Testimonials

Looking for clarity

If you’re looking for clarity in your business direction and strategy, I can recommend you contact Brenda Etchells. I’m an executive coach and support businesses with professional development, but everyone needs support at some point. Brenda has recently helped me to unpick the ‘ball of spaghetti’ in my head and find the right direction for my business regarding which areas I should focus on and invest in first.

Brenda has a wonderful way of helping you visualise your business’ future, approaching this from different angles until you get the leverage you need to take action. And she’s a thoroughly friendly, warm and supportive person to boot!

Extensive Knowledge

Brenda ran a workshop for our members at In Business, her knowledge on business strategy is extensive.
She makes business strategy simple to understand and our members were able to easily apply it to develop and take their businesses forward.
Brenda is friendly and has a charismatic way of keeping her audience engaged throughout.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge and expertise Brenda.

Would highly recommend

Brenda ran an excellent workshop for our members at In Business. Everyone enjoyed it and found it extremely useful. Brenda has a very engaging and relaxed, yet focussed way of presenting her business strategy workshops. I would highly recommend her to anyone looking to sort out their strategy! Thank you Brenda

Excellent style at engaging delegates

Brenda has a great ability to bring business strategy methods alive in a way that’s easy to understand and implement. I’ve worked with Brenda on a joint business and HR strategy skills course and she had an excellent style of engaging the delegates.

No-nonsense approach to business strategy

Brenda recently delivered a session on behalf of RTC North as part of the Leeds City Region LEP Access Innovation programme. The delegates loved her delivery style and the content was engaging and relevant. I found her such a great person to deal with and appreciated her no-nonsense approach to business strategy. I am confident that any business would benefit from her skills and have no hesitation recommending her services.

Knowledge is amazing

Brenda has recently joined The Northern Affinity and her enthusiasm and knowledge is such a big driver for the group. She helps me in any way possible. Her knowledge of what she does is amazing and I would recommend anyone who wants to improve their strategy, to speak to Brenda

Strategy on a page

Brenda and I worked together to articulate the charity’s strategy on a page and look at the key actions for 2019/20. She really helped me focus on the longer term goals and sustainability of the charity. The document will be shared with board members and all colleagues across Northpoint Wellbeing to ensure we are all aligned in our activities and have a shared sense of purpose.

A very clever methodology

Great session today Brenda, thank you! If you are serious about your business, whether it is a new venture like ours or you have been going for years, then your strategy is key.

But why are business owners so reluctant to work on their strategy?

If you are undecided then Brenda uses a very clever methodology and I recommend you take up her offer to help you..

A great communicator and facilitator

I have worked with Brenda for many years now, and Brenda is great at communicating strategy and strategic matters, and really engaging with her stakeholders and audience. However, of late, most of my work with Brenda has been in facilitation. Either at YBS Group Welcome Days, or when we jointly delivered a series of workshops around communicating a message via storytelling. Brenda has the ability to communicate a message clearly, and enthusiastically – she really put her whole self into the delivery – but also by ensuring that her style, speed, content and involvement are flexed and tailored around her audience. She is able to read and adapt her presentation, and this means her engagement and interaction, and the way her audience “get it” are great. A great communicator and facilitator, I loved working with Brenda, but fate has sent us in different directions. I can’t recommend her enough.

Would not hesitate to use again

We asked Brenda to facilitate our annual board strategy day. I was very impressed with how Brenda approached this, making sure she built up her knowledge of our business before the day and also taking the time to understand the key outputs required from the strategy day itself. It was the first time we had used an external facilitator and Brenda ensured the meeting was focused on strategic matters and was facilitated in such a way that allowed the right balance of discussion and decision making on key strategic questions. Following the meeting Brenda not only wrote up all the output but also made recommendations for follow up actions. I would not hesitate to use Brenda again.

Certainly Recommend

Brenda facilitated a recent Board strategic planning day. This is the 3rd planning day I have attended with this Board and the day facilitated by Brenda was the best run and most value adding to date. Brenda was very well prepared with strong background understanding of the key business and industry challenges we face over the coming years. There was an excellent balance of discussion time, guidance to stay focused on the key strategic decisions we needed to agree and prevention of certain discussions going into too much detail. The pace of the day was excellent and ensured all of the outlined discussion topics were covered sufficiently and there was a fantastic energy throughout the day. Brenda was an excellent facilitator and I would be happy to use her services again and would certainly recommend her services to anyone.

Best Strategy Session

We asked Brenda to facilitate a one-day strategy session for our board and were delighted with the service we received. Brenda spent time asking what we wanted to get out of the session as well as taking time to understand our business to maximise her impact on the day. She struck the right balance in terms of allowing discussion but making sure we remained focused on the strategy of the business rather than getting bogged down in day-to-day details. Having Brenda there meant that all members of the senior management team and the board could participate fully in the session rather than having to try and facilitate and keep notes at the same time. We received the write up of the day promptly and in an easy to understand style that will help us to shape our business plan. Everybody who attended on the day has commented that it was the best strategy session we have held. I will certainly be asking Brenda to facilitate future sessions

Painless & efficient

I have worked with Brenda for several years as a Business Unit Leader specifically working through, developing, formalising and monitoring strategic business plans. She is a specialist in this area and has a vast array of tools and structures as well as incredible patience, that can make this vital business process both painless and efficient. Brenda is a pleasure to work with and I would highly recommend working with her.

Positive Experience

Brenda was facilitating a workshop between YBS and us concerning our adaptation of our holistic personal finance system to the UK market. Not only did she run the workshop perfectly, but she even volunteered her own family data to help make the setup realistic. All in all a very positive experience working Brenda!

Invaluable

I worked with Brenda on a few strategic projects at YBS. Her knowledge of strategic analysis techniques was invaluable, together with her skills at weaving strategic insight with pragmatism, to ensure realistic outputs, that would land well with stakeholders. Always willing to develop others and provide opportunities for colleagues to flourish, and do what is in the best interests of the wider business. I would recommend her talents to bring fresh insight and navigate different stakeholder interests, to plot a path for success.