Abundant Solutions - Business Planning

The Last week has been somewhat full on, but hardly surprising as having spent the previous week working ‘on’ Abundant Solutions there have been a number of things which needed to be continued with, so Daryl spent time last week continuing to work on our new website – as it could not all be done from the iPad. whilst we were away.

Alongside this we have had 3 client meetings, where focus was specifically on reviewing previous quarters actions and for setting actions and priorities for the next 90 days action plan.

The Link4Growth boardrooms continue to gain momentum and we had 2 meetings and a number of telephone calls regarding the roll out of new Boardrooms.
On Thursday we had the 4th Link4Growth Watford Boardroom and the topics discussed gave all participants real benefit and tangible actions.

We attended 4 x 4Networking breakfast meetings between us and have been talking about Link4Growth and our 1 on 1 Business Development Workshops.

We ran a Regional Leadership Team meeting with the Area Leaders on the Monday evening, where we spent some time continuing to build on the collectively supporting team spirit, and developing new leadership skills.
Later in the week I also caught up with 3 of the AL’s to further support and develop them.

There are exciting times ahead with another joint venture in the Abundant mix, and we spent a few hours working on the content and method of delivery of a new service.

All in all last week was busy but very full filling and this week is just as exciting – but more about this week, next week!

Paula

Day 5 – Social Media stuff and a new project

I Spent sometime first thing this morning getting to gripes with my iPad2 and adding some new aps.

One that I am quite excited to use is flipboard having now added google reader, twitter, linked in, and facebook this will make it easier for me to manage both my time and the need to keep in touch more than I do with the social media stuff from the iPad.

I am a bit of a technophobic who quickly gets bored if ‘things’ don’t happen quickly and as with all techie stuff it takes me time, trial and error to get it right and quite frankly I can’t be bothered so having persevered for an hour this morning is quite an achievement……..Well in my eyes anyway lol:-)

Anyway what else happened on day 5 of Abundant Solutions Bootcamp

Daryl wrote a blog, and I started a thread on the 4N forum with 13 comments and 170 views on the first day – I am happy with that especially as this was the first thread that I had started in anything other than group hugs! Thanks everyone for contributing……..

The rest of the working day was spent mapping out the backbone of a new project which we launch later this year, and all so much easier when working in surroundings like this

In the afternoon we enjoyed a long, lazy (hot) walk, a swim and soaking up the Lanzarotte sunshine – and contemplating how often each year this way of working could be realistically done……. It has been a great way to get loads done ‘on’ the business and had we have had a bit of chilling out time too - we will be back!

Paula x

Is your self talk holding you back?

Every year thousands of new businesses startup and also every year thousands of business unfortunately close – but have you ever wondered why some businesses are successful and others aren’t.One of the factors I believe it comes down is to the Business Leaders attitude. Now, attitude covers a very wide spectrum of issues, however the one I want to deal with here is Self Belief – and perhaps more specifically the ‘chatter’ that goes on inside your head which, just might get in the way of you believing in yourself 100% of the time.

If you have attended a 4Networking LEARN session one of the topics that is covered ‘Self Talk’ this is what goes on in your head all the time, it is not normally something we think about it just happens, but it happens to all of us all the time. It is that little voice inside our head, sometimes this can be very useful – like when you are just about to say something inappropriate and a little voice inside you says “STOP, if you say that then…..”. However, on other occasions your self talk may not be as helpful and it might actually be holding you back and can be quite easily read by others.

How you might be thinking can self talk be readable by others? Well it is down to body language – your body actually responds to do what you are saying – so you have to make sure that you are sending it the right messages….. your self talk needs to be positive if you are to be portraying a positive message.

Take the example of when you are doing your networking pitch. How often have you delivered a 40 or 60 seconds overview of what you do only to sit down and think damn I didn’t say ‘x’ or you beat yourself up about how or what you did say. Perhaps if it did not come out quite as you had planned, your self talk will be negative as you retake your seat and you can be sure that your body language is too.

Lets consider a sporting analogy to really make the point of how self talk can hold you back.

