Author: monecosse (Page 1 of 2)

The world is now obsessed with recycling stuff but happily places people on the scrap heap all too quickly.

While they are still full to the brim of potential, energy and passion, or at least they could be if given half a chance, people repeatedly report to us at Monecosse a sense of ‘stuckness’, of being at a certain point or stage in their life where societal pressures expect them to be but they want something else and sometimes they have no idea what that something else is. This isn’t an age related thing. I see it in young people who have decided university isn’t for them and they are not yet quite sure what path they want to follow in life. There is an unspoken pressure of ‘waste’ simply because they don’t seem to be quite on track for a mortgage and 2.4 children by the time they are 30. I see it in fifty and sixty year olds who have had successful careers but, as that comes to an end for one reason or another, listlessness sets in and a mistaken belief that ‘that’s it’, or worse a panic about who and what they are. I see it in seventy and eighty year olds who, with a few physical issues, are resigned to boredom because culturally that seems to be what is expected of them. I hear forty-somethings declare that it’s too late for them to do anything else and so they settle into their current job and lifestyle and hunker down for retirement.

There are of course those who seem to shift from one thing to another throughout their life. Their path seems to be one of continuous adventure where they flit and float from one amazing story to different one on a yearly or bi-yearly basis. There are others who relish routine and love the familiarity of their lives finding flow, happiness and energy with each new day, continuing to do what they do with a spring in their step forever.

If neither the flitty-floaty adventurer nor the routine-relisher sounds like you and you feel a bit rudderless, stuck or washed-up then perhaps it’s time to have a really big think about things.

For a start people often turn quickly to qualifications to break out of their current doldrums but who ever met a world wide traveller with a hugely interesting life that had a National Certificate in world wide travelling and having an interesting life? Yes, granted if you chat to them long enough they may be taking an online course in Philosophy or you discover that they seemed to jump tracks from a dentist to a yoga teacher several years ago (or vice versa) but that qualification isn’t the full story.

The amazing teacher Dr Wayne Dyer said that we shouldn’t let our music die within us. He said that we should find a way of discovering our song and making sure we let it out into the world during the course of our lifetime. In short, our purpose and I believe it’s possible to have more than one.

There is a burning ember inside of everyone. Discovering what that is is tough enough but working out how to create a life around it is something else entirely. At Monecosse we are increasingly working with individuals to help them to achieve both. Our music, our passion is to help others to soar, run, glide, globe trot, wheel and deal, invest, research, write, paint and play no matter where they currently find themselves.

If a bag for life can do and be 100 different things then why can’t you? To help you get started you can claim for yourself (or give to someone who needs it) a free Monecosse 45 min thinking session – available to the first 3 people to message the word ‘PURPOSE’ to us any which way that works for you.

Unless you are in the enviable position of being in a position to fly solo while your business grows in other ways, chances are you will reach a point where the question of recruitment looms. Whereas larger organisations have the resource within them to decide what the role actually is, define it carefully, spec out the skills and experience required, the contract on offer as well as the on boarding process and ongoing reviews, for the owner run business, all of the above falls to you. If you happen to have been a recruitment consultant in a former life then, some of this will appear easy. If on the other hand the thing that you do best is fixing tractors then this list will likely feel like unnecessary nonsense. Why can’t you just employ your brother’s eldest daughter straight from school? Surely it’s family and it will be fine right?

Perhaps one of the biggest issues within a growing business is that traditional roles don’t exist. Starting off in business usually means that you do everything from thinking of the concept in the first place all the way through to invoicing the client. The likelihood is that you will also mingle this with other elements of your life like, picking kids up from school, having a car MOT’d, your dog, your mother and the latest news that hits the economy. Without the luxury of employment that offers defined working hours, paid holidays and possibly flexi-time as well as the whole responsibility ultimately on someone else’s shoulders, you navigate your way through this as well as take on the multiple roles in your company. From marketeer to cleaner you are it!

So how comfortable will a new person be in this ‘go with the flow’ situation?

