Four Steps Towards Better Intuition in your Business
Do you have intuition? Or do you think you do? Do you just wing it or do you have a process for it? Well, let’s take a few minutes to find out if you truly do.
Good afternoon friends, Thomas Joyner with Business On Purpose here.
This past weekend, our entire team flew up to Franklin, Tennessee to celebrate the opening of a new BoP location in Middle Tennessee. True to our colors we spent time going over the vision, the mission, the core values and then spent the better part of the afternoon being taught by our own team members in ways that they are strong.
It was an incredibly powerful time to be together, to halt coaching for a day and reinvest back into our team. If you’re not doing something like this, I can’t encourage you enough to invest the time and resources to do so. We all have a little spring in our step this morning and are excited to be a part of this team.
One of our coaches asked us this question and the teaching from it was so powerful for me. He asked us if we have intuition. We all kind of raised our hands as we were like, “Of course, we wouldn’t have been hired to do this if we didn’t have some decent sense of intuition.”
But he didn’t stop there. Most self-aware and healthy individuals have some sense of intuition. They can typically take a problem and drill down to what’s underneath. However, most of us stop a few steps short of actually fixing it, so we end up repeating our mistakes over and over again.
We walked through this “Intuition Process” as I coined it for my own memory, to never forget the 4 steps.
So what are the 4 steps? Let’s dive in and talk about it.
The first thing we must do is wrap our arms around the problem. Asking simple questions to figure out what the dilemma is. Is it personnel-driven, a problem with a product or service, or maybe a client? I don’t know... but it’s asking enough questions to wrap your mind around the problem you’re facing.
The second thing we need to do is drill down and ask, “What’s the root of the problem or what’s the real issue?” I injured my back a few months back working out. I went to a physical therapist as I could barely walk and they asked me a series of questions. I pointed to where it hurt and how I injured it and they told me it was a problem with my glute muscles.
“No, the pain is right here,” I kind of said as I pointed to a spot 6-8’’ above where they were telling them the problem was.
I’ll never forget what the PT person said. “Oftentimes where it hurts is not the problem. That’s just where the problem is rearing its ugly head!” Man, that is so true. Often times the problem is not what you see or feel, but a failure somewhere else along the line and this is just where it manifests itself.
So, as you’re asking questions, what is the root of the problem? What created it? A breakdown in communication? Overlooking something in a hiring process? Maybe it was training-related? But find out what the real issue is!
Third, ask “What’s the action to take?’’ Now, this can be tough. Rarely are actions black and white, but most are somewhere in the gray spectrum. So, with the information we have, what is the action we need to take? This can take some time to discuss, but there should be an action to take.
Now, this is where most people stop. And it’s natural to stop here. We fixed the problem, rooted it out, and took action. But if you stop here, you’re bound to repeat your mistake! You’ve got to take one more step.
That step is what Process do we need to build or tweak to prevent this from happening again! That’s powerful stuff right there. What do we need to put in place to make sure this root issue is solved! Think how freed up your business would be if you built a process every time something went wrong to insure that it never happened again!
For one, you would probably have a whole lot less mistakes every single day.
So, what does this look like in the real world? Let me walk you through an example.
We work with a client who hired a new salesperson. A few months in they just weren’t getting the hang of it. We tried more training, we tried encouragement, we tried everything we could to get their performance up and it just wasn’t happening. In fact, they were well below their peers who had been selling way less time than this new employee.
So we began to work this Intuition Process. We knew the problem. This employee was not getting close to meeting sales quota. As we drilled down a bit, we realized that the problem was NOT the employee. We realized that there were some assumptions made in the hiring process. This person should have never been hired for this role in the first place. They were just not a salesperson, but much more of a support role type.
So, the owner took responsibility for that and realized we had to take action. We put some metrics for the employee to reach to be able to continue in the sales role. There were other roles they could fill, but they couldn’t be paid to produce without actually producing.
Lastly, we spent time figuring out what are the holes in the hiring process that need to be fixed in order to prevent this from happening again? We built a new hiring process with new ways to test salesmen on their effectiveness before they are hired!
Here’s the thing. There will be mistakes. Always. We’re managing human beings who make mistakes and that is ok. But... what we can do is build processes that help eliminate as many of those as possible. We can do our part to make sure the process is in place to prevent the same mistakes from happening twice.
So, take this and use it in your business. Figure out the problem, drill down to the root of it, find the action to take, and then build a process to prevent it from happening again!
That’s some good stuff right there and I hope you enjoyed it! Make sure to subscribe to our podcast and youtube channel so you never have to come and download our episodes. We want them waiting on you every time we add a new one. Don’t want you to miss a thing!
Have a great week!
