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It’s Not Rocket Science Five Questions Over Coffee with Simon Hague, Coach & Facilitator (Ep. 4)
Who is Simon?
Simon runs the coaching and facilitation business, Wheresmylunch, http://yourl.ch/1b1zd73. Their ideal clients are business owners and/or leaders that want to explore new possibilities that can further enhance their business opportunities. Working in a frame of wider wealth (social, intellectual, community and financial), he helps people to unlock dreams and passions that have before just been that. This short chat over coffee will invite you to dig into what type of innovator you are and therefore, what type of support you may need around you to help release these dreams.
In this podcast you will earn how to manage your remote team and how engage, engage, engage are the most important three things you can do today!
Key Takeaways
1. Understand what you actually want
2. Take the time to get intimate with your finances
3. Find the positive in your current situation
Valuable Free Resource or Action
Transcript
Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)
Stuart Webb 0:43
Well hi again and welcome back to the it’s not rocket science five questions over coffee, important thing here I have got a cup of coffee in my hand and I’m joined by Simon Hague, who is also got a cup of coffee, which is great to see. Welcome Simon. Simon is running a coaching and facilitation business called where’s my lunch. Their ideal clients are business owners and leaders who want to explore new possibilities that can further enhance their business opportunities. And he works in our wireframe of wealth that social intellectual community and financial helps people to unlock their dreams and passions.
And this short chat, we’re gonna dig into the type of innovator that you as a business owner are and what type of support you might need to help you release those dreams. So welcome to the to the five questions over coffee, Simon. Thanks very much, Stuart, absolute pleasure to be with you today. I love some of the stuff you talked about. So let’s let’s sort of get into it a little bit. I’m interested really to start off by understanding what it is that sort of your ideal clients find as a big challenge before before you sort of get involved with them, essentially. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that question. So one of the one of the big things I see in today’s current
Simon Hague 2:01
pandemic, is the ability for remote teams to operate effectively, you may be having a small business that has staff working at home on their kitchen table or in a dining room, or in a shed at the bottom of the garden. But being able to stay close to those particular individuals, it’s going to be really, really difficult for you.
Some people are doing it well, some people are engaging. Well, some people aren’t. But it’s certainly causing a big issue at the moment.
And that’s materialising in stress. It’s materialising in work absence, downturn in productivity, downturn effectiveness, probably one of the biggest ones I’m interested in is downtime and innovation. Because you’re no longer having that coffee chat. You’re no longer having that
chat over by the watercooler just to really explore what is it this actually happening today?
Stuart Webb 2:51
Yeah, it’s a big problem, isn’t it? I mean, it really is.
I’ve noticed that you can schedule as many sort of, you know, chats with people that you like, but because they’re scripted, because their schedule is not the sort of necessarily sort of interaction that you get when people will just bump into each other and start talking about something completely random.
Simon Hague 3:12
It is a challenge for those innovators who really want to drive innovation in their businesses. Yeah, I don’t think it’s just about innovators, innovators, a specific interest to myself, but I don’t think it’s just about that. There’s the greasing of the company wheel that needs to happen. So for example, you’re working in sales and you you bump into somebody who’s going to ship your product, you can have that conversation, just a heads up that something’s coming through. Or if you’re in operations, and you know, there’s going to be a supply issue for somebody, then you can make the sales team aware of what’s going on. But that could just be walking down the corridor, five seconds chat. But that now is very difficult to actually happen. Because of the nature of using zoom and Microsoft Teams and all the rest of these types of products, which you’ve seen this exponential growth, not surprising, really bearing in mind how we’re being forced to work.
Stuart Webb 4:03
No, absolutely. But it’s one of the common mistakes people try and make when they’re trying to solve those problems that you come across.
Simon Hague 4:10
Yeah, thinking long and hard when I saw this question come through.
I don’t think it’s so much mistakes that people making is more about Miss missed opportunities, and the ability for organisations to take decisions quicker.
So it’s very easy to get to an outcome, but it may take a couple of months without putting some form of interrupts in place. And that interrupt can be a really, really simple fix as we’ll explore in a bit. And that interrupt could then deliver maybe a new product line or a different service offering different productivity tool, whatever you want it to develop for your business.
