TRAINING & WORKSHOPS
What Business
Are We Really In?
Lessons from an evolving business
By Emma Sargent and Tim Fearon
I
f what you are doing isn’t working do
something else”. That’s what we teach
people in NLP isn’t it? Well, our business
wasn’t working that well to be frank. And no,
it wasn’t because of the recession. Let me just
rewind a bit. A few years ago we (that’s my
husband, Tim Fearon and I) had a perfectly
good business; we had big corporate clients
who gave us lots of training and coaching
work all over the world and we had a very
comfortable life. We ran a few public events; a
Practitioner Training once a year that we ran
as a lovely small group and all who came on
it were thrilled, as were we. We had dreams to
run our NLP events in a big country house and
we made those dreams come true! But there
was something missing....
I’m getting ahead of myself. So we had a
perfectly healthy business until we moved house
exactly three years ago. Why on earth would
moving house cause our business to fall away?
Why on earth would moving house
Well of course it wasn’t the moving, it was US.
We moved to the New Forest, only an hour cause our business to fall away?
and a half from London, but oh the psychology
attached to moving house, schools, friends, and then new business has a six month lead time.... Whatever happened to “Do what you love
business (notice I put business last in the list you’ve probably been there. But hey, we’d and the money will come”? We all believe that,
without thinking) had a very interesting effect always been alright before; Lady Luck had don’t we?
on our income. Some of our clients started always put a new contract our way just when But we WERE doing what we loved and the
to come to the natural end of their contracts we needed it. Something always happened money was NOT coming.
but others thought that we had ‘moved away’. which meant that we would be alright. Some of our new friends (luckily I had done
Mention that you live on the Dorset border to a And then we weren’t alright anymore. a great job of forming friendships over the first
central London client and you may just as well It LOOKED like we were alright; we were, 18 months of our new life) were amazingly
have gone to Mars. But it wasn’t just them – I after all, living our dreams: a cottage in the generous in donating their time and business
thought it too. “I’ll let you know when I’m next country with land, the children at a fantastic expertise. They asked us questions which made
up in London”, I said to them. Oh the shame school doing marvellous activities and yes, us inwardly squirm as we tried to answer them.
of it. The simple truth of the matter was that running our NLP events in a big house in “What’s your exit strategy?” asked one.
we took our eye off the all important business the forest. Frankly, we were having a lovely WHAT???!!! You can’t exit from a business that
ball. Personally, I was too busy making friends, time and we just didn’t want to face up to our IS you!
getting the children settled and being part of mounting debts and diminishing income. Lady “Quite.”
the school community to really notice that Luck nearly saved us again with the promise of “Do you want to have a business or a job?”
things were sliding a bit. a £250,000 coaching contract in Dubai, which asked another; “Because at the moment you
Self employed people tend not to notice a then evaporated. have a job.” Well, I felt rather affronted at that
slide, and when things are really good we don’t Boy was it time to do something different! until it sank in and I realised he was right.
have time to do any new business activity. And Because the missing ingredient was MONEY. Oh yes, and the very worst one, the one that
42 | Autumn 2009 - rapport
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