3 MUST DO business tasks at mid-year…
We’re at the halfway point of 2021... so what now? Well, here are 3 MUST Do business tasks that every business should do this month. Good afternoon Thomas Joyner here with Business on Purpose.
It’s easy to get into the habit of putting it on cruise control. It’s summer vacation for kids, everyone is restless to get on the water over the weekend. It’s hot and humid... you name it. It’s natural to hit the halfway point and just kind of hit autopilot for a month or two until you realize you have to hit your numbers by year-end.
But hey, that’s not operating your business “ON PURPOSE” now is it? In fact, all that leads you to is getting stressed at all the work you didn’t do in Q3!
So what do you need to do today? You won’t achieve all of your goals, you won’t earn your year-end bonuses, but you can definitely stall your business enough to prevent yourself from either of those things.
So... today. Get out your calendar and schedule 1-2 hours for each of these tasks. Now, that’s the tip of the iceberg. Some of these things will take more time. But if you get the ball rolling you can always schedule more time to finish the conversations surrounding them. So, figure out who needs to be in the room and schedule it now.
Ok, so what are the 3 MUST DO business tasks at mid-year?
You set goals, where do you line up in relation to them. Are you over/underperforming? If you doubled your numbers will that get you to yearly goals? How is your team performing? Are there pieces that need some care or further training?
Lastly, take a peek at your financials. Ok, take more than a peek. Look at your Profit and Loss Statement, look at your cash flow month to month and check in with your CPA to see if there is anything that doesn’t make sense. Are your margins where you hoped they would be? Are your labor costs high/low? Are materials and inventory where you thought? Any expenses way higher/lower than you anticipated?
These are all great questions to ask so that you know if you need to make some changes moving into the second half of the year.
I was looking over this with a client recently and they were frustrated at their payroll. It was almost 20% higher than they anticipated. So, we looked back over it and realized they were paying 8 guys 10 hours of overtime a week at time and a half. You do the math and that’s a lot of extra payroll expense. So, we made the necessary decision to hire 2 new employees to get those overtime costs down. Had they not looked? They would be looking at a HUGE loss to the company, plus they now have the opportunity to get more work and grow their team. All because they took an hour to look back at the past 6 monthsperformance.
2. Spend some time forecasting THROUGH Q1 of 2022
What work can you plan on getting over the next 6-9 months? Do you have the staff to accomplish that work? Are there any roles you need to add? Roles you need to merge into one? Anything at all on the horizon, you need to be prepared for.
I can say from experience that most BIG mistakes I’ve seen when sitting in with clients are all a result of not forecasting. This is what I mean…
Acme Co. enjoys a slow summer. They take it all in and just enjoy the slower season. Waiting for them is 4 HUGE projects that all begin at the end of August. So... August 1st arrives, and by that time it’s too late. They realize they need 3-4 more employees to handle the work. So, they have to rush the hiring process. They are unable to do the appropriate vetting because it’s an emergency and they just need bodies.
Next thing you know, they mess up on the job. It costs the business time, money and reputation. Margins go down. Businesses notice the quality of your work. All because they weren’t aware of what was on the horizon.
So what is coming in the future that you can prepare for now? Put in the time and then build out the systems to support it. You have time today. You will not 6 weeks from now.
3. Build out your hiring process for if, and when, you need people.
The one thing that we hear constantly is this…”I feel like my employees know I don’t have anyone waiting behind them, so there’s no way to hold them accountable!”
Well, what if there was a way to have someone behind them? What if you were in hiring mode all year round, with a pool of competent candidates ready to hire. It doesn’t just happen.
So often we wait until we need someone to actually put in the time. But, when we are interviewing, or at least working on our interview process, we can seamlessly integrate new, qualified people into our business and use that to push our employees to a standard.
I can promise you this... you will need good people. I can also promise you that they will be tough to find in an emergency. Spend time and energy finding good people, build roles for them and then work hard to find the right role within your business to maximize their skills. That’s how you raise the bar and hold your employees to a standard. When they know that their are multiple people waiting to do what they do. It’s building a culture of hard work and quality that will raise the bar for everyone.
Ok...don’t pick up your phone and answer a text... don’t call someone back. Schedule time THIS WEEK for these 3 things.
That’s it! Hope you have a great week and take a minute to go and subscribe to our YouTube and Podcast. Thanks for tuning in
Why Transfer Your Influence: How A Business Sets Itself Free
by Scott Beebe
Founder | Head Coach
Business On Purpose
12 Week Plan Live Event
Hewitt Oaks, Bluffton, SC
17th June 2021
"Transferring Your Authority: How To Equip Your Team And Set Them Free"
by Thomas Joyner
Business Coach, Business On Purpose
12 Week Plan Live Event
Hewitt Oaks, Bluffton, SC
17th June 2021
What exactly IS the function of an ORG Chart?
