Changing Tack

Like many social entrepreneurs, I find myself in the undesirable grip of the "recovery". The recovery, turns out to be much nastier than the recession. With public sector spending at 51% of GDP, I imagine it is not just my business that has found Government spending cuts to be having an enormous effect on their revenue. 25% cuts means a drop in GDP of ( gets out calculator) 12.75%.

How does that feel like a recovery?

What it means for us, as a training company, is that we are the first budget to be cut. We are seen as an auxilery, a luxury item. Even though the end user, the student at Uni with no employability skills, the redundant institutionalised civil servant , the young person bewildered by the education system and its value, has more use for us than ever, unless we can raise the cash for core costs through delivering services to better off businesses, or we find ourselves an Angel benefactor, I may not be able to afford to keep going much longer.

And it is the same for plenty other small businesses and charities I know. One digital media design colleague has just had the budget for his major project slashed to a quarter by the client. They have had to let freelancers go and are themselves fighting to stay afloat. Another friend, running a children's charity, is a month or two from the brink. CSr departments are telling her "there is a recession on", as if we didn't know! The projects based in our building have just been told the local council has pulled the Youth Opportunties Fund and risks pulling the Discretionary Grants, at which point, several unique services will no longer be available to young people in Brighton.

So why do we bother? I have a good degree, a prestigious career history, I don't have to do this? I think it is a combination of passion, determination and sheer bloodymindedness. Your project is your baby, you cannot just abandon it! You have to try everything to make it work!

So, my top tips to others in this position:

1. What have you got that is relevant, appropriate and useful to this climate? For us, it was short, skills based trainings for businesses (Power Hours - www.thelifeproject.co.uk/training)
2. Who can you partner with that has the capacity you lack? e.g. we are a training design and delivery consultancy, who do we know who has great connections or marketing skills?
3. Collaborative funding bids - more likely to be successful, less time spent groaning over a computer screen
4. Take time out - it is too easy to become obsessed with making it work and it only increases the likelyhood of burnout
5. Reach out - be honest with your funders, friends, colleagues, stakeholders about where you are at and ask for their support
6. Get onto your MP! They're still new enough to care - I've had calls from Glenda Jackson and Mike Weatherly and one of our colleagues is off to Number 10 tomorrow!
7. When you're pruning your mates hedge, look out for nasty nasty nasty red ants. I didn't and now my right arm looks like to belongs to the elephant man.
2.

Guest Blog Spot - Find Your Vocation Train the Trainer - Ro's take

I was the last to arrive at the training session, when I did I was greeted by six happy, relaxed but professional, but not stuffy, tea sipping faces. Nice. A quick round of intros, for my benefit, revealed a university career guidance tutor, three professional coaches and an ex-lecturer, (soon to be trainee teacher). Needless to say I felt welcome and at ease despite my I-Phone related tardiness.

The ease-putting continued as Erica initiated a story telling warm up game whereby we each were charged with producing coherent nuggets of narrative, coherent with the previous persons nugget that is. Our story was immediately about a dragon that played chess. My turn came second and I spoke of the dragon’s trip to the world chess championship in Beijing, and his intimidation of all the more learned and older dragons when he arrived.

It was only after about five minutes that the poignancy of my addition occurred to me that what I had said referred directly to my own current and wider professional situation, blinkered or what?! There I was sitting in a room with a group of professional and learned elders talking about a scared little dragon playing chess. I suddenly felt a bit exposed and violated by my own brain and mouth. But I realised in a quick fire game trying to temper your response would end up sounding contrived. This was not just a game (or are all games like this?) so from then on I became hyper-attentive and interested in the rest of the exercise.

I observed what people were bringing up. New media became a hot topic perhaps mirroring both the current obsession with and most people’s horror and revulsion towards it. So after the dragon and tweeted, played chess and written a blog he came up against some more challenges such as loneliness and writers block and these were solved through the creation of a support network for dragons and other creative reptiles.

And then he fell in love – and although I may not buy the happy ending per-say, what I do believe is the power of coming together to support each other as a group, or a network or even a couple.

This feeling of being united, which was evidently also valued by the other players and made explicit through the story of the dragon, who was named Bertie by the way, stuck with us throughout the session.

The day continued and the attendees explained and the group examined how the tools they had been given by Erica in the previous two sessions had facilitated their group work over the past month. Some had not previously done group work, but had felt that the tools gave them the structure and confidence to do so. What really shone through was the use and even necessity of the feedback session.

Despite my not being a coach it became apparent that when you take responsibility for a group you need someone to fall back on yourself, for reassurance and guidance. All the members of the group had issues and it was obvious that talking them through with Erica and having the support network of the group was exactly what a coach of any level needs access to.