The first person after you to enter your business will be the most crucial. They will need a strong desire to learn and at least some of your excitement about what it is you are doing. They will really need to be able to think for themselves and yet be open to new and ever changing situations. It’s easy to think that this ‘wisdom’ can be found in the most experienced people and sometime is can, especially in those who have a entrepreneurial spirit themselves. However most people would like to know the role they are going to be doing. Are they an engineer? a foreman? a marketeer? customer account management? safety officer? Ah, actually its more like all of the above. How do you find one of those?

In short you need to recruit the right thinking rather than what looks to be the right CV or best interview. The right thinking is not reliant on age, nor necessarily previous experience. It is a lot to do with personality and intrinsic qualities. This is not to say reach for the first psychometric test you can find but rather who is your person? How do they show up on the rugby pitch at the weekend? Do they stop to help and chat to the elderly person in the shop who drops something? Do they thoughtfully park their car? Do they automatically make you coffee and toast when they walk in noticing that you have been in for hours already? Do they make every client feel special, listened to and heard? In the 20 mins before finishing time on a Friday do they clean the van out or tidy the stores? Because these are the things that make a business successful, and of course a very good sense of humour.

For more information on getting your first recruitment right contact us hello@monecosse.com

Also take a look at this great article on recruiting School leavers:

https://www.aspirationtraining.com/articles/top-reasons-to-recruit-a-school-leaver-into-your-business-this-summer

At times the world of the owner-run business can feel like a jungle. You may find yourself wanting to throw the towel in or sell the ship to the highest bidder. As multiple challenges intertwine, it can be difficult to see what is truly within your power to change and what must be overcome or accommodated. Well-meaning opinions and advice from friends and family who can only grasp a certain perspective, can actually be more exasperating than helpful. As your thinking runs away with you like a steam train what can you do to think clearly and make progress?

Firstly, do you already have an exit plan? It may seem strange but even as you depart on your adventure in business its a good idea to have rough idea of how you will extract yourself and when. Knowing this sets the tone and timing for your project. Of course it would be wonderful if we could all maximise our efforts in a sell out to a larger organisation or hand the reins over to the younger generation. This however isn’t always a viable (or enjoyable option). The sheer amount of work to make a business saleable is largely underestimated and often, even when completed barely breaks even on investment. On the other hand handing a business over can also be tricky business as its always mixed with healthy doses of pride, love and family tension; not a super recipe for calm sailing. An option less often is to achieve a particular goal, level or turnover and sell assets, extracting dividends and reward as you wind down. Beyond, a consultancy to similar businesses may continue to ignite your passion for what you do best.

But for now you are in it, up to your neck sometimes.

For every challenge (within your control) that is impacting you, what is the strategy that needs to be in place to minimise the time you spend on it but effectively deal with the problem? Often the challenge is embodied in a person or group of people. What is the behaviour pattern that they follow which continually brings this issue to your door? What is it about them that competes for your time? What strategy do you need to adopt so that this becomes less emotionally draining for you but still manages the issue?

Now for the things out of your control. Legislation changes, economic down turns, pandemics the list goes on. Things that you have never seen before require a different type of problem solving, a different way of thinking. A great coach or mentor will be able to pose questions to get you thinking about your issues in a different way. They won’t just give you an answer – you are the expert in what you do after all so its the contents of your own head that will bring about the Einstein-Like solutions. But thinking in this way without this mental trampoline is tough, rather like trying to jump clean out of quick sand. We all need a hand sometimes!

We are Monecosse and we regularly help owner-run businesses tame tigers, swallow frogs and work out the seemingly impossible. Get in touch with us via our contact page to set up a one hour free consultation without obligation: hello@monecosse.com

When we worked in the corporate world we worked with people and their thinking. We captured their words verbatim and then studiously analysed the words for context, repetition, emotion. phrases etc. We literally stuck the data to the walls of our office and had a multitude of highlighter colours to colour code the insights.

It wasn’t long before the data outgrew the office and we had to look at another way. A key employee at the time had computer programming skills that were not being used. Well make lemonade when you have lemons. We loaded all our textual data onto a database and began to analyse the data in a multitude of ways. We reduced the processing time from days to literally minutes. Our on-line data analysis tool set was born. But like a new born baby we didn’t really know what we had given birth to in terms of what is was to become.

Fast forward 6 years and we were building data structures, back ends, front ends and interfaces for clients who had data in multiple places, paper being a popular location, and did nothing with it to gain advantage in their business.

