http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f60dheI4ARg

Stephen Paul Jobs (1955-2011) was a truly great leader who will be studied for decades to come. He changed the world in so many ways by ‘thinking different’; not just in his range of products and services but in the way he ran his company; Apple Inc.

This short interview will give you a glimpse into just how differently Steve led and managed people.

What would happen in your organisation if you walked in tomorrow and replaced every committee with one person and then gave each of them your trust?

Recognising that his style of leadership would be lost with his passing, in 2009, he put his mind to the task of training his own people in his unique leadership and management style. See this article in the Los Angeles Times, Steve Jobs’ virtual DNA to be fostered in Apple University

He will be sadly missed.

The third in a series of three workshops.

In an ideal world, we begin coaching our coaching program with every client at Step One, then we’d move to the material in Step Two, before we begin to look at Step Three; communicating with people external to your business.

Quite a few of our clients started with this area of work, but if you’ve done the first two workshops in this series, this is where the rubber really hits the road.

Now that we’ve looked at you and your organisation, this session will focus on communicating to your  market.

Enter the Snake Oil Salesman…

Advertising can either be a complete waste of money or it can lead to your fortune. Oddly, most of the population think they know all there is to know about advertising; the people who spend money on it, the people selling it and third party suppliers selling advice.

The reality is that advertising is a lot like gambling, the house always wins and the punters may or may not. The reason for this is simple – see the paragraph above!

One of the reasons many of our clients start working on this area of business is because typically advertising and marketing is perceived as the activity that brings in the most customers, (which, in some cases, it does). The other reason why clients start with this aspect of our coaching and mentoring service is because Chris has a reputation as a fairly successful advertising strategist.

What is it all about?

In this session, Chris will draw on his decades of national and international experience as an advertising strategist to give an enlightening overview of the advertising landscape as he sees it.

You will gain a good understanding of the work that should be done to effect good bang for you advertising dollar and then Chris will give you some enlightening shortcuts and simple strategies you can use to limit your losses and improve the effectiveness of your advertising.

And this leads us back into ‘Step 1’ communicating with people.

When, Where and How Much?

The first running of this workshop will be on November 25th in Deakin. Visit the ACT & Region Chamber of Commerce & Industry and scroll through the list of events then click to book your place.

The second in a series of three workshops.

If you haven’t done the first workshop, don’t worry, we frequently start working with clients on the material we’ll touch on in this workshop too.

Step One was all about you and your team, this second workshop is all about fine-tuning your business structure and clarifying your role in it, now and into the future.

Time Management

One of the issues small business owners often complain about is a lack of time. Much of this  problem arises from poor choices, inefficiencies, time wastage, procrastination and lack of discipline.

Some people call these ‘time management issues’ but when you look deeper, they aren’t. In fact, these problems are all effects that are indicative of underlying problems with structure, process and leadership.

This may sound radical, but given a sound business structure, good process and good leadership, most ‘time management’ issues will take care of themselves.

The Mad Hatter in the Cockpit

Don’t worry, this isn’t about your personality and behavioural quirks, (we discuss those in Step One!). In this part of the session, we’ll look at ways of minimising the volume of work a small business owner needs to do.

We’ve all heard the expression ‘wearing too many hats’… well, apart from looking at your business structure, in this session we’ll also discuss how many hats you really need to wear and then we’ll look at how many you might be able to get rid of. (Let’s take the weight off your mind!)

How much is too much?

This is too much! Once again, there is far too much to do in two and a half hours, but our aim is to have you to leave this session empowered with ideas about how you can improve your business’s management and leadership practices through better structure and processes.

When, Where and How Much?

The first running of this workshop will be on October 28th in Deakin. Visit the ACT & Region Chamber of Commerce & Industry and scroll through the list of events then click to book your place.

The first in a series of three workshops.

This workshop is all about people, because without great people, your business will sink. Your people are your greatest asset, and no one is more important to the success of your business than you are. (And floating your boat is really important too!)

