UTurn^TV

Many thanks to Gavin Elliott for the inspiration to today’s blog.

It’s often all too easy to forget that whatever work you do that somewhere you have a customer. Even if you don’t come face to face with them they are always there at the end of some process. Does your team spend too much time on non-productive work and forget that who they are serving?

Love to hear from you.
Jules

When Jules has something to celebrate she does her victory dance. What do you do when you have something to celebrate?

We want to see your victory dance! Take a look at Danny Johnson’ for inspiration and send us your own!

http://bit.ly/9QUAna

For those of  you out there who run your own businesses as Jayne and I do you will understand some of the challenges that we sometimes face. The continuing search for clients, balancing the books, delivering a quality service or product and just generally staying consistently on top of your game can be a real battle.  As Jayne and I (loosely) work in the Personal Development and Training arena which means we have the added challenge of having to ensure that we check in on our work/life balance and make sure it’s not overly tipped one way or the other, otherwise we could easily be seen as hypocrites.

So far, the majority of our clients have come to us either through recommendation from existing clients or because they met us face to face and instantly ‘got us.’  This is wonderfully gratifying and it means that we know that everyone we deliver to is there because they understand that they will have a moment or moments of clarity about the issues they are facing and be in a much better state of mind than when they first came to us.

In the last few weeks as we have been upping our game we have had a number of conversations between ourselves and with others where we have had to stand still and check in on what we are doing to make sure we are still on track. Given our line of work it is inevitable and right that we should do this.  I’m sure most of you out there do the same thing but I wonder how often you change direction, even by a tiny amount, based on how influenced you have been by outside forces.

Clearly there are some outside forces, such as the economy, which many of you have had no choice but to adapt to in order to survive.  However, I do wonder how much we are influenced to change direction and later regret it because we didn’t stay true to our core beliefs, what we are truly good at and what we love doing.

Jayne and I are very priviledged to have each other as business partners because we always have someone who cares about the business equally to bounce ideas off and make sure we are still doing what we intended.  Whilst I will never have a problem with change for the better I think sometimes it’s very easy to think that an idea proposed or an opinion given should be cogitated over, absorbed and implemented.  For those of you who run your businesses alone, not having someone to bounce ideas off when these new shiny things jump up and down at you can be a much greater challenge.

Jayne and I know that sometimes from the outside our work can be seen as ‘namby pamby’, ‘weird’ or just plain daft.  Added to that we tend to approach things in our own quirky, unique ways which may look unconventional but really really works for us and our clients.

We never check out ‘the competition’ because we know it would be a waste of time and energy, and whilst some businesses need to do this to survive, it will never work for us.  We don’t do suits.  I would probably lose the will to live if I had to wear a suit to win a piece of business.  We don’t do brochures because we know that the majority of them will end up in the bin and a piece of paper could never express who we are. We dare to be different.  And it makes us very happy to work this way.  And ultimately, isn’t that the point?

I am so looking forward to growing our business in the way that we have chosen to do.  And what if we fail I hear some of you cry?  Not an option.  We love what we do too much for the money not to follow.

I would love to hear from you and particularly if you have some daring ideas on how you want to run your business but think it might be a bit too ‘out there’.

I wish you much love and joy and hope that life is treating you amazingly well.

Jules