Kiwi Business Story: Business Coaching Special 3

Four more inspiring  Icehouse Business Coaching  Alumni discuss their key learnings in this Kiwi Business Story coaching special. Kirstie Macmillan, co-owner and General Manager of Farm To Farm Tours, Blair James, Managing Director of James Group, Georgia Dive, Managing Director and founder of Babysitters Club and Victoria Hughes, owner of Rodney Wayne Eastridge, spoke to us in 2020 and 2021 to explain how Icehouse coaching has helped their businesses. 



Kirstie Macmillan: I completed The Icehouse  Owner Manager Programme 45 in 2019, and Emmet Hobbs was one of the facilitators. He spoke to us about governance and also provided some great advice during the breakout sessions. 

When travel went pear-shaped in 2020, The Icehouse reached out and explained that coaching funding was available for tourism businesses, so the chance came up again to work with Emmet, and I didn’t hesitate.

As I did OMP 45, Emmet was already familiar with the business, so very quickly he was able to help me focus on the positive aspects of our operations while acknowledging it can be really challenging personally and not to dismiss that. 

He was a fantastic sounding board; genuinely interested and always checking in to find out how I was coping. I never felt I had to pretend I was taking it all in my stride! From running through existing options and new business ideas and revenue streams that perhaps we hadn’t considered, brainstorming, right through to that well-being support side, he has been there. 

He also has a wide and extensive network of contacts, and he's very generous with his connections, introducing me to people who can really help the business move forward. For example, we have spoken about finding an independent adviser for the business, and that's something we’ll be discussing in the next few weeks.

It’s a family business, so it was quite intense at the start of lockdown, but you can’t let it consume your whole family life, so having that external person such as Emmet to talk to and get advice from was invaluable. 

Blair James: I’ve also had one-on-one coaching with Ken Leeming. Ken has been superb thus far, and he constantly challenges me. He brings a new outlook to every aspect of the business and can articulate it in a way I can understand and apply. Ken has taught me, “you are where your feet are”, helping me to control the controllables and he has prevented me on numerous occasions from grazing my knees, having already been through so many challenges I am facing. 
 
Ken has also put the focus on ‘resilience’ and helping me to apply my traits to key areas of need of the business during the COVID turbulence. 

In Ken’s words “Never waste a good crisis!” Ken has also been instrumental in helping me to better learn and understand the numbers and associated data that lies within my financials to help better position James Group to weather any storm clouds brewing on the horizon. 

Having this funding [Blair received funding from Google YBI] has enabled me to continue with the utilisation of The Icehouse mentoring services, which would have otherwise dried up when the ATEED funding ran out. Having these funds has not only helped me to act swiftly with confidence having a level headed mentor like Ken supporting me, it now helps me to look beyond the turbulence to what lies ahead and plan and prepare the business for the various stages of recovery.  

It has also helped us to get more speed out of the boat, so to speak, and peeling back the various layers of the business and get a true understanding about where it is we play and play hard and win. By doing this, it has helped me to streamline the business and redirect our efforts and energy to our core skills and service offerings. Without the mentorship, I wouldn’t have been able to seek advice and guidance or be held to account for my response as a leader to the cards Covid has dealt us.

Georgia Dive: The support that I have been receiving from Jamie Brock has been so beneficial for clarity, focus and direction – helping me to make those great business decisions to allow me to make those small changes that are going to make a difference, long term. 

When people initially hear about us they think that we're just a little babysitting company. As Jamie started to dig into my company, he realised that what we were actually offering was so much more than what we were promoting ourselves to offer. 
 
For instance, there's just so much value in Babysitters Club that’s waiting to be unlocked by not limiting ourselves. Jamie’s helping me understand how we can show this so that people truly know what they're getting.  

Find out what funding is out there – particularly around coaching. That’s why I am very grateful for YBI and the Google.org funding initiative. Funding allows an external person to help refocus your attention to the things that allow you to move forward successfully.

What’s really changed for me is the whole idea of compounding results. Now I'm really long-term focused, and I understand that every little decision or action now, will result in a more significant, ‘smarter’ decisions which will help grow the business further down the track.

Victoria Hughes: I arranged six hours of coaching sessions with Kim Hill. A friend suggested I contact The Icehouse as she’d done one of their programmes and was raving about it! My first thought was, ‘Instead of putting the money towards my usual set of bills, why not try something different?’.  

The main session was amazing. The whole team and I went offsite to The Icehouse’s offices, which was a first for a few. They’re hairdressers after all, so offsite team coaching and meetings like these are very out of their comfort zone. 

One of the main things for me was that to get the most out of the session, the team needed to feel as comfortable as possible. I stressed to them that there were absolutely no expectations of them. Kim was very aware of this, and she did a great job of making them feel relaxed.   

We all love Kim. I’ve since had post-session catch-ups, and she’s full of great advice. We would have extended the main session, but we had bookings to fulfil. Kim talked about the choices you make in life, how you react to things and having the right mindset – not just around how you do business and approach work, but also life in general. 

I found time to do a SWOT analysis with Kim, which opened up some new opportunities, particularly around communication. One of the things about my business is that there’s nothing broken, so everything around coaching has been about making more improvements. To get the team out of their comfort zone was a big deal, but for them to enjoy the session as much as they did was a significant achievement.  

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