We call this workshop ‘Step One’, because this workshop covers some of the key things that we work through when we begin coaching a new client. (In fact, you could start with ‘Step Two’ or ‘Step Three’ because each of these workshops links to each other in a cycle.)

Who is it for?

Step one, is a great starting point for any new business owner or a business owner wanting to make some business improvements.
In this workshop we want you to think about what makes you tick? What excites you? Where your strengths and limitations lie? What are your values, your mission and what are your goals?

Of course there is no way we can cover all of the options in a single workshop, but we hope to give you some great food for thought and in the process start you thinking more about yourself and how you can better utilise the people around you to improve your business performance.

And don’t miss this bit:

We’ll also give you some tips on how to reliably identify who else to invest in? Wouldn’t you like to know who is more likely to stay with you and who will happily take what they’ve learnt from you, and move on?

We’ll discuss how two people with exactly the same ‘personality type indicator’ can behave completely differently. We’ll consider the impact of different behaviour patterns and discuss ways to empower individuals and teams.

We only have two and a half hours but it you are interested in improving yourself, this session is not to be missed. If you are only interested in breathing life into your business by empowering your team; again, it’s not to be missed!

You get the message… don’t miss this!

When, Where and How Much?

The first running of this workshop will be on September 23rd in Deakin. Visit the ACT & Region Chamber of Commerce & Industry and scroll through the list of events then click to book your place.

“Tell me and I forget, 
teach me and I remember, 
involve me and I learn.” – Benjamin Franklin

The Problem

According to the ACT & Region Chamber of Commerce & Industry, many people, when thinking about starting a business, have ‘stars in their eyes’ and fairly unrealistic expectations about business ownership. They frequently spend a considerable percentage of their start-up funds in all the wrong places. This ultimately leads to business failure.

Life7 was approached by the ACT Chamber to see if we could help.

The Challenge

Clearly this is an educational challenge, but one that isn’t easily solved. The problem is that when a person has their mind made up, they have ‘stars in their eyes’, they think that they know what is best and they are driven by heightened emotions, it means that they have great difficulty taking any advice, particularly if it is contrary to their vision.

Many of these new business entrepreneurs have had countless years of experience working as an employee in a large organisation and they now see themselves as their own boss; running a small consultancy, a guest house, a bicycle repair shop or a cafe etc and enjoying a pretty good income.  (Because isn’t that what all small business owners enjoy!)

What they often fail to realise is that, whilst they may have had a lot of experience in the corporate sector, running a small business is ‘a very different kettle of fish’. No longer are they a cog in a big machine, now they must be all the cogs in the machine – and that takes no easy task!

The Solution

After considerable deliberation, we came to the conclusion that a three part workshop series based on each of the three segments in the Life7 Communication Cycle would provide the ideal eye-opener for newbies, whilst providing some very good coaching material to help seasoned business owners. We call this new series; ‘3 Steps in the Right Direction”.

Our coaching bag of tricks

One Great Feature

One of the great things about this series is that the content in all three sessions will be pulled directly from our existing coaching material, and we know from experience that there is something in each session that will appeal to leaders and managers at any level of business, from a corporate CEO to solo entrepreneur just starting out. This is the same work that has led our clients to make massive changes in their business and personal fortunes.

And a Bonus Feature

Another great feature of this series is that candidates can start in any session. They don’t need to do the sessions in order 1,2,3, (although we’d prefer that). They could do sessions 2,3,1 or 3,1,2 and achieve the same fundamental understanding.

The three sessions are:

1. What every business owner needs to know about people: and how to float your boat!
2. Run your business like a space mission: and discover the Mad Hatter in the cockpit?
3. Advertising campaign secrets you won’t have time to do and what to do instead.

Time and Place

These workshops will be held at the ACT Region Chamber of Commerce & Industry in Deakin on the fourth Friday of the month, commencing with Workshop One on September 23rd 2011.

To book your place, please visit the booking page at ACT & Region Chamber of Commerce & Industry or contact the Chamber here.