Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Prosper With Purpose – a conversation with author Colin Crooks MBE
40 Plays20 days ago
Prosper With Purpose by Colin Crooks is a book that enables the reader to unlock the secret to building a successful business either as an entrepreneur or employee without burning out!
Colin Crooks MBE, is a serial social entrepreneur and experienced business coach. He has established five award-winning social enterprises and earned the Queen’s Award for Enterprise: Sustainable Development with his enterprise Green-Works.
That experience is captured in his book Prosper With Purpose in which he offers real-world insights and practical tools from someone who truly understands the challenges of running a small business.
In this episode of the Abeceder podcast The Independent Minds you will discover how at the heart of "Prosper with Purpose" is Colin’s proven 3 Ps framework:
1. Create a Plan:
2. Manage People:
3. Focus on Profit:
Bonus for Readers
Colin Crooks MBE offers every reader of Prosper With Purpose - 30 minutes of free business advice and coaching on issues discussed in the book.
Buy Prosper With Purpose at these links
The Independent Minds is made on Zencastr.
Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform, on which you can create your podcast in one place and then distribute it to the major platforms.
Zencastr really does make creating content so easy.
If you would like to try podcasting using Zencastr visit zencastr.com/pricing and use our offer code ABECEDER.
Find out more about both Michael Millward and Colin Crooks at Abeceder.co.uk
Travel
Colin is based in London, a very expensive city to visit. That is why when I visit London, I make my travel arrangements with The Ultimate Travel Club, which is where you can access trade prices for flights, hotels and holidays. Use my offer code ABEC79to receive a discount on your membership fee.
Three the network
If you are listening to The Independent Minds on your smart phone, you may like to know that Three has the UK’s Fastest 5G Network with Unlimited Data, so listening on Three means you can wave goodbye to buffering.
Visit Three for information about business and personal telecom solutions from Three, and the special offers available when you quote my referral code WPFNUQHU.
Being a Guest
If you would like to be a guest on The Independent Minds, please contact using the link at Abeceder.co.uk.
We recommend that potential guests take one of the podcasting guest training programmes available from Work Place Learning Centre.
We appreciate every like, download, and subscriber.
Thank you for listening.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to The Independent Minds Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencaster. Hello and welcome to The Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abecedah and people who think outside the box about how work works with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
Discussion on 'Prosper with Purpose'
00:00:22
Speaker
I'm your host, Michael Millward, the managing director of Abecedah.
00:00:26
Speaker
Today, I'm going to be discussing a new book, which is published tomorrow, the 31st of January, 2025.
Zencastr and the Podcast's Production
00:00:36
Speaker
The book is called Prosper with Purpose and the author is Colin Crook's MBE. As the jingle at the start of this podcast says,
00:00:46
Speaker
The Independent Minds is made on Zencaster. Zencaster is the all-in-one podcasting platform that just quite simply makes making content so easy. If you would like to try podcasting using Zencaster, visit zencaster dot.com forward slash pricing and use my offer code ABACEDA. All the details are in the description.
00:01:11
Speaker
Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencaster is for making podcasts, we should make one. One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading, and subscribing to. As with every episode of The Independent Minds, we won't be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think.
Mentoring for Workplace Improvement
00:01:31
Speaker
Colin Crooks MB is the CEO of Intentionality, a business that mentors other businesses to successfully give people that other employers would not hire a chance. Colin is based in London, an expensive place to be based, an expensive place to visit, which is why when I visit London, I always make my travel arrangements through the Ultimate Travel Club.
00:01:58
Speaker
because that is where I can access trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, and all sorts of other travel related purchases. There is a link and a membership discount code in the description. Now that I've paid the rent, it is time to make a podcast.
00:02:15
Speaker
So hello, Colin. Hello, Michael. How are you? I am very well. Thank you very much. I'm buzzing because this is the first podcast that we recorded with a specific publication date in mind to tie in with the publication of your book. That's fantastic. I've got to get it right. yeah We absolutely do. Yes. Yes. It's a big moment for me as well.
