Where's the Lid to Your Company's Jigsaw Puzzle?

I absolutely love Michael Gerber!

Perhaps I should add here, that I can get quite excited about life and I do love lots of things! And I'm happily married; so when I say "I absolutely love Michael Gerber" please take it the right way! ;-)

OK, now where was I? Oh yes, Michael Gerber. For those of you who don't know who he is (shame on you!) go to Michael Gerber's website to find out more.

I was fortunate enough to see Michael talk in Leeds in 2004 and I got to meet him afterwards while he signed his book. You can listen to the very evening I went to on a Red Audio CD. Just go to the Red Audio website to get your copy.

This is not an affiliate link and I make no financial gain from your purchase
He was a really nice guy and when you listen to his talk you'll realise not only is he very funny; he's incredibly smart about small businesses.

The part on the CD when he tells the stary of Ace and Bob is hilarious and it's a key turning point in Michaels' life. He realised that most small business owners don't have a clue about business. Most small business owners don't have any systems in place by which to run their businesses. They just react to the day; phonecalls; emails; customers. 

"It was like someboday had bought a jigsaw puzzle, thrown the pieces on the floor.... and thrown away the cover of the box.... Nobody had a picture of the finished puzzle of the business they owned!" Michael Gerber

Mechanics open garages, chefs open restaurants, chiropractors open clinics and Michael Gerber thinks this is a profound mistake. Just because a chef can cook doesn't mean he can run a business. Just because a chiropractor can fix people doesn't mean she can run a business.

He says that nearly all small business owners are busy, busy, busy everyday, working in their businesses instead of ON their businesses and at the end of the week they wonder where the time's gone. Every business needs to have systems to follow. "This is how we do it here; no not that way; this way." Most small businesses are reactive instead of proactive and Michael Gerber says it's a tragic shame.

So where's the lid of the jigsaw puzzle of your business? If you've lost it don't worry. You can start today and decide what the picture of the finished puzzle of your business looks like. Leave all those peices scattered on the floor of your office for now and take some time out to think about the vision of your business. 

• What do you want to achieve with your business? 
• What's the reason you started it originally? 
• What's your story?
• Do you want to build it into the world's biggest something? Like MacDonalds or Walmart? 
• Or do you just want a nice income each year? 
• Do you want to build a business which you can pass on to your children? 
• Or do you want to sell up in 7 years time for mutli-millons?

Whatever it is you want, you need to get the picture clear in your head and put some systems & processes in place so you can begin to stick your jigsaw pieces together. 

The beauty of this is you get to decide! I look forward to hearing about your jigsaw puzzle.

Why I love Volcanoes & Virgin Holidays!

On April 13th I flew with my family on holiday to Dubai. Our friends booked the holiday as a group booking for the 6 of us and boy oh boy are we happy they did it with Virgin Holidays!

We booked just a 6 day holiday as we were staying in The Atlantis Hotel on The Palm and it's not the cheapest hotel in Dubai.

On arrival at the airport we all said we wished we'd booked for a few days longer.

Confusicious said: "Be careful what you wish for!"

Little did we know the Icelandic volcano was to affect us and so many other air travellers around the world.

It was soon apparent from watching Sky and BBC news in our room that the affects of the volcanic ash were far reaching. But even when the UK airspace was closed we didn't envisage the closure would be more than a day or so.

Our Virgin Holidays Rep, Fares Malaeb, was at our hotel everyday at 11am to book excursions etc but as the situation worsened he was the bearer of the bad news that we were unable to fly home. Initially, there was drama as we imagined the implications but the next day our Rep explained that Virgin Holidays would be paying for our hotel room and breakfast for every day we were stranded! 

Fares was incredible. He was excellent and did a very good job keeping us all in touch every single day. Many of the others contacted him day and night by mobile and also text and Fares was unwavering in his service. 
On one particular morning, when the situation had once again changed, there were a few, very angry customers who were quite rude to Fares. But Fares was always polite and he was excellent at calming people down. He of course had me there to help too! On a few occasions I argued with some of the Virgin Holidays customers explaining that these were unprecedented circumstances and that Virgin and Fares were doing everything they could etc..


Virgin Holiday, you have an excellent rep. I hope Fares Malaeb receives the recognition he deserves for his tireless hard work and sleepless nights.

As you can see from the photo on the right, the pool was lovely and it became my working office each day. I had my iPhone and free wi-fi from the hotel so I was able to handle emails and phone calls. So I could have happily stayed for a while!

We watched all the doom and gloom on the news and whilst I have a huge amount of sympathy and some empathy with my fellow, stranded tourists; I appreciate our situation was no where near as bad as many of those stuck at airports or those who had to take on a plane, train and automobile type of trip to get back home.

So a huge THANK YOU to Sir Richard Branson and Virgin Holidays and to Fares Malaeb, for looking after us so well and taking the panic and strain and stress out of our situation.

I will defintely be booking ALL future holidays with Virgin Holidays. Any chance you can make sure Fares is our rep each time we travel with you??!! ;-)

Right I'm off to finish opening my 2 weeks worth of post and emails and get back to all my customers' requests.

I love volcanoes and Virgin Holidays!! 

P.S. My mate has a video of me whizzing down the "Leap of Faith" slide screaming "I love Virgin Holidays!" I'll upload it here as soon as he sends it to me. :-)