I spend $ on direct mail?)
You get the picture. Whatever the tasks, we all have our so called reasons for not getting them done, whether due to fear, indecision, boredom or dislike.
So try this. Set up an accountability partnership. I define this as a regular check in with a colleague or friend for the purposes of support and accountability. I have a telephone accountability partnership with a friend and fellow business owner who is based in Toronto (in fact, our partnership was her idea). We meet every Monday for an hour via phone. If it seems like a lot, I assure you it is one of the most valuable hours in my week.
Accountability meeting (30 min for her/ 30 min for me).
Check in on where we stand relative to the commitments we made from the previous week.
Decide on key things we will commit to for the week ahead.
Have fun. Challenge each other. Champion each other.
Every week we challenge each other to do what is “closest to cash” or sometimes what is closest to our hearts’ desire. We care about each others’ success and happiness. For this we are willing to push each other quite hard which isn’t always comfortable yet is usually very rewarding for us both.
So if you want that great feeling that comes with momentum and support, less procrastination, and greatly increased productivity, set up an accountability partnership of your own.
Here’s what I recommend:
Choose your partner well. Partner with someone you trust and respect, who is reliable and shares your work ethic. Pick a coach-like person who is a great listener and challenger and is curious. Ensure there is mutual benefit. One sided partnerships are like clapping with one hand…not very effective.
Design your partnership. Agree on your joint purpose for meeting, when you will meet, for how long, what the agenda will be, how you will keep each other accountable.
Take it seriously. More than just busting through procrastination, you are setting up a structure that will give you support and guidance and help you achieve what you want (i.e. getting more clients/ customers, raising your profile, learning to delegate, having more fun in your business etc.)
Have fun. You are creating a really powerful tool to help you in life and business. Keep it alive by making it playful. Celebrate your successes together. This may well become the highlight of your week.
An accountability partnership doesn’t replace being coached but it sure is a great set up for busting through procrastination and reducing isolation. In my case, I have a top notch business coach and a wonderful accountability partnership. I wouldn’t have it any other way!
Stay tuned for procrasination buster #2 in my next post.
I just had coffee at Shäika, my corner cafe. It has oft been my reward and my respite when I need a change of scenery from my home office. I have long loved this place and today my fondness grew, for today I interviewed co-owner and operations manager Christina Sciascia and learned first hand about the making of Shäika.
It started as dream of Dave Moloney and Christina S. They were a couple at the time. They saw a neighbourhood badly in need of a great cafe and they plunged ahead.
We were a bit crazy. We saw this great location in a very run down building and we jumped into it. We have since transformed this community.
Christina laughs shyly. I believe her shyness comes from knowing she’s right and yet almost not believing how much impact their business has had. Her romantic partnership with Moloney ended but the business partnership is going strong. In August, Shäika will celebrate five years as the lifeblood of Notre Dame de Grace (NDG).
In the beginning, their vision was to create a vibrant neighbourhood meeting place. Check! Today, the cafe has a pulse all its own. The clientele is eclectic—new moms, students, locals, business people, and lovers. That Christina cannot describe a typical customer is, to her, a testament to having achieved their goal of being a meeting place for everyone.
According to Christina, many a great relationship has had its genesis at Shäika. Bands have formed and business collaborations have evolved. William McNally, a local musician, even wrote a song called the Shäika Shuffle.
And then there is the most important relationship of all. Without even realizing it, Christina neglected to mention it but my coach’s intuition told me to ask her more questions.
He came in for coffee every day before work. He lived in the building. At first, I thought he was so straight laced but I got to like his dry sense of humour and starting realizing I was looking forward to his morning coffee run. But I didn’t think about him romantically at all! At the time I was still performing music so he started coming to see me play. He would always bring a female friend. After a few months of this, I invited him to bring her for brunch one weekend and he said he’d come but won’t be bringing his female friend (I really thought she was his girlfriend). That’s when I started to realize he’d been in love with me for months! We started dating and a few months into it I knew he was the man I would marry.
Fast forward 9 short months and he was her husband; they now have two young boys. And Christina seemed to realize in telling me her story how much Shäika has formed this part of her life.