Colin's Mentoring Approach and Book Inspiration
00:02:37
Speaker
Tell me a little bit about intentionality. Yeah. Thank you. um Well, intentionality kind of stems from my experience as a social entrepreneur, which we I think we've spoken about before. And yes, I should interrupt you there and say that Colin has been a guest on one of my other podcasts, the Abecedah Quotation Conversations, which are published by Bookburn. It's always good to get a plug in, Colin. Well, I thought I'd lob it up for you there. Thank you. Yeah, as ah as a social entrepreneur, I really have really developed my thinking about how intention
00:03:12
Speaker
creates the energy. So if you plan forward and you want to achieve something, it it could be a commercial good or a social good in my case. and My motto is the energy flows where the intention flows. So working out what someone's intention is, what they're planning to do, helps them then to focus their energy on getting there and getting there in the right way. So Really what I do ah in in my mentoring practice is to help people understand what it is they're really trying to achieve in their business and then work out ways of getting them there with the most engagement of their staff team to to help them along the way, bringing them on board and developing that energy, the staff energy and engagement.
00:03:58
Speaker
So it's not just the entrepreneur, not just the business owner that's driving the thing forward, but actually the whole team. And that's what I do, that's the coaching. And that's really the root of what drew me to write this book. Which is called Prosper with Purpose. Prosper with Purpose, absolutely. Going to have to explain the title, but what it's interesting when you talk about organizations doing things with a purpose,
00:04:27
Speaker
You know, thinking back to when I started at Abisida and going to events and meeting other people that were starting businesses. Yes, we all wanted you to have a living and and be happy and successful and be able to pay all our bills with with more than a little bit left over. But I remember talking to people and there was always some sort of reason beyond simply making money for starting your own
Purpose Beyond Profit in Business
00:04:51
Speaker
business. totally And for me it was I didn't want people to have to work the bad bosses. ha And that was like I want to make good bosses, managers who know how to do their job properly and and have the confidence to implement those skills and knowledge.
00:05:07
Speaker
And I think there are more and more people who are thinking, yeah, I want to run a business, but I also need it to be something that contributes more than simply money to society. Yeah. And there are a multitude of rationales for setting up a business. Sometimes it's proving a point to your family or to friends. Sometimes it's to be independent. I mean, autonomy is a huge driver. I think people are increasingly frustrated by work and um being told what to do and not agreeing with the company they work for and they branch out on their own because frankly they want to do it their way. Autonomy is a really powerful motivator and often there is a social construct behind it as well. They have a passion for a particular, ah it might be a technology, it might be an environmental objective, it might be a social thing, but they have a passion and they
00:06:02
Speaker
They can't express that in as an employee. So they go off and start their own thing. And I think when you scratch the surface of almost every business owner, there's a deeper passion than just the the money.
Colin's Mentoring Journey
00:06:16
Speaker
And I've always felt that. And i've always every time I've worked with somebody, I've met that and found there's ah there's a much deeper purpose. Okay. So how long have you been doing this mentoring? Frankly, I've been doing it for probably 15, 20 years. At first through my work as a social entrepreneur, so I was mentoring
00:06:33
Speaker
long-term unemployed people in greenworks and helping them, what we were employing them, and then they were mentored to keep them and to enable them to to to get even better and to know and no one understand what what work they really wanted to do. And then gradually, I started another social enterprise called Tree Shepherd, which was about helping people start their own business. And that involved a huge amount of mentoring on, you know, what does that business look like? Why do you want to start it?
00:07:02
Speaker
Where are you going to start it? How are you going to get it going? Actually helping them develop the confidence to go and find that first customer, all of those sort of key steps, if you like, on on that startup journey. And then four years, I've sort of professionalized that and become a full-time business
Challenges and Importance of Delegation
00:07:19
Speaker
mentor. It's just so fabulous. I love working with people and helping them, you know, bouncing the idea around and really reflecting back what they're their saying and reframing it and enabling them to understand why they're running this business because that can sometimes get lost in the hurdy girdy of business.