Back in the 1954 nobody had ever run a mile in under 4 minutes. In fact the scientists of the day said that it was impossible and even if a man could ran a mile in under 4 minute mile then his internal organs would explode. It is hardly surprising that nobody had run a 4 minute mile because of the Self Talk an athlete had when he went to run – “nobody has ever done this, it impossible and if I did did achieve this then I might die!”
Roger Bannister had total belief that he could run faster then 4 minute mile and that this would not cause any harm. Roger’s belief was so great and he was so determined that on the 6th May 1954 he broke the 4 minute mile with a record breaking 3minutes and 59.4 seconds – in the sporting world this was phenomenal after decades of athletes trying. Whilst that was amazing in itself, what I think is even more incredible is that just 46 days later this record was smashed by John Landy who ran a mile in 3min 57.9seconds. And then within three years, by the end of 1957, 16 other runners also cracked the four minute mile.

This incredible story clearly demonstrates how we are limited by our own belief’s and if we dispel these belief then anything is possible.

So, what is really going on inside your mind when you approach a specific situation which you might not feel entirely comfortable. One common topic I often come across is “Closing the Sale”., so lets take this as an example.

Situation
You have covered all the foundations with the prospect, you have understood his needs and offered a potential solution.

Are you thinking to your self……
“of course the prospect will buy because to be honest, why wouldn’t he with all the benefits that he will enjoy if he uses my product or service?”
or are you saying to yourself……
“I’m not sure if he is going to buy after all it is quite expensive and there are lots of other alternatives on the market and perhaps he hasn’t got any money anyway.”
In this situation you could ask the prospect exactly the same question ….. “…would you like to buy?”
… but depending upon your self-talk as I said earlier your body language will be saying completely different things as this directly has an impact on your physical actions which can directly impact the outcome of a situation.

There are many other situations where your Self Talk will have an impact on the outcome. Perhaps you will recognise some of the following….

• When you are asked to do something new and unfamiliar
• When you are inviting someone to an event
• Picking up the phone to a customer or prospect
• Writing an email to a customer, supplier or prospect
• Making an important decision – or perhaps making any decision!
• Delivering a Presentation

In each of these situations you will have Self Talk going on which can either make you feel more or less confident. Some of the examples of Self Talk which might make you feel less self confident are as follows….

• What if they say NO, I will feel rejected
• What if they ask a question I cant answer
• I am not sure if I have the skills to really do this
• These people are pretty clever, they might know more than me.
• I am not really good enough to do this
• I am really worthy of being successful

Each of these statement are not enabling you to feel more confident about delivering what ever you are doing. You cant stop your Self Talk and nor would you want to, however there are lots of things that you can do which can turn this to your positive advantage and eliminate self-chatter which may hold you back. Here are just a few of the things that you could do to help you in these areas.

• Be prepared by researching your topic, being clear on benefits
• Be confident – understand what you are really good at.
• If you have a gap in skills do something about it – learn new skills
• Be really clear on the outcome you desire and the impact they will have (or the impact or not doing it)
• Understanding and Accepting “No’s” are not personal are infect an essential part of moving the business forward.
• If a task seems too big then break task into smaller more achievable components

I believe that you should equip yourself in the most effective and efficient way possible to enable yourself to be successful.

Create yourself a Toolbox of resources that will help you if your Self Talk starts to get in the way.

Examples of what you might have in your self-talk toolbox:-

• NLP Techniques – this provides some really useful ways to overcome fears
• Coaching Resources – some techniques on how to approach specific situations
• Books – Many books exist on self talk and positive thinking
• Process & Approaches to situations – methods to break down tasks into smaller steps then it becomes a lot easier to take those steps
• Passion & Desire – Check in with yourself – if you haven’t got the passion and desire to succeed for the specific issue you are handling – then you need to think again.

This is a very big topic which can have a massive impact on your self belief and desired outcome. My final recommendations for you are

1. Become conscientiously aware of your self-chatter- both positive and negative
2. Take clear specific steps to deal with negative self talk
3. If you are having difficulties with overcoming negative self-chatter talk to someone who can help you with this.

