Chris Barrow’s Blog

Back on the workshop trail this week:

Tuesday – Edinburgh

Wednesday – Newcastle

Thursday – Leeds

Friday – Birmingham

Saturday – Newcastle (again!).

I mentioned in my last post that the Caledonian in Edinburgh managed to destroy my first post-Canadian sleep by setting off the fire alarm at 4.00am on Tuesday morning.

Interesting to note that maybe 25% of the guests even bothered to leave their rooms, the other 75% presumably privy to some inside information that the alarm was false – or maybe just stupid.

Those of us who did congregate waited patiently whilst both hotel staff and fire crew worked through their “brand standards” and, after a half-hour, told us we could return to our slumbers (or not in my case).

A father nearby joked with his young daughter that the only item she has rescued from their room was the model Loch Ness monster, sporting a “Cally t-shirt” – a complimentary gift to all guests.

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“It’s only a green plastic dragon.” he commented, loud enouigh to impress those other adults nearby.

“Not in my imagination it isn’t.” she responded – putting Dad in his place and making me ponder that a child’s imagination is a potent force.

Later that day, the alarm rang again – and we were forced/obliged to wait in the car park for a while.

After the first alarm, we were requested to return to our rooms at about 4.30am – and so the gathered throng did so, rather sullenly I thought.

So I made a point of dropping back, waiting until they were gone and then approaching the two fire crew to say a simple but heartfelt “thank you” to them both.

I just hope that made their day, the way an unsolicited acknowledgement makes mine.

I arrived back in Edinburgh at 12 noon yesterday.

My suitcase arrived in Edinburgh at 5.00pm yesterday.

Thanks for nothing British Airways.

I suppose I should count my blessings.

I collapsed into bed at 9.30pm last night at the Caledonian.

At 4.00am the fire alarm sounded and I spent an interesting hour with all the guests and the Scottish Fire Brigade.

Unable to get back to sleep – out for a jog around Edinburgh city centre at 5.30am this morning.

First of 5 consecutive days of presenting today – there are 65 people due in 10 minutes.

My head doesn’t know what time it is.

But it’s better than an office job I guess.

More on my fire brigade adventure later.

Meeting over – and I am overwhelmed with the quantity and quality of the ideas that I’ve gained from my fellow members.

It is very uncomfortable to have your professional life “creatively destroyed” by others – but when:

• you trust, respect and like them and
• they don’t have an axe to grind, an agenda, a vested interest or an ego that clashes with yours

then the intake of fresh air makes the head dizzy for a moment before the common sense of what they are saying sinks in.

And what are they saying?

1. You need to create space
2. You need to do fewer things
3. You need to eliminate tolerations
4. You need to move from 10 (full-speed ahead) to 2 (dead slow)
5. You need to avoid repeating the mistakes of history – don’t solve problems the way you always have done.

All rather scary – but I would rather hear that from this group than any other.

and when all the laptops have been put away – it’s been the quality of the conversation that has made the difference.

In the last 24 hours I have read Seth Godin’s new book “The Dip” from cover to cover.

That’s an easy thing to do because he really has cornered the market on saying very little, very well.

Learning when to quit and what to quit as a success strategy – rather serendipitous don’t you think?

Let me tell you my new buzz word – since reading “The 4-hour work week”, since this week’s mastermind meeting in Montreal, since reading Godin, since spending the last 4 months making everybody around me miserable as I go through “The Dip”.

Outsourcing.

That’s my buzz word.

Outsourcing.

Here’s Godin:

All successes are the same. All failures too.

We succeed when we do something remarkable.

We fail when we give up too soon.

We succeed when we are the best in the world at what we do.

We fail when we get distracted by tasks we don’t have the guts to quit.

So I’m going to become the best in the world at what I do.

And I’m going to quit the tasks that I haven’t had the guts to quit.

Watch me.

It’s hot here in Montreal – yesterday the temperature climbed to 86 degrees and walking the 20 minutes from my hotel to our conference venue and back were a delight.

Fundamentals.

There is a good conversation going on here with my fellow coaches – and I’m reminded of fundamental lessons that can be applied to my own business and my professional life.

Here they are:

• Many of us have created successful coaching practices and are now ready to move away from coaching – to make the shift from practitioner, through business owner, to entreprenuer
• Many of us want to reduce the number of hours we work and re-balance our lifestyles
• Most of us want to “outsource” everything (thank you Timothy Ferriss and “The 4-hour work week” – now an Amazon best-seller)

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We are all weak in four key areas:

• Lead generation
• Lead conversion
• Financial analysis
• Outsourcing

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• There is a lot of money to be made (still) via virtual sales and advertising

Last night we enjoyed the slowest customer service I can recall for many a year.

