Always look close to home

During our world tour this past year, Matt and I have traveled all over North America and even some in Europe. At these events our average book sales ratio is 1:6. Lately we have been doing more training and speaking events closer to home (one because our family have said so and two because people have started asking for it) and suddenly our sales ratio is 1:4 and sometimes even better.

So even though the travelling is fun and exciting and sometimes can be easier (I know strange but true), it's important for every business to look close to home. What opportunities lie right in your backyard that you haven't seen yet?

So with that said... here's some information on our upcoming Kingston workshop.

Thu, Mar 27, 2008
8:30 AM - 11:00 AM
$60 (includes snacks, 2 training sessions, autographed copy of Trucker Management)

A Day in the Life Contingency Planning for your Small Business
In this interactive seminar, participants roleplay a full day of operations in a small business, brainstorming actions and reactions as everything that can go wrong does. By the end of the seminar, participants will be well equipped to transfer the lessons learned back to their own businesses, ensuring they have all of the necessary contingency plans in place to avoid costly disruptions. Useful tools that participants can immediately implement in their businesses will be provided as take-away resources.

Assembling Success
Do you have what it takes to lead your team to victory? Successful organizations depend on quick-thinking leaders, an ability to recognize strengths and weaknesses of team members, and plans that allocate resources for maximum efficiency. This fun and fast-paced session has teams competing to design and execute an assembly line, and get quality products to market more quickly than the others while facing unique challenges associated with the abilities of each team member. The lessons illustrated by this exercise can easily be transferred to any type of business or organization. Team leaders will have their decision-making and communication abilities tested in a hectic environment  how will you measure up?

To register contact us at:
613-546-0222, info@truckermanagement.com

Meet the Meanie

Those of you that have known me a few years have probably heard this crazy idea I had a back in 2004. The idea is that instead of fearing and loathing your competitors, embrace them, in fact, invite them for lunch or coffee. I believe in this concept so much that I developed a set of lunch sessions called 'Meet the Meanie' for different tourism operators.

It worked like a charm, especially for the museum industry. Each museum was struggling to promote themselves on such a limited budget. Collaboratively, they realized their budget for advertising was much greater and they could stretch it further. So they developed a joint brochure, ad campaign and a visit multiple museums passport type activity. It worked to increase the pie and not just the piece of pie, therefore everyone's pieces increased.

In the tech industry I have seen several competitors get together to post joint job ads. Two different ways that meeting your meanie can be effective.

Have you met your meanie? More importantly, have you thought of ways to work with your meanie, instead of fearing them?