Stuart Webb 4:51
That’s, that’s interest you, right? It isn’t so much just about mistakes. Those missed opportunities can be as big as sort of, you know, doing so.
thing not quite,
can lose can lose time can lose money. Yeah, absolutely. And what we’re talking about here is just a mindset. Because what we’re seeing is we’re seeing a reprogram programming in my mind, you’ve heard the saying, it takes 21 days to break a habit, or it takes 21 days to form a habit as well. So if we, if we think about where things started with what we’re doing the moment it’s nearly a year ago,
Simon Hague 5:24
23rd of March, I hit the first lockdown. And that’s a hell of a long time for us to actually operate in this virtual space. So we’ve formed that habit now.
Yeah, and it’s a long time in a business life, isn’t it? I mean, those businesses that have now been trying to cope with a new world for the last year, those that have been unable to move forward or innovate to have those chance encounters in the corridor where you sort of move something forward. That’s a year’s worth of lost. And that’s
And what I was thinking of as a model of three engages, okay, so it’s engage, engage, engage, just think about this, just think about the engaging side, engage the stop is a first engage. And what I’m talking about there is when was the last time you as a business owner, or when was the last time you as a business leader, or as a sole trader, picks up that phone and actually had a proper damn conversation with somebody,
Stuart Webb 5:55
terrific. Recover? Yeah, I believe it will be Yeah, you’re right. So what’s what’s that one valuable free action that you think that the audience at the moment can implement to help them solve some of these problems? So,
Simon Hague 6:08
again, I was thinking about this, there’s so many different tools we can use right now. But I think one of the most important things that we need to do is we need to give ourselves time, we need to give ourselves time to actually stop time to enjoy what is going on around us, not just the treadmill of getting through stuff. But this, this, this goes for when we’re in business, not in a pandemic, as well as when we’re in this pandemic situation at the moment.
not about anything in particular, but had a conversation with somebody about something which wasn’t related to work, and actually got to know them. Do you know your customers? Do you know your suppliers Do you know your staff, and the majority of time at the moment, because what we’re seeing within zoom sessions and online sessions is it’s very, very business focused. People aren’t getting to know people anymore. So that’s the first engage, the second engage is engaged to listen. And what this means it’s putting stuff in the diary. So some of the senior leadership teams that I’m working with are now putting time in their diary to actually stop with their leadership team. And just go for a walk, go for a walk down the road, go for a walk in the woods, grab a coffee, grab a flask, I know it’s very limited on what we can do now. Because of the distances you could go to go and have that walk. But it’s just going out in nature, stop, have that chat, schedule something in your diary. So engage the listen and listen to what’s going on with your staff. And the final one is about engaged to advance. So what we’re doing here is, we’re starting to understand our people better, we’re understanding the motivation of the individuals better. Now we can actually engage with our staff better, we understand what’s going through their mind, we understand what’s happening in their life, we understand the challenges which they’re having, we understand the mental challenges, the mental health issues, maybe that’s them or their family are experiencing. And we can engage on that level, we can talk to them about maybe some of the things which aren’t about work, but huge in their lives, which will make a massive motivation factor for them to deliver for your business. Because after all, people are the business. It’s not the business, that’s the businesses, the people within it, that’s gonna make the business and the revenue.
Stuart Webb 8:40
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I love those three, and I made a note of them, they will be they will be in my diary in future because I think that’s brilliant, you know, the idea of just just putting time in your diary to sort of make a phone call to somebody just to say hello, just wanted to know how things were not not not anything to do with business. Because, you know, we’re so we’re so good at leaping into the business, actually, we should leap into just talking to each other as human beings.
Simon Hague 9:05
I totally agree. So but somebody mentioned to me if your target orientated, do it this way, put down a 10 by 10 grid, in your book, in your workbook in your day book, okay. And your challenge is to put a tick in each of those boxes in that 10 by 10. grid. So you at the end of that you’ve won the challenge of talking to 100 people. And that is such an way that if your target orientated, you can actually achiever.
