How To Find And Hire The Right Person For The Right Job
This is a monumental week for us, today our team welcomes a new team member, and tomorrow is the six-year anniversary for our business.
To give you some context, we spend our days liberating business owners from chaos so they can make time for what matters most. We do that with powerful business coaching that helps business owners and key leaders build systems, processes, and purpose using the Business On Purpose Roadmap and then graduate onto the Business On Purpose Compass.
Business coaching is nuanced and requires a unique skill set that requires intuition and is hard to replicate. That is why we are a team of four coaches instead of forty at this stage of the game.
How did we find and hire the right person for the right job?
What I am about to share is simply the play that we have called when the game situation calls for bringing a new team member in. There are many ways to proceed... this is ours.
We will do well to remember that hiring and leading a team is not the equivalent to a primary care nurse checking vitals prior to a visit with a physician. Of course, vitals are a part of it; prior skill set, past employment, complimentary personality, etc.
Hiring should be thoughtfully intrusive and investigative. Not in a weird CSI television kind of way, but in a thoughtful, well processed, well-intentioned, goal-focused direction. Hiring an employee is more metaphorically aligned with marriage than it is with dating. We are not inviting someone to a job, we are inviting them to a mission, a calling, and we need their help to get there.
An in-human way of hiring is how most hiring is achieved; check for a pulse, make sure they are not too bazaar for what you are comfortable with, see when they can start, and send over the paperwork.
An incredible human way of hiring is slowing the process down. Not starting at the minimum requirements (experience, degrees, certificates, etc.), but instead walking them through the mission and the role with check in along the way.
We have eight steps that we thoughtfully walk a new team member through over an extended period of time in order both to make sure we are aligned with that person and that they are aligned with our mission.
Step one is pre-recruiting. Before we ever reach out to someone we check off five pre-recruiting items:
Step two to finding and hiring the right person for the right role is the initial phone or Zoom interview. It is intentionally distant and has a goal of simply reading the situation by asking general questions of background, experience, desire, and motivation.
Step three is the first in-person interview (if applicable to location). In this interview, we do not share anything about role specifics or compensation. Before you get married your biggest questions are not regarding future financial goals and or roles within the home. They are important to discuss prior to marriage certainly, but out of the gate, it is important to make sure there is a simple motivational fit.
We want to make sure this new candidate is aligned with our vision, mission, values, and culture. We spend the entire time reviewing those written cultural and purpose-centered documents along with our Org Chart and case studies so they can get clarity and ask questions.
We take just a minute to explain the compensation structure (i.e. base plus commission) but do not discuss numbers. Our desire is they want to be on the team because of purpose first, then we can get to some of the other elements of the agreement down the road.
Step four to finding and hiring the right person for the right role is the due diligence phase where we ask the candidate to take a DISC profile, complete an appropriate homework assignment to determine competency and motivation, and we follow up with three references from three different relational backgrounds to the candidate.
Step five is our second in-person interview (if applicable to location). This step is where we dive deep into the role, where that role fits within the larger organization, and how that role helps our business to take another step towards liberating business owners from chaos so they can make time for what matters most.
This is time that we roll out the specifics of compensation for discussion and review.
Step six is a live meet up with the candidate and their spouse (is applicable). We want to spend time with them in a casual environment so we can have unscripted discussions about life, business, and a variety of other things. It also allows another member of their household to get to know us better and hear our heart.
Step seven to finding and hiring the right person for the right role is the formal offer where we send a formal employee agreement of expectations within a formal offer email. We put a time limit on the offer and expect prompt response.
The final step to finding and hiring the right person for the right role is ONBOARDING! We script out the schedule and calendar of the first four weeks for our new team member. We also host weekly onboarding calls with our new team member for the first 90 days and ask them pre-set questions. We want them to focus on learning and growing rather than constantly wondering “what’s next?”
The hiring process is the decision-making process to helping your new team member find out if they really do want to run the marathon of your mission with you, the 90 day onboarding time is the stretch period before the race, and the 90-day mark of their new role is when the marathon gun fires at the starting line.
