A little over a year ago I visited my accountant for the first time and embarked on the first steps towards launching my own business – registering for VAT, setting up a Limited Company and a registered office and various other things that were utterly alien to me and quietly terrifying. Yesterday I visited him again clutching the fruits of my first year in business so that my accounts can be filed at Companies House for the financial year.
The new year is traditionally time for reflection and it is easy to forget the significant milestones from last year both professionally and personally – delivering my first training course in the Far East, extensive travel in Europe working with dealers to understand their training needs and then writing and delivering that training to a pan-European audience for a luxury automotive brand. In addition I wrote a global training programme for Service Advisors working for a premium brand that will be piloted in early 2016, and delivered successful programmes for emerging management talent for a global car, van, truck and bus manufacturer.
Other highlights included delivering management development programmes for dealer groups and importers and getting back to the grass roots of selling.
From a personal perspective I embarked on some fairly hard-core but vital personal improvement plans; as if the stress of starting a business wasn’t high enough I also decided (along with my long-suffering partner Nicola) to quit smoking in December 2014 with the help of the remarkable David Kilmurry (http://davidkilmurry.com). Following on from this we decided a few months later to improve our personal fitness levels and signed up with the equally remarkable Lee Stuart and joined www.gocommandobootcamp.co.uk which has proved to be a life-changing (and enhancing) experience. In October we decided to abstain from alcohol for one month in order to raise money for MacMillan Cancer Support (a big ‘Thank You’ to everyone who donated).
So what relevance does this have to my business? Well, pretty much all of my work and teaching (whether the subject is managing people, customer expectations or sales) centres around the importance of achieving and maintaining high standards from both a business and personal perspective – It would be poor form to receive this message from someone who talks the talk but doesn’t walk the walk.
Are these objectives all now achieved? As with anything that’s worthwhile they all require hard work and constant focus – I’m still working towards my fitness goals and this will be a long-term commitment (you can’t magically drink a slimming drink and eat dust for 6 weeks and sustain weight loss or maintain fitness).
Reading this, you may have noticed that I’ve provided links to some of the people I’ve worked with this year. David Kilmurry is the man to go to for cognitive behavioural therapy, Nick and Jamie at Caralot ‘deliver the most enjoyable car buying experience you’ll ever have’ and Lee at Go Commando Bootcamp will get you fit (and do it with integrity and not try to sell you diet supplements.) In other words, they are specialists. It’s the same with the service that I offer; I specialise in developing and delivering training that improves personal behaviour, skills and business performance and, like getting and staying fit, is an on-going process. My long-term clients recognise that it isn’t a magic fix; it’s a commitment to continuous improvement. Have a great 2016!