Stuart Webb 9:31
What a great idea. I love that. I love that. So Simon, what what sort of concept books programme have been most impactful for you in your experience that you want to sort of highlight. And I know you’ve got lots of these, so let’s sort of limit it to sort of 10 Okay, well, well, I’ll
Simon Hague 9:49
go, I’ll go. I’ll go a bit. I’ll chunk it down a bit more for you than that. Okay. Well, we’ll think about maybe three or four. Because it’s such a horrible question to ask right now. So First one is the daily stoic is a book, okay by a guy called holiday holiday. So Ryan Holiday, okay. And alongside that comes a journal, the daily stoic journal, not that I’ve got any shares in it at all, I haven’t. But the idea being that daily stoic introduces you to maybe some comments or questions to think of how which you can start your wellness day. So for example, today, it says, Do I outbursts ever make it better? Now, it’s such an innocuous question. But it’s something which actually, you know, we all experienced, we have outbursts, does it make it better? Maybe, maybe not. The other one that is very big for me as well, is about planning. And I found this probably about a year and a half ago, I found this book, the full focus planner, which is a system of timekeeping by Michael Hyatt. So if you just Google Michael Hyatt and full focus planner, you’ll see where I’m coming from. But what that does, it looks at the top three things that you need to be achieving in a week. And it keeps you really, really focused because they’re linked into maybe your quarterly or your annual objectives. Not that I like being that structured because I don’t like being agile, I like being cold go where we go, sort of thing, we’ll we’ll manoeuvre where that where the weather takes us. But that structure does really help in achieving things. If I want to increase my turnover or increase my revenue, then one of the things I look at is I need to target time to actually work out where I’m going to get that from, and not just say, Oh, yeah, I need to do it. I don’t just need to do it. I need to actually target time for it, and then it will happen. So that’s the that’s the second thing. The third thing is in the US, I came across at the start lockdown, I came across some American speakers who do some great podcasts, and there’s some amazing material and podcast is very much personal favourite. There’s a lady called Jenna chercheur, who runs a podcast on marketing. So if you just Google gold digger, okay, that’s g o a l. Very, very clever play on words. Very clever marketers, Jenna. But she she does maybe two, maybe three podcasts a week. And that is just full of information full of stuff about how to get Google to work for you. How you feeling when you need to turn up to work, and it’s everything around you is going to pot? How do you deal with that sort of stuff in the real world. So that’s really, really useful. But probably the biggest learn for me. I started my business 12 years ago. And very early on in that I was introduced to Sinek Simon Sinek. Yeah, he describes himself as a professional optimist. I loved it. On the TED Talks, you’ve got his job title at the vaccine professional optimist. But it’s very true. He’s always talking positively about the world. And right now he’s all over LinkedIn is everywhere. But start with the Why is the thing that really, really hit home. Because you can talk about the warts, the product, the how it’s going to help people. But unless you get into the emotional space, when you’re trying to sell your product, you ain’t gonna get anywhere. And that ties in also with getting into why people turn up work. So if we think about the engaged, engaged, engaged stuff, what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to understand the why about the individual, we’re trying to understand the behavioural response of an individual. So if we can get into that we can understand that we’re going to really be able to motivate our base.
Stuart Webb 13:27
Brilliant, really, it’s I mean, it’s so interesting, you sort of mentioned two things there, one of which is I myself, I’m a daily stoic reader, the first five minutes of my day, I try and get to the, to the, to the, to the office here, you know, fairly early in the morning, I’m normally at a desk by seven, having sort of got up and sort of, you know, exercise my body. My next thing is to exercise my mind. And I read the daily stoic, I’m absolutely not you I sit there. So softly you sit there and I know this month is it’s all about sort of, you know, being that sort of engaged, sort of, you know, thinking about what, what can you possibly affect by the by having these outbursts walking you effect by worrying and you sit there you go, Yeah, why? Why do I spend half of my day worrying about something which I’ve got no control over? Let’s just let go of those and worrying about the things I can actually control. So it does refocus your mind on that. And the other one that you just mentioned there, which I think was absolutely fantastic. I really like that the way that you’re thinking about some of this stuff in terms of sort of the way in which you’re sort of doing that planning. I like you. I’m a massive planner. I like being agile. But I remember very early in my career, one of my mentors saying to me, if you can put down what are the top three things I need to achieve today and you get them all done by 11 o’clock, the rest of the day is yours. I loved that thought if you sort of focus and go, I must achieve this, I must achieve this, I must achieve this. And when you’ve done those, that’s it. You can sort of respond, you can sort of sit there and go, I’ve always wanted I’ve tried to do so and so and you’ve got that freedom. Having said that I try and sort of you know set aside a day Every month to sit there and go, Well, what is it the next month needs to do? So you have to put this time aside and get it in your diary. Otherwise it’ll get overwritten. But if you can get into the mindset of saying what am i top three things today, if I can get those done by 11 o’clock, I’ve got all the time in the rest of the day, in order to start achieving things that I never expected to do, if you leave later in the day. Great. I love it. I love it. post it notes. It’s wonderful. Too late in the day, though, the whole days gone before you start attacking the things which are truly important to you. So yeah, I’m with you. I just think it’s really important. Get those key things that you need to achieve? Absolutely forefront, and then you can really make progress. Yeah. Is it you say eat the frog principle, isn’t it? Done? And then the time is yours? Absolutely. So finally, you know, what that one question that you that I should have asked you that I haven’t done that you think is gonna give great value. And, you know, if I if I failed to ask difficult questions so far, that is the most difficult, I think.
