Is Your Business Sick?
Listen to this audio recording about your personal live and a reflection of your business.
Can you please leave us a comment at the bottom on this page?
Andreas: Okay today, I’m very, very lucky here to be on a broadcast with Martin Jimmink. Martin and I have a long history. We’ve done seminars together. Martin has been my business coach. Martin has been a member of the A-Team. Hello, Martin.
Martin: Hello, Andreas.
Andreas: How are you today?
Martin: Well. My normal answer is always I’m great, actually. However today, I feel that my world is really sorer and I’m doing flu and I feel a bit sorry for myself.
Andreas: Okay. Okay, that’s interesting. There’s some learning that you’re getting while you’re doing this flu thing.
Martin: Completely, completely and I’ve presented to model that and I like to function really well on the highest level. My health needs to be great. My financial situation needs to be great. My relationships need to be great. If one of these is not working, then the whole scheme falls down. I find now, with me not actually 100% sure that it’s whether I can just accept this as a temporarily state of being that my body obviously needs or whether I can choose not to be affected by the flu. I’ve got a real question around that. From a physical point of view, I noticed that my world has become rather small. I’m focused on the tasks ahead and very much in the now. My thoughts all keep going, even further or backwards, and now it’s very much in the now and a lot of things that normally excite me aren’t even coming up as being excitable.
As far as my performance is concerned and I wouldn’t be on the bench even today, I’m not in a state to deliver a top performance.
Andreas: Yes. Martin, something comes up when you say that you could just ignore it and that kind of thing. I think, to me, that sounds a little bit like a denial state because it is a fact you are sick. You can feel it, it’s there, and it’s something. Would you agree with? That it would be denial to not see it when it’s actually there?
Martin: Well, that’s an interesting question because you say because you feel it, it’s true. I’ve still got a tape in my head that says that my thoughts create how I feel, not the other way around. Is what am feeling, is that genuine or is that because of all the movies, all the conversation, all the nourishment by my mom, my lifetime experience of physically something not really quite right? Do I make it mean something? I find it really quite interesting to experience it myself because I have not been doing ill for a long time and now I feel wow, I don’t even know where it came from, out of the blue, bingo. It started last week very gradually, but I also feel that in a way that it’s something to be celebrated, something to acknowledge and say well, I’m going to get every little bit out of this that I can.
Andreas: Well, your body will actually do that, isn’t it? It’s going to build you a … It’s right now, it’s building your defense system to prevent you from having it again?
Martin: Completely, completely. Yes.
Andreas: Take that on to a business, Martin. If you look at a business and a business is sick, maybe it has one of those things that isn’t really working, but it could be a relationship between the business owner and team member, that kind of thing, or any type of example.
Martin: It would just take it then from the physically sick, sometimes what business is physically sick, you notice it when you walk in straight away. It feels toxic. It’s messy. People haven’t put any energy into nurturing it or caring. Let’s stop for a moment and let’s give this business the attention that it needs. We come to tidy up. We’re not going to do anything else. We’re going to tidy up. We’re going to clean it up. We’re going to put some new fresh plants in there. We’ve got to get some orange juice in the fridge. We’re going have early beds, no TV. Just make sure that everybody is in the space again so they can recuperate.
Andreas: Yes, yes.
Martin: Sometimes I see that.
Andreas: Good example there, Martin, because that is exactly what needs to happen from time to time. Basically let’s make you healthy again in the business and practically, what would they be some of those things? What’s the orange juice in the business? What’s the early to bed in the business?
Martin: Well, the early to bed in the business is not taking any work home. Yes, you see that one of the things that my mom always did was when I was sick, I could then have a shower, and my mom would put clean sheets on the beds. After my shower, I would be there in a clean better and I would feel really cared for. I think in a business as well, very often say the toilets are maybe not clean or there are old magazines floating around or old posters on the walls or areas that haven’t been cleaned for a long time. Maybe new colored chairs need to be bought, something to make it fresh again.
Andreas: Yes. I think that’s true. It has to be something like the fresh sheets. It has to be something, new change. It’s clear, I know exactly this has changed. It’s not a gradual thing. It needs to be something rip the old, put something new on type of thing.
Martin: Completely, completely.
Andreas: I can’t just cover the old things up. I think what you’re experiencing here is what happens in business. There are businesses sick out there and rather than do something about it, they stay sick and probably keep getting sicker and sicker and more toxic as we go.
Martin: You see what we’re done in Triex is that we bought an aquarium, one of these tall aquariums. We’re actually leasing it. As soon as you come up to the stairs, you see a clean, crisp aquarium. In the smoke colored room, we’ve got a great white table with orange chairs, look really, really very cool. We’ve always got a bowl of oranges and apples on the table. It’s just injecting some love and caring in the business.
