ActionCOACH Cheltenham clients enjoyed a day of business planning, networking and listening to inspirational guest speakers recently.
As part of their coaching programmes, our clients get together with the team at ActionCOACH Cheltenham every quarter to share their successes and to plan and set goals for the next 90 days.
Prevention Is Better Than Cure
This event’s theme was ‘Prevention Is Better Than Cure’ be that in life, health or managing your business.
ActionCOACH Cheltenham’s Managing Director and Senior Business Coach, Billy Smith introduced the day with an inspiring session about ‘managing change’ and being aware of any threats to your business, anticipating change and how to stay aware and ahead to ensure success in your business.
Using the analogy of windmills and citing real-life case studies, Billy encouraged clients to think about the threats in their own business sector, warning that “when the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills”.
The key to managing change explained Billy was getting clear vision, skills, incentives, resources and an action plan in place to ensure success.
What does success look like?
Using the real-time feedback app Menti, clients said:
“Choices, security, growth, serenity, peace of mind, moving forward, legacy and freedom”.
In the first of the Guest Speaker sessions, Paul Wray, Director and Physiotherapist of Breakspeare Clinics gave an illustrated talk on Health & Wellbeing with a particular focus on the links between your physical wellbeing and business performance.
Sharing some incredible statistics about the decline in productivity and the number of days lost due to employee sickness, Paul gave some valuable insights into improving a better workplace environment.
Revealing that a staggering 149.3 million working days are lost each year to illness or accidents (ONS Census 2021) and the cost to the economy is £18.8 billion per annum (HSE Statistics 2019/2020) Paul shared some compelling solutions to help keep our clients and their staff fit and well.
Getting education and advice, taking more exercise and being active, ensuring preventative measures to avoid injury, getting enough sleep and rest and having healthy habits around nutrition and hydration will lead to an improved daily routine and ability to run a successful business.
‘Entrepreneurship and Mental Health’ was a fascinating talk given by Joyce van Leendert, owner of Cheltenham Psychology Services.
Joyce opened her session with an interesting Elon Musk quote: “Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death”!
Joyce shared with ActionCOACH clients some of the challenges a business leader can face, including high levels of responsibility, dealing with uncertainty and risk, issues around a work/life balance, financial concerns and long working hours.
The impact this can have on a business owner was stark, given that 72% of entrepreneurs admit to struggling with their mental health and 54% saying they are stressed about their future.
Joyce shared some valuable advice with ActionCOACH clients, gained from her 15 years’ experience and professional qualification in clinical psychology.
Learn how to cope with stress and not avoid it, advises Joyce, who advised recognising your triggers, using resilience to change your behaviour so you don’t hold your business back.
How Healthy Is Your Business? asked our Senior Business Coach Neil Martin is his compelling session about mitigating risk in your business.
Asking our clients about the risks they are facing right now, the replies included ‘staff retention, market changes, cash flow, new competitors, technology and productivity’.
To deal with these challenges, Neil outlined the importance of recognising the types of risk – whether it’s strategic, operational, financial or compliance – and assessing the likelihood of the impact, so you can mitigate the risk.
Our clients finished their day by making a plan for the next 90 days – setting their goals on what they want to achieve by the end of June 2024 and making a detailed plan on how they are going to achieve it.
What Our Clients Said ….
Hearing inspirational guest speakers, meeting regularly with a community of business owners with similar challenges, expert business advice, strategies for success, the opportunity to plan the next business quarter away from the office and networking opportunities were all highlights of the day, according to our clients’ feedback.
If you’re interested in talking to us about any of the challenges you face in your business, get in touch. We have award-winning business solutions to support you and your team to grow a resilient business of the future.