00:07:36
Speaker
and then how they can share that dream and that passion with the staff and enable them to take on more responsibility within it. That's when, in that American phrase, the rubber hits the road. When you've got that team working with you to achieve the same object, that's really unbeatable. Power of a team. Writing this book is not just a thing you woke up and decided to write a book. It's based on years and years of experience that you now committed to to pen and ink in a book. Yeah, it is. And it's based on just really replaying the same sort of story with so many ah business owners who I often find, yes, they have a ah kind of a ah a mission, if you like, they have a thing that motivates them, but they don't really have a plan. They don't really know where this is going to go or where it could go. I think like with everything, if you don't really know where you're going,
00:08:34
Speaker
It's very hard to engage with others to help you on the journey. um you know How would you drive through a strange town and wind the wind down and ask for directions if actually you don't know where you want to go? It's as simple as that in a way, and it's but it's also as complex as that because actually working out where you want to take the business isn't necessarily that simple. But not knowing that actually is a real inhibitor of of growth and development. And business owners then tend, I meet so many that work six, even seven days a week, doing the fact return on a Sunday, overstretched, missing kids' birthdays, forgetting anniversaries, really quite pressurized at work. Often that's where they they have lost that dream. the The company is now running them rather than them running the company.
00:09:23
Speaker
That's a very powerful little sentence that it's worth saying again. The company is now running them rather than them running the company. You can end up with a business controlling you, not just running you, but controlling you. And it should be the other way around. It
Opportunities Through Effective Delegation
00:09:39
Speaker
totally should be. You're the founder. It's your business. There's a phase in the business cycle that is is kind of quite well known. There's a model called Griner's growth model, was if but actually there's this point where you you take the business as far as you can and it gets to the point where you're working flat out. And something has to change. At that point, you're either beaten down and exhausted, or the business changes, evolves to the next level, if you like.
00:10:08
Speaker
and you start to delegate and you start to bring other skills and talents into the management and the decision making and you move on to the next phase. And it's kind of a well-trodden path, but it that step I think is the hardest single step that all businessmen have to make. Because once you've broken through and you started to delegate and you've you've made a success of it, the opportunities for more delegation and recruiting more people to do new tasks, leaving you free to drive the strategy and to drive the business, is it is immense. But it's a major logjam. The first significant delegation is the harvest. And then once you've broken through to that and you start to get into the habit, it's kind of like a muscle. If you like, the more you work it, the stronger it gets. And I'm meeting so many people who, they might be employing lots of people,
00:11:04
Speaker
but they're not really delegating decisions to them. So that's a very different thing. So they're sharing tasks, they're not sharing responsibilities.
Trust and Stress in Delegation
00:11:12
Speaker
And that's why they're taking so much work home with them. And if we can break through, and this is what I this is what i spend a lot of my time with clients on.
00:11:22
Speaker
You know, I have a ah kind of, if you like, a KPI, a key performance indicator for myself in my work with with others. And that is, can I get my client to take a holiday for over a week where they don't take calls from work? That's my kind of initial measure of success.
00:11:43
Speaker
it sounds like such a simple thing to do that doesn't it take a week's holiday yeah and if you're listening to this you're an employee i can imagine that you're thinking like what not be able to take a week's holiday without taking a call from work and yeah entrepreneurs people who run businesses very often will take a laptop on holiday with them, will take their phone with them on holiday, just in case somebody needs to speak to them. And it can be very disappointing when so nobody wants to speak to you or needs to speak to you, because it's part of that. When you say it's the most difficult thing to do for an entrepreneur is to hand a part of their business over to somebody who's an employee.
00:12:30
Speaker
I agree with you. It is extremely difficult to hand part of your business over to somebody else as it is for anybody who's a new manager.
Guiding Effective Delegation for Growth
00:12:40
Speaker
who's been, as I've been in my past, been asked to set up departments and then you set up the HR ah department or you set up the training department. And then somebody says, well, you need somebody else to work with you now. And it's, well, what am I going to give them to do? And can I trust them? Will they do it the same standard that I'm going to do it to? Will people want me in the room? Why don't people want me in the room? What is it that I've done wrong? Is this person a threat to Neil?
00:13:06
Speaker
all sorts of things you it's a all of those are very stressful it's a it's an activity which you do a task that you do in order to reduce the workload and reduce the stress but if you don't do it correctly it can increase the stress yeah it's a double-edged sword it most definitely is and that's that's where i have to spend most of my time to make sure that this works for the for the client and indeed for the staff member because if you if you don't get that delegation right their morale can sink as well. you know So it's something that needs to be worked at to get right. And there's there's quite a lot of well-traveled guidance about it. But of course, you can read all of that in the theory. It's actually um what I find myself doing is literally guiding the client through it, you know almost blow by blow, if you like. What will it what will you say? How will it work?