Admittedly, we were a party of 10 for dinner, no reservation and on one of Montreal’s busiest nights of the week (and a hot evening – everyone was out).

But Ristorante Cellini in the Loews Hotel was purgatory.

2 hours to be served with one main course.

And a waiter who told us that separate checks was beyond his capability.

He was clearly rushed off his feet with our party and the other half-dozen diners in the restaurant.

We were told that the reason for the delay was the logistics of serving 10 meals at the same time.

Earlier in the day, separate checks and 10 meals in 45 minutes wasn’t so difficult at Eggspectations, a franchise, of course.

It’s 7.45am Friday – and I’m now looking forward to another day of conversation with my coaching buddies.

I’m making furious and copious notes – its great – I love master-minding.

Yours truly on a Tuesday afternoon conference call with Michel Neray of Esential Message fame and members of his bull-pen coaching group.

Today (Wednesday) I begin my 3 days of mastermind coaching with a group of 10 coaches from North America and the UK – and this afternoon I have been listening to them coach me on the next stage of my business development!

And at the end of our working day I learn that Liverpool have been beaten by A C Milan in the Champions League final. In spite of years of rivalry, I cannot escape a slight twinge of regret that the trophy has been won by a non-British club.

Didn’t see the game after all – it would not have been fair to 8 of the coaches who hardly know what soccer is.

Last night I walked from downtown Montreal to Le Plateau – a somewhat bohemian district of town, full of boutiques, restaurants and arty-farty stores.

The arrival was great but the mistake was to walk all of the way there, through some decidedly dodgy parts of town.

Passing prostitutes, drug-takers and homeless dog owners (that’s homeless people with dogs, not homeless dogs with people – although, in fact, it was homeless people with equally homeless dogs – it’s just that the dogs didn’t care) wasn’t my idea of an adventure and it was all a bit unsettling.

Why do homeless people with dogs all have dreadlocks, wear black and put studs in their body-parts?

Once through, the sightseeing became more civilised.

Amazing how similar big cities are the world over – I would never have dreamed of walking around inner city Liverpool or Milan (I know them both) – so why I did that last night I don’t know.

Moral – take a cab through the places you don’t know.

The city world is slowly turning into a Blade-Runner set.

Raphael is a street entertainer in Montreal.

Monday is Victoria Day – a national holiday – and in the sunshine he performs in the Place Jacques-Cartier, taking his 30-minute pitch in between other performers.

But Raphael makes more money than anyone else as I watch from the restaurant alongside.

Why?

His act is good – very good – but that’s not the point.

The point is that during his act he specifies exactly what action he is expecting at the conclusion.

That the crowd will pay.

And the best line of all is:

If you only want to give me pennies and loose change – then you need it more than I do – so keep it.

With a firm hand signal – he tells the crowd that, if they have enjoyed his act – he wants each of them to give $5.00.

That’s $5.00 everybody – nothing less will do – because he is worth it.

And guess what – he is swamped with people giving him $5.00.

The moral?

• Proud of himself
• Good at what he does
• Knows he makes a difference
• Knows what he expects
• Not afraid to ask
• “Over it” if you don’t pay
• Doesn’t suffer time-wasters
• Doesn’t give discounts

A class act.

Well after my last post (they called the flight) we all sat on the aircraft for a while and the pilot then told us that:

1. the reason for the delay was that Heathrow was busy (duh)Â and because our aircraft had to be towed to the gate across from the other side of the airport, it was stuck in a traffic jam;
2. and now that we were on the aircraft, ATC had announced that due to a wind direction change, all flights waiting to take off west-bound were now having to taxi the length of the runway to take off eastbound;
3. so we would have to wait on the tarmac until a gap appeared.

and so we left the ground precisely three hours late.

But all credit to our cabin crew who, once again, provided a flawless customer service experience.

By the time we were airborn, my plans to write emails and ezine articles were replaced by fatigue – so my in-flight entertainment became a combination of reading (see below) and watching a movie (the Clint Eastwood directed Iwo Jima dramatisation – Japanese with sub-titles but gripping and beautifully acted).

I think I have read less than 6 books that have changed my life permanently – and yesterday’s in-flight reading will be another one.

Timothy Ferris’s “The 4-hour work week.” sounds like a cheesy Californian attempt to cash in on the “get happy with my plan” fad and, although I don’t subscribe to all of his lifestyle views, the underlying messages of the book are thrilling.