You owe it to yourself, to your team, your mission, and your new team member to take the time to do this right.
For help in this go join our Business On Purpose Roadmap membership community where you can work through a complete training on hiring and 30 other crucial elements of building a business that liberates you from chaos and makes time for what matters most.
Scott Beebe is the founder of Business On Purpose, author of Let Your Business Burn: Stop Putting Out Fires, Discover Purpose, And Build A Business That Matters. Scott also hosts The Business On Purpose Podcast and can be found at mybusinessonpurpose.com.
Does your business rely on you... or your system?
Employee-dependent businesses, lack of trust for employees, and never taking the time to systematize... so many things to get to this morning. Happy Friday friends I hope it’s been a great week. Thomas Joyner here with Business on Purpose.
We do a business owner lunch about once a quarter or so with businesses we have zero connection to. It’s so much fun as there’s really no expectation other than to invest back into some new businesses and make some new connections.
Yesterday I sat down with about 8 business owners and we began to talk all about Delegation... the goods, the bads, and the uglies associated with it. It was powerful and they left with some practical ways to own delegation in their businesses and left with multiple tasks to systematize and train on after they choose to delegate.
We were moving until we hit a roadblock. One of the business owners brought up the frustration of feeling like there were several things that he couldn’t delegate. “What do you mean by that?” I kind of asked him to go a little further in-depth.
“Well, estimating is probably 80% of my job. There are so many variables. So many things you have to know and things I can’t really train on to get this off my plate.”
I agreed with him for a minute but then asked this question.
“So what happens if something happens to you?”
You see, that’s what we have to think about. When we are the business, we’re severely limiting the ceiling we can achieve. Severely holding our business back from reaching its potential. But, what happens if something happens to us and we can’t estimate for two weeks, a month, 6 most? Does this business just stop estimating? Especially in times of COVID... we have to think these things through.
“The challenge,” I said, “is to get people to buy into your system, not buy into you.” Salespeople want to sell themselves first and foremost. Because oftentimes they view sales as someone’s not buying what I’m selling, they’re buying me.
While that sells a ton at first... you’re basically selling your time at that and becoming incredibly vulnerable as a business. But... when you can create a system that people are buying into, a customer experience that is a competitive advantage, then people aren’t coming to you for you, they’re coming to you for your system. Which, in turn, sets others up to help carry the load of estimating, bidding, coaching, and whatever complicated operations you may have.
It’s no different from when I started here at BOP. Scott was the face of this business for 7 years. When you called for business coaching you wanted Scott. And he is AMAZING at it. But think about this…
Think there aren’t a ton of different variables in our business? We coach businesses all across the country and world, in every different industry (in a time of pandemic I might add) and there’s problem-solving that goes into every coaching session. It’s a training nightmare getting me up to speed.
But here’s the thing Scott saw a while back. He doesn’t have to train me on 5,000 different variables, he just has to train me on our system. He put the time in to create a system that works industry-wide and then pushed me to focus on learning and implementing our system.
And the verbiage changes right. No longer is it…” Hey, come to me for coaching and we’ll get you straightened out.” It’s, “Hey, we have to get you in our roadmap to get you moving the right direction.”
You see the beauty and the power and the secret sauce, if you will, should be your system. That’s what unlocks almost unlimited growth. So now, it almost doesn’t matter who the coach is, the system is intact and the coach walks you through our system.
So, here’s the challenge for you. How do you build that system where you currently are? It doesn’t just happen. But...if you want your business to be able to thrive if something happens to you, for your employees to be able to run without wondering if they’re doing the right things if you want to rip the lid off your potential and allow for huge amounts of growth... PERFECT YOUR SYSTEM!
Or at least get started. Yesterday we talked a ton about just getting started. Because the perfectionist in us wants to say that if we don’t get it perfected quickly then it’s not worth doing. No, Scott took 6-7 years building this system, and it’s still changing today as we learn and re-implement. But we wouldn’t be where we are today had he not written it down and started creating it.