00:14:00
Speaker
what would you do then, all those sorts of scenario building. And so that's kind of what I've tried to encapsulate in the book to help more people start that delegation journey and start to be able to get some head space for developing the business rather than just operating it, if you like.
00:14:19
Speaker
Yes, I do. I know precisely what
Operational Success Through Metrics
00:14:21
Speaker
you mean. And I think one of the things I like about the title of the book is that you've called it Prosper with Purpose. Until you can actually, well, before you can delegate, you've got to hire the best people that are available to do the jobs and design jobs around their skills and talent. And it's important, like you said,
00:14:40
Speaker
to make sure that the person who's having things delegated to them is having it delegated to them in the correct way so that both people are confident that everybody's doing what they're supposed to do. You don't want a talent. The worst thing you can do with a talented person is micromanage them. Oh yes, yeah it's exhausting. Yeah, find yourself an expert and let them get on with it. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
00:15:05
Speaker
and work out. And this is one of the things that people challenge, challenge, push back up to me on. and They say, well, I can't really just let them go. How do I know it's going to work? um and i And I say, so what you need are some metrics that tell you it's working. um If, for instance, um I was running ah ah waste paper collection company and the most important metric was the reliability of our collection so I wanted to make sure I wanted it as near to a hundred percent as possible because that was the
00:15:41
Speaker
The key thing our customers wanted is reliable collections. Nothing else was really that important beyond that, really. Everything else was very, very secondary. So I had a ah metric reported to me initially daily and then it became every other day and then it became weekly of the percentage or of collections made. So I didn't have to know the ins and outs of every single collection. I could see this number at the end of the week and know whether or not the operations team Was getting it right and so if it slipped to ninety eight ninety seven percent I'd want to know but if it was in the high ninety eight ninety nine hundred Then they must be doing it right. I don't need to know the detail of how they're doing it particularly They're doing it right and I think it's worth pointing out i when you're saying I there you're not speaking theoretically you're talking about your own experience of running a business and Oh, absolutely. Yeah, that was my very first business. Absolutely. Going back into the early 90s. Yeah.
Case Studies and Business Lessons
00:16:40
Speaker
So the book Prosper with Purpose is not fit and it's not a theory book. It's a very practical book. It's your experience and the experience of the organizations that you've worked with. It's an an enormous number of um case studies that are based largely on ah my experience, but I do love a case study. I must admit, give me a business book and I'll first of all, I'll try and find the case that is
00:17:04
Speaker
Because those are those are the most interesting parts of a book. Well, they're certainly the most fun to write. Yes. They take you down memory lane and you go... and Because I think a lot of people can read recall experiences they have. The thing I'm quite good at doing is actually developing a learning point from that experience. So what does what does this teach? And how can we ah what can we take from this?
00:17:27
Speaker
So just as I just explained about the reliability thing, it was I was paranoid about reliability and about collection because I realized how important it was. But unless I could take my eye off that ball every day, I wasn't going to be able to expand the business and and start working up with different clients and get investment into the business, e etc.
00:17:49
Speaker
So having that metric enabled me to know what was going on and feel comfortable with what was going on, but also give me the time to... get away from that, the detail behind that, and then focus somewhere else. So I've used these case studies to draw out key learning points, if you like, that I think every business could apply. They're fairly universal. I mean, they're not, I don't think, specific to any particular industry. That's what I'm hoping a reader will be able to see the relevance of the case studies to what they do in their business, albeit very different.
Power of Stories in Business Learning
00:18:22
Speaker
Well, that's what makes the case study the best part of of the book. yeah yeah there's There's the theory part of it, which is which is interesting. It's when you apply the theory into the case study that the learning from that story and stories, you know, I've been a trainer for years, stories are one of the best ways of learning about something new or having something which you perhaps already if you're perfectly honest with yourself you have to admit that you already knew but you weren't actually putting it into action and the story of the case study helps to emphasize to you that i knew it yeah yeah i knew it i know i knew it but i can now see why i need to implement that that particular action
00:19:07
Speaker
I think you hit the the nail on the head there, Michael, is the word why. You can show people these things, but unless they understand the why, it's just another interesting anecdote that doesn't impact on them. If I can get over the why, what is the benefit of doing this? What's the rationale for doing it?
