This month we were privileged to have Sas Freeman talk to us about the after effects of her strokes and to share some of her story with us. Stroke can be completely life changing and Sas has experienced two strokes, yet has gone on to recover and find the positives in her experience.

Stroke affects 150,000 people each year in the UK, yet stroke charities only receive a tiny proportion of the charitable donations made each year. We’re lucky enough to have the Life After Stroke Centre in Bromsgrove, which aims to provide a warm, friendly and inspiring environment for stroke survivors and their friends, family and healthcare professionals.

Sas’s book, Two Strokes Not Out is a personal experience guide for stroke survivors and their families, and is available from her website, www.sasfreeman.com.

For more information about the Life After Stroke Centre, visit www.stroke.org.uk/finding-support/life-after-stroke-centre-bromsgrove

NWBL will be supporting the Stroke Association via our meeting donations over the next six months.

If you would like to join NWBL our annual membership is £99, which comes with a range of benefits. The monthly events will remain FREE of charge for members, and we’ll continue to ask for a voluntary contribution of £5 for our chosen charity. Click here to find out more, including details of our upcoming Workshops. Non-Members will be charged £10 per meeting plus a voluntary contribution to our resident charities.

Membership will also include access to the BizSmart SmartRoom, a valuable resource giving you access to downloadable resources to help you grow your business, along with regular specialist webinars and blogs.

As we enter the second year of WBL, we’ll continue to collaborate with organisations across Worcestershire, continue to raise money for local causes, and continue to grow our membership. We do hope you’ll join us at the next meeting on 21st June 2016, from 10am to 12pm at Hogarths Stone Manor.

Blog post written by Andrew Pain, New Starts

With a selection of new grants available for Worcestershire businesses and surrounding regions, it was great to have the team from Worcestershire Business Central (WBC) and Worcestershire County Council (WCC) with us at this month’s NWBL to explain the different grants.

We’ll outline some of the grants briefly here, but if you need further information then your first port of call should be WBC. Phoebe Dawson and the team can point you in right direction and help you access all the information you need – visit www.business-central.co.uk or get in touch at info@business-central.co.uk or on 01905 677888.

WBC is there to support Worcestershire businesses and help them achieve success and growth by providing support, advice and guidance, including providing information on grants.

Proof of Concept Grants

Billed as a “less sexy version of Dragons’ Den”, The Proof of Concept grant is available for businesses that want to investigate, advance and protect early stage innovative business ideas.

Hollie Kirk, the programme manager from WCC, explained the details of the grant and the support that’s available:

• •       £30,000 grants
• •       50% of projects costs
• •       Defrayed Expenditure
• •       External Costs
• •       Application writing support

Other grants include:

Resource Efficiency: There are grants available for providing resource efficiency advice to SMEs, enabling businesses to improve profitability, energy efficiency, waste reduction and resilience to climate change, whilst reducing carbon emissions. These grants are from £2,000 to £20,000.

Low Carbon: These are grants available to SMEs – targeting manufacturing, agritech, construction, waste management, food production and distribution – to support them in taking new green tech products to market, diversifying into the sector and/or gaining access to new supply chains. These grants are up to £70,000.

Enterprising Worcestershire – Start Up & Growth: Aimed at business start ups, high growth start ups and business growth – providing workshops, events and 1-2-1 advice in conjunction with University of Worcester and The Prince’s Trust. Grants are from £1,000 to £20,000.

Investing in Growth: This is a large capital grant programme focussed on key target sectors and providing support for companies based in and relocating to Worcestershire. These grants are from £20k to £100k

Growing Cyber: Support, training, advice and revenue and capital grants for cyber and non-cyber companies. Grants up to £20k.

The Business Growth Programme

Georgina Harris from North Worcestershire edR explained the £33 million Business Growth Programme, which has been running since 1 June 2016 and will continue until 31 December 2018. The programme is business to business only and is in place to strengthen supply chain companies, stimulate innovation and grow existing SMEs. This programme covers the Greater Birmingham & Solihull, Stoke-on-Trent & Staffordshire, and The Marches LEP area.

