September 2026 - Round up
Wins, challenges and the month in numbers.
Wins
Hari added a new country to the “list of places she has trained in that make people jealous” - Ibiza. While she was only technically on the island for about 30 hours, and she got caught in a big storm that grounded planes and flooded out part of the conference room, it was still a brilliant trip guiding a new client’s leadership through a 2 hour storytelling workshop.
Our new Head of Customer Care Lia is fully onboarded and working with us on outreach - we think you’re going to love her! She’s a former English as a second language trainer so she knows all about the power of a good story!
It’s been a month of webinars - we did our usual Overcoming Stage Fright freebie (next one is October 15th, sign up now) as well as two of my favourites - Great analogies, successful explanations and Effective presentation planning for one of our longest running clients, the brilliant JGA Group!
We’ve had a slightly slow start to the (northern hemisphere academic) year - lots of people recovering from Summer holidays. But Hari had fun teaching a one day course in London and 2 × 3.5 hour virtual sessions for a brilliant group based in the Americas. Now we’re fully in prep mode for L&S Free Spirits Live on 1st October (both Hari and Aaron are speaking) and World of Learning in Birmingham on 6-7 October. Let us know if you’ll be there - we’d love to meet up!
Challenges
September has been a bit of a slow start after our long Summer of travelling. Lots of budgets seem to be tightening right now, as we’re hearing from a lot of people.
But for those who can’t swing the cost to have one of our trainers on site to deliver one or more days of training, we are running an open access course that anyone can sign up to, starting in November 2026. It will run for 6 weeks over Friday lunchtimes (UK & Europe) or breakfasts (EST locations) and will cover the usual syllabus we teach over 2 full days of in-person sessions. Find out more about Storytelling for Business here.
Probably the most challenging part of this month, of any month, if we’re honest, is expanding our reach and meeting new people. Even though Hari has recorded a “Networking for people who hate networking” advice video, she admits it’s not a comfortable area for her. But that’s the nature of new business outreach - being comfortable is not a priority. We tried something new this month - voice notes in LinkedIn. So if you got a strange audio message talking about storytelling - it might have been from us!
Another challenge - a familiar one to all working parents - was the fact that the school Hari and Aaron’s kids attend started its Autumn term a little later than anticipated, which left our founders scrambling for childcare in the first week of the month. 4 extra days needed!
The month in numbers
September 2026.
4 days with no childcare we hadn't planned for.
26 Voice notes sent on LinkedIn by Hari and Aaron in 1 day.
Hari led 3 different webinars this month.
