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Do you like flowers? Can you name more than 20 different sorts of flower, in under a minute? Go on, see if you can!

I can’t. I do like flowers; I know the yellow ones are called daffodils and the red ones are roses …and that’s about it. I buy them based on colour and visual appeal, without troubling myself to actually know what I’m buying. Maybe I like the mystery of it, which is another way of saying I’m happily ignorant.

However, flowers do brighten up a kitchen and I often have the yellow ones (see above) on my table in Springtime.

It’s the same with offices. Flowers and green plants (I have no names to offer here) make a difference. They soften hard edges and can bring a sense of calm to the workplace.

Calm is good. It promotes well-being at work and is part of increasing mental health. Obviously, we can’t simply throw a couple of pot plants at our employees and hope they will all be well (the employees, not the plants). What we can do though is pay attention to the office environment.

Is it clean? Do people have decent chairs to sit on? Are workstations properly set up, or are monitors perched on telephone directories? (Which seems to be the only use for them these days).

What are the restrooms like? Is the reception area welcoming, or Spartan?

If the office was a school, would you want your children to go there?

Does it stimulate productivity, with equipment within easy reach? Or does it cause friction, as people queue for the photocopier/printer?

I’m always amazed at how an organisation will hire someone and then pay for them to stand around waiting for something to print out. We talk about the paperless office, but what about the queue-free office?

Well-being at work starts with our environment. So, this week we can all take a fresh look at the space we work in and see what improvements can be made. Perhaps start with a few yellow flowers, to brighten things up?

Next week: Organisational BS!

Do you like driving? Perhaps not the morning commute, or the time sensitive school run. Maybe when there are no roadworks or school buses to slow us down, or when we can take our time and cruise along happily.

At a rough estimate I’ve driven over 300,000 miles for business in the 15 years I’ve been self employed. That’s a lot of CDs listened to and roadside sandwiches scoffed.

Now though I’ve discovered Audible and the music has taken a back seat to a raft of celebrities, who happily chat to me on my travels about their interesting and varied lives.

Driving is much more fun when you have company.

I was chatting to a colleague the other day about how to generate more sales. They were grumbling that work was hard to find and I asked how far they would travel to find some.

‘Well, I’d happily do 20 miles,’ they replied.

A whole 20 miles! I shared with them that a friend of mine, in the same business as them, would drive 100 miles to run a workshop. The workshop itself didn’t make much profit, but did introduce them to 15 people, of which a couple would probably buy further work from them.

Keep repeating this process in different locations and, with a bit of effort, it would be fairly easy to build a business.

I am currently in advanced training to qualify as a therapeutic counsellor, partly because I love to keep learning, and partly because I have clients who have asked for counselling services to fit alongside my coaching work.

I drive 350 miles every month and love my course and the people on it. Of course, being me, I’ve pitched some workshops to the centre I attend and am now discussing dates to run a first one.

The course has opened up a new bunch of people to work with, learn from and sell to.

By putting in the miles, I have kept in business for 15 years and constantly evolved my customer base.

Yet I do come across people who want to build a business on their doorstep and that makes life hard for them.

If we subscribe to Abundance Theory, which states that there’s enough work for everyone and we just have to go and find it, then putting in the miles is a good way to go.

Good business is all about making the effort. When I started up one of my first sales meetings was 4 hours away. I turned up on time, to find that the client had forgotten the appointment and was elsewhere for the day.

Curiously, I wasn’t disappointed, as we can all make mistakes. I rebooked the appointment and turned up on time a month later and although I wasn’t successful in selling my services, it did teach me a good lesson:

If we don’t do the miles then we are guaranteed a no-sale. If we make the effort enough times then we will sell something.

Business can be very simple at times.

So, this week we can all work out if we are doing enough miles to win enough sales. Despite modern technology, it’s still easier to sell face to face than via an email.

My 300,000 miles have been a good investment really. How many more miles do you need to do?

Next week: Office Flower Power