2026 | Issue #1

New year, new look!

Hello Reader,

Welcome to the first issue of tbc news in 2026. As you can see, we have a new look. We've been cooking up a lot of exciting plans for this year and you will be hearing all about them in this newsletter, and on our social media channels.

Some quick updates:

The Resources page on our website has been reorganized. We debated long and hard putting our templates behind a paywall. In the AI-forward world that we live in data scraping and copyright infringement are real concerns. But we are also on a mission to make coaching accessible to everyone. So, we are taking a leap of faith. In light of our mission, and in a spirit of openness and community, we are making all our worksheets available on our website. We hope you will find them useful.

Also, we would like to formally introduce our Head of Operations, Trainer and Facilitator Ripudaman Sujlana. Ripudaman comes from a customer service background, which means he has survived real humans in real situations. Angry customers, overconfident trainers, slides with 87 bullet points, and yet, somehow, he still believes in people. We’re still trying to figure out how. Scroll down to get to know him in his own words.

RESET - A new approach to goals

We are one month into the new year and I’m already resetting. Not because I have failed or I need yet another reinvention montage. Mostly because expecting January me and March me to operate with the same energy, time, and optimism feels like a setup.

By now, most New Year resolutions have been fully abandoned but still living rent free in our heads. And right on schedule, we blame ourselves. Apparently the problem is never timing, workload, environment, or the fact that life loves chaos. It’s always discipline. Or lack of effort.

Somehow that narrative doesn't work for me anymore. I no longer buy into the guilt trips, the trash talk, the emotional roller coasters. I still believe in setting goals and putting in the effort to accomplish them. But I don't want to spend my energy pushing myself, trying harder, feeling bad when things go wrong, and repeating the same cycle. So I’m resetting my approach.

Instead of forcing habits, I’ve been playing with a different idea. What if goal setting worked more like a board game. One where we make moves based on what actually happened, not what we planned. Some days we land on momentum, other days we get distracted. Some days we pause, regroup, rethink, and redesign. No shame, just better moves.

Well, we created that board game. Check it out in this month's worksheet.

Ripudaman in his own words

If you spend 10 minutes with me you will notice that for me, customer service isn’t a function. It’s a passion and a philosophy.

Over three decades in Hotels, QSR retail, IT services, and as an entrepreneur, I have built high-performance environments where operations don’t just run, they resonate. My career has moved across various industries but the thread connecting it all is simple:

How people feel when they interact with you matters more than what you sell them.

At the Oberoi Group I learnt early on about discipline, and service, and delivering with both precision AND heart. At McDonald’s, I helped open seven stores. It’s an environment where speed, systems, and service have to work together every minute, every order, every single time. But efficiency doesn’t have to kill warmth. In fact, the right systems can actually protect great service with a smile. At IBM, I saw service from a different angle through processes, and platforms and learnt about the importance of a service oriented culture.

And then through my entrepreneurship journey my learning came full circle. When you own the entire customer journey, you quickly understand that service isn’t an “extra”. It is the bedrock of business.

Today at The Bento Coach, I help teams build service cultures through coaching, facilitation and training workshops that shift team mindsets from task-oriented thinking to customer-oriented thinking.

​Connect with me for:

• Pro-Train – Train-the-trainer workshops for future-ready trainers who deliver learning that sticks
• The Customer Lens – Customer service workshops designed to rewire teams to see decisions through a customer-focused lens
• Always On – Customer service workshops to facilitate great customer service and make it consistent, repeatable, and recall-worthy

And also to discuss sports or global affairs. I promise you, you’re in for a passionate deep dive with a well-timed joke thrown in.

I believe service is about presence, care, and detail - the kind that makes people feel seen. And when people feel cared for, excellence tends to follow. I’m really excited to share my passion for service with the Bento Coach community.

Reading now

Hi! I'm Radhika and I am a Marketing Consultant at The Bento Coach. You have probably seen my work on the Bento Coach website, in their brochures, social media posts, newsletters and decks.

As a content creator I try to find inspiration from various sources. I have always been a voracious reader, but in recent years I have found my attention span reducing drastically. We are so used to consuming snippets of information and entertainment on the internet and social media. We forget that compared to print, all this is fairly new technology and very addictive. I was finding it hard to read long-form content. Or I would start books, but never finish them. So, in an effort to recapture some of that attention, and to diversify my reading list, I challenged myself to read more classic and non-fiction books. The only catch, it needs to be a physical book. E-readers and smartphones not allowed.

I have to admit, it's been hard. I am a slow reader, and I HAVE to read the whole book, cover to cover, including preface and dedications and introductions. If there's a glossary of terms at the end, I will read that too. So I tend to stay with a book for a long time. But it's also been pleasant. There is something about the feel of a physical book in your hand, turning pages, the weight of it. It instantly relaxes you. And there are no notifications.

Anyways, currently I'm reading Six Easy Pieces by Richard P. Feynman. It's a series of lectures that he created to teach the essentials of Physics to first- and second-year college students. Why a Physics book? I came across it in a Freakonomics podcast special on Richard Feynman. I was intrigued by the idea of this genius scientist who was a brilliant communicator. I wanted to learn how he broke down such complex ideas into simple language. I was curious how he would cover everything in 6 chapters. I thought that perhaps the Physics would be beyond me. But I was pleasantly surprised. Not only was I able to understand the fundamental concepts, I went down rabbit holes trying to find out more about quantum particles and the Uncertainty Principle. I would definitely recommend it if you are looking to learn something but also great storytelling. I also wish I had found this book in high school. It would have made life so much easier.