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

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 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………