Two phrases I’ve heard in the past week…
My answer? You’re absolutely correct. Happy Monday friends, Thomas Joyner with business on purpose here. We’re going to answer the question today of what exactly is the function of an ORG Chart in your business.
Let’s go back to those questions that I was asked this week. And surprisingly, the two go together.
The first one gets to the thought of What does your business need? It’s a great question to ask. If you could wipe the slate clean, fire everyone (hypothetically speaking, please don’t go out and fire everyone right now), and build your business to serve your needs today... would you have the job roles you have?
Probably not!
No, you need more from your employees, because they were hired in chaos... NOT from a place of vision. “Gah, the phones are ringing off the hook, we have to hire another administrative person!” Or maybe something like this, “We’re driving all over the place, we need someone who can handle estimates and still do a little work on the job, so let’s make a hybrid Project manager/estimator role to fill the gap for right now.”
Well, that whole fill the gap excuse lasts a year, then 2 years, then you can’t remember what you were hoping that role grew into in the first place.
You’re not crazy, it happens all the time!
Let’s look at the second question. “I feel like we have holes between what our business needs and what it actually has!”
Of course, because when you hire in chaos, it’s solving an immediate need, but not the most efficient, best long-term need.
And here is what happens. You end up with a bunch of people on your team with overlapping job roles, working outside of their strengths because the urgency is informing the hire instead of the vision and the need informing the hire!
When we start in crisis and don’t think things through we end up with an ORG chart that looks completely different than what the business needs. So... where do we start and how do we combat this?
You have to go back to this thought of if I could start over from scratch and build my business to serve my current revenue numbers, what job roles does the business need.
Notice what you didn’t hear me say. I did NOT say, who do we currently have in our business and what else do we need.
No, this may take us shaking up our entire business to finally, FINALLY give the business what it so desperately needs.
So, go through the 4 main pieces to your business, ADMIN, Marketing, sales, Operations, and start putting down roles.
To handle the administrative tasks our business needs, what roles does that require? Do we have 4 people handling this part-time? Could it be blended into one job role to help with communication and collaboration?
In looking at Marketing, ask, who is quarterbacking the marketing processes. Who is leading the charge and what support do they need?
With Sales? Who’s in the field, how much can they legitimately handle? How many salespeople and managers does the business truly need?
And with Operations, what does that team ideally look like? Is that how we’re running things? If not, why not?
The last question I want you to filter all of this through… Does this ORG chart, we built allow us to manage the growth we’re expecting and wanting in our vision? If not, what are the necessary roles we need to get there?
I love doing this! It’s so simple and yet gives you a framework for all hiring. No more hybrid roles where one person is operating in total confusion because they’re just a stop gap for all overflowing work!
That’s not effective and horribly inefficient. Your business will tell you what it needs if you’re willing to put in the time and listen.
But think long-term for a second. What if your business had all the roles filled that it needed, with employees that knew what they were held accountable for... with room for business growth!
That’s the purpose of an Org Chart. To tell you what your business needs today... and what your business needs to accomplish your vision.
Thanks for listening today... Hey, make sure you subscribe to our podcast and our YouTube channel. We’ve got free content coming out daily for your commute to work or for just sharing with your team. Get on and subscribe...
How To Develop A Job Description
Growing up in a faith community, we would head out for loads of different community service opportunities picking up trash at a community park, repainting old homes, sorting through spoiled food at a local food bank; or the time in Denver when we were serving in a food line while a group of men smoked pot on one side of us while a knife fight broke out on the other side.
Serving people who will never be able to pay you back is rewarding, but what can put a damper on community service is a lack of preparation and planning. Showing up to a service project with a “whatever you bring will be helpful” message is far more confusing than a message of “here is exactly what we would like for you to do”.
When there is ambiguity, the result feels like you are muddying the already murky waters of chaos without clear direction on what the mission and the task is.
Owners are notorious for simply “needing help” and then finding people with a mind and a pulse and “throwing them to the wolves” so they can “figure it out as they go”. We tend to perpetuate the “whatever you bring will be helpful” myth.
It’s a less-than-ideal way of empowering others to help drive the mission of the business, and yet it is done every single day.
There is a better way, a way that is more human, kind, and visionary.
People react to chaos, but they respond to vision and clarity.
A simple, honest, written job description is a powerful and necessary step in building clarity and vision that a new team member will require and is in search of.
Here are four ways to develop a helpful job description.
First, on a sheet of paper or document, do a total brain dump of everything you wish this person could do.
