Faith-leaping into a business, NPO, or the life of your dreams?

PERSONAL COACHING CONVERSATIONS [FACE-TO-FACE & ONLINE]

I’m ready to engage in creative, constructive conversation with you, online or face-to-face. Listening to you is my privilege. As a proud member of The Perennial Generation, I welcome fellow humans to my coffee table who want to be the co-creators of their lives, including work and relationships – lives that they love and want to grow all the way to their last breath. Lead thyself. Lead others.

What is the next chapter in your story?
+ Starting a business or NPO venture with a reasonable chance of success?
+ Growing your existing business, education organisation/ department or NPO – which means your people and processes – to your well-defined ‘next level’?
+ Tackling personal and organisational challenges, e.g. conflict management, time management, productivity? 
+ Discovering your personal voice and/or style of entrepreneurship?
+ Aligning your brand communication with the voice of you and your people, i.e. your organisational culture?
+ Expanding your repertoire of hobbies, passionate and entrepreneurial pursuits, to start co-creating the life of your dreams?
+ Need inspiration for your team/audience to ignite their true/best selves for the common good?

I work with numerous tools and programs around a tried and trusted 12-step process, a framework I use as conversation canvas for most engagements. The process includes programs and tools to ignite and inspire your activation and growth towards your purpose. I embody this process, therefore I facilitate individual personal growth as essential first step towards organisational development.

The best time to plant a tree? 20 years ago. Second best? Now. So, go ahead, contact me without delay for a free first conversation.

 

KEYNOTE SPEAKING

Typical topics:
50+ Shades of … Entrepreneurship!
All The World’s A Stage – roleplaying the good life.
My Life CV – remembering my once-upon-a-time self.
Dancing into conflict, essential for growth.
Do you have a topic in mind? Let’s talk …  I can guarantee something interesting and inspiring will pop up.

On the wings of story and song, I aim to inspire and ignite my audience to grow in self-empowered gratitude. My grandpa djembe drum and ukulele songs accompany my stories, bringing a distinct African and international flavour, rhythm and exuberance to the narrative. I wrap universal truths in story and song to present my message. Making wisdom practical and fun again, is my passion and privilege.

What stories will I select for your keynote engagement? The Half-Girl? The Rabbi and the Clown? The Businessman Who Let Time Tell? The Erratic King? The Guitar-maestro and the Security Guard? The Couple who split the Earth? The Potter Girl?
Songs: Your Very Own Heart? My True Selfie? I Can See Clearly Now?
I will engage in conversation with you, before my performance, to ensure that I am aligned with your aims.

I love bringing serious messages with a light and humorous touch – the ‘fun, practical wisdom’ I referred to, earlier. I commit to inspiring your audience or team with a message of substance and healthy take-aways, for mind, body, spirit and soul.

And 3, 2, 1 … lights, camera, action!

COACH’S BLOG

When you live from your calling, your purpose, your core, life becomes a meaningful adventure with the world as our dance floor. 

To grow is to live. We grow in gratitude as we accept our lives and commit to relationships, work, play, learn, rest and all life has to offer. Our ability to generate joy wherever we are, is greatly enhanced by our willingness to anchor our roots in appreciation.

As a startup or existing organisation – growing a sustainable venture, whether business, non-profit, or creative project – you require constant discovery and development of your character and competence to embrace the ever-increasing responsibilities entrusted to you.

Grow.  Well.  In. Conversation. Online. Face-to-face.

Use your fears to feed your fierce … Face-to-face. Online. 

 Start or scale your venture: business, non-profit or creative project. Become the leader of your life.

  • Design and implement a model for your venture that works.
  • Decide what shade of entrepreneurship you are comfortable with: Full-time indie pioneer? Social Entrepreneur? Franchise? Intrapreneur? 10% Entrepreneur? Solopreneur? Ad hoc creative?
  • Draw up a life plan that flows from your calling, discover what you value, day by precious day, what truly matters most.
  • Learn by taking ACTION, because we are what we repeatedly do.
  • Embody the story (life plan, venture model) of your life, venture or project. Presenting your story from the heart is key to authentic relationship-building, marketing and selling.
  • Grow healthy habits to continuously improve your life, venture or project: Networking, Communication, Innovation, Resilience, Health, Wealth, Contribution, etcetera
  • Make enough mistakes before you launch or scale, learn, improve – launch or scale with reasonable confidence.
  • Grow in stature, as a responsible, creative, self-empowered individual of Planet Earth.
For business or NPO ventures: Clarify your products & services design and communication (Value Propositions), venture model & ability to generate surplus cash.

