As we all know time passes ever so quickly, and that’s what we realised last month when our Flywheel Collective programme had its final session. How could that have been 8 months since it started?
To us, working with businesses that are so passionate about what they do is very satisfying, so to add to that, a deeper understanding of their businesses financials and drivers makes for an extremely rewarding journey for us to be part of.
Our first intake saw a variety of different businesses sign up and from that, we handpicked 6 businesses – which included beauticians to butchers, a pharmacy to a financial advisor and we soon realised that the mixture of businesses we selected created an extremely open and trusting environment. - Of course, we understand how lucky we were to have such a great bunch of folk onboard who gave such valuable input!
A key finding for us was that no matter the business size, structure, or industry – all of the businesses had a similar range of struggles and stresses. We discussed with them ways to overcome certain situations whilst helping them gain a clear vision of where their businesses is trying to go and what they are trying to achieve, this helped the group set meaningful and achievable targets and ensure they followed them through.
One of the common areas was communication, or lack of, and we see this time and time again. We know that it’s extremely important that you communicate your core values to your team and share relevant financial information as this helps explain why you make certain decisions for the good of the business, ultimately making them feel more involved and allows them to take ownership over their role and tasks, generally making them feel more fulfilled at work.
Of course, there was a lot of laughs along the way, some buffets, lunches and meringues but there was also a lot of hard work and accountability – but surprisingly from our group feedback, everyone loved the fact that we held them accountable and set them deadlines which we would follow up on as this ensured that they stayed on track and got the outcomes they wanted.
If you think your business would be a great fit for our next intake of The Flywheel Collective, sign up here!