A healthy job description is just that, a description about the job. What are all of the tasks and responsibilities that this role will own?
What are all of the little elements you would want this role to do? In a stream of consciousness write everything down that comes to your mind. Even if it doesn’t make sense, write it down, just get it out of your head into a place you can actually see it.
How specific should you be? The more specific the tasks you write out, the more clarity you will bring?
For instance, you may write down “accounting”. Be more specific like “payables, receivables, receipts, bank reconciliations, payroll, timesheets”.
Second, categorize tasks into three or four (or more) groups. For instance, if you are hiring a project manager for construction, you may want to categorize your job description this way…
Underneath each section is where you will add many of the tasks that you wrote out in the first step.
The third step in developing a job description is to add your mission statement, your core values, and also to add any additional narrative you would like for a new recruit to know.
We actually have started to add an open letter to the new potential team member providing a narrative overview of what we are looking for and also insight into our culture.
Here is a snippet…
“We believe that business owners can have a great business AND a great life. The best way to have them make time for what matters most is to liberate them from the chaos that distracts them.
And that is where you come in!
We are looking for a Marketing Strategy & Campaign Manager to come in and set up the systems that will invite 100 new people per week into the BOP Train Station so they can engage and make the decision to be liberated from chaos or not.
We have good systems, good processes, and a great product. But we need someone to come in and obsess over drawing crowds of people in so they have an opportunity to know that help is available to them.”
This is a massive contrast to the corporate job description that sounds more like a legal brief than it does a human document. Allow your job description to show your humanity.
The final step in developing a job description after you have the categories, the tasks, and the human element of the job description, it’s time to test and title the document.
Read back through what you have written so you can test it. Do you feel like it brings a helpful level of detail and explanation for the role?
Send it to a friend or peer who has some insight into your business and allow them to read through it to see what questions or thoughts they may have.
Once proofed and tested, only then do you put a job title on the job description. That’s right, wait till the very end. Why?
We put generic, placeholder titles on most roles (Accounting Manager, Sales Associate, etc.). Once you have read back over the role, what would you title the role regardless of what the industry suggests you title it?
What job title actually describes the role you see? Use that job title. A unique job title will help grab the attention of people and jolt them out of the cliche of hearing some generic title.
Once tested and titled, it’s time to market your new role. When you ask for recommendations from others make sure to not say, “we’re looking for a JOB TITLE.” Instead, “we are looking for a person who can (INSERT A FEW OF THE SPECIFIC TASKS FROM THE JOB DESCRIPTION), the role is (JOB TITLE)”.
This forces engagement from the person you are speaking to. Otherwise, you are setting yourself for a good old-fashioned, and non-helpful response, “yeah, I’ll keep my eye out!”
Do a brain dump, categorize all of the tasks, add your culture to the job description, and finally, test and title.
This will give you a powerful job description that will grab their attention.
4 Four Lessons Learned from Year 1 with BOP
It’s been a year at Business On Purpose for me... and one thing I can honestly say is it’s been a roller coaster. So what are the 4 things that have truly stopped me in my tracks this year? Well, let’s talk about that today. Happy Monday friends, Thomas Joyner here with Business on Purpose.
Coaching 20+ businesses, writing new content, helping clients put out fires, hire new employees, manage supply chain shortages, opening a new office in Nashville, you name it! It’s been a challenging year to say the least.
With all of that, there have been a few things that have stuck with me. A few things that fundamentally changed the way I view work and are things I will carry with me for years to come. I wanted to share them with you not to brag about all that I’ve learned, but to offer you the chance to marinate on them with me.
Maybe they change your perception a bit. Maybe they push you to tweak the way you do things and grow in your own ways. We should always be growing, always learning and I hope that this stirs your mind in a way that you will process, then act on whatever you’re challenged by.
So... the 4 major lessons I’ve learned from the past year.
Knowing your why! We have to start here. I’ve seen this over and over again. Business owners that don’t know their why end up one of two places. They either burn out in the process of chasing their goals. Just bored and exhausted from the mundane day to day. No true fire in their belly to storm the next hill, but just going through the motions because their work is not attached to anything.
Or... they end up in another place. They accomplish their goals, survey the scene and realize it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. They look around and realize that this goal is only meaningful if they grow next year or go bigger next year. The goal had no why behind it and so it felt completely empty at the end.
I had lunch with a business owner last week who had some BIG goals... growth, expansion, and new locations. I was so excited for him. I’m a dreamer at heart and I love listening to other people’s dreams.
After he finished telling me about what he hoped for in his business, he made such a profound statement. He looked at me and said, “I’ve got to figure out why I want to do all that though.” I was kind of shocked he went there. I asked him to explain what he meant by that. “Well, I know that if I accomplish all of that, there’s just gonna be more goals on the other side of it and it will feel really empty if I don’t create spaces for people to meet, places for people to work and provide for their family, and a place for a community to come together.”
