Coaching Testimonials Jason Heaven  (Heaven's Bakery Ltd) "This is a letter of testimony for David Trim of Accountants Hawkes Bay Ltd. We have been working with David for many months and have found him to be very inspirational and a wonderful source of energy. David came to us with the idea of us employing him as our personal business coach. This was a service that we were unfamiliar with and weren't sure as to whether we really needed him as we are a very successful bakery and have been in business for over 30 years. We had a very frank discussion with him and asked him what he thought he could actually do for us and why he should we pay for his services. We were impressed with David's honesty and he listed the areas that he thought he could help us and ways that he could see these begining achieved. David also listened to what our aims for the business were and where we could see it in the future. We have found David has now become an important part of our team, not just working with the management team but also with other team members within the company. David has many contacts that have helped us achieve some of the goals that we have set ourselves in areas that we have not tackled because it was always in the too hard basket. David has posed questions to us that have made us think and work through various areas of the business and with his support new structures have already been developed. When we agreed to work with David our main aim was for him to help us become even more efficient, productive and set specific structures and manuals in place, we are well on the road to achieving these aims and I believe that with David's help he has motivated us as a team to achieve them . We are enjoying working with David and where he is taking us. " Lian & Sally Dunne (Deepseed) "Business Coaching ... is it for you? As with some things in life I was skeptical when my husband thought that our business needed a Business Coach. However, on meeting Dave and seeing how he could better our business, my skepticism subsided. With having an outsider look at the business as a whole we were able to get an understanding of where we needed help · What systems needs to be put into place · Where and why we should be measuring and testing each department. · Why these needed to be implemented The success of taking the above steps has meant that as a Company we knocked $6,000 per month off the bottom line. It doesn't mean that we have automatically become a profitable company but it does mean that we can see what we need to achieve an order to become profitable. Dave Trim is a honest person. He tells you the facts, sometimes they are hard to hear but he truly is there to assist you in achieving the best results." Julie Eagle (Visique Shattky on Russell) "We have worked with David Trim from Accountants Hawkes Bay Ltd for nearly 18 months now During that time we have worked together on many areas of our business, from marketing initiatives to team culture and time management. He has encouraged and supported us throughout with regular meetings to keep us on track. David has often challenged our traditional thinking, encouraging us to get outside of our boxes. We now test and measure all our ideas and marketing, and we now know what the return on investment is for each are or our marketing. I feel that we have managed to do far more with his enthusiasm adding to our to help create the energy to make things happen. Thanks to David our yearly plan is full of exiting challenges for our team to get passionate about. There have also been some more sensitive areas that we needed to work on, where his calm common sense has led to win/win resolutions." Jason Heaven (Heaven’s Bakery Ltd ) "This is a testimonial for David Trim about the interview process that we used recently to employ eight new members to join our team We were a bit skeptical about using this process as we had always interviewed people one-to-one. We used the one-to-one process with the idea that you can ask specific questions relating to the position and relevant personal questions. David informed us about this interviewing technique and explained how it worked and the benefits of it. As we had to find eight new team members to hire and had received over 80 applications we decided that this was possibly a good time to try it out and see how it could work for us. We only had a limited amount of time to get these people hired and trained and the idea of beginning able to interview ten people at a time was very appealing. We held two interview nights and were able to interview 20 people. We filtered through the applications and sent out letters to the people who we thought had potential explaining that we would like to see them and to explain to them about Heaven’s Bakery, what we expect, what they can expect and that the interview could possibly be 1 1/2 hours long. After the interviews we sent the unsuccessful applicants a letter thanking them for their time and enclosed a coffee voucher to be spent at any of our stores. All the interviewees came along with a positive attitude and when they saw other people there waiting to go into the interview room as well you could see them thinking “what is going on here”, but they seemed to relax and while they were waiting for everyone to arrive many started up conversations with each other. After the interview everyone was asked what they thought of the interview process and they were all very positive and said that it was relaxing and not as stressful and many interviews that they had had. They all commented on the letter they were sent inviting them to the interview night and said that it had intrigued them to come along and find out more about our business. From an employers point of view we also found it interesting as we were able to sit back and critique the interviewees while David ran the interview process for us. Once the interviews were over we had time to sit down and analyze the interviewees and out of the four of us, who were critiquing the people being interviewed, we all came up with the same people who we would like as part of our team. We also like the standard letters provided for this interview process as it made it a lot easier to organize and complete. We would use this process again when we have a numbers of vacancies to fill. "