Help Yourself to Help Your Business

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Help Yourself to Help Your Business

I have just been to Tasmania to do one of my Bread workshops and it went really well. I do these workshops with Roger Simpson, from the Productivity Increase Group, as the facilitator and we have done these workshops for many types of businesses.

The Bread workshop is presented four segments in a half-day workshop, covering Self, Leadership, Customer Service & Goal Setting. My job is to give several presentations throughout the workshop on how I run the bakery, and Roger facilitates between my presentations, getting all the delegates to participate and work through their workbooks in order to get the most out of the day.

The reason that the first segment of the workshop is based on self is because you have to have a good look at yourself to be able to help yourself and your business.

We then focus on Leadership because we are all leaders in one way or another and we are in charge of ourselves and if we aren’t enthusiastic, how can we expect our staff to be … Leaders make things happen!

We then move on to Customer Service where we work on how to build a culture in your business to enable you and your staff to see your business through your customers’ eyes, as it can look totally different from where your customers are standing.

The last session in on Goal Setting, where we get the attendees to firstly identify if in fact they have any goals, and then work with them to help achieve these, and maybe set some more. For those that don’t have any, we will work with them to try and help them set some.

Roger and I were doing a workshop for a small group a few weeks before we went to Tasmania and some of the participants said they thought that what we were sharing was “so basic…we have already done all this”. If that was true, however, why were their businesses failing to do really well? Each and every one of them could have been much more successful but, the truth is, they did not want to participate and write down their goals, nor “share” them with anyone else in the group. Fact is, they weren’t open to change.

What an opportunity you can have – just by participating in a group workshop – to improve your business or career. Through sharing thoughts, ideas, problems, dreams etc with other likeminded people, who may have some suggestions or answers that can help you, you can bring about huge change in your business’ success. Sure, it’s not always terribly pleasant listening to what you could be doing better but if you keep on doing what you’ve always been doing, you will continue to get what you’ve always been getting. Wasn’t the idea to make your business more successful?

I have found that by writing down my goals, and dating them, it gives me something to measure, whether it is a personal or business goal. And by doing so, I am making a statement to say that I am refusing to be ordinary.

I must admit, at times I just want to drift along like everyone else, I can be very lazy, but writing down my goals gets me out of my comfort zone. The idea is to have goals that will stretch you, excite you and make you want to get out of bed in the morning with a sense of urgency.

I like doing these Bread workshops as they get me out of my comfort zone, and also prompt me to look at my own goals, my life…I can always do better.