For more information about this programme – which includes the HS2 Supply Chain Programme, the Green Bridge Supply Chain Programme, the Business Innovation Programme and the Business Development Programme, visit www.nwedr.org.uk or get in touch with the team via info@nwedr.org.uk or 0845 601 5953.

If you would like to join NWBL our annual membership is £99, which comes with a range of benefits. The monthly events will remain FREE of charge for members, and we’ll continue to ask for a voluntary contribution of £5 for our chosen charity. Click here to find out more, including details of our upcoming Workshops. Non-Members will be charged £10 per meeting plus a voluntary contribution to our resident charities.

Membership will also include access to the BizSmart SmartRoom, a valuable resource giving you access to downloadable resources to help you grow your business, along with regular specialist webinars and blogs.

As we enter the second year of WBL, we’ll continue to collaborate with organisations across Worcestershire, continue to raise money for local causes, and continue to grow our membership. We do hope you’ll join us at the next meeting on 21st June 2016, from 10am to 12pm at Hogarths Stone Manor.

Blog post written by Andrew Pain, New Starts

Back in the 90s, I spent a year working with street kids in Mexico. The majority of them worked at major road junctions, waiting till the lights went red before approaching the stationary cars. Some washed car windscreens, some entertained by juggling, some sold sweets, others begged (and wore fake casts on their arms for extra sympathy points) whilst others boarded buses to sing songs to the passengers or perform stand-up comedy.

I learned a lot from them and some of those lessons have served me well in business and in life.

LESSON 1)

The kids who earned the most money were not necessarily the cutest, the most needy, the most sorry looking, or even the youngest … they were simply the kids who had an entertaining act which put a smile on the face of their customers and was different from the rest.

The harsh reality was that the kids who washed windscreens or begged, earned 3 times less than the kids who had a unique act such as juggling with 3+ balls and/or delivering a confident comedy routine to commuters on the bus.

SO WHAT?

– When it comes to our own businesses, how many of us could be sure that if we stood in a room with our competitors, we would have something to share, which is so brilliant that our competitors would feel compelled to copy us?

– How many of us describe unique selling points, which on reflection are not that unique because our competitors could claim the same things?

My personal favourites I’ve heard over the years include:

“We’ve been in business for over 20 years” (so have most people over the age of 40 – some of them are in prison)

“We’re a 6-partner practice” (and your point?)

“I’m a maverick” (so is Donald Trump)

“We really care about the quality of our print” (that’s nice, but most printers would claim the same thing)

• However resilient you are, however charismatic your sales pitch and however likeable you may be, if you want great results in business, you have to deliver a product or service which puts a smile on the faces of your customers because it’s unique and brilliant.

LESSON 2)

The kids who earned the most money were prepared to take risks.

How much courage do you think it takes, to board a bus full of tired and hot commuters, (most of whom groan when they see you) and then win them over with a solo song followed by a short comedy routine?

The answer is, “quite a bit” … which is why most kids who worked the buses shuffled apologetically onto them and asked the passengers for money – they rarely got it, but those who had the courage to put on an entertaining show, fared much better.

SO WHAT?

If you want something in life, you have to be prepared to do the things which other people aren’t prepared to do. This may be about how many hours you work, or the actual tasks you have to perform … in most cases, it will certainly involve doing something which makes your guts tremble.

If you would like to join NWBL our annual membership is £99, which comes with a range of benefits. The monthly events will remain FREE of charge for members, and we’ll continue to ask for a voluntary contribution of £5 for our chosen charity. Click here to find out more, including details of our upcoming Workshops. Non-Members will be charged £10 per meeting plus a voluntary contribution to our resident charities.

Membership will also include access to the BizSmart SmartRoom, a valuable resource giving you access to downloadable resources to help you grow your business, along with regular specialist webinars and blogs.

As we enter the second year of WBL, we’ll continue to collaborate with organisations across Worcestershire, continue to raise money for local causes, and continue to grow our membership. We do hope you’ll join us at the next meeting on 21st June 2016, from 10am to 12pm at Hogarths Stone Manor.