That’s it. That’s everything. When the why is firmly in place, it frees you up to chase after your goals knowing that there’s more behind it than just money and growth! Don’t forget that and know your why!
If you’ve read Jocko Willink’s book, Extreme Ownership you know that this is one of his main points. This may seem harsh. “You don’t know my team, Thomas!” You’re right, I don’t. But I have seen time after time over the past year, when a leader in a business takes extreme ownership, believing that every shortcoming in his business lands squarely on his shoulders, it frees his team up to operate at peak efficiency.
Why? Because now, the owner takes it upon himself to train, train some more, and then retrain. They take it upon themselves to listen to their team, learn from them, and lead them towards a common goal. They build processes to free their team-up from questioning every move and delegate authority for decision-making to develop leaders on their teams.
I’ve watched teams go from barely functioning to absolutely crushing it as the owner decided to finally lead instead of just getting by. It’s a beautiful thing to watch when a person takes that ownership. Doesn’t pass the blame, but views it as their sole responsibility to make sure their team succeeds.
That’s what leads to high-functioning teams. Now, that weight is heavy. The responsibility of running a business is heavy. But it is one that should never rest on the shoulders of your team. It’s too heavy for them. But when you shoulder the load, train your team, and equip them to do their job... it leads to a business functioning exactly the way it should.
Someone told me this years ago and I’ve seen it over and over this year. It’s why we start with Vision. If we can see it, if we can believe it, it becomes possible. But the moment we doubt and think that it can’t be done in our minds, we lower our ceiling and seal our fate.
Belief and positivity are such powerful forces in our businesses. Our teams need to know we believe in them and believe that they can get the job done. Our teams need to know where we’re headed and feel the belief that we can get there. It has to be a part of your culture. Many times we, without even realizing it, put a ceiling on our business by the way we communicate with our team.
But when we set the bar high, equip our team to perform, constantly review the goals and show our belief that we will get there... the impossible becomes possible.
But... this leads me to my last lesson.
The difference in my clients who are knocking it out of the park and the ones who are just getting by and still wondering why they haven’t picked up momentum is directly correlated to the amount of work they put in. It’s that simple. There’s no shortcut to success.
Elon Musk made me laugh recently when I heard him say this… ”People always ask how I became an overnight success. I tell them by working 16 hour days for 10 years!”
It’s so true, there’s no such thing as an overnight success. There’s no shortcut. Behind every successful business is someone who put in the work!
Don’t believe the lie that you can cut corners. Anyone selling you that is lying to you.
In fact, every time I have a sales meeting with a new business, people ask me, “Thomas what is BOP’s secret sauce? Why do the businesses that work with you guys keep getting better?”
The first thing I tell them is that there’s no magic wand, and if there WAS a magic wand to make everything better, we would charge a lot more for our coaching!
The second thing I tell them is we hold all of our clients to a high standard and we hold them accountable to putting in the work every single week. And if they don’t want to put in the work, we tell them we may not be a great fit.
Because there’s no shortcut to success. It’s hours of training, hours of implementing, and hours of work before the business gets to the point that it’s “Made it.” But you know what? Even the businesses that have made it are still working hard behind the scenes to stay there.
So that’s year 1 in the books with BOP... take these lessons and think about them for a bit today. Ask yourself where you stand with each of them and allow them to make you better like they have me.
Alright! Let me know what you think in the comments below. If you want more content, make sure to follow us on YouTube and subscribe to our podcast. As always, we’d love to hear from you!
Have a great week!
Must Have Tool For Hiring: An Organizational Chart Template
Human anatomy is simply the study of the structure of the human body.
In 1862, an antiquities dealer from Bridgeport, Connecticut named Edwin Smith was living in Egypt and connected with Mustapha Aga, another dealer.
Smith purchased an ancient Egyptian medical papyrus that dates back to the 17th century BC and had taken residence for all of those years in a tomb near Thebes, Egypt.
The Edwin Smith Papyrus as it would become known, is the oldest surviving deep-dive into 48 various cases of trauma to the human body.
The Edwin Smith Papyrus served as an external map to an internal world so others could quickly and systematically build on the prior learning of others. The papyrus is the oldest trauma text in existence and is remarkably cutting edge for its antiquity.
Each of our businesses has a structure, an anatomy.
In the same way science has uncovered eleven primary systems in the human body (i.e. cardiovascular, musculo-skeletal, etc.) it is crucial that we understand and publish the primary systems of our business along with the muscles that allow them to function.
