6 Men and 2 Blooms

We were meeting a friend for coffee (and in our business, that’s considered a vacation :) and we were relaying a recent disappointment. He listened intently, bought us coffee, gave us a hug and tried to help.  We loved him for it and at the end of our time he said, “you need to come to a group I meet with every two weeks”.

Sure enough, two weeks later an invitation comes to a local restaurant for a breakfast meeting at 7:30am.  The morning of I was thinking of excuses why we couldn’t possible attend.  But the other bloom was up and getting dressed so I figured we could do this.

We get to the restaurant and 4 men were sitting over coffee laughing, too late to make a run for it we grabbed coffee and sat down.  Soon a copywriter and a government employee sat down and we were surrounded.  Awkward.  Where could we go?  How could we get out of this? 

Soon enough the leader started engaging us, what did we do, how long had we been doing this and soon enough we had 6 men completely immersed in our story.  They asked intelligent questions, they laughed at the right times and offered wise counsel and guidance.  By the end of the hour we didn’t want them to go.  They had looked at our business from a completely different perspective and given us advice that was golden.  Things we had been struggling with they dismissed kindly and told us to move on to what we were doing right.

Later that day the facilitator send us some materials that were spot on – we were in love!  And grateful that 6 men put aside their own agenda that morning and helped us see the other side of things.

Our takeaway - look for people not at all related to your business or even in your field and ask them what they think.  You might be surprised at the results.

Caron