August 2025 round-up

Hari considers the wins, the challenges and August in Numbers.

Wins

August is often a weird month. The kids are off school, the sun shines, people take holidays. Few people want to schedule training when half their team is on parent duty so training-wise this was a fairly quiet month. Though we did have a two notable in-person courses…

We delivered the second of three one-day Storytelling for Business courses for A new energy and innovation client in central London. Riccardo handled the first session back in July, then I took over for the August class. What a lovely bunch of people - see the first polaroid picture above.

Even with a few technical challenges around playing video over the conference room facilities, it was a great day. And they treated me to a pizza lunch which was a nice change from the standard Pret sandwich tray. Our third class for them is coming up next week and I’m really looking forward to it.

We ran a two hour masterclass for a leading UK law firm, helping them to mentor and up skill the legal talent of the future through their REACH programme. We ran a virtual session for the 2024 REACH participants, so it was great to be able to go in to central London to run a longer in-person session this year.

The REACH participants work on their speeches.

I gained more than a few insights from this one:

• I need some more recent pop-culture references. Most 18-25 years olds don’t get 90s jokes!

• Only 3% of lawyers in the UK are black - but this bunch are determined to shift the needle on that, and if anyone can do it, they can!

Challenges

Following on from July’s discovery that our standard LSP kit contains 1911 blocks we started researching the best way to build a few more kits.

Buying the exact bricks from pickabrick proved one of the more expensive routes, even if we only did it for the fancy bits of kit. We were resolved to buying several standard LSP kits and reorganising them out into 4 new kits, but Aaron identified an ex-LSP practitioner selling 35 kilos of LEGO™ on eBay for £10 per kilo.

But turning several large boxes of LEGO into organised LSP kits doesn’t just happen.

First of all we had to get it away from the kids!

Then we had to find the time and space to inventory the bricks and build the kits.

Luckily we have a big LEGO™ teenage fan living on our street who was willing to do some summer work. She’s the superstar who counted and catalogued the kit last month, and now she’s working her way through 35 kilos to build 3 kits. We are very grateful for all the help she’s given us so far!

Summertime school holidays bring more than a few challenges as any working parent knows. We did manage to take 6 days off for a week in Cornwall - and we managed to keep work at a distance that entire time, which is better work/life balance than I’ve achieved before.

But we also wanted to visit family, and we had too much work on to be able to take much time away for that. Luckily my Mum and Step-Dad have an office that we can appropriate, but as you can see from the middle polaroid above, it’s a bit of a cramped fit. At my desk I have everything set up to prevent back pain and have a good posture - but it’s lot harder when you’re working remotely on a laptop. I need to find a better solution for those times.

The month in numbers

August 2025 in Numbers:

2 classes

• 1 Storytelling for Business one day session

• 1 Public Speaking masterclass

35 kilos of LEGO™ purchased from eBay ready to be sorted into 3 new LSP kits

Random:

• 3 new business proposals created and sent - all for entirely new clients!

• 2 new coaching clients

• 6 days off with the kids

• 4 new hair colours