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I wonder if you can help us out.........

We send our Fish Tales every week. Some of you read it and even respond. Others not. We’d like to make it more useful and interesting to you.

What would you like to see from us? Please post comments below.

Thoughts:

• Free online business coaching – you send questions or problems in and one of us will offer ideas or advice for nothing. (Obviously, this is more of a website thing than a weekly articles thing)

• Specific topic requests – time management, marketing, leadership

• Should we put on events and use the emails to invite you to them? We’re thinking workshops on specific topics
such as setting strategy, writing marketing plans, managing people, leading.

We’re happy to share what we know – between us we know a fair bit – but we’re also clear that the value in coaching is not the knowledge we share but the process and the relationship that causes you to take action.

We’d like to make our website and our emails (and ourselves) a useful resource that helps you make your business better so that when (if) you want business coaching and the changes that come with it, you come to us and invite us to talk to you.

Please help us be useful.

We promise to try!

Jon Dale
Small Fish Business Coaching Byron Bay
www.smallfish.us

Meetings!

Are you lonely???
Don't like working on your own?
Hate making decisions?

Then call a

        MEETING!!

You can...
SEE people
DRAW flowcharts
FEEL important
FORM subcommittees
IMPRESS your colleagues
MAKE meaningless recommendations

ALL on COMPANY TIME!!!

MEETINGS...

THE PRACTICAL ALTERNATIVE TO WORK

Pole Dancing And Snow Shovels: The Importance Of Clear Communication

The importance of clear communication.

First Grade Drawing - PRICELESS!

A first grade girl handed in this drawing for her homework assignment.

The teacher graded it and the child brought it home.

She returned to school the next day with the following note:



Dear Ms. Davis,

I want to be perfectly clear on my child's homework illustration.
It is NOT of me on a dance pole on a stage in a strip joint surrounded by male customers with money.
I work at Home Depot and had commented to my daughter how much money we made in the recent snowstorm.
This drawing is of me selling a shovel.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Harrington


Contributed by Ian Fewtrell www.inkxpress.com.au

Jon Dale
Small Fish Business Coaching
www.smallfish.us

It's About Getting Things Done

Seth Godin has been catching my eye again by stealing our catch phrase – “It’s about Getting Things Done”

Stealing maybe an overstatement but he’s written about three ways of getting better performance from people, illustrated by a book about a basketball coach (it’s got the word ‘coach” in it, so I read it). As usual, Seth is speaking my language – you get better results from your people, not by hounding them or by pitting them against each other but by giving them a platform to succeed and excel. It’s a bit scary but, ultimately, rewarding. Not only that, it’s respectful and decent, too.

How do you manage your people?

Jon Dale
Business Coaching Byron Bay
www.smallfish.us

Abattoirs Of The Human Soul

More TED inspiration. An idea worth spreading – How to Achieve Work-Life Balance

Nigel Marsh (author of Fat, Forty and Fired talks about one of our favourite subjects – how to achieve work-life balance. He makes some good points (and his perfect day sounds pretty good, too)

• Certain job and career choices are incompatible with being meaningfully engaged on a day-to-day basis with a young family.
• Even the good corporations (not so much small businesses, perhaps? We’re run by people and people care. Big companies lose that human sense) are set up to wring as much out of us as possible. It’s up to us to achieve it for ourselves because they won’t. (They are the abbatoires of the human soul – the bad ones, anyway)
• Elongate time frame over which you judge balance
• Approach balance with balance – you need to attend to your emotional, physical, intellectual and spiritual sides. And small things count.

I sort of agree with him, at least that it is something we want and that we need to take charge of it for ourselves. But even in an incompatible job, you can take charge and I’m still stuck with my own personal view of work-life balance. Do less work. Simple.

Jon Dale
Small Fish Business Coach Byron Bay
www.smallfish.us

Even Google Needs A Coach!

Eric Schmidt is CEO of Google. He was interviewed by Fortune Magazine and asked “What’s the best piece of advice you ever got?” His answer: Get a coach.

Watch the interview here by clicking the image below:












We blogged about this once before when we referred to an article about Eric’s coach – Bill Campbell – who is also coach to Steve Jobs.

A common perception we encounter when we’re marketing our service is “I don’t need a coach, it’s going OK” but maybe that's not what a coach is about......