00:19:30
Speaker
then the story helps illustrate that. That's seek that's the key is and I'm hoping the book brings through the why. Why am I talking about these things? Why am I showing you these case studies? What is it that you can do and what would be the benefit of doing that? Yes, I agree with you and I think one of the reasons why I like the title is that you've part of the why of the book is that the why is not about being efficient for its own sake or some sort of management technique for its own sake.
Prosperity and Higher Purpose
00:20:03
Speaker
The why is that you know when you set up a business, when you take on management responsibilities in a bigger business, what you want to do is to prosper. You want to be successful. You want to turn the additional responsibilities, the risks that you're taking on, into improved prosperity. And that, in the title of the book, is sort of like part of the why of the book. It's like,
00:20:26
Speaker
It's not doing something for its own sake, it's doing it because there is this end point in mind, this increasing prosperity for yourself and the people that you have working with you. Yeah, and I take quite a wide definition of prosperity. I mean, clearly it's financial. that I think every business owner would wants to earn money out of this and pay staff well, e etc. But I think it's also this point that we kind of alluded to earlier about prospering in terms of your sort of emotional and status, if you like. So being able to show, I mean, so many people start a business having left the company they worked for, and they the business is very much in the same mo same model of the the business they left, all the expertise they've got. And they're desperate to show that
00:21:18
Speaker
the way it was being done in the business isn't as good as the way they've got. And I think driving that business and making it successful is enabling you to prosper in the sense that you can show your idea is better. you're you You had an idea and you were able to demonstrate it was an improvement. ah Your way of doing things was better. And I think that's really goes to the heart of the motivation of a lot of businesses. And then if you can boil that down and really distill it. You can get a lot of other people, your staff team, to really buy into what you're trying to do. You're not just trying to run another marketing company, catering company, whatever. You're trying to run this company with a particular set of principles based on your experience of others. And you're setting yourself against them saying, I think we can do better than that. That better than, that difference is the thing that drives
00:22:17
Speaker
a lot of owners. Yes.
Leadership Vision and Team Engagement
00:22:19
Speaker
But they often lose sight of that as as we were saying earlier on ah amidst the drudgery of the drudgery. All of the responsibilities that come with ruining a business that yeah and the commitments you have to make and the legal responsibilities, it it can take over and it can distract you.
00:22:36
Speaker
from that vision. But you know, leadership is vision times communication, getting people to see what it is that you want to achieve yeah and moving everything forward. But it's that vision is is your purpose. Why are you running this business? Why Couldn't you change the other business to, to be better and what it is that you think you can do. And so having a purpose to the business, to the organization that you're running that goes beyond simply making money. And this, this, I can almost.
00:23:08
Speaker
see like a set of scales, we have to prosper and in the widest sense of the word, but the purpose of the business has to be beyond the boundaries of the business as well. So what's how would you talk about purpose with the organizations that you're working with?
Defining 'Better' in Business
00:23:25
Speaker
Yeah, I drill into these these words about quality, really. You often would meet people that say, oh, I think I can do it better.
00:23:35
Speaker
And then i'll I'll drill down with them. What is better then? Do you think you can do it? It might be the quality of the food. It might be the speed of the service. It might be the politeness of the response. It's something that.
00:23:47
Speaker
they're animated about and they were frustrated about and in previous lives and they want to do it better and they feel you know that's why they started this business because it's going to be better and you try to tap into that quality what is what particularly are they meaning by making it better it's an interesting question that that's that ah really prompts its thoughts like If you can't define what better is, you're never going to chain you so you are never going to achieve better unless you can define it. You've got to be able to define it. Absolutely. It sometimes takes a while. We drill and drill, ah but mostly it's fairly close to the surface. Even if they've been running a business for 10 years or something, and I take them back to that originating moment.