Good luck and I hope your Self Talk is now telling you …. wow what a fantastic blog, I really must post a positive comment on here….

Daryl

Day 4 – Business Development Workshops

Today our focus was about how to develop our Business Development workshops to become more marketable and reach a wider audience.

Our Business Development Workshops are a cornerstone service from Abundant Solutions and provide business owners with the opportunity to take an in-depth look at their business and develop a Business and Action plan which can really drive their business forward. Our challenge is that we want to find new ways of marketing this service as well as enabling access to this service to a wider audience.

Our approach in tackling this issue was broken down into 3 key tasks

• Understanding what we have delivered so far to which clients
• Consider what we what for the future
• Develop a detailed plan to develop this service further

From this work we identified that whilst we call all this service our ‘Business Development Workshop” these actually vary considerably and focus upon different aspects of Business Development across at least a dozen or so different topics.

We have decided that the support we deliver in each of these areas should be accessible to business owners via 3 different methods depending upon their needs and their budget – Self Help, Assisted and Individual Workshops. We have now developed a clear plan of the contents, media and costings for each of these areas.

Regarding the workshops we have developed these into 4 different types of workshop:-

1. Strategic Business Review
2. Sales & Marketing Review
3. Quarterly Business Review
4. Staff Engagement Workshops

Finally, we have developed a plan to drive the above forward which will enable us to roll out these new services over the coming months. This will include talking to existing clients to get their feedback on this initiative as well as finding some volunteers to test our new contents – if you want to volunteer your business then get in touch. Sounds like we have got our work cut out for us? – certainly we have, but we have the clarity of what we need to do, when we need to achieve it and why we are doing it.

The Abundant Business Bootcamp Day 4 has been a fantastic day!

Later in the afternoon, we took a drive to El Golfo, Lanzarotte.

One of the principal attractions at El Golfo is the famous Green Lagoon – an unusual phenomenon in the cove, which is actually the crater of a volcano formed from the eruptions of 1730. The lagoon, which fills the base of this semicircular crater, is the result of flooding, where sea water has become trapped in the form of a lake which has turned a striking acidic green, due to the algae which lives there.

SUCCESS a seven letter word that creates emotion and stimulation for many, but does it mean the same for everyone? Of course it won’t, but what is important is what Success means to you.
So go on I challenge you……..
Write down your own definition of success, what it means to you, what it will look like and feel like when you have achieved it. I can assure you it won’t be the same as anyone else’s….

Success is personal it can be small steps or big steps in your overall scheme but knowing where you are heading is a sure sign that you are going in the right direction.

You need confidence in business to succeed, but there can be a fine line between confidence and arrogance – think about what side of the line you are standing on as ego gets in the way and blurs the edges and impacts on your decisions.

Totally believing in what you doing, enjoying what you do and wanting to do what you do, IS the way to succeed in life and business, if you don’t love what you do what chance of success is there?

Why not add your definition of success as a comment to this blog……

Day 3 Blogs, Posts and Articles

After a lovely ‘well deserved’ day off yesterday it was back to work today – and its not been a particularly easy day.

Day 3 of our Abundant Solutions Business Bootcamp was about developing and writing Blogs, Forum Posts and website Articles. To be honest this is not the easiest of areas for either Paula or myself, in fact this very subject was recently discussed as one of the topics in a Link4Growth boardroom, where I decided that I was going to work with Chris Bown to help me get started on this.

However, needs must and this was our area of focus for today. It started well with establishing that Audioboo was the best tool for us to use for Audio Podcasts that can be easily twitted out or included with a blog article. Check out the blog that I sent this morning after we had set up the relevant accounts.

On day one of our Business Bootcamp we had identified 6 key topics that we were going to develop content for our website and this morning we discussed who was going to write about what. This is were we hit a bit of a wall – we spent more time talking about what we should be doing, rather than getting on and doing it! Eventually, and I do mean eventually we came to the conclusion that we just need to get on and do. So, I took one topic and Paula took another.