Blog post written by Andrew Pain, New Starts

In MediEvil times, convicted traitors were hung, drawn and quartered. It was an agonising way to die, designed to cause maximum pain, prevent an after life for the victim and create a gruesome spectacle for the crowds to watch. Whilst death by PowerPoint may not be quite as gruesome or have as much bearing on your journey into the afterlife, it’s still an agonising experience which many of us have to endure again and again.

Given the vast wave of presentational skills advice from gurus, masters and coaches, why do so many people continue to turn PowerPoint into PowerlessPoint, thus killing their audience when they need them to be alive and engaged.  PowerPoint can be a useful presentational tool, so long as it’s used in moderation, it sits firmly in the background to your presentation, and that you adhere to 4 golden rules.

1) Always present to your audience, never the screen.

We’ve all seen it so many times: presenters who start with the best intentions, but after five minutes, they’ve stopped looking at their audience and become entranced by their own slides. It’s as if an invincible vacuum within the screen has just swallowed them up.

So what?

It’s seriously boring to watch someone under the spell of their own slides because they stop moving, they stop varying their tone and any sense of human touch becomes lost as they transform into monotone robots. Whether it’s a presentation to 100 people, or a business meeting in a cafe with a prospect and you’re using your laptop, keep your eyes firmly on your audience and stay in control of PowerPoint. If you’re not strong enough to resists it’s magnetic pull, don’t use it!

2) Guess what? It’s a VISUAL aid for a reason – make it visual!

How is it possible that there are still PowerPoint presentations in black and white with no images, but plenty of boring text? I hate to break it to you, it’s plain laziness, or a lack of organisational skills, neither of which will be attractive to prospective customers. Use colour, use relevant images, use relevant video footage and DITCH THE TEXT/BULLET POINTS. No one cares about them and no one will remember them.

• If the real reason for the bullet points is that you need them to keep you on track with your presentation, you don’t know your presentation well enough and that’s seriously lame!

3) Easy on the formatting 

Many moons ago, I was a member of BNI (to the uninitiated – it’s a business networking group) and each week, a member of the group was required to deliver a ten minute presentation about their business, so that the other members would be better informed as to how to refer more business to them. One week, a fellow member was chatting to me over coffee and proudly mentioned that he was really up for his ten minute presentation, partly because he’s a PowerPoint whizz.

Sadly he was such a whizz that he was able to make the text spin and bounce onto the page. As each new slide appeared, the company logo soared into place like a comet and best of all, as each slide changed, it crashed into the next one creating a mini big bang effect on PowerPoint … what a wonderful thing that out of the crashing lines and colors, a new slide was miraculously formed! Who needs god or mother nature when you have PowerPoint?

It took my attention away from the point of his presentation and rather than impress me with his human distinctiveness or how his firm could help solve my pain and/or achieve my aims, he’d instead tried to impress me with his PowerPoint tricks – I never did use his business!

4) PowerPoint = technical risk: ensure you prepare for the worst

If you choose to introduce I.T. into your presentation, you choose to introduce an added element of risk. One of my most stressful presentations came when I delivered a leadership day for 120 NHS senior managers at a top hotel. As part of my resilience work, I started by asking the audience to analyse the footage of post-match interviews with soccer coaches whose teams had just been defeated. The audience seemed really up for it but unfortunately, the sound at the super-duper venue was less keen to play ball. We tried everything and eventually, after 10 minutes of techies coming and going and large amounts of sweat pouring down my forehead, we finally got it working.

I’d been naive and hadn’t planned for what I would do if I was prevented from delivering parts of my material. If you choose to use PowerPoint and add risk to your presentation, know what you would do if the I.T. stopped working. Know how you would re-shape your presentation and how this would affect your learning outcomes, the points you want to convey, the links from one section to the next.

If on the day, it really does go pear-shaped like it did for me, give it a few minutes, then ditch it with purpose and switch to plan B.