For corporate Enterprise Development & Supplier Development initiatives: Learn more about the New Venture Creation Programme I created with and for the UFS Business School.

Personal Business Coaching

One-to-one and group coaching

I coach individual entrepreneurs – business, NPO or creative project – or groups of startups. Groups often spring from Enterprise Development, Supplier Development and Socio-Economic Development projects, funded by corporates, or SETA-funded interventions e.g. for adults with physical disabilities,  unemployed youth, startups in ICT, agriculture, hospitality, tourism, and so forth.

Commitment

One-to-one engagements: Terms, including investment, timeframe, agreed upon before our conversation journey starts.
Groups: 12 to 24 weeks* of your time for the New Venture Creation Programme, journey from your self as a person, to your idea, to a summarised venture plan and pitch. Or, if you’d like to take up the full challenge, commit 12 to 24 weeks of your time from idea to venture plan, pitch and first transactions! 

* The New Venture Creation Programme is particularly flexible, it has been presented in crash course format over four (4) days, up to 7 months online, with a number of iterations in-between.

Start or Start Afresh

Perhaps you wish to start a new venture – business or non-profit (social entrepreneurship). How about a creative project? Perhaps you would like to take an existing venture back to the drawing board, or grow it to your well-defined ‘next level,’ by inspiring growth in your people and processes.
One-to-one engagements’ roadmaps are tailor-made, through co-creative conversation.
Groups: If you value learning from taking consistent action, the New Venture Creation Programme may be a good fit for you, with me and the UFS Business School

Selling The Truth: BrandStorming, including your Brand Story Framework

As a pro-am member of The Pun Club and author, I love wordplay as much as my love for free range rump steak, Greek Salad and dry red wine. Every startup or existing venture I coach gifts me the opportunity to inspire, guide and co-create the birthing of new brands, including the venture’s name, a logo idea or three, a startup slogan/strapline framework, the philosophical/values-based platform aka the ‘Why’ on which the entrepreneur builds her/his future as innovator.

In short, this describes the co-creation of a brand story framework which is aligned to the values and venture model of your venture. The one and only birthplace of you, selling the truth.

Your brand story framework may be applied to any communication channel, including your corporate profile, website, social media profiles, and, most importantly, your personal representation of your venture to prospects, referral partners, investors, financiers, and so on. After all, what you say about your venture, and the way in which you talk – including body language and tone of voice – is truly what sells.

Strategic Planning Preparation

To develop an integrated, sustainable relationship with people, our planet and cash profits/surpluses, leaders entrusted with strategy face many challenges.

Whether planning at the executive level, department or project level, strategic planners often act as conductors of an orchestra (organisation) for an audience (customers/clients (business) or beneficiaries & donors (NPO), etcetera). Usually, only a few individuals around the annual strategic planning fireside are ‘fit’ for strategic conversation – i.e. those who regularly operate and think strategically throughout the year – which leads to lack of engagement, strategic monologuing, strat planning rubber-stamping, and so forth.
“When is lunch/dinner/sundowners, already!”

Secondly, the individual strategic conversationalists are brought to the main strategic planning conversation (“fireside” or table), where the conversation is guided into the organisation’s main strategic planning process. The individuals enter this circle, prepared for their role-based domain, confident to contribute to the bigger picture of the organisation.

Thirdly, after feedback, conversation and reflection, I leave said strategic planning table, trusting that every individual will contribute their best to the greater good of the organisation’s impact in the world.

And yes, I will most certainly return for the dinner, if red wine is on offer.

 

The Werner Schmidt coaching promise: constructive, creative conversation. I honour your story as creative individual and professional and meet you where you are on your journey. Always.

metaphor moses

 I am a coach, teacher, mentor, philosopher, keynote speaker, author and musician. I love metamorphosis so much that I’m fast becoming a Metaphor Moses.

I inspire and ignite growth in my clients through creative, constructive conversation, and carry an extensive array of tools and programs in my inner backpack. I perform motivational speaking engagements and workshops, blending ACT*,  NLP*,  story coaching, with djembe, ukulele songs and a wide range of strategic and operational experience, since 1994. As a registered coach, I hold an Honours degree from UNISA and a Master’s Degree from the University of Pretoria. 

Married, father of two kids and two canines,  friend, walker, martial arts enthusiast, Sunday soccer player, and pro-am member of The Pun Club.

* Acceptance & Commitment Therapy, Neuro-Linguistic Programming