One of our great successes was reducing the work completion to invoice cycle from four weeks to 24 hours. The new target being developed was “invoice as we leave the workplace”.

So what is this wee blog about? Well lets have a look at the insights.

1. It is likely you are perfecting inappropriate and inefficient processes.
2. You have people in your organisation who’s skills are not being used.
3. A new internal process could become a revenue earning external process.
4. You never know what the new “child” will emerge into.
5. Oh and your data has value if you handle it well.

Frustrating isn’t it? You are flying along, everything is going fine and then, wham! Something happens that just knocks your world sideways. It might be your top technician just handed in their notice. It may be a change in industry legislation that is really going to impact how you work. Perhaps your boiler burst or your washing machine broke, the dog is sick or your kids are driving you nuts (trust me from 0-21years and beyond this never changes). Whatever is it you could certainly do without it and anyway why do these things always seem to happen to you?

Life happens and it’s easy to think that it only happens to us but in fact life happens to everyone. Simple -but no less frustrating or in fact agonising I hear you scream! Well, no however let’s consider what can be done about it.

Firstly allow yourself a little time to react, you will find some useful tips on managing your own and other peoples reaction in times of stress here:( https://monecosse.com/reaction-or-the-root-of-the-worlds-problems) Secondly imagine standing in the very centre with all the bits and pieces that make up your challenges. Spread these out in front of you we are going to organise them out of the chaos in which they currently exist.

Firstly, and most importantly work out which bits you have absolute control over. You don’t need anyones permission, help or collaboration to do something with this. Let’s call this the Inner Circle. Secondly, think about the things that you have a fair amount of control over, perhaps you need another person involved, a client, a supplier, your partner but you have some degree of say in what happens next. We will call this Middle Ground. Finally consider what is totally out of your control e.g industry regulations. No matter what you do from your current position you have absolutely no say on what happens. Let’s call this Out There.

Im going to give you three energy beans. They contain your time, effort, thinking, discussions, emotions and energy and you can spend them how ever you like. Now that your challenge is arranged into these three groupings it could be argued that you could spend an energy bean on each, divide them evenly. But look again, compare the Inner Circle and Out There and consider where your energy beans have most value?

Now that we are thinking about and talking about the right stuff think a little harder. Before you go rushing in to replace, fix or sort the thing look at the bigger long term picture. Hold this pesky thing up against your master plan and ask yourself if it may have just done you a favour? perhaps not but its worth pausing just for a moment to consider if the universe was just trying to lend us a helping hand to reach a bigger decision – it often does.

Often when I talk to business owners there is a desire to do something that goes beyond the realms of the business. Sometimes it is related to what they currently do, many other times it seems that there is no connection at all. These ideas and desires for a future that currently seems to be of or in another world, a parallel universe of ‘what-ifs’ are regularly laughed off by the individual as ‘silly’ or ‘just a dream’.

Who said that as we become entrepreneurs or business owners we had to give up all the other fun stuff in our heads? Why can’t I be a ski instructor too?

Either/or is neat and simple. It allows sense to be made of the school time table- science or art?, It allows sensible adult decisions to be made- joiner or racing driver? It fuels the 9-5 economy and ensures a ready made market of car-loan takers, holiday makers and TV entertainment package buyers are always there, looking for a little reconnection to their long let go of dream. How sad.

Let’s replace either and or with and. I want to run a business and live permanently in the south of France or I want to be a gardener and do a degree in Literature, or I want to be a joiner and race cars at the weekend.

The problem is that as soon as we verbalise things with ‘and’ our old, slightly dodgy, risk mitigation system that is our own thinking kicks in and tells us that we ‘can’t because’. We can listen to it or we can choose to live our life the way we really want to live it and a little underused tool called creativity will help us.

Imagine you are in that perfect life as a joiner that races cars or a recruitment consultant who is also a skiing instructor in winter. Look around you- what do you see? what do you hear? What are the conversations that you are having and with whom? What does it feel like? What are you looking forward to? Who and what surrounds you? Paint a rich picture using all of your senses continuing to give free rein to your creativity and imagination. If sensibility suggests that something isn’t possible or realistic, cast it to one side and continue. It doesn’t have to be realistic or possible at this point. Most worthwhile, innovative or adventurous things begin life labeled as mad ideas. Rarely do sensible well thought out and carefully- planned- from -the- beginning ideas create innovation or adventure.