It is time we value the simple business org chart in the way we value a simple anatomy drawing realizing that it brings empowering internal clarity for all of our employees to see the systems and muscles of the body.
To build a simple org chart need not be complex.
First, write out the four systems that are found in every business.
Administration (to include accounting and finance), operations or production, marketing, and then sales.
Each business is supported with these four structures, and each of the four structures will have various muscle sets to help them move.
Second, write out the minimum number of roles within each system that will enable the business to move.
Be very careful to not start writing the names of people in those roles, but instead to have a mindset of role first, people agnostic.
We must be careful to not build the business around certain people (because people may change), but instead to build the business around specific roles that we will then place in the skilled custody of people down the road.
It is rarely a good idea to find a person and then write a role. Instead, ask the business what roles it needs to best operate towards its identified mission.
Third, determine who is responsible for the day to day oversight of the entire body (business), and then who will be responsible for the oversight of each individual system and the roles that make that system work.
Once the roles are complete, only then do we fill the roles with people.
For some, one person may fill multiple roles (i.e. office manager, bookkeeper, etc.), for others, multiple people may fill one role (i.e. superintendent, customer support).
For the basic org chart, focus on the roles first, the people will come later.
Once built you will have created clarity for you, your team, and future team members to come. You will then be able to get on with the business of writing powerful job roles that are aligned with the proper structure of your business and then align the right people with the right role!
Happy Friday folks. Brent Perry with Business on Purpose here. It’s June... we made it. Summer is here, and I hope you are ready. My best piece of advice... don’t let your clients ruin your vacation.
Story of 2 clients this week talking about summer.
Mexico story
Freedom fishing in Florida
What are your summer plans?
So the question of the day, how do you save your vacations? And yes, I think you can save them before they even start!
Let’s get practical
Change your voicemail
Set your email with an automatic response
Don't open text messages
Thanks for your time. I hope there is something here that you can take with you.
We will talk again soon... but do yourself a favor this week. Enjoy these summer days!
Vision, Mission Statement, And Core Value Examples You Will Actually Use
It was beautifully designed and placed on the wall of their printing business in the cosmopolitan city on the southern coast of Nigeria; three wall plaques side by side by side.
The first plaque read “Our Vision”.
The second, “Our Mission”.
The third, “Our Core Values”
The world of business has been uniquely lulled into apathy as to the true value of a vision story, a mission statement, and a set of unique core values.
We usually respond to such with an eye roll and a “yeah, we have those” as if we just asked you about a collection of VHS tapes in your attic, or your old cell phones from the early 2000s; ”yeah, we have those.”
It is also clear that they are dusty and looked at only during your annual office clean-up day with sentiment and reflection.
We have stripped the power away from articulating and casting a clear vision.
We have butchered the value of a bomb-dropping mission statement.
We have relegated core values to strategic talking points that check the box of purpose in the eyes of customers or stakeholders.
Let’s reset and challenge ourselves to take a fresh look at the life-giving tools of a vision story, a mission statement, and unique core values.
First, a challenge to write your vision story.
A few thousand years ago we found a Jewish leader in a desperate place crying out to God for help and frustrated, “how long do I have to cry out for help before you listen?”.
Here was the response that ultimately came, “write the vision down, make it plain on tablets, so those who read it may run... if it seems slow, wait for it, it will surely come.”
Every business must have a vision, and that vision must be written and made plain to everyone because of the truth this wisdom, “where there is no vision, people scatter.”
Instead of making excuses as to why a vision won’t work, even though we’ve rarely tried, we must implement, commit, and believe that our team and our clients will have greater clarity because we have greater clarity.
Here are seven categories to work through as you write out a detailed, multi-page, bullet-pointed vision story.
The first category is the duration of the vision. How far out does this vision take you? Is it 18 months? 24 months? 36 months?
Our culture used to allow for 10 and 20-year visions. Those durations are much harder to gain clarity on because of the speed of our culture. We recommend that your first vision story be 24 to 36 months.
Instead of writing “36 Months”, write the actual date that is 36 months from now like “December 14th, 2025”. It makes your vision feel more substantive.
The second category of your vision story is the family and freedom section. You may ask, “but isn’t this a business vision?” Yes! Business and life necessarily intersect. Although we think we can “keep work at work”, we know better. What happens at home follows us to work and vice versa.
What vision do you see for your family in 36 months? Write down the ages of each of your family members. Write down what you hope for them by that time. Write down the things you wish to do and experience together. Write down everything you can think of in terms of the growth your family will experience because of the growth your business will experience.
Also, consider the freedom you hope to have as the owner of your business. Want to have your Fridays free to creatively think over new ideas? Write it down.
