This month saw 5 years as a business owner for me and I’ve really celebrated it in style.
Friends and family who know me well will know that I never let my actual birthday pass me by, it’s in January and I like to make a fuss, gather friends and family together and have fun (and cake!) so why any different for the business?
As you all know I love to provide excellent quality customer service to my clients… that’s one of the reasons I surround myself with such amazing people and have a great team supporting me.
So to celebrate CBCs 5th birthday, I wanted to have a day to treat my team to lovely surroundings, great workshops and gorgeous food… and it was all a little bit for me too! 🙂 I booked a gorgeous venue – The Rewilding, Patty’s Barn in Lancashire Events | Retreats | Online Shop | Venue Hire | The Rewilding | Cockerham (the-rewilding.com), invited my team to join me and also invited 3 of my favourite speakers (also clients and friends) to help me create a lovely celebration. And I did it! It was…. amazing.
The three speakers were Sam Flynn, Helen Calvert and Ali Knight Ali Knight Coaching
Sam is a digital wellbeing coach, my reason for asking Sam to run this workshop was that it is important for me to create a culture where everyone is working when they want to, not when I send an email or a Whatsapp message. There is hardly ever something that needs doing right now… let’s face it, accounts and tax is not open heart surgery… things can wait. So I want to create a really healthy digital culture where the team’s wellbeing comes first and the work gets done. I know that everyone is hard working and committed to my business and I love that and want that to be the case for the next 5 years so I don’t any of them to burn out, feel overwhelmed or overworked by me, ever. And if they ever do, I hope that they can tell me…
Sam gave the talk and as usual some really great tips, some reminders, some new (the work offline button in Outlook is the new life-changer for me! :-)), she delivered exactly what I wanted and expected and more…. the big takeaway for me was to role model. If I don’t expect the team to be on emails at midnight, over the weekend, in the summer holidays – why am I? I need to make changes to how I work too, so that I don’t burn out.
The Rewilding team kept us fed and watered throughout with gorgeous homemade energy ball snacks in between talks. Tea and coffee was available throughout too.
Next up, Helen. You may know Helen as she is co-founder of the The Organised Entrepreneurs Club with me, she’s a client and she’s also my coach Coaching – Clear Day (clear-day.co.uk) and her team is an extension of my team Business Support – Clear Day (clear-day.co.uk) Victoria Barker for business management and Sam MacMahon is my social media manager.
Helen runs a workshop called “Be your own best boss” and it opened my eyes to so many things the first time I attended it that I think I’ve been 3 times since! To the same workshop and I still don’t know it all… it’s my favourite podcast episode and it’s a chapter that I regularly revisit in Helen’s book (available to buy here The No Bullsh*t Guide To A Happier Life – Clear Day (clear-day.co.uk) if you don’t already have it, it’s really good). It is essentially about looking after yourself and being confident.
I asked Helen to talk on the day about confidence and being your own best you! Essentially I want my team to feel confident when working for me. The team all work flexibly and I want and need a confident team… so it was over to Helen who gave an awesome talk, got everyone up a few times, some breathwork, some tits first talk and asked the team to individually say how they help me in the business. It is always so interesting to me how women struggle to say what they are good it. When, generally, men find it much easier. Emily Worthington Liz Fisher Sabrina Simpson BA (Hons), MAAT Louise Ball Lisa Clennell and the Clear Day team took turns to share what they brought to the table. There were a few “a don’t know what I bring” comments but overall everyone worked out that they same me time and keep me from burnout. They ALL help me to manage the business in one way or another and I took from that section, I need some more of that. My business is bloody brilliant, I am, the team are and the clients are…. I need to be able to step away from it more, hand over the reigns…. the machine is there and it’s working, it needs me to let go (a bit) of control, to free me up more to, I think, allow it to grow (still working out exactly what’s needed).
We had an absolutely gorgeous and nutritious lunch followed by the best Victoria Sponge cake I’ve ever seen, I’ll be sharing it a lot on socials. Emma Boyle captured the day perfectly.
After lunch it was time to share Ali and her goddess work with everyone, I couldn’t wait! There are some sceptics amongst us and others who I knew would be open to this but have never experienced anything like it before…. I’ve tried a few times now to introduce Ali and don’t think I can do it effectively enough. It seems I can’t do her justice. I saw Ali talk in 2018 at a women in business networking event. It was about not having to do it all yourself. I immediately found her inspiring. She was wearing a t-shirt that said “Spiritual Gangster” and I remember speaking to her and thinking “I think she’s a bit psychic.” Then I saw her speak again for ParentPreneur during lockdown. I was going slightly insane from the trapped feelings of the family all being home, I had a 2 year old Immy on my knee on Zoom colouring and Ali was talking about Soulful businesses. Ali introduced herself as a witch and Immy said… “She doesn’t look like a witch” (she was thinking “Room on the Broom”!) Again… Soulful was the way my business was going.
Then Ali set up a membership in 2021 which I had to join and I’ve never been in a group of more loving, supportive, non judgemental, soulful people… and that all came from Ali and that’s why I asked her to come to celebrate with us and run a workshop, to help create that soulful culture. it was awesome!
I’m now thinking that I want to have at least an annual full team day like this, so I’ll get my thinking cap on for September 2024!