Thank you to this blog for the picture

Glitzy do's and those that have done well

Thursday evening – attended the Teach First -Awards dinner. Quite exciting to see what can be achieved with the right support and the right strategy. Teach 1st was set up by Brett Wigdortz, a former McKinsey consultant, to bring excellent teachers into challenging secondary schools. The Award ceremony had lots of great examples of very inspired and enthusiastic teachers, giving it their all. Great canapés, very glitzy do. Had to get myself an emergency frock from my stepma so I didn’t look terribly scruffy as it was a last minute invite.

Phew – finally got to Friday. Final training day for the first cohort of Find Your Vocation Train the Trainer-. That’s our course for equipping careers advisers and coaches with a toolkit to help people find their ideal work. This was the third day of a three day training. The first two days take participants through the course materials. Then they get to practice facilitating these tools in a group setting. This third day comes after a month’s break, in which they have to deliver some of the tools in a real world setting and then return to feedback and share their experience. It was such a buzz to know that 6 people are out in the world, using my toolkits to support young people and adults to become more confident and more employable. Very chuffed! Last minute meeting on Friday afternoon with Whizz Kidz – a mobility charity for young people, to explore designing a life skills programme for them. All in a week as a social entrepreneur.

Graduation Entreprenurs and Activists course!

Wednesday – the last day of the four day long Entrepreneurs and Activists course I have been teaching, for the third year, on behalf of the Friends Centre. The Friends is a local adult education provider from the third sector, offering a wide range of low cost and free courses and has its origins in the Quaker faith practice. This is the first course that I have had people not complete and I felt a bit odd about that. Those whose achievements we celebrated included: a community events and festivals organiser, a choirmaster and a Swedish handicrafts importer. I love this course. We take up to 18 people from concept to business plan over 4 days. Of 85 completers, we’ve had 20 odd new businesses over the last three years. And the course is free to attend. This year we piloted charging for it. It didn’t work. Those who most need it often can’t afford it. So we ended up giving everyone a free place.



Weds Eve – toddle off to London to hang out with Venture Lectures, Unltd, School for Social entrepreneurs and Cambridge and Oxfords Entrepreneurs Society. The topic for discussion – does a social enterprise have to choose between ownership and impact? Do you go down the investment route, to achieve speedy growth or do you grow organically, retaining ownership, but perhaps developing at a slower pace But for me, this was not the primary question. The primary question is deciding on and clarifying which on the many options you can choose in terms of revenue is the right one. See, because of the nature of the work social enterprises do e.g. associated with health, education, the environment, social disadvantage, they tend to be either:
a. funded by grants or
b. earning money by delivering services to the public sector or
c. operating as a normal business and using the profits to provide a social benefit.
d. A combination of a, b and c.



See my article on The Trouble With Social Enterprise for more if you want to geek out on this.


Anyway, the delightful and capable Lily from MyBnk was there. MyBnk offer financial education to young people and enable them to set up their own FSA approved banks. Amazing. We didn’t get to catch up then, but soon!

Two new Life Projecters

On Tuesday, Ian and Roisin started working with The Life Project. Their task…to get our voice heard, our name out there and our message loud and clear. It has come to my attention, that while I am very good at identifying the core of the problem and developing a training or product that cures it and I also great at presenting and teaching in a simple and accessable way, I am not quite so hot on the selling of that training or product. Thankfully, there are other people around with other skills. I can do the vision and the strategy can be informed and implemented by others with stronger talents in that area. This is so important to learn. How to be able to get help from those who excel in the skills you lack. Of course, I’ve had to become proficient in the worlds of say marketing, or accounting, in order to survive. But to thrive, the key has to be a crowd of talent, to push the new idea up the hill and set it rolling. I’m lucky. They are a talented pair.

Meetings and leads - The Life Project

People may think it is all glamour and glitz (but most wont) here's the truth!

Plunged into despair on Monday from the ongoing budget situation. It is the first time that economic forces have really hit my business, sheltered as we were by offering training, research and coaching to the public and education sectors. And it couldn’t be at a worse time, as we had invested lots of time in developing and launching a training course for youth workers, careers advisers and JobCentre staff. Who wants training when you are not sure you even have that job for much longer??

Perked up on Monday evening, when I recognised that within every crisis there is an opportunity. I’d always wanted to muster the courage to offer our brilliant workshops to aid productivity and increase wellbeing in the private sector and now, I was presented with a need for which taking this step could provide a solution! And then my lovely researcher Helen sent me a funding form for a Government stream that fits exactly with delivering Find Your Vocation training for free to our lovely but cash strapped clients in the public sector. So I was stoked.