The third category is the finances section. What profit do you calculate your business to generate then work backwards? In order to generate that profit, you will need to spend and invest what amount? Add the anticipated profit to your anticipated expenses and you will have a rough estimate of your total revenue needed.
If it’s a crazy number, then think about it. Is it ambitiously silly, or ambitiously doable?
The fourth category is the product and service category. What products and services will be needed to generate the amount of revenue that you envision in the third category?
Write them all down.
The fifth category is the team category. What roles (not names of people, but roles) will be needed in order to market, sell, deliver, and administer the products and services that you identified that will ultimately get you to the total revenue that you envisioned?
The sixth category is the client or customer category. Describe in great detail who the person or groups of people are who will purchase and procure your products and services. Be detailed!
For example, “our best clients are business owners that have between two and fifty employees, been in business for at least two years, are cash flow positive, and struggle to find the free time to spend on the things that matter most in their lives.”
We also encourage you to write out details of who you do not prefer to work with as a client or customer.
For example, “we will not serve business owners who think they have got it all figured out, who demean their employees as widgets, who want us to ‘fix’ their employees but are unwilling to ‘fix’ themselves…”
The final category of your vision story is the culture category. If you were to walk into a restaurant and overheard a group of clients and community members talking about you and your business, what phrases would you want to hear them say?
For example, “I bet when you walk into their office, their team is constantly smiling and are at the same time locked in and focused on their mission.”
If you write a clear vision, read it (you can certainly leave the financial section out of your public reading) to your team, and in some cases to your clients; then we know that those who read it may run.
The mission statement and the unique core values are no different.
The mission statement is simply a written, memorizable sentence, less than 15 words, that gives clarity on the impact you make and forces people to either continue asking questions or to lose interest quickly and save you both time.
Our mission is to liberate business owners from chaos to make time for what matters most.
When asked, “what do you do for work?”, that is precisely how we respond. In the spirit of Simon Sinek, we do not respond with what we do or how we do it... but we respond with why we do what we do.
And what of your core values? They too should be written, should be challenged regularly, and should be unique.
Enron’s core values were Communication, Respect, Integrity, and Excellence. Written, but highly cliche, and rarely challenged.
Answer this, what are those things that you value, but we may not.
For us, we have a core value set that is unique.
Simply... Write It Down.
Work Worth Doing.
Work Is Faith.
BIG Wins.
Learn And Implement.
No other business we know has that set of core values. We talk about these at weekly team meetings and during our weekly check-in calls with team members.
Please do not presume, “yeah, we’ve got those.” Go back to the drawing board and put fresh attention on your vision story, your mission statement, and your unique core values so those who read them, hear them, and are influenced by them may RUN!!
Top 5 Hiring Mistakes
I once spoke with a former COO of Disney and had a brief conversation about how he spent the allotment of time he devoted to work each week.
His response was, “I spend 60% of my week trying to find the right people to bring into Disney.”
In my head, I’m thinking, “you mean to tell me that you are basically devoting all of Monday, all of Tuesday, and all of Wednesday to finding and hiring people?”
He obsessed over finding and developing the right people to fit the mission of Disney because he realized that the amusement of Disney is a commodity, you can find similar amusement at Six Flags, Carowinds, or any number of other theme parks around the world.
What makes Disney of higher customer value is the non-commodity part of Disney... people.
Coffee is basically coffee. What makes a great coffee experience is the barista who remembers your name and remembers that your Kindergartener just had graduation last week.
Hotel rooms are basically hotel rooms. What makes a great guest stay experience is the person at the front desk making you feel like you are the only guest.
Our product or service, whether it is ice cream, a five million dollar custom home, or a consultation, is simply a commodity. What makes it a repeatable experience is the person facilitating the relationship.
All of a sudden you realize why the former COO of Disney would spend at least three days out of every week locked in on finding and developing the right people.
As business owners recruit and train, there are at least five common mistakes that owners make that sabotage their product experience.
The first mistake we make in hiring employees is making excuses about why we can’t find people to hire.
Hiring is hard work and requires grit and grind. Very few businesses in the world have a line of people standing outside of their metaphorical door awaiting the slim chance of entry.
We must treat hiring with the same reverence, passion, skill, strategy, and accountability that we treat sales, operations, and accounting.
In a market where there are plenty of applicants, you must do the hard work of making your business attractive and irresistible, ensuring clear expectations, over communication, and motivational fit.
In a market where there are very few applicants, you must do the hard work of making your business attractive and irresistible, ensuring clear expectations, over communication, and motivational fit (aka - the same work).
Stop making excuses and start making blocked time in your weekly schedule to shake the bushes and let the world know that you’ve got a great opportunity available.
The second mistake we make in hiring employees is being unclear about what we are asking them to do.