Andreas: Martin, have you got an example of something more radical? Say now as a coach, you come to a business and it’s really like the whole thing, like we talked about toxic and stuff, and it needs some absolute … They need a dose of penicillin.
Martin: Yes.
Andreas: What would that be in the business? What would that be?
Martin: You see, that is a sickness that might be treatable with penicillin, but there are other things that are more life-threatening. Very often when I go into a business and I always look at what is actually happening, very often what I need to do is stop the bleeding.
Andreas: Yes.
Martin: The bleeding is very often around the money.
Andreas: Yes.
Martin: Or around the team or around their time. That is in my area where the bleeding needs to be stopped. If it is around the money, it’s very often that they’ve got outstanding money and nobody could be bothered getting the money in.
Andreas: Yes, yes.
Martin: Yes or they’ve got a system where they collect the money after 60 days or 90 days, rather than after 7 days. We’ll really look at that. Where is the business bleeding from a money point of view and from a team? It could very well be that some issues have been going on for a long time, rocked to a few camps there in a business, people are not communicating with each other. People are sabotaging. Some people want to keep it going like it has always been. Other people say hey, we need to change and these forces or then completely not aligned. In that case, we need to work with the team and very often as well it’s with the time of the owner that when they started that business they really loved it and at a certain state they’re doing so many tasks that they’re working, I don’t know, something like 100 hours per week.
Andreas: Yes.
Martin: Then they take work with them. They’re completely snowed under. They can’t see the forest from the tree anymore and that is then something where we need to stop the bleeding from what is happening with your time because to take a thing you like that, they will come back one day at home and the family has left because they can’t be bothered anymore. Those are, to me, the sort of illnesses in a business where I as a coach need to come in and say before we do anything else, we’ve got to stop the bleeding.
Andreas: Martin, this is brilliant because I like that being you’re sick, there’s already some benefit that we get out of that today, learning from that and seeing how that applies for business because you can really feel it. If you were bleeding, you’d have a different treatment than just having the flu. The flu sometimes you just have to nurture and have orange juice, go bed too early and the other times you have to totally stop the bleeding right now or else there’s going to be some death in there.
Martin: Completely, Andreas.
Andreas: Martin, anyone that’s interested in this kind of thing, in what we’re talking about, helping business owners, what would you recommend they do next if they want to learn more from us?
Martin: I would say that in the same way that if I get in accident, I would go to a doctor because I can’t see it myself. I take medication at this moment that’s prescribed by somebody else. I can’t see where I am completely. I just know that I’ve got some symptoms, so if there are people who have got symptoms like this, I would really like to say schedule a call with Andreas and myself and we will just then look in from the outside and see if we can create some clarity there for you.
Andreas: Yes. Absolutely, I’d agree with that, Martin. The first step is probably the most important thing. It’s going to the doctor. After that, things almost happen automatically.
Martin: I think it’s shifting from being in denial to say actually something is happening here.
Andreas: Yes.
Martin: Yes.
Andreas: Yes. It’s awareness. It is taking responsibility for it. I think it goes from below the line on denial, not wanting to know that this goes on, immediately above the line by accepting and taking responsibility for it and potentially getting help. We can’t help everyone, but it’s worth at least finding out where we’re at.
Martin: Yes, but very often I find that my … I know a doctor and he said that in 80% of the cases he can’t do anything. People would get better.
Andreas: Anyway.
Martin: Anyway, so 10% of cases are people that are so sick that he can’t do anything and for 10% of the cases, he can really do something and I think that is also with us. As long as people talk about it, they’re sharing it, they’re coming out in the open and then soon … I’ve always had it with children. When I believed that something with my children was a problem, I started to talk about it with other people. It would almost already disappear.
Andreas: Yes, yes. Yes, that’s true.
Martin: That is what I want to encourage other people to do is to schedule a call, talk it through, get it off their chest, and start to see possibilities again.
Andreas: That’s right and what comes after that we can’t really predict. It’s one of those three things; you might die, you might get better anyway, or the medicine that we have is perfect.
Martin: That’s right.
Andreas: Great. Martin, that was awesome talking to you and I hope you get better. Yes, we will do these regular things on an ongoing basis. I think we can give people some really good value with some snippets on how to do things better in their business. Any last words from you, Martin?
Martin: No, I think it’s awesome and I really have appreciated the phone calls and texts from people who say hey, we’re thinking about you, get better. Get well.
Andreas: Great.
Martin: As for me, to all the business owners out there who feel that they can do with a bit of help, get better, get well, give us a call.
Andreas: Yes. Get better, thank you. Awesome.