To bring dream into reality all you have to do, from your wonderful future, is to tell me how you got there? As if giving me driving directions, tell me the big steps that you had to take in order to get to that future. Don’t worry about the detail, just the really big stuff. Right, got that? now return to the present moment and look at those big steps and ask yourself if doing those things would get you to that future or are there things missing? Continue to think backwards and forwards, weaving your dream into reality.

What’s up? Oh one of those things seems impossible? Place that in the future and ask if it were true what would it look like, feel like, sound like? Paint a rich picture and…you know the rest.

Happy weaving!

Negative people are often scorned, tip toed around or worse still, excluded. Their presence in a room can make eyes roll and heads slump into hands. Often, their reputation precedes them and they are the thing that newcomers will hear about first, their negativity having become part of the DNA of the business. In larger companies the naysayers are often those either very senior or kept well down on the ladder for what seems to be obvious reasons. Middle management is often filled with highly positive, enthusiastic, can-do people who, on a daily basis run the gauntlet of negativity. But, in an owner-run business, the individual with the reputation of ‘grumpy’ is usually up close and personal to a high percentage of people, not just those employed, but all of the people that the business interacts with on a daily basis and that means your clients!

My own take on legendary negativity came in for some realignment when I met with one individual who changed my mind forever. As I arrived at the fast growing renewables company, the CEO pulled me aside and apologised because Mark was going to be in the room that day and ‘Mark’ was verbosely negative and often left lesser mortals scurrying away seeking positive re-oxygenation. My task that day was to navigate a collaboration with another company, something that Mark was likely to react to.

He was indeed a formidable character but my memories of him these days are only good ones, warm and friendly remembering the person I said cheerio to many years ago and hoping that he is still a tornado-like personality in whatever company he works for. You see, it came to light that Mark wasn’t negative, he was just passionate. He was passionate about safety and with a wealth of experience in his head, he could see things down the line that others just couldn’t see. For many years he had been labelled ‘negative’, ‘impossible’ and on his worst days ‘obstructive’. In truth there was another side to Mark that few people could see. An immensely caring family man, he viewed every project through the eyes of a father and wondered how safe that project had to be before he would be happy letting one of his adult kids near it. His problem, if he had one, was the way he verbalised his insights into the complex challenges that faced the company; usually red-faced and ranting. Working at a senior level and in with the bricks, he was often given these labels to his face, it was in fact an in-company joke but as the accolades for negativity piled up, Mark could do nothing other than be what people expected of him, there was no way out.

Then we changed everything. We gave him a new label and worked with his thinking in a way where, as a team, we could mine the safety gold out of Marks head. The problem was keeping up. At one point three of us were taking notes as we discovered all the answers we needed to make the project a rapid and safe success were inside Mark’s head. Diamonds of thinking right there where nobody was looking. In fact they had been avoiding for years.

Months later I returned. Mark was indeed a changed man (but not too changed). He relished his job once more, still took stick from colleagues but was invited on to every new project team and was now running a far bigger team of his own.

Negative isn’t bad. Negative people are more often than not passionate about something. If you can get them pointing in the right direction they will often give you insights that no one else can see but it takes a brave and invested business owner to give them that opportunity.

Now if you really want to find the problem in a company, look for apathy, that will mess you up every time!

Although this is a true story ‘Mark’s’ name has been changed to protect his identity.

Inspiration comes in all forms and this Easter break I was reminded of my (now) 18 year old son’s fiercely independent streak when he was a small child. We laughed as we reminisced at his total lack of fine motor skills and yet being completely intent on tying his own shoelaces, usually as I attempted to bundle he and his older brother out of the door at a time when we were already running late. As emotions mounted and I tried to intervene to help and to move the situation along in a timely manner, I was faced with “my do it” which translates into ‘I can do it, leave me alone’. ‘My do it’ was a frequent shout from my stubbornly independent toddler with sticky little hands pushing my hands out of his way. Now he is a little more savvy and can see that there is a time to learn and a time to ask for help.