Simon Hague 16:05
Yeah, again, thank you for letting me see these questions in advance. That the question I’ll put down here is what do you see as the future for the coaching or facilitation industry? in the future? As a massive, massive question, isn’t it?
Stuart Webb 16:22
Isn’t it? Yeah.
Simon Hague 16:24
One of the one of the things just to just go straight into answering that it’d be great to hear what your your thoughts are, as well. But I think we’re in a very programming stage at the moment, if we think about how our brains work. They’re, they’re quite elastic, in that they can adapt to what’s going on around us. But I think we’re right now in a programming phase, where what we’re going to be doing over the next month or two months, is going to have a really, really big influence on potentially what the future is of what we do as individual business owners for the future, because that neuroplasticity is starting to form a pattern, the pathways are starting to bond now. So that has an impact on how we show up? Are we going to be showing up like this? Okay, which is great. And it’s lovely. But how are we going to be showing up face to face? Are we going to be able to sit in a room with a client anymore? And how are we going to feel about that, all those sort of things are going to start to go through our mind. And that’s going to impact the effectiveness and what we’re trying to deliver. I also think that if we look at the coaching space, and the facilitation space, more and more people are coming into that trade. So I think it’s more and more important for us to understand what our niche area is what it is that we’re really, really trying to push out there. And that goes for not just about coaching, but it goes about any business, I think we need to be absolutely aligned to what our purpose is, what the product is that we’re selling. And we need to understand. Okay, so what is the actual benefit? What is the pain point that I’m actually solving here? Because if we don’t understand that we’re going to get eaten alive in our business ain’t going to be there because other people will be able to sell?
Stuart Webb 18:04
Yes, yes. Simon, he, once again, we’re really talking on same language. I mean, the key thing that I talk to clients about so often is, is when I when I when I ask them sort of like, describe your business, you know, they’re talking about the features of the business. And again, what’s the benefit to the customer? What’s the pain that they’ve got? If you can get yourself out of your head and get them get yourself into their head and go, I’m trying to solve this problem today? What’s the easy thing for me to do to get that problem solved? And you then give them the solution? There’s no selling involved? The Chenango, when do we start? And so often, where they’re trying to say, oh, how do I convince them, don’t convince them, get into their head, get behind what it is they’re got as a problem. solve the problem, then they’ll be the one saying to you, why can I have it now? That’s the that’s where so many people sort of fail to understand that it’s all about when to serve the client and not trying to persuade. And I think, you know, you just hit it run to break, what’s the pain? And how am I going to help that just go away?
Simon Hague 19:12
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely agree. And to do to do that, you need to just give yourself some time. But it comes back to this engaged engaged ation. There’s a big rap here. Because we need to take time out we need to think just like you do, you take you take a day a month out to look at a whiteboard to work with a whiteboard to work with a flip chart work with post it notes, just to say, Okay, what does this mean? What’s happening with my business here? And we need to do that we need to think about that and really get really, really get focused in on what our outcomes need to be. And that’s really what I like working with people on so that’s where that’s where I am.
Stuart Webb 19:52
Simon, I love it. I think you bring I thought you brought a great deal of value to the audience. I hope they pick up on some of those tips. I hope they engage, engage, engage scrolling across the bottom of the screen, you’ve got Simon’s LinkedIn address. Go to LinkedIn. Yes, go see go see what Sam has got to offer there, connect with him speak speak with him about and go and see what he’s got at where’s my lunch. And, and for in the future, obviously, that the other great thing that we’re sort of, we’re sort of looking for if if you can, if you want to go and get a scientific market and make over from from the road, or subscribe, see more of these. If you get if you go to tcaa dot FYI forward slash subscribing and get to see when we do these come on and see the great value of that the the, the the the interviewees, the people that we talk to really are. Simon, thank you so much for the for what you’ve given this morning. I really hope that people get out there and engage, engage, engage and come with find out what you’ve got to talk about. Where’s my lunch? And in the future, if you if you’d like to come back and see us we’d love to have you back on. That’s fantastic. Sure. It’s been absolute pleasure. Thank you very much. And the coffee ain’t bad either. Yeah, thankfully. I got a good one made for me this morning. Good for you. Take care.