Like the changing art on Shäika’s walls, Christina is a musician turned operation manager and mom. She is most proud of her transformation from laissez-faire musician to an organized manager of 12+ staff.
I have a new way of respecting people that I didn’t have before. Our staff makes a wonderful team. They all think differently and we all arrive at our logic in different ways. I didn’t have a tolerance for this before.
With her heightened management skills, she has learned the importance of creating business processes, trusting her intuition, hiring better and taking direct and timely action when a staff member is disrupting the team. These were hard lessons. She seems happy to have learned them and happy to have them behind her.
So what does this dynamic woman want to be telling me over coffee five years from now? She says she’ll still be at the table and wants to tell me that Shäika is host to big name evening entertainment and that the neighbouring Empress Theatre (formerly Cinema V) is in full swing with live music, dance and cultural events.
This woman is committed to building community and it’s not hard to see why the community is committed to her.
So you might readily agree that one could draw parallels between tango and sex. I go so far as to say there are parallels between tango and business and specifically that there are common characteristics between tango dancers and entrepreneurs. And it has nothing to do with sex.
Hear me out. For starters, is there any dance more complicated to learn than Argentine tango? Is there any business more challenging that an entrepreneurial venture?
Leadership
There is no tango without a leader; there is no new business venture without an entrepreneur.
Improvisation and multi-tasking mastery
In tango, the leader must lead the dance, navigate the busy dance floor, and keep time with the music, all the while connecting with his follower. And Argentine tango is an entirely improvised dance. There is no blueprint to follow. It is made up in the moment. The entrepreneur juggles planning, operations, finance/ accounting, marketing and human resources, to name a few. No one hands her a set plan to follow for any of this though successful entrepreneurs usually write their own plan and improvise as they come up against new things.
The art of attraction
The best tanguero offers the entire package: skill/ technique, a sharp appearance, grace and respect. The successful entrepreneur is always skilful, presents himself professionally and believes in his product or service. He ensures that customers, employees and investors want to dance with him…and preferably repeatedly.
Finely tuned Intuition/ instinct
The seasoned tanguera dances like she has eyes in the back of her head. She can sense her next move even before it’s invited and yet she knows not to step until she feels the lead. She trusts her partner and herself. The best entrepreneurs are so in tune with their vision, their stakeholders and their business climate, they can feel in their bones what they should do and when to do it. And they know that even if their interpretation is off, they will learn from it for next time.
Responsibility/ Partnership
You’ve oft heard “it takes two to tango”. Well, it truly does. And whether you know it or not, both partners must maintain their own axis (balance) at all times. Both partners are creators in the dance just as the entrepreneur is the creator of his destiny. “Off axis” moves require a supportive partner. The astute entrepreneur knows when he is off axis and has fostered partners to lean on during those times. In fact, the true entrepreneur will intentionally take himself off axis to explore areas for growth!
And finally PASSION
Did you think I would forget? Without it, the tango is not worth dancing; in business, no passion means the shop doors might as well close because no one will want to walk through them. So if you are a passionless tango dancer or business entrepreneur…dear me… either find your passion or get a job and learn the waltz!
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My business partner (and dear friend) 
Kim Fuller is the mother of three. Her oldest is a corporate communications company called 
Buffets, of course. They sound like a great idea when you are really hungry and you often regret it very quickly after when you have eaten too much and realize the food all tasted the same.
My partner 
The bottom-line version is that Coach Buffet is an innovative event that is designed to bring a dozen powerful life and business coaches together with participants for meaningful one-on-one coaching conversations in a social evening format.
M-Girl knows what she is talking about and she knows how to sell her concept. In 1999, fresh out of business school at 
The notion that business problems are personal problems in disguise I believe can be traced to 
For my business coaching practice, you will get past the the velvet rope if you are:
You have made a decision to let a longstanding employee go because she no longer adds value to your company; your number one supplier is slipping badly and if they don’t improve, you are going to contract with another supplier; you need to tell your wife you are going on a week long golf trip with your buddies (and you neglected to consult her…ok this isn’t a business issue per se but business and life all blend together anyway, don’t they?). Whatever the situation, knowing you have to face it and have a conversation makes your stomach turn inside out. 
