Leadership

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If people are looking to you for direction or inspiration then there is a good chance you are a Leader.
It doesn’t have to be in a business environment… you could be a school football coach, a community head, a business manager or a parent….you are probably a Leader… and therefore you cast a Leadership Shadow.

What’s yours like!!

Monday 13 September

Leadership

Is it me or are the people that enter the Dragons’ Den more deluded than the contestants on X-Factor?

• My name is Brian. I’m looking for £100k for a 10% stake in my business. I have invented a cup, which you can fill with tea. And drink from.

• Hmmm. So you value your business at £1 million. How many of these cups have you sold?

• Four. One to my mum. One to my dad and 2 to my Uncle Harry who drinks a lot of tea and doesn’t have a dishwasher. And they all really love them.

• This is a tough market. What makes your cup so special when there are thousand out there already?

• Mine is blue. I expect to sell 2 million in the next 6 weeks and they retail at £1.99 each.

• Blue cups, eh? Novel. How much do they cost you to make?

• Err.. I don’t know. I think it’s about £3 per unit.

• Let me tell you where I am, Brian. I’m out.

Mad. The Dragons are often prone to quote the old adage “Turnover is vanity. Profit is sanity.”  And they’re right. Well, they would be. They are all multi-millionaires. more…

Monday 16 August

Leadership

If your business isn’t doing as well as you’d like, you might want to consider employing my niece, Emily.

The only problem is, you’ll have to wait a while because she’s only nine.

On a recent family holiday (30 of us invaded Cornwall for a week), Em decided that an open-air talent show was in order. And once Em decides something is going to happen, you’d better not get in her way.

First she drew up the accounts, listing the cost of everything she would need in order to determine how much to charge the punters and still make a profit. (When she grows up, she wants to be Sir Alan Sugar).

Then she auditioned to select her acts before producing the tickets which she sold to remaining family members; shrewdly negotiating with the less than enthusiastic by offering a ‘Forces Discount’ to her soldier dad and an ‘OAP discount’ to her great-granddad on the basis that he was, well…really old.

She then recruited and selected her staff; I was to be in charge of hair and make-up while others were given jobs as stage crew, judges, catering etc. (Salaries accounted for).

Next, she cornered me to take her to a supermarket, where she bought huge bags of popcorn, which she then decanted into paper cups to sell at 50p a go in the interval.

more…