I raced through the pages and will return with a highlighter pen later this week.

I have already written some emails this morning to people I want help from on implementing some of his ideas.

A fantastic “tear up the rule book” document – much in the same mould as Thomas Leonard’s “Portable Coach”.

Read it!

Arriving in Montreal at about 10.30pm local time, I thought my travel problems were over.

After successfully navigating the usual slap-faced immigration official, I assumed that I’d be straight out of the airport door.

But no.

The baggage belt breaks down, with half the luggage from the flight somewhere in the innards of the system.

So a further 45 minutes ticks by as the survivors from the flight stand around, making cell phone calls to people stood outside waiting for them.

I arrive at a deserted Hilton downtown, just after midnight and collapse into a bed, burned out.

This morning I am trashed – a lazy first day of acclimatisation.

I’ve been sat in T4 (Heathrow) for 4.5 hours now.

Flight was due to leave an hour ago – no news, no announcement, no aircraft, no ground staff – just 300 tired people waiting around in a gate area with seats for 100.

Nothing seems to be changing then – although the flight down from Edinburgh was pleasant enough and on time. The gay flight crew were very entertaining – a complete spectrum from hermaphrodite to muscle-bound – but all 100% friendly and helpful. Happy gay guys are so good at customer service.

International seems to be struggling at the moment.

Actually, as I type this, we hear that there may be a boarding about to take place – in 10 minutes or so…..

We shall see.

I’m bored now – are we there yet?

No – not even on the darn flight.

I’ll be catching a flight from Edinburgh to Heathrow this morning – and then Heathrow to Montreal.

Sounds crazy for a guy who started his journey in Cornwall on Friday afternoon but there’s method in my madness.

I’ll be flying back from Canada and straight into a workshop week that goes Edinburgh, Newcastle, Leeds, Birmingham and then back to Newcastle for an IPG group meeting.

From Newcastle I’ll be driving down to Devon for our annual client retreat in 2 weeks from now.

So making the effort to travel to Scotland will pay dividends.

It’s cold here in Scotland this morning (49 degrees and sunny)Â – and the northerly shift in my location was evidenced by daylight until 9.45pm last night and bright sunshine that woke me at 5.00am!

It’s no wonder that the Scandinavians and the Scots have a reputation for being a little dour – they don’t get enough sleep.

As P. G Wodehouse said:

It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.

So here goes with a day of travel – arriving at my hotel probably about 4.00am in the morning UK time – if there are no delays.

And I have bitten the bullet and booked my travel with British Airways – I’m giving them another chance after a horrendous experience with Zoom (who didn’t) last November.

Fingers crossed that BA’s £350 million provision in this week’s accounts for criminal penalties around price-rigging of fuel surcharges will have engendered a slightly more humble approach to customer service.

I’ll let you know in about 24 hours.

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OK – maybe a bit of sore losing on my part – but the honours for the season have been shared well on reflection.

I’m just glad I didn’t have a seizure a few weeks ago and pay the £1750 asking price for a pitch-side seat at the new Wembley – or, for that matter, have to pay £4.50 for a Pukka pie or £10 for a programme.

The FA representative on the radio this morning argued that the “prices were in line with other major sports events and rock concerts”.

And I suppose he has a point – I noticed that £100 tickets to see Barbra Streisand in London this July are now on offer at about £750 each. I suppose the meat pies will be expensive at the London Arena as well.

So are live sports and entertainment now only the preserve of the super-rich? The “prawn sandwich” section – as they are now known?

It would seem so.

Back to the football.

Chelsea get 2 trophies – that acknowledges their struggle to maintain form for the whole season in the face of injuries and back-stage dramas.

Man United regain the Premiership and Ferguson can confidently assume his rightful position as the most successful team coach of the last 20 years.

It was very saddening to see Notts Forest lose to Yeovil Town at their own ground last night in the play-offs of what is a minor league – and those of us watching reminisced that the same Nottingham club won the European Championship (was it twice?) under the charismatic and unorthodox managership of Brian Clough.

Beware the ides of May Leeds United!

I have only two wishes for the rest of what has been the best season for some years:

1. Jose gets his dog back and
2. A C Milan stuff Liverpool.

I’ll be watching the Champions League final next Wednesday with my mates Sital Ruparelia and Paul Copcutt – sat with a Ugandan Asian and an expatriate Brit, watching Scousers play Italians, in a French-speaking hotel in Canada.

We should order in a Chinese meal.

Surreal.

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