If you would like to join NWBL our annual membership is £99, which comes with a range of benefits. The monthly events will remain FREE of charge for members, and we’ll continue to ask for a voluntary contribution of £5 for our chosen charity. Click here to find out more, including details of our upcoming Workshops. Non-Members will be charged £10 per meeting plus a voluntary contribution to our resident charities.

Membership will also include access to the BizSmart SmartRoom, a valuable resource giving you access to downloadable resources to help you grow your business, along with regular specialist webinars and blogs.

As we enter the second year of WBL, we’ll continue to collaborate with organisations across Worcestershire, continue to raise money for local causes, and continue to grow our membership. We do hope you’ll join us at the next meeting on 21st June 2016, from 10am to 12pm at Hogarths Stone Manor.

Blog post written by Andrew Pain, New Starts

Most of us already know that it’s better to split the big tasks into smaller tasks, to prioritise, goal-set (stretchy but achievable goals) and avoid multi-tasking and if we don’t already know this, we’ve clearly not been paying attention! So;

• Why do we still answer the phone with a mouth full of sandwich whilst responding to our latest emails?
• Has anyone got any fresh insights on how to be more productive?

There are 3 habits I’ve developed which have really helped me to be more productive:

TIP 1: PICK YOUR BATTLES

Too many of us waste time getting bogged down in battles, which we can’t win or which are trivial. Sometimes we get the timing wrong in launching our assault, sometimes we’re ill-prepared for the dangers that lie ahead, sometimes there was no need for a battle in the first place and diplomacy would have secured better results and sometimes, we get drawn into battles which are not ours to fight.

If you want to manage your time, pick and choose your battles.

• Be sure you know what ‘important’ and ‘trivial’ look like for you: fight important battles – walk away from trivial ones.
• Focus on the battles you can win & perfect your timing.
• Opt for a diplomatic, win/win situation wherever possible (war is costly)
• Unlike military warfare, the less aggressively you begin proceedings at home or at work, the more likely it is that you’ll get what you want!

TIP 2: KNOW YOUR BOUNDARIES & STICK TO THEM

If there’s one magic cure when it comes to time management pain, it’s the principal of developing your boundaries. You might already use some funky time management apps and address the important things first, but without firm boundaries, you’ll become over-stretched and your good habits will gradually crumble under the pressure.

• What are you prepared to compromise on?
• What are you not prepared to tolerate? (In life, you get what you’re prepared to tolerate, so work out what you’re prepared to tolerate because that’s what you’ll get!)
• What do you specifically need and do you communicate this?
• How far do you choose to stretch (metaphorically speaking)?
• What’s important to you to deliver and complete?
• What would you answer ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to?

It’s only when you explore how these questions relate to your work, home, self-esteem, leisure, health and personal growth, that you can start establishing firm boundaries. People who are in touch with their boundaries;

– Know what their mind and gut is saying to them

– Are aware of their limitations and their potential

– Focus on what’s truly important

– Know when it’s right to fight, when it’s time to compromise and when it’s appropriate to walk away

TIP 3: EXAMINE WHY & WHEN YOU PROCRASTINATE 

There’s no 1 answer to solve the problem of procrastination. We all do it at different times and with different things. It can involve boredom with a specific task, perfectionism, general depression, feeling out of your depth either with the size of complexity of the task, fear of failure, the list is endless and the solution to procrastination varies depending on the cause – there is no singular magic solution. The best starting point therefore to overcoming procrastination is to understand WHY and WHEN you procrastinate on a particular thing. Once you understand WHY and WHEN, you can then address it … or you can choose not to address it – after all, it’s always best to deliberately procrastinate rather than accidentally and subconsciously procrastinate!

If you would like to join NWBL our annual membership is £99, which comes with a range of benefits. The monthly events will remain FREE of charge for members, and we’ll continue to ask for a voluntary contribution of £5 for our chosen charity. Click here to find out more, including details of our upcoming Workshops. Non-Members will be charged £10 per meeting plus a voluntary contribution to our resident charities.

Membership will also include access to the BizSmart SmartRoom, a valuable resource giving you access to downloadable resources to help you grow your business, along with regular specialist webinars and blogs.