In an owner run business there is a history of having nobody around to do anything other than yourself. From the concept of the business to the first invoice and everything in between, chances are the tasks have landed on only one or two pairs of shoulders in the early days. As a business grows it is incredibly difficult to know when to hand over a task, train someone else to do a task, ask for help in something you know very little about or just admit that you are exhausted and are about to have a meltdown through lack of rest or food or both. ‘My do it’ lives on although it’s not so easy to spot in fiercely independent business owners who have, in all likelihood, always thought for themselves, done things for themselves and are frankly a bunch of rebels in the best possible way.

There is a time to learn, practice and train and there is a time when experience and efficiency reign. As an owner run business that is growing rapidly a key focus should be sharing the workload, looking to grow people into their next role, taking on new talents. But that is likely only for those who join your ship. In the early years it is your innate talent and passion that drives the business forward. Keeping up to date with your industry, with one eye firmly on where you want to take your business and the other on your amazing team, you have little time to transform yourself into a graphic designer (Accountant, Film maker) over night, so don’t! Neither should you be dropping back into sending invoices if you have an amazingly competent team who have ‘got this’. Tell your ‘my do it’ to back off. Let expertise run the show.

On that note, the middle of a stormy sea is no time to hand your newest, naivest recruit the rudder and expect it to all be ok. Training in a storm is best to be avoided at all costs so plan training, changes, development for calmer times ahead. If your team lacks a competence it may be worth while looking to a valued external in the short term. I always think the most professional people are the ones who are also happy to up-skill others to create a seamless handover. So if you are in need of a graphic designer or film maker try to go for one who will be only too happy to show you how to tie your own shoe laces and yet will get the job done in a crisis.

We face them everyday but is there anyone who actually feels super confident in making them? The field of science that covers decision making is huge and complex. Unsurprisingly our emotions can really impact the quality of our decisions. You can read more about this side of things in this great article: https://nesslabs.com/decision-making. However, at Monecosse, as always, it’s about the day to day and the people who are around you and your business.

First and foremost (and if you have been following my ramblings so far this won’t come as a huge surprise), decisions made whilst we are reacting to something have less chance of being good ones. Although it isn’t always possible to have breathing space between an event and making a decision, a ten second count noticing that we are in ‘Reaction’, can be enough to slow our tumbling mind and give a small spot of stability from which to make a decision on the hoof. So, to recap, stop, notice reaction, count to ten then make the urgent decision. That probably doesn’t include an impulse purchase of a zebra print sofa by the way!

Ideally, in a perfect world, we will have time and a calm state of mind when making our biggest life or business decisions (for the owner run business these are more often than not, heavily linked) and will have the knowledge to hand that we need. Good decisions can have bad outcomes and bad decisions can have good outcomes, what is for sure is that we all try to do our very best in the exact moment of making decisions but we cannot possibly predict the future. The variables involved in a decision as simple as where to go for lunch are immense. All we can hope to do is make the best decision at the time with the knowledge that we have and then to deal with the consequences (including the reaction of others) subsequently. One thing is for sure and that is making decisions in order to avoid someone else’s reaction is unlikely to be the right thing for you and your business. That is something that needs to be split back into the two separate issues that it consists of: 1. What is the decision? 2. Managing the reaction.

Finally, its worthwhile having a decision book, either a physical paper one or an electronic version. It’s a book only for decisions that feel somewhat weighty in our mind. The idea is to capture our thinking in the very moments of making a decision and why we chose a specific option. For example, ‘I am going to buy that zebra print sofa in the sale because I really love it, it makes me smile, I know that my partner won’t like it as much but I am totally prepared to deal with that reaction for the love of the sofa’. (yes I have chosen a trivial decision to make my point but it works)

Six months later you may be wondering what was going through your head when you made that decision. Now you have a record of your thinking and can see that at the time you could completely justify what you were doing, it felt right and you were all good with your decision. Just because six months on you are questioning your actions doesn’t mean your decision was a bad one, it just means that circumstances or your thinking, or both, have changed. Now you have the ability to look back at your own thought process and let yourself off the hook. More importantly you may begin to notice patterns and in doing so learn more about your own gut instincts, impulses and tendencies, and, it’s just for you. Nobody else ever needs to know about your impulse buy of 100000 paperclips in neon green.