00:24:34
Speaker
That's embedded in their memory. They they remember that passion, that joyful a sense of freedom when they started, albeit not the struggles as well that went with it. But actually i can I can normally get back to that moment. What were you thinking? What was the thing that you wanted to change or get better, make better? Often long forgotten, but it's still quite close to the surface nevertheless. Yeah, it's interesting. Sometimes I will meet founders of businesses who bring me in as the HR professional.
Improving Business Practices
00:25:03
Speaker
in the very early stages of running the business. And when you investigate, you know, what is it that you want me to achieve? It's the experience they had with the past employer, the way in which they were made redundant, or their job was made redundant, and they were let go. It's like, I don't want to treat people in the way that I was treated. Yeah. Yeah. It is that we mark ourselves against.
00:25:28
Speaker
previous experience. and And sometimes obviously there's you know fantastic bosses that people have said, oh, I want to emulate that. I want to do that and I want to build on that. Absolutely. I had some knee surgery done a couple of years ago and the surgeon who did my operation was taught under the surgeon that ah operated on my other knee 30 years before.
00:25:53
Speaker
And it was quite a remarkable coincidence. He said very clearly, he said, I want to show you how I've improved on my tutors, your original surgeon's model. And so, yeah, huge motivator, but it was an improvement. He wasn't like, you know, he'd learned a huge amount, but he wanted to build on that and show how he developed it. Better has been moved forward because you've taken what has happened, what happened to you as an individual,
00:26:20
Speaker
The way in which one organization operates. You've learned from it. And you've then said, okay, that it can be done better. This is what better looks like. This is what better feels like. This is what better will cost.
00:26:35
Speaker
And this is how I need to communicate the information about better to other people so that they recognize it as well. And then you can put it into action.
Defining Prosperity and Purpose
00:26:45
Speaker
You said that you take a very broad view of what prosper and prosperity mean, but you also take a very broad view of what purpose means as well by the sounds. of Yeah, I think it's a very individual thing. I mean, what did it what is it that excites people when they get out of bed in the morning to go and carry on running that business or to get it started in the first place?
00:27:05
Speaker
And they're very individual and unique things. One person's passion is another person's complete turnoff. So I don't think we can prescribe what people should be passionate about. ah It could be that they love the precision. It could be that they love the cleanliness. It could be they love the speed and efficiency. It could be they love the look, the beauty of it, or whatever it is that they might they do. That's what we've got to revitalize with for leaders, business owners.
00:27:36
Speaker
what What is that passion? What is it you wake up? What is it you wake up for in the morning too to do better? And so i take I don't think we should be assuming as anything. I need to work with individual clients individually to work out what it is for them. And then once we've tapped into that, we can really work on it. Yeah. What you're saying does make me think that the world of work and the world of business is changing and We haven't quite yet worked out how it is changing or what the end result of that change is likely to be. But the questions that you've just posed in terms of
00:28:13
Speaker
having to identify what prosperity means for us as individuals, having to identify what purpose means for us as individuals is probably a really good place for people
Conclusion and Insights on 'Prosper with Purpose'
00:28:25
Speaker
to start. But today, it's been really, really very interesting. I do appreciate the opportunity to find out more about Prosper with Purpose, your new book. but Thank you Michael. Thank you very much.
00:28:39
Speaker
Thank you. It's been really enjoyable. Thank you. I am Michael Millward, the managing director of Abecedah, and I have been having a conversation with the independent mind, Colin Crooks, MBE, the author of the new book, Prosper with Purpose. You can find out more about both of us at abecedah.co.uk. There is a link in the description, together with links to places where you can buy Colin's new book, Prosper with Purpose.
00:29:08
Speaker
If you are listening to the independent minds on your smartphone, you may like to know that 3 has the UK's fastest 5G network with unlimited data. So listening on 3 means you can wave goodbye to buffering. There is a link in the description that will take you to more information about business and personal telecom solutions from 3 and the special offers available when you quote my referral code.
00:29:31
Speaker
The description is really worth reading, just like Alan's book. I'm sure you will have enjoyed this episode of The Independent Minds just as much as we have enjoyed making it. So please give it a like and download it so that you can listen anytime, anywhere. To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe.
00:29:50
Speaker
Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think. Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye.