You may recall last year Sheri McConnell was a guest on Biz Growth Live - well I am delighted to let you know she will be joining us again on the 7 April 2008 at 1pm ET/6pm Ireland and the UK.

Sheri has been running a new programme with her clients called “My Millionaire Friends” - you see she has many millionare friends and over the last year she has been studying their success.

On our free teleseminar, she will be sharing with us the key learnings that she has accessed through this research. 

Some of the questions we will be covering include:

• The importance of a millionaire wealth plan
• How can we apply the learnings and strategies of her millionaire friends at a time when a recession is staritng to take hold in many geographies across the world
• The 6 millionaire business models she uncovered
• How to create a great support team as you grow your million dollar business
• The secrets to a millionaire mindset and habit
• Key resources to build a million dollar business.

Yes this is a somewhat different call to the usual branding and business development masterclasses we have held at Biz Growth Live - but I want to bring you access to this interesting area and have Sheri share her research and personal experience in relation to building a million dollar business.

So I hope you will join me on 7 April 2008 - remember the call is free to attend and I will podcast a short section of the interview after the event - all you need to do is register online at Biz Growth Live.

And if you have a questions for Sheri, you can either leave a comment here or submit it to our Live Questions page.

Did you find this article helpful? Then please share it!

So with just a week until Christmas, have you remembered to buy gifts for your colleagues and business partners? And what about your team?
A recent survey by Morgan McKinley of secretarial and support staff working in London’s financial services industry has found that a 71 percent of bosses have either never, or only occasionally, shown their appreciation for their hard work.

77 percent of the respondents to the survey said that they would be more enthusiastic about their work if their boss showed their appreciation more often - and I am guessing less likely to resign as research into retention consistently show that people leave jobs not usually because of financial reward or career progression, but because of the relationships - or should I say poor relationships with their boss.

And when it comes to Christmas gifts, 56 percent of the respondents either didn’t like the gift they received from their bosses last Christmas or didn’t receive one at all.

So what do you buy your administration assistant? Well the respondents to the survey indicated that the most wanted gifts were:

• Dinner for two at a top restaurant
• Luxury accessories or gift ‘experience’ vouchers
• Pampering/grooming products.

And the three Christmas gifts to avoid were:

• Chocolates
• Designer stationery
• Flowers/plants.

Taking a little time and thinking through what would really inspire your people and connect to their interests and passions as a Christmas gift takes little time and perhaps a little more effort than a job lot of hampers or buying a case of wine. However it will mean that your team realise that they are valued as individuals.

I always find that selecting a gift that is something that I know a member of my team would really enjoy and perhaps is something that they would not indulge or invest in themselves goes down a treat.

So if you haven’t finished your Christmas shopping you have just about enough time to find a gift that will inspire and excite your team.

Did you find this article helpful? Then please share it!

Do you ever wonder what it would be like to have more free time for family, friends and fun?

Or pehaps you want more time to work on key activities serving more clients?

But what might be stopping you is that you are concerned that if you employed more people in your team it would be a huge impact to your fixed overheads?

Or perhaps you are not sure how to delegate more areas of responsibility to members of your team?

Well delegation and outsourcing strategies to grow your business is the subject of our next ‘Biz Growth Live’ where I will be in conversation with Erin Blaskie, Virtual Assistant.

Erin is the author of “30 days to delegation”and has worked with many business coaches taking on accountabilities so that they can focus on client centred work while Erin and her colleagues manage the administration for their growing businesses.

So if you are a small professional services firm and you want to explore how you could delegate or outsource adminstration to a virtual assistant or perhaps you are already working with virtual assistants and want to explore how you could be even more effective in leveraging these relationships to create more time for family, friends and fun, then join me for the no-cost Biz Growth Live call on the 14 May 2007.

Did you find this article helpful? Then please share it!

So you have made a decision to grow your team to support the growth of your business.

But how do you ensure that you make the right investment and appoint the right people to your key team roles?

Make sure you have a pen and paper ready to take notes as colleague Ann Greene and I share in this second of a three part series on team effectiveness.

In this weeks podcast we share the 5 steps to building your success team including:

• developing clarity of purporse for your team
• how to define the capabilities that you need
• translating the capabilities into a role profile
• selecting your team members
• getting your team off to a flying start so that you deliver your business goals.

You can listen the podcast here.

You can access the first in the series here where we talk about the differences between groups and teams, the characteristics of teams and what are the constituents of high performing teams.

Did you find this article helpful? Then please share it!

Teams - why do we need them? Is it necessary to build teams to grow your business or why can’t we just hire a group of talented individuals?

Make sure you have a pen and paper ready to take notes as colleague Ann Greene and I share in this weeks business podcast:

• the difference between groups and teams
• characteristics of teams
• what makes a high performing team
• and the different types of team that can enable your organisation to succeed.

You can access the business podcast here. This is the first in a three part series on teams.

Did you find this article helpful? Then please share it!