Jon Dale
Small Fish Business Coaching Byron Bay
www.smallfish.us

Small Fish Business Coaching Launch In Canberra

Last week, we hosted a gathering of friends, press, customers, potential customers and anyone who wanted to come, at the Canberra Glassworks to launch the Small Fish Canberra presence. Business coaches Tony Ozanne and Richard Everson are both based in Canberra and bring extensive and very different experience to the area. Richard has been trained as a chef and worked in international hotels for many years before managing teams of chefs and then running multiple catering and logistics operations for Sodhexo. Tony has had a career spanning the globe too, with extensive experience working with Pizza Hut and KFC managing their franchisees and building their international operations. We’ll be picking his brains as we build Small Fish, don’t you worry.

The venue was great – stylish and rather cool. The catering, provided by Richard’s wife’s business, Country Guesthouse Schoenegg, was delicious and the people of Canberra were friendly and interesting. If you’re in canberra, watch for us in the Canberra Weekly and B2B Magazine both of whom were there.

I travelled to Canberra to give a short speech and officially launch our team and I stayed at Schoenegg and it was also lovely. It has won awards for its hospitality and I was pleased, but not surpirsed to find that I liked it too. Thanks for having me Richard and Evelyn and I’ll definitely be back.

Thanks for being welcoming, Canberra.

Jon Dale
Small Fish Business Coaching Byron Bay
www.smallfish.us

Mathematical Effort Output Analysis

What Makes 100%?

What does it mean to give MORE than 100%?

Ever wonder about those people who say they are giving more than 100%? We have all been to those meetings where someone wants you to give over 100%.

How about achieving 103%?

What makes up 100% in life?

Here's a little mathematical formula that might help you answer these questions:

If:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

is represented as:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26.

Then:

H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K
8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 =98%

and

K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E
11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 =96%

But ,

A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E
1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 =100%

And,

B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T
2+21+12+12+19+8+9+20 =103%

AND, look how far ass kissing will take you.

A-S-S-K-I-S-S-I-N-G
1+19+19+11+9+19+19+9+14+7 = 118%

So, one can conclude with mathematical certainty, that While Hard work and Knowledge will get you close, and Attitude will get you there, its the Bullshit and Ass Kissing that will put you over the top.

Now I know why some people are where they are!

Jon Dale
Small Fish Business Coaching Byron Bay
www.smallfish.us

Are You Sure You Need An Office For Your Business?

I like to watch TED. They have this excellent mission of getting interesting people to talk abot the subjects they are interested in or expert in. It’s a non-profit organisation devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading.

What a great idea and what a source of inspiration! I hope that didn’t sound like I’ve been reading The Secret or anything – I don’t want to sound all uncritically enthusiastic but I have found some of the speakers very intriguing.

This one is about how much work actually gets done in the office and how, if we’re not careful, the office can be a source of interruptions and time-wasters. The two worst of these are M&Ms – Managers and Meetings.

It made me think of my days at Optus :)

His remedies might feel a little extreme but he makes a serious point underneath the hype – we need to think about how we make our workplaces more conducive to actual work.

Have fun.

Jon Dale
Small Fish Business Coaching Byron Bay
www.smallfish.com.au

A Success Story... Well Almost!

Last week we were prompted by one of our coaches to enter the Bankwest challenge- Explain your success story and you could win $10,000! So, we did....

We thought we would share with you our entry:

Our vision is to build a global company (we're not there yet!) supporting business coaches (Small Fish) to build their businesses helping other Small Fish to make their businesses better.

We're at the beginning of our journey - only 13 business coaches and 40 current customers (not bad for a 1 year old franchise!), so you couldn't call us an unqualified success yet. But, there are already success stories.

A few of our coaches are now cash flow positive and we know they are feeling the relief that it brings. Melanie says "It's the best decision I've ever made. I'm loving it!"

They are also starting to enjoy the glorious feeling of having helped someone. Debra Drummond, of Pink Printing Supplies, said "Thanks for taking the time to care about my business, Simon."

We're trying hard to foster an environment where we support each other and enjoy working as a team. We're succeeding here too- our coaches love being part of the group, our staff love working here and the directors love the journey we're on. Lindsey, our marketer, says "I wanted to go back to Sydney but I'm staying here now- I love it."

Even our customers like working with us- we've surveyed 35 past customers and asked them for a mark out of 10 for our coaching's overall helpfulness. The average mark was 7.45 and the qualitative responses were overwhelmingly positive.

We'll finish with an answer to the question "What sets us apart?" It's because we really mean it. We really want to build this business that works for us, for our coaches and for our customers; our staff and our coaches want to do the right thing by people.

Maybe we have succeeded after all...

We are not sure how we will do, but we are pretty proud with how our business is going! Are you proud with your business success story? Maybe you should enter the Bankwest Competition too...

Jon Dale
Small Fish Business Coaching Byron Bay
www.smallfish.com.au