How is FocalPoint helping?

This is our story....

As professional business educators, our job is to help others. Both Head Office and our Coaches strive to add value to every interaction we have. This even extends to our marketing.

To have Corporate Social Responsibility, a ...

"Business would embrace responsibility for the impact of their activities on the environment, consumers, employees, communities, stakeholders and all other members of the public sphere. Furthermore, business would proactively promote the public interest by encouraging community growth and development..."

(Ref. Wikipedia)

When we market, we select from a set of tools that are designed to add value to our potential new client before we even ask to meet them.

When we meet a business leader (an owner or and executive) for the first time, our meeting goal is to leave them with specific business tools that they can use within 24 hours of our meeting.

When we present to groups or audiences as speakers, trainers and facilitators, we use a workshop format with specific deliverables that helps our guests with an immediate challenge they have. These tools are usable within 24 hours.

When we coach, we focus on perspective. Where is your business now? Where does it need to be? What is the impact that doing this change will have?

This is the impact of a business coach.

7 Circles

1. business leader
2. business
3. families
4. city
5. region
6. country
7. world

Brian Tracy gets right to the point on this..."Business Coaching IS the bailout program for America and the world..." . Small business is what drives the economy, and will certainly lead the way as we evolve out of our current (global) financial situation..."

We discussed this during our Annual Conference in 2008 ,and a suggestion was raised on how we could do even more.

A bit of background will help here...

One of the high level aspects of business coaching is a focus on "attitude". This statement stems from "how does your attitude affect your outcome"?

One part of a healthy, business-growth-attitude is a business leader's ability to turn a negative into a positive. This is a common trait among entrepreneurs.

This aspect of business growth leads to the axiom "When the world gives you lemons, make lemonade" !

The negative that we were dealing with internally had to do with our internal culture. To keep ourselves accountable to the tasks at hand during a large meeting like conference, or training, we have an "on-time" rule. If you're late to return from break, there is a small fine.

Respect for intellectual property is another value we hold. We support that with the rule "If your cell phone ( or various electronica) goes off during any presentation, there is also a small fine.

These 2 simple rules keep our events running very smoothly. However, $5.00 here and there begins to add up!

So the question was raised...what do we do with the money? Our coaches had a great idea - "lets donate it to a charitable cause."

Great, but who? Truly, which one charity is more deserving than another?

We decided to look back at our values again. We turned it into a quick brainstorming exercise. Coaches pointed out a few interesting cultural aspects of FocalPoint. One of our values is "seek the Win-Win-Win"

Another value is that "We are in business to make a profit and we recognize and respect the right of others to do so as well."

The subject of micro-credit came up during the brainstorming and it just made sense.

Micro-credit is a new type of lending tool that is part of the larger Web 2.0 generation. These are investment funds that aggregate donations and use that money to extend very small loans to those in poverty. Precisely the kind of businesses that need the help most but can't get it!

Over the next few weeks, we looked at kiva.org and microplace.com.

We decided on microplace.com because it fit our Win-Win-Win values. Our funds are forwarded to a financial aggregator who is registered with Microplace.

Loans are then made to micro-businesses, who then pay a small interest rate on the money.

We had our 3-Win! We could use our money from fines to make the loan, the micro-business gets the money to use, and we get interest back on our money. We will then re-invest that money back into more microloans.

We have turned the negative of fines into a positive that adds value to the world.

Our research showed that Kiva.org was also well respected , but didn't return an interest rate. This interest rate was important to us as it helps us continue the giving.

Here is more on MicroPlace.com vs. Kiva.org

To date FocalPoint Coaches have invested

For more information on the faces of our investments, as well as the Investment Criteria we used to select them, please click here.

The numbers above may look small and insignificant to some, but we also have a business timeline of "forever". We look forward to the day when we have millions going into these programs!

You can donate too at www.microplace.com

Thank-you for reading our story.