Let’s be blunt. Please, WRITE A CLEAR JOB ROLE.
There, I said it.
There is no magic to this. What is the role that you are asking them to do?
Write it down in plain language.
No corporate speak.
Don’t say you want a self-starter or someone who is results-oriented unless you are hiring a salesperson or a visionary. Otherwise, realize that 86% of the world's population (according to PeopleKeys) have a passive personality which means they are awaiting instruction.
Map out all of the elements that you are asking of them day to day.
Don’t stop there, also provide an example weekly schedule of what their week might look like hour by hour and day by day.
You might say, “that’s unreasonable.”
My response, “then you are not ready to hire.”
In fact, please don’t hire if you are unwilling to bring clarity through a written role and written model weekly schedule. You are setting your new employee up for failure and it is not fair to them or their family, and it will negatively impact your business.
The third mistake we make in hiring employees is we have no idea what a new hire compensation will do to our finances.
Breaking even on a role is not a profitably winning strategy. We’ve heard many owners say, “if we can just sell X widgets then we will break even on this role.”
Let’s shift our mindset to seeing employees as investment in growth.
Many business owners use a 1 to 3 ratio when thinking through how to compensate an employee. For every dollar invested in an employee, the expectation is that the employee's work would return three dollars of real revenue (total revenue minus cost of goods sold).
It might be more, but we hope it would not be a lot less. Each employee is not brought in to just fill time and space, but instead to push the business ahead profitably towards its powerful mission.
The fourth mistake we make in hiring employees, and this mistake is widespread, is neglecting to properly onboard and then wonder why the new employee feels lost but won’t say anything.
The challenges we have with employees six months and six years from now are challenges that could be prevented if we are willing to make the time and put the hard work in now.
Hard work is not taking a mindset with employees that each should exhibit common sense. Candidly the idea of common sense may be a misnomer.
In many cases, the things that are “common” to you may not be “common” to me even if we live in the same community.
I still don’t understand some of the things my own neighbors do.
Relying on an adherence to common sense is a losing strategy.
Instead, we should intentionally bake in a defined, scripted onboarding process that includes at least three items.
First item is a scripted, hour-by-hour weekly schedule over four weeks so the new employee does not feel lost.
Second item is a set time weekly for your new team member to meet with the owner or supervisor for a fifteen to twenty-minute check-in.
Third item is a written list of questions that the owner or supervisor will ask during that weekly check-in time. Questions like what are you seeing and thinking? What questions do you have about your role? What do you need from me?
Also, use that time to offer feedback to your new team member with your insight to this statement, here is what I see in you and what I need from you.
Most business cultures do not have a predictable platform for employees to have encouraging and/or challenging conversations.
You must make time for this and implement it.
When a new employee comes into your business, they have a fresh perspective on the business that you will never get back so make the time to mine their perspective and learn!
The fifth mistake we make in hiring employees is not intentionally building our culture and instead just crossing our fingers and hoping for the best.
Culture is a biology term and draws its roots from works like tend and cultivate.
We must stop thinking that certain businesses are “lucky” because they have a good culture and other businesses are “unlucky” because they have a bad culture.
Your culture is a direct result of what you tend and cultivate. If you don’t like it, uncross your fingers and start tending and cultivating different habits, tools, conversations, meetings, goals, etc.
Build culture has little to do with ping pong tables and bean bag chairs and has more to do with written vision, mission, values, team meetings, clear expectations, regular feedback, encouragement, and challenge.
There is actually one more mistake that business owners make in the hiring process, and it starts before the hiring process even begins.
The unknown mistake that we make in hiring is recruiting.
We treat the recruitment of potential first-class employees like the beat-up computer kiosk in the dark corner of the Wal-Mart customer service area.
We just throw it out to a few people, “hey, we need an insert-role-name-here” and then hope they are powerfully motivated by our half-hearted approach and mindlessly submit an application.
We bring passion in marketing our business for external customers (those that purchase your goods and services), it is crucial that you begin to think of the pre-hiring process as marketing for internal customers (those that deliver your goods and services).
I’ll never forget walking into the recruiting room at the collegiate football powerhouse Clemson University. The room was filled with life, orange everywhere, and two huge floor-to-ceiling whiteboards that were filled with the last names of high school athletes from around the world. There is a full-time staff devoted and obsessed with finding the right athletes to fill the roles they are looking for.
When you are recruited by a collegiate football team, the red carpet is rolled out and the process is clear from front to back. Do we do that with our business? Why not?
Let’s stop playing games with hiring and remember that this is the livelihood of you and your family and your employees and their families.
Let’s take hiring off of the back burner and let’s treat it with the same vigor that we treat marketing to external customers.