As we enter the second year of WBL, we’ll continue to collaborate with organisations across Worcestershire, continue to raise money for local causes, and continue to grow our membership. We do hope you’ll join us at the next meeting on 21st June 2016, from 10am to 12pm at Hogarths Stone Manor.

Blog post written by Andrew Pain, New Starts

There’s a temptation as a business owner to think that we need to work every available minute. After all, the to do list never gets any shorter and there is always more that can be done.

But studies show that taking a break can actually boost productivity. Not only that, but taking yourself off somewhere different where you can relax and let your thoughts run away with you, can be good for business.

Taking a holiday, both physically by going to a different location, and mentally by switching off from work, will refresh you and mean you can return with a renewed enthusiasm for what you do.

Not only that, but the headspace a holiday gives you can often mean that new ideas for your business will start popping into your head.

Hopefully you’ve already had at least one holiday this year, but if you haven’t, what’s stopping you from investing in a break?

If it’s the fear of leaving your business with no one there to run the show, here are some tips for making a success of your holiday while ensuring that your business is fine while you’re gone:

1. Delegate

Make sure that someone else is covering the phones while you’re away. You won’t be able to relax if you’re fielding calls or constantly checking your voicemail, so forward your phone to a trusted member of staff or an outsourced call answering service (this is something we do for our clients) and then you can kick back and make the most of your getaway.

2. Choose your time wisely

When you run a business it can feel like there’s never a good time to go on holiday, and if you have to fit in with other family members then it can be a challenge to find the best dates. But if you can, try to work within the natural cycles of your industry. If August is your busiest time, it might be less stressful for you to go away at Easter, rather than take a summer holiday at a time of peak sales.

3. Step away from the phone

It’s not a holiday if you spend the entire time glued to your smart phone. It may be that you have to check emails, but set an out of office reply and check your emails once a day at most. Ideally, have someone else checking your emails and ask them to contact you only in the event of a query they don’t know how to handle.

4. Take a notebook

Once you’ve relaxed, you may find that ideas keep popping into your head. A change of scenery can give you the mental freedom to come up with new ways of improving your business or making other changes. But you still need time out so whenever you get an idea, note it down in the notebook and then move on. Kicking back and having a break is more important than fleshing out your ideas immediately. Just note everything down and you can elaborate on your new ideas another time.

If you have managed to get away over the summer, but it wasn’t the relaxing break you expected, hopefully some of this advice will help you to have a better holiday next time.

And if you’re lucky enough to be going away soon, we hope you can act on some or all of the above, so that you and your loved ones get the break you deserve.

If you would like to join NWBL our annual membership is £99, which comes with a range of benefits. The monthly events will remain FREE of charge for members, and we’ll continue to ask for a voluntary contribution of £5 for our chosen charity. Click here to find out more, including details of our upcoming Workshops. Non-Members will be charged £10 per meeting plus a voluntary contribution to our resident charities.

Membership will also include access to the BizSmart SmartRoom, a valuable resource giving you access to downloadable resources to help you grow your business, along with regular specialist webinars and blogs.

As we enter the second year of WBL, we’ll continue to collaborate with organisations across Worcestershire, continue to raise money for local causes, and continue to grow our membership. We do hope you’ll join us at the next meeting on 21st June 2016, from 10am to 12pm at Hogarths Stone Manor.

Blog post written Comma Comma and Source&Effect collaboration

Staff costs are likely to be one of the biggest costs in your business. Of course, it’s important to invest in your staff, but what if there was a way to bring on board experienced, highly skilled people without paying over the odds?

Sarah Moore, founder of recruitment agency Flexible Minds, who spoke at our recent NWBL meeting, identified a gap in the market, and now helps employers to source skilled but flexible workers.

Sarah told us, “There is an under-utilised, talented resource pool in this country as a result of people are not being offered the flexible hours they need.

“Four out of five of people working part time are working in roles that are at a lower grade than their experience level. By offering three or four day working weeks, employers can take on a talented, experienced member of staff at the same rate they’d pay someone more junior for five days a week.”

