Q&A with Andrew Gibson
Meet the author of ‘What’s your URP? — don’t just make a living, make a life’ and hear expert advice on how to live a Seven-Day Weekend.
Andrew Gibson is an expert in Solution Focused Practice, Coaching and Networking, and will be one of our key speakers at the IABC Leeds Summit 2019. Here is an interview conducted to find out more about Andrew, his upcoming speech and how to live a seven-day weekend.
- Please tell us a bit about yourself.
I have been working for 30 years now, having started as an engineering manager in big FMCG businesses and moved to various different functions from productions, sales, and national accounts. I helped set up a .com for my employer Bass Brewers which was launched in 2000 during the .com boom. It was fantastic fun since it became the online company for the independent license trade which is still going strong.
After that job, I realised that I wanted to do something different and decided that it was time to throw it all up in the air and go for it. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do but found myself working as a business coach in Bradford for a company called Bizfizz where I worked with people who had fairly little resources to their name and were often long term unemployed. I enjoyed working there for a few years helping them and to set up new businesses.
I realised at the end of this job that I should set myself up and become self-employed. Eight years later, here I am happily self employed, helping people set up businesses and develop sustainable revenue. My passion is for helping people who are looking to start businesses and helping people who run charities. The whole idea is to try and help them realise how to make a difference In the world and to use that as a means of sustaining their own business. If you can find out who you are helping and how you can make a difference for them, then of course that is a great way of making a living.
2. What will you be presenting at the masterclass?
The title of the masterclass is ‘how to live your Seven-Day Weekend’.
The idea is that if you’re doing something you love doing and with people that you love helping, then isn’t that the definition of a seven day weekend?
People are looking for a unique selling point, so I find out what they do, something unique about it and how they sell it. I use that to distinguish themselves from people who are doing something similar.
My approach is to look at customers that you want to help, how you can help them and the difference you make for them. If you can find a unique group of customers, for whom you can make a difference and get a track record, they will start recommending you to each other. Then, you would have found your unique referral point. The whole idea of my talk is to find customers that you want to help, find the ways in which you can make a difference for them. If you’re doing something that you love doing, then you will find a way of making a life and not just making a living.
3. How did you come to living your seven day weekend?
The combinations of experiences and coaching skills I have acquired along the way have been amazing in order to live my own seven day weekend. I love what I do and the people that I help, which is why I wrote a book about it to help as many people as possible to achieve that. I was working in previous jobs to support my lifestyle when I decided that I had had enough. While I was planning what to do next I was thinking:
‘right I’m going to do what I love doing and for the people that I love helping and the money will take care of itself.’
It works better that way right? Whether you earn as much money or not, it doesn’t become relevant if you’re really enjoying what you’re doing everyday. You don’t find yourself spending so much money because you don’t feel the need to go on fancy holidays, buy expensive cars or clothes to make yourselves feel better because you feel good about the work you are doing. It works on so many different levels if you just follow your passion, follow your heart and not worry about the money.
When you’re first starting out, theres so many options. There are many people trying to tell you what you should do and you’ve got this need to make a living, to have security, put a roof over your head, food on the table and look after family. A lot of people do stuff for the need to make money, and then they find that they’re not really enjoying what they do. One of the reasons I gave everything up was because I had a very nice job which was well paid, came with a company car, health care, pension scheme and more but I was just not enjoying what I was doing.
4. What does it mean to be a Solution Focused Practitioner?
Solution focused practice was formed from a therapy background and the medical model of helping somebody is to look at the symptoms and make a diagnosis. So the worker is the expert and uses their expert knowledge to make a diagnosis of what is wrong with the patient and prescribes a cure. The whole idea of solution focus practice was to turn that around and think ‘hang on a minute, I can’t possibly be an expert in somebody else situation, they’re the experts in their situation.’
So, I ask questions that are geared towards what they have which will help them in their situation, then they will be able to find their own answers and I will help them make progress by figuring what they need to do for themselves. The easiest way to look at this is to imagine that somebody has a problem and is stuck with something, you can spend a long time analysing the problem or you can simply ask yourself: ‘lets imagine the problem wasn’t there, what would we notice? What would be different?’
And you turn that into a conversation about what you want rather than what you don’t want. The conversation focuses on finding the desired outcomes then working out the messages delivering those outcomes. Each client has a solution tailored to them, the client will present the situation and we will analyse how they want things to be. Once the client has a good picture of what to notice then we can come back and question ‘Is any of that happening now? Or in the past? If so, how was it happening then?’ It’s easier to replicate something that somebody has already done and contribute to how we would like things to be.
Thanks to Andrew Gibson for taking part in this interview. If you would like to know more about him, here is a link to his LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/growthbusinesscoach/
This article is based on technology and communications as a feature of the Leeds Business school conference: LUBSXIABC Future Forward. The event will be based on communicating in a digitally disruptive world, which will be held in Leeds on 10th June. Plus tickets are free for LUBS students! For more information, check out our following social media:
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