The owner run business is a tough gig at the best of times and, from my experience, the owners are exceptionally good at beating themselves up over supposedly bad decisions. Through talking to them I discover that in fact, they made good decisions at the time but insist on beating themselves up with hindsight. It’s just one area where I think business owners can give themselves a smoother ride whilst constantly learning about themselves and the crazy, hurly, burly world in which they exist.

It’s the last day of January and New Year’s resolutions, for most of us, fell foul a few weeks ago. Yet still the media machine will be serving us up platefuls of advice on what to eat, how to exercise, the right look, the right shape, the right clothes and and what is considered an acceptable, successful life (by whom Im not sure but that is another story). By now holiday marketing will be well underway and side by side the sale of the perfect beach body perhaps? Greedily we consume, rarely considering what we are placing in our minds and fragile thinking. Yet we buy organic, count calories and obsess about kale, what about our thinking diet? With our thoughts being at our very core, driving our emotions and behaviours, shouldn’t we be more mindful of what we comsume mentally as well as physically?

Have you ever watched a film and an image live with you for a long time, one that you cannot seem to shake out of your head no matter what? In one way it’s a sign of a fabulous film, in another it’s an example of consuming something into our thoughts in a state of relaxation. Like junk food it’s sense of immediate gratification passes quickly and we end up with a thought or image we would prefer not to have. Sometimes Its below our radar. We consume thoughts and ideas without even noticing. Interactions with social media for example can both inspire us or depress us, leaving us feeling unworthy somehow without ever knowing why. Isn’t it time we made a choice as to what social media diet we will follow? How much of it we will consume, when and where rather than allowing it to take hours of our life only to end up with negative thoughts and feelings about ourselves and others.

Others also play a part. We are all human but some humans are not good for each other. It’s not that they are necessarily bad people, just that somewhere one mind set clashes or overpowers another and that’s never a good thing. Some individuals are highly competitive even in conversation. Rather than feeling happy, inspired, supported or loved, when we leave them, we can part from a conversation feeling wholly inadequate. Is this really the food for thought that we want? If we consider who in our social life invariably makes us laugh, feel good, supported and loved who would that be? Shouldn’t they then make up the majority of our daily plate of social interactions? If not, can we control the conversations that we do have with less wholesome relationships so that we absorb only the best from it?

Books, magazines, TV and film all enter our thinking. Drama can be a wonderful bubblegum for the brain but too much at once is like eating a multipack of mars bars, nice at the time but do we really need a mindset fully charged on domestic upset, abuse, murder and desolation? Being mindful about what and how much we watch is surely what our thoughts deserve. Equally, supplementing ourselves with inspiring documentaries, informative films and historical stories can provide nutritious morsels to ponder and consider.

Our top tips for creating your best thinking diet are as follows:

A social media fast. How long – you decide but a week being off-line to break old habits seems about right. Not ready to go cold turkey, try cutting back to just 30 mins a day.

Death Eaters- (as in Harry Potter) Learn to spot which conversations seem to suck the life out of you and avoid them if you can. If this isn’t possible learn to control the conversation through being ready to lead it with questions.

Mindful Consumption: Choose your viewing material as you would your weekly shopping basket. Plenty of green leafiness with a peppering of trashy dramas! Switch to radio for half (or all) of your leisure time and discover worlds of thinking previously untouched (or unheard in this case).

News: At the risk of being controversial; very, very little news reported today is unbiased. Take an approach to find the alternative argument to what you read. Check the provenance of who has written or created it, question what is said and look for world balance not just western ideas. Anything written about celebrities isn’t news its just someone else’s life reportedly going really well or really badly (newspapers sell more with the latter) It is therefore empty calories, junk food, best left where it is.

If you are feeling down it is easy to flick through channels and surf media for hours. Get back to nature, 10 minutes fresh air and bird song is an elixir for the soul.

For our owner run businesses, consider making your place of work a clean thinking zone. Provide inspirational publications in your waiting room or staff chill out areas, have a policy on social media that reflects your values, consider walks in nature for 5-10 mins as valuable work!

For more information on how we support individuals and owner-run businesses to flourish get in touch with us to book a coffee (or green tea) powered zoom. hello@monecosse.com