“It’s not just parents and carers who want flexible or part-time hours – it can be a wide range of people, including those who have worked for thirty years, paid off their mortgage and want a better work-life balance, while still having a fulfilling career.”

Flexible Minds helps employers to make the most of this untapped pool of professionals in a range of industries, across all traditional business support positions.

Sarah added, “There are so many advantages for employers. People desperately want to use their skills and they really value flexibility, so part time workers are more loyal, more productive and more engaged.”

For employers needing more junior members of staff, an apprentice may be an option. Nik Wall of LMPQ spoke to NWBL attendees about apprenticeships, covering the advantages of taking on an apprentice:
Some of the benefits of taking on an apprentice include:

• More reasonable costs compared with taking on a graduate
• Free training
• No recruitment fee
• Apprentices are often popular with customers
• Reduced staff turnover
• Increased productivity.

There are important things to look at when taking on an apprentice, including whether you and the apprentice are a good fit, and whether they will work well in your existing team.

Other considerations that you might not normally look at with a new employee include commute time. How will the apprentice get to your place of work (they may not have a car) and are the costs of commuting realistic?

Looking at your training provider is also important. Look for a provider who wants to help you get the right apprentice, rather than one simply focused on filling your vacancy.

If you missed our last NWBL meeting, and would like to be at the next one, click here to book a place. We have interesting, relevant speakers at each event, as well as providing a great networking environment in the elegant surroundings of Hogarths Stone Manor.

When you ask most business people about their marketing, they start talking about how they need to improve their website, or create a brochure, but the reality is that marketing is about much more than the face you present to your clients.

At our next Worcestershire Business Leaders (WBL) meeting http://nwbusinessleaders.co.uk/northworcestershire/ Gill Hutchinson of Aardvark Marketing will be talking about the process she goes through with her clients to demonstrate where the gaps are in their marketing.

By scoring twelve different areas out of ten and then plotting them on a “Marketing Success Wheel”. The results will usually create an unbalanced picture, showing where the gaps are in that particular business.

Gill told us, “This process gets people to think about things they don’t normally link with marketing. There are so many different areas that are important but people often don’t do the work that’s needed behind the scenes that can feed into creating their website, poster or leaflet.”

Areas that are important include:

• Customer understanding – do you know what your customers need?
• Your product mix – have you got all of your eggs in one basket?
• Understanding your competitors
• Your proposition – how are you differentiating yourself?
• Business goals
• New business development – is there a process for this?
• Marketing objectives – what do you want people to believe about you?
• Marketing strategy – is it written down and shared within the business?
• Marketing investment – how much time and money will you commit to marketing?
• Marketing plan – successful businesses tend to have one
• Implementation – are you following your plan?
• Key Performance Indicators or KPIs – are you tracking your marketing?

If you come along to our next WBL meeting on Tuesday 21st June from 10am to 12pm, Gill will be speaking on this subject and taking us through the process used with Aardvark Marketing clients, so you can see the gaps in your own marketing and understand what to do about them.

As Gill puts it, “Marketing is like an iceberg. The poster or flyer you’re creating as part of your marketing is the tip of the iceberg, which is visible above the ocean surface, whereas the bulk of the work is the main body of the iceberg. It can’t necessarily be seen by your clients or prospects, but it’s still a vital part of your marketing”.

Click here to put your name down for our next WBL and enjoy listening to our inspiring speakers, networking with established business owners, and the refreshments and comfortable surroundings of the newly refurbished Hogarths Stone Manor.

Time management can be a big issue for many business owners. It’s easy to spend an entire day on busywork where you’re essentially reacting to other people’s agendas by replying to emails, taking phone calls and answering queries from your staff.
The reality is that if you want to achieve business growth or hit your own specific targets then just staying busy, without proactively managing your time, is not going to be helpful in reaching your goals.
Mike Gardner, aka The Time Doctor, is a trusted BizSmart Select colleague of ours, so we asked him what business owners could do to manage their time better.