For my part, once I had a structure to work to, I got started and managed to write 1,000 words without too much difficulty – receiving the ‘constructive feedback’ from Paula was not quite as easy! For Paula’s contents she took a different approach and decided to write 3 short pieces 1) blog contents for our website, 2) Forum post for discussion and 3) Top Tip to be included on our website under the new heading of ‘Abundant Ideas” (Another action a which came from a Link4Growth Boardroom). All this content will be published over the next few days.

At the end of a long day we went for a walk along the seafront and reflected on what we found to be quite a tough day. Its easy to beat yourself up when things are not as easy as you would like them to be, however a beer and sangria managed to put things into perspective and it now seems all ok. We are now off out for something to eat…and looking forward to another day in the Abundant Solutions Business Bootcamp tomorrow….

Daryl

This is our first Audioboo message.
Are you using audioboo and if so what are your thoughts on it as a communication tool?

Checkout Audioboo from the website

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Day 2 – It’s all about our website

Our current website has served us well, but we have used this for the past 4 years and a lot of things have moved on since then. Before we came out to Lanzarotte we had already made the decision to launch a new website developed using a wordpress theme. So, last week I switched the existing www.abundant-solutions.co.uk domain name away from our existing site to point at our new one. The contents of the new one was primarily based upon the old contents so our challenge for today was to update the site to reflect our current business.

We have had a busy day, but very successful. We started by looking at the Home Page, with a complete overhaul to this very important landing page. We then worked our way through each of the other pages, both updating contents and structure to each page. All the updates were completed via the ipad, however there are some things that we weren’t able to do – so we are building a list of things to do when we get back.

To the left you can see our “Boardroom” which has all mod cons and free WiFi, which enables us to keep in touch. Isn’t Skype fantastic, we even managed to have a conference call this afternoon with Chris Ogle about Link4Growth!

This afternoon we did manage a couple of hours by the pool, which was actually 1 degree warmer than the air temperature – a very comfortable 28 degrees. As you can see it wasn’t exactly crowded and I was still sort of working as I was listening to a podcast – not whilst I was in the water – obviously!

I am hopping that tomorrow we will get a bit more time off as its my Birthday….

Bye for now
Daryl

Many people in business have heard the expression that you should work “on your business” and not just “in your business”, but the realities are that running your business requires a lot of energy and sometimes finding that extra time and focus to develop your business can be a real challenge.

Last year, in May 2010 Paula and I spent a week away to combine business and pleasure with a focus on developing the strategic direction and business planning for Abundant Solutions. This really did provide us with the clarity and direction that we needed to move our business forward. It was like running one of our Development Workshops but for each element of our own business.

That was a year ago and since then a lot has happened. We have developed further our consultancy work, driven our 4N Region forward, Helped launch 4N Australia, supported 4N with its training and launched a new business called Link4Growth. We haven’t delivered on everything in our strategic plan, but we certainly have moved the business forward.

So, onto this year, we have decided to focus on getting things done, hence why we have called this trip a Bootcamp.
We have taken a week out of the business and again we are also combining business with pleasure, however this time we are focusing on a different aspect of ‘getting things done’ each day.

Day 1 – Contents for Social Media and Blogging.
Part of our marketing strategy is that we need to do a lot more in developing our on-line presence and in order to assist us with this we want to have a range of online contents.

What we achieved today.

• Identified that we will use the following online tools on a daily basis – twitter, blogs, Facebook and Forums.





• Looked and listened to a variety of Blogs, Podcasts, Video and printed material to identify what we liked and what we don’t like.





• We decided that we will develop online material including Video, Podcasts, PDF’s plus some interactive ‘events’ to engage with people.





• We have identified 6 key topics to develop material around and prioritised those topics.





• Developed a ‘detailed’ plan of the contents for the first topic.





• Researched some material to support this first topic.

After this we took a break and spent 2 hours by the pool – well it had to be done as the water temperature was the same as the air temperature – a rather comfortable 27 degrees.

Looking forward to Day 2………

Writing a blog article really shouldn’t be difficult. In fact with iPhone’s and iPad’s you should be able to write a new article anywhere – wherever you get the inspiration.
This article is created using an app on the iPad called Blogsy. Now all I need to do is save it an upload it to the correct place!