Your Life Your Business Mastermind Retreat

Everyone has a story about life and business. Here is a blog describing how life and business collided for Sharyn and how that resulted in the Your Life Your Business mastermind retreat. An Introduction From Nanny to Programme Director and Beyond Beyond. That is how I defined my small business journey when I set off into the great unknown in Feb 2014. The definition of beyond according to Google is “at or to the further side of” or “happening or continuing after” or “the unknown, especially in references to life after death” I didn’t realise at the time, but they are all so appropriate to what has happened in the last few years. Corporate Career 3 years ago, I voluntarily walked away from a successful corporate career. I had worked in many industries (manufacturing, contracting, service industry, outsourcing) and in many roles (accounting, project management, product portfolio management, marketing, business process re-engineering). I tell you this to illustrate the variety of experience that I’ve had, the different industries, companies, departments, roles. All with varying degrees of challenges, but all (except one) with a corporate background, and all business to business. Big business. National, International, Multiple departments, Multiple employees. In short. A living organism in its own right. None of this prepared me for the small business challenge. Small Business Experience Firstly, I worked on my own as a sole trader. I had a lovely office in one of my bedrooms in the house, everything I needed at my finger tips and all my nice things around me (even my beautiful Persian cat), I was also armed with good practices and self-discipline and I didn’t really get distracted with housework and such, I was a regular attendee at a few networking events, but something was still missing. Looking back, I missed the “machine” that is business. I missed being part of something bigger. Not one to ignore a yearning, I created Pure Zest in York with a friend and colleague. A business hub for other people like us who missed the community of being part of something bigger. Who wanted to work for themselves but not necessarily by themselves. A community where in time there would hopefully be a marketing expert, where there would be a computer expert, where I could be the coach or finance expert – or the coffee maker. And we would all work together but on our own businesses. Our slogan was “A desk is just the beginning”. And that worked for a while, except in our innocence we targeted the wrong market and didn’t give enough time to working on that business due to our other business commitments which eventually became more pressing than the need for community. (The vision lives on though in the Natural Entrepreneurs Workspace – N.E.W, run by Elaine White at Forest Farm, York. Check it out here, it’s really worth it!). Finally, after much soul searching, I began to work with my partner in a slightly larger business with a staff of approx. 10 people. Still a small business, but not a ‘one-woman band’. I realised that more than the wider community, I missed the camaraderie of a team moving towards one goal. I missed the opportunity to build that team, to establish the goal, to drive a business forward, to implement all the big business ideas but in a smaller environment. (And running a business with my partner was a long-held dream of mine) Your Life | Your Business Mastermind Retreat Now, some of those big business ideas were winners, and some were losers, I’ve learned a massive amount about the psychology of small business, most of which I can’t articulate yet – but watch this space. I’ve learned masses about myself, again watch this space! And finally, having ignored my own needs for too long in service of this business, I had a mini breakdown. A brush with chronic fatigue and depression that I am still working with and so I’ve had to change the vision and extent of my input into our business. Why am I telling you this? Because when you’re running a small business your life and your business are at best intertwined but are often one in the same thing. Having started to come out of the ‘fog’ of implementing change in our business I am now seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, seeing the synergies between what I learned in big business, what I learned as a sole trader, what I learned (and continue to learn) as a small business owner and what I’ve learned on my personal journey. I’m seeing the reflection of this in the consultancy business – Sharyn with a Why, and I’m seeing how it can all fit together. I am a multi-faceted person, just like you. I am enjoying the challenge of running my own small business. I’m enjoying developing the team and watching them take that first tentative flight. I’m watching myself develop a strategy that will shortly see me in a part time role in my own business with a fully functioning team of experts. And for me that’s exciting because that allows me to begin to explore Sharyn with a Why all over again. To bring my experience and training together in what I hope will be a valuable resource for small business owners. The form of this is still fluid. It will definitely be a combination of actual business techniques, processes and procedures, but more than that, it will be an exploration of your state of mind, your beliefs and how they are impacting your business. A space both physically speaking and metaphorically speaking for you to focus on your life as well as your business. A place to soothe your body, your mind and your spirit. To connect with your Why, the Why of your business, the Why of the next 60 days. To enable you to rise to the challenge of another day in your business energised, focussed and set to achieve. If you would be interested in hearing more about my “Your Life, Your Business Retreats” for small business owners who are serious about living the dream then please do contact me, I’d love to have a natter over a cuppa and a ginger biscuit 😊 UPDATE: these retreats are now running and are an integral part of the Efficiency Guru programme. We haven’t changed the blog to reflect this, it’s here as it stood, when the retreats were just a concept 🙂

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