Time management success
Mike says that one of the challenges of being a business owner is the number of different hats you need to wear during the course of a day or week. Many of us act as the boss, the marketing manager, the sales manager, finance director, HR manager and perhaps many other roles.
For obvious reasons, this can lead to us losing focus, and struggling to regain focus after we’ve lost it. Here are some of The Time Doctor’s best tips for achieving greater focus in your work.

Prioritise your to-do list
One of our favourite tips from The Time Doctor is to prioritise your to-do list. Divide your list into two sections, with one section for things that you need to do personally, and one for things you can assign to other people, whether that’s a member of staff or a virtual assistant. On your own personal list, prioritise the tasks that will bring in money. For any complex tasks, break them down in to smaller, more manageable tasks and prioritise them accordingly.

Schedule your time
Work for two hours at a time, with a 15-minute break after each work session. Set a timer for two hours and then again for 15 minutes. Make sure you put the timer out of sight so you don’t keep checking it.

Do one thing at a time
Don’t multi-task. Research shows that it takes about 15 minutes to focus on something, so every time you switch tasks, it will take around 15 minutes to regain your focus. It’s much more effective to work on one task or project and see it through to completion.

Remove distractions
Turn off instant messages, forward your calls to a staff member or voicemail, log out of your inbox and switch off email notifications. Shut your office door.

Plan tomorrow the day before
Write out your plan for the following day in a notebook. The very act of writing things down will help you to remember, and writing a plan before you leave will help you to clear your head before you head home. Put the plan o your desk and read it through before you switch our computer on the following morning.

So, in summary:
Prioritise your to-do list
Schedule your time
Do one thing at a time – don’t multi-task
Remove distractions
Plan tomorrow the day before

All of the above will help you to regain focus, improve productivity, and ultimately help to create a more profitable working environment for you and your team.

Increasing business productivity can be a challenge. When you’re managing a team of people, you want them to work hard and produce their best work, but it’s not a good idea to work them too hard. After all, a tired workforce will become unproductive, and may even get ill more often.

Worcestershire County Council have recognised that increasing business productivity is something that is much easier when you have happy, healthy staff.

The council’s Worcestershire Works Well project has been running for more than five years now, and has had a positive impact on more than 75 businesses and 25,000 employees in the county. Ten per cent of the Worcestershire workforce has now benefited from the scheme.

By focusing on staff wellbeing, the programme has helped businesses to:

Increase productivity
Reduce rates of staff sickness
Improve staff loyalty, leading to:
a reduction in staff turnover
reduced recruitment costs.

With Worcestershire’s aging population, the focus has been on improving health for the 40-64 age bracket, which has the knock-on effect on ensuring people have a better chance of enjoying good health in their retirement.

Promoting good health

The programme focuses on promoting good health, smoking and tobacco control, mental health, physical activity, healthy eating, leadership, health and safety, attendance management, and alcohol and substance misuse.

The scheme is free to access, and businesses that sign up are helped to focus on embedding a healthy culture into their workplace. DHL Droitwich is one such organisation that has benefitted from Worcestershire Works Well (WWW). The company offered their staff a free health MOT and conducted a survey to assess their starting point.

A representative from WWW then supported the business to make changes and focused support on helping staff to make healthier lifestyle choices. A year on from this, the rate of short-term absence has dropped and one site alone has saved more than £37,000 by reducing sickness absence.

To find out more about Worcestershire Works Well, please talk to us about attending our next North Worcestershire Business Leaders meeting, where Angie Waldron from WWW will be talking about their successes, and Karen Fox from The Mainstay Group will talk about her involvement in the programme and the benefits she’s seen.

At Source & Effect we with work with a range of clients, offering a number of different business support services, including business development, telesales and social media and marketing campaigns.

The easiest way to explain what we do and how it can be transformational is with a real world example from one of our customers.

Lime Box Ltd is a fully integrated exhibition and event design agency, which delivers stunning exhibition stands as well as managing everything to do with a show, from briefing stand staff to analysing exhibitor results.

