Should you tandem skydive to grow your business? Three outlandish workshops

Business owners are being encouraged to “get their business flying” by participating in a workshop that begins with a tandem skydive, as business workshops become more outlandish.

The new workshop series, launched by Melbourne-based business coaching outfit Headswitch, uses tandem skydiving as a tool to help business owners grow their businesses faster.

The workshop begins with a tandem skydive and finishes with an intensive, one-day business planning workshop.

“When you want breakthrough results, you need to take breakthrough actions,” says Headswitch principal coach Leanne Knowles, a former skydiving instructor.

“Science tells us that mindset and perception drives our actions, and those actions in turn produce a set of results.

“We help our workshop participants find the mindset they need to dramatically increase business performance.

“Making a skydive immediately before our business planning workshop will reset the participants’ perspective about what they are capable of and what’s possible.”

Although skydiving has occasionally been used in a corporate business setting as a form of motivation, this particular approach is believed to be a world first.

But it’s not the first example of a business workshop that strays from the norm. Here are a couple of other quirky concepts:

Project Getaway

Project Getaway is the brainchild of Michael Bodekare, a self-described tech geek who came up with the idea while kite-surfing one day in the Canary Islands.

Bodekare realised he missed the networking, brainstorming and “sheer fun” of working with other inspiring entrepreneurs in exotic environments.

The Project Getaway program sees entrepreneurs live and work together over a period of several weeks, in what can only be described as paradise-like settings.

Bodekare insists it is not just an event but a “complete experience”, aimed at entrepreneurs who want to create a life “where success, adventure and a balanced lifestyle go hand-in-hand”.

The first getaway, held in Bali in September 2010, was, according to Bodekare, a “roaring success”. As a result, the events are “sprouting faster than you can say ‘Surf’s up!’”.

Extreme Business Bootcamp

Several years ago, the village of Palatine in the US state of Illinois played hosted to an Extreme Business Bootcamp, in which participants were “hammered” with the basics of business.

“It’s not by accident that a significant portion of the weeks at army boot camp is taken up with marching, drills, ceremonies, and lots and lots of standing in formation,” the website says.

“Boot camp is where they drill their core values into you – hammering them into you during your stay.”

The one-day workshop promised to offer participants an “arsenal of information”, helping them “confront survival” in an entirely different way.

This included helping participants “camouflage” their marketing strategies, and team exercises designed to achieve “department cohesion”.