Tag Archives: honesty

Today I met a Firefighter

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At full tide down at the 40′, you never know who you’ll get into conversation with.  I’m there, we’re chatting about the pull of the tide and the next thing, whilst we’re maintaining strict eye level contact as we discreetly peel off our wet togs and get dressed, I’m chatting to one of the nicest guys I’ve met for a long time.  Stephen O’Reilly.  Firefighter.  Instantly I like him.  Firefighters have to be good people and you know instantly when you meet someone if this is someone you want to chat with, or politely disengage!   The 40′ attracts a very correct crowd of people, in case you are wondering.

A Quick Dip in the Irish Sea by Heather McKay

A Quick Dip in the Irish Sea by Heather McKay

Now don’t misunderstand me, this post is not about attraction in that sense of the word, it’s about social dynamics.  Stephen is so enthusiastic about what he does in addition to his job as a firefighter, I find the more he talks, the more I want to hear. Anyhow, the conversation flows easily and he asks what I do, WORDS,  I say, well it’s much more than words – it’s about how we use them. It’s about who you are. Now we’re flying and I get to find out so much more about what drives Stephen and now I understand why he drives across the city to dive into the sea and make the most of one of our most wonderful natural resources.   Check out grown.ie. It’s a cool company, who stand by their ethics. I love the clarity of their brand ‘messaging’ and yes, Stephen is a great brand ambassador. The point of all this?  Life is one big conversation and I just love it.

 

 

value and social media

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It’s an interesting thing when you give a free workshop.  There are many reasons for doing something like a workshop for free.  It would be human nature after all do try to minimize the amount of preparation, to try to use existing material and slides but it doesn’t work that way for me.  As I liaised with participants beforehand, particularly when they are non-native English speakers, many different thoughts are going through my mind and I make ever more changes to what I will be doing.  One thought in particular is around social media, prompted of course by the very fact that this is how most of them have found out about the program.  But how do they use social media, what do they think of it. How do they really use it for their personal life and professionally. What do they consider to be the pros and cons,  as everything has the good, the bad and sadly sometimes an ‘ugly’ side to it.  It’ll be interesting to see how people of all different ages, backgrounds and cultures view social media.  Which as we know, in some shape or form, is here to stay. As a self confessed ‘twit-nit’, it’s all good learning I suppose!

Why is business eluding you?

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Why aren’t you getting more business?

This is probably one of the most difficult questions to answer… honestly.  We all make excuses and hindsight can be a great way to justify why something didn’t happen the way we wanted it to.  Hindsight too can be valuable.  Better still is to have ‘Invaluable Insights’ and by that I mean really looking at how things could have gone better and practical ways to re-visit something.  Particularly with a client who has chosen someone else to do business with. Maybe you just weren’t speaking their language.  Maybe it wasn’t about the price.  Maybe they just didn’t trust you enough to risk their reputation with you. Is your client relationship strong enough to ask WHY?

janie-saysTrust can underpin or undermine every relationship

Want to work on getting better business?  Click for details of my next 221:121 Workshop “Building Trust, Sustainable Sales and Customer Loyalty”.