It’s a family-run business with husband and wife team, Lee Moss and Donna Moss at the helm. They are extremely good at what they do and, consequently, work with huge brands such as Garmin at major shows across the globe. However, they’re so busy delivering client work that they struggle to find the time to develop new relationships and expand their client base. It’s an age-old problem that many business owners struggle with.

This is where we come in. Source & Effect has an ongoing relationship with Lime Box Ltd, and one of the areas in which we are able to help is with telemarketing. The team at Lime Box Ltd has a list of clients they’d love to work with, and these are clients they know they can add real value to, as they’re already working in similar fields. For example, they are already working with companies at the Parisian boat shows, so it would make sense to break into some of the British-based shows.

That is exactly what is now happening, with Laura Underwood of Source & Effect managing the process. Laura calls Lime Box Ltd’s prospects initially to introduce the company and then follows up, staying in touch and ultimately getting to the point where Lime Box Ltd can tender for the next project that comes up.

As well as meaning that this growing business can tender for work that they are perfect for, the company is saving time and money on the costs of employing an extra member of staff. Source & Effect acts as an ‘outsourced sales team’, working within budget and enabling Lime Box Ltd to avoid the costs of recruiting, training and retaining an employee.

Lee Moss, Director at Lime Box Ltd, says, “Responsive, resourceful, professional… three words that perfectly describe the Source & Effect team. Involving a third party supplier in your company’s marketing is a big decision for any company to take. However from the moment we met the team it was very clear to us that they were not just a supplier but an extension of our own sales and marketing team.”

If you struggle to find time for business generation activities such as making sales calls and following-up with leads and prospects, or if you’re not consistently bringing new clients on board, call Source & Effect on 01527 306087 or email melanie@sourceandeffect.com. We’d be more than happy to talk through your options and the ways in which we can help you to win more clients, so please don’t delay getting in touch.

When you’re running a business, using goal setting to motivate both yourself and your staff is a key factor when it comes to business growth and success. However, many business owners don’t take the time to celebrate when those goals are reached. No doubt, most of us celebrated over the festive period and welcomed in 2016 on New Year’s Eve, but how many of us celebrate our successes throughout the year?

We spoke to leadership coach, Rob Holcroft of Super Humans, about how to make the most of this time of year, when many of us are feeling motivated, but we know that staying motivated can be a challenge.

Rob told us, ‘One of the biggest reasons business owners and their teams get demotivated is that they fail to celebrate their successes. It’s common to start focusing on the next goal as soon as you’ve hit your targets. While it’s good to stay focussed, if you just keep giving out tasks to your staff but don’t recognise what’s already been achieved, people won’t want to do it anymore.’

‘It’s so important to recognise that you’ve reached a goal, celebrate the success and enjoy it. Whether you want to crack open a bottle of wine, finish early on Friday or buy a gift, find an appropriate way to mark the occasion before you move onto your next goal.’

Rob told us about a business owner who is a real foodie and celebrates each milestone his business reaches by cooking a meal for his team. Not only does this show how much he wants to motivate his team, but that he’s prepared to go the extra mile to show his appreciation. The team get excited about what he’s going to cook next, and everyone feels appreciated. Could you do something similar in your business?

Even if you’re currently a micro-business, and you don’t have a team, it’s still vital to celebrate reaching those important goals and give yourself a reward for all your hard work. As Rob puts it, ‘if you don’t celebrate those milestones, who will?’

There are a few things you can do to ensure you are regularly celebrating your achievements:

Set small goals as well as larger ones. It’s great to have big goals that will take years to achieve but give yourself some smaller targets along the way.
Decide on a celebration or reward in advance, so that you and your team have something to look forward to.
Share your successes. Send out a press release and let your clients know what you’ve achieved. This will help to boost morale in your team.
Remember there’s no endpoint. Unless you are currently trying to exit your business, there’s no point at which you’ll be able to say, ‘we’ve made it’ as it’s likely you’ll continue to strive for bigger and better things. So enjoy the small wins as much as the big ones.

Hopefully, we’ve inspired you to put together a list of ways you can celebrate your business successes.