elliptical MasterMind is a small business consulting program in which business owners meet to share experiences, offer insight to help resolve issues and problems, and to devise and install proven strategies designed to produce steady business growth, increase profits, simplify operations and build wealth.
A membership in elliptical MasterMind enrolls you in ideation sessions and a strategic relationship with peers that involves sharing know how information, problem solving, and support as you engage in a process aimed at rational growth and the development of the structures you need to create a Done Business.
One of the aims of the program is to help you become deliriously happy about more things more often.
It is radically simple idea. Better input + encouragement = better decisions, stronger accountability, and better results.
elliptical MasterMind helps you get on track and stay there. Together, with a coach, clients explore an assortment of options that solve a wide variety of business issues and develop strategies to take advantage of new business opportunities.
Our small business consulting process involves detailed interactive dialogue between the coach and the client. The client puts into practice the decisions reached in these discussions and reviews the results with the coach to gain mutual insights and develop further improvements.
The coach offers advice and guidance, but more importantly, he offers an opportunity for clients to talk through issues in a non-threatening and confidential environment. Often, clients don’t want others to know everything they are thinking. With a coach, they can speak candidly, knowing their ideas and issues will be held confidential. Having that advantage, some clients discover a process that produces unusually effective results.
GRAHAM SKINNER grew up as the only child of a coal miner father and fire station cook mother in the shadow of coal mines and steel mills located in the industrial West Riding of Yorkshire (now South Yorkshire) in England. He was blessed with a fertile imagination and an entrepreneurial spirit gifted by his paternal grandfather. As a schoolboy his dream was to learn robotics but there was only one college in the UK that offered a degree in robotics at the time so they had a pretty tight focus around finding potential undergraduates. That focus never quite made it to South Yorkshire so Graham embarked on an Electric/Electronic Engineering degree at Woolwich Polytechnic in London.
Partway through his middle year, despite being an A student, his faculty advisor suggested Graham leave the academic world and join the UK’s largest computer company (ICL) operating and programming mainframe computers. The gamble paid off and within 18 months he was streaks ahead of graduate entrants to the company. From there he went to work with scientists at Bristol University on a project to link distant computers and share data – it was the earliest incarnation of what would eventually become the world wide web. So sorry Al Gore, Graham really did help invent the internet! Subsequently Graham went on to work in IT management, held ever expanding executive and consultant roles in major international corporations including mergers, acquisitions and dissolutions across the globe. In the early 1980s these endeavors brought him to the United States which he decided to make his home and continued to be employed by large corporations. Eventually in 1989 Graham made a life changing decision to quit the corporate world and focus his energies working exclusively with individuals and small business owners. He enjoyed great success as a consultant to specialist entertainment industry businesses while also helping his wife Laura with her dream of establishing pre-schools and daycare centers in the Los Angeles area .
In his desire to help others lead more fulfilling lives, Graham has worked as a licensed financial planner and counsellor to individuals, families and business owners; established and supported business networking groups throughout Northern California; dedicated his time to those suffering or in need and now helps Laura with her more recent avocation – an animal assisted therapy program using Pumpkin their miniature horse. Graham was invited to meet Richard Paris Borough, founder of the Master-Mind Alliance® in 2009. He and Richard hit it off immediately and Richard suggested Graham start a Master-Mind Alliance® program in Chico, Ca. They worked together to enhance, expand and promote the program throughout California. Graham’s uniquely broad experience and passion for small business has been instrumental in helping business owners achieve their goals through participation in the Master-Mind Alliance®. Since Richard's untimely passing in 2020, Graham continues to make a monthly pilgrimage through the Trinity mountains to continue Richard's passion by facilitating the newly named elliptical MasterMind meetingin Eureka. In addition to his role within elliptical MasterMind Graham is becoming the most sought after Business Growth Strategist in Northern California. He’s known for helping owners easily and quickly transform their businesses into profitable million dollar enterprises. Graham has now expanded his small business consulting services reach to also serve business owners across the United States and beyond.
Graham is a Certified Life Coach and Certified Master NLP Practitioner.