I've recently spent a week in Sydney with Matt Church becoming an accredited Thought Leaders Mentor ... another string to add to my business coaching bow.
 
Consequently I've been thinking a lot about how thought leadership can help small business.
 
Thought leadership in a particular field means being an expert, but it's more than that. It's actually about extending the thinking in that area.

You may recall my last blog about getting on the phone and making cold calls - with exceptional results.

Well, we actually held the seminar last week, which was also really the launch of our new business Pure Bookkeeping. The outcome we were looking for from the event was to sell licenses to the Pure Bookkeeping System at the reduced price for our launch of around $4k. We had 12 people along on the night. Of those 2 had already bought the system, 2 were partners and one was an employee of Deb's, so we had seven prospects. A good rule of thumb for these sort of nights is to convert one in four, so I said to Deb that two sales would be a good result. So how did we go?

A couple of days ago I got on the phone and did some cold calling for the first time in 10 years (cold calling is ringing up someone out of the phone book that doesn't know you from a bar of soap). The last time I cold called was when I was just starting out as a business coach - and the results back then were nothing to write home about. In fact I think over six months of fairly consistent cold calling I didn't get a single client. Since then I've been in the fortunate position of getting enough business coaching clients through referrals, so it's been a while (which is lucky really, because I if I was relying on my cold calling skills I think I'd be on the street by now).

You are probably thinking "what on earth prompted you do that again?"

 Last month I met with a client 2 days before the end of the month, and he
was three sales short of his quarterly target of 30 sales. We could have
been satisfied with that, but instead we decided to keeping going full out
for the target until the end of the quarter.

We came up with the great "Get my business coach off my back" sale. 

We ran The Money Workshop on the weekend. We ask for feedback at the end of the workshop, including what we can improve. We had a few comments like "nothing comes to mind. that's a first!" and simply "all good," as well as "open window was too cold" and "bring an espresso machine." I think if we've got it to the level where the only complaint someone can come up with is that we only have filter coffee and not an espresso machine, we must be doing a few things right!

I was listening to a podcast from RadioLab and heard about this fascinating study. They set up a challenging mini golf course. But before each of the subjects played, they were told "this is a test of your physical intelligence." The result - the white subjects on average played four strokes better over the course than the black subjects. Doesn't sound that surprising - golf clubs are often exclusive and expensive, maybe more whites play golf than blacks, maybe mini golf isn't a typical African-American family outing.

Here's where it gets interesting though. They made one small change to the experiment. This time they told the subjects "this is a test of your natural athletic ability." The result was startlingly different.

You may recall a blog I wrote back in October last year "What do your customers say about you ... even when you are not there?". I wrote about The Loyalty Zone - a company that surveys customers, not about customer satisfaction, but about customer loyalty. As CEO Craig Cherry says "a satisfied customer isn't enough - a satisfied customer probably won't come back, and probably won't refer anyone. You need loyal customers."

At the time I said I was ready to bite the bullet, and find out what our customers really thought about The Money Workshop. And I promised I'd let you know how we went - here's the verdict.

Our two month Bali adventure is over, so I thought I'd share some of our lessons.

You may recall we were on a 10 day holiday in Bali in May last year, and I was staring out to sea reflecting on my business. I realised that while the business had grown (the team was up to ten people), I was working harder than ever, feeling more stressed, and not really loving my business. As I watched the fishing boats sailing back into shore I thought I need more of this.

I then said to Trish what would we need to do in the business to be able to be a way for two to three months and still have everything run?

Trust in business is completely critical. In his book, Lovemarks, Kevin Roberts writes about trust and respect being the two precursors to a Lovemark. I agree - for someone to love your business, they must first trust and respect it.
 
It's interesting being in Bali, thinking about the cultural aspects of trust in business. In Australia the government basically trusts us to pay our tax. We may get audited, but its largely an honour system. And the vast majority of businesses do pay their taxes. On the other hand, retail stores don't trust the public (and often the staff) not to steal stuff. If you were leaving your shop for five minutes you'd lock the door.
 
Here it's the opposite.

Our experiment to live and work in Bali is underway!
 
A little background ... a six months ago we came for a holiday to Bali for 10 days. I did some reflecting on my business, and realised that while we had grown, had a beautiful office and a growing team that peaked at 10 people, I wasn't loving the business any more. I was working harder to pay everyone, more stressed and had lost my mojo. I was staring out to sea thinking I could get used to this, when I thought 'why not?'
 
Fast forward six months - I've gotten rid off the office, reduced the team, and I've just landed in Bali for a two month experiment to see if its possible to run my business and do my coaching from Bali.