Don’t let it scare you... but also don’t believe the lie that you can’t get things off of your plate. It’s just not true.
Hey, if you haven’t already subscribed to our podcast or YouTube channel... check out my business on purpose on both platforms. So much great content coming out weekly!
Have a great weekend y’all and let me know if you ever want to connect.
Cameron Herold Interview
Hosted by:
Scott Beebe
Founder | Head Coach
Business On Purpose
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Is your success in spite of you?
So often there are so many variables linked to success, so how do we know which ones were the real reason behind it all? Well, that’s what we’re going to talk about this morning. Happy Monday y’all, Thomas Joyner with business on Purpose here.
I love meeting with new businesses and asking them what they attribute their success to. A couple of weeks ago I was meeting with a friend who ran a mortgage office and he said something that struck me.
We were talking about the Mortgage business and how on fire it has been recently. Clearly, he had a great year and originated a record number of loans for his branch. I started asking him what was behind that. He said a few things I expected like, “Well the rates were so low, people’s buying power jumped this year,” or, “so many people moved south due to the pandemic and needed a lender”, or even, “everyone and their brother decided to refinance their homes this year to lower their rate.”
All that stuff was predictable. But, what I appreciated was what he said next. He said, “Thomas, if you didn’t succeed in the mortgage industry this year, you probably can’t make it. It was almost too easy. This year we succeeded IN SPITE of ourselves, but the true measure is going to be next year where we have to succeed BECAUSE of ourselves.”
Now that’s a heck of an observation. You see, he realized that this year’s performance had very little to do with the effectiveness of his business. It didn’t have to do with the processes or workflow or even the customer service. Sure, that stuff helped, but the waterfall of business was flowing so strongly, that they didn’t have to be great at what they did in order to succeed.
But next year, when the pipeline is a little less strong, when the refinance market slows down and everyone has the rate they are after, the competition really kicks in. The playing field is narrowed so to succeed, it has to be ON PURPOSE!
I thought about that in the context of this pandemic. Are you ready for the year after the pandemic? Have you been living in chaos mode so long that you’ve lost your advantage? So when the pipeline starts to slow down a bit, your processes aren’t ready to keep the sales moving forward?
You see this is why we’re so passionate about systems and processes. They are tested in the midst of the fire, but they are perfected in the calm. Their worth is truly realized when there is nothing else to fall back on.
So, before it’s too late, where are the holes in your processes? Where do you need to take some time to work ON your business, so that your business is ready to handle what this year will inevitably throw at you?
You have to have a plan!
I loved what my friend said. They weren’t just expecting this year to go off without at hitch but were going back to customers and asking how they can improve by sending surveys. They were poking holes in the customer experience to make sure that, this year, they succeeded because of their systems and processes.
One thing we say around here all the time is, “There’s no competition for a well-run business.” And we truly believe that. The day you commit to that is the day you stop succeeding in spite of yourself and truly build a competitive advantage that keeps you in front for the long haul.
If that doesn’t make sense, reach out... let’s have a conversation. We want you to succeed because of yourself. To build a business free of the chaos! One that you can be proud of and not have to worry as much about the external factors blowing your business around.
Hope you guys have a great week! Make sure to follow my business on purpose on YouTube and subscribe to our podcast. Man, there’s so much good stuff on there.
Take Care guys.
Four Tools To Help Resolve Conflict At Work
It was silly; grown adults yelling and screaming at an umpire for a bad call... at a tee-ball game.
Why? Why do we lose our minds and create conflict?
Conflict is literally to strike together.
Think about metal grinding together... conflict... parks... explosion.
We are people with emotions. We are people with opinions. We are people with varying perspectives, worldviews, tendencies, and biases.
It is only logical then if you put two people together in an emotional situation where opinions can be expressed, or biases can surface; explosion may not be far behind.
My first manager at Pfizer Skip Clarkson used to say, “speak to people the way they wish to be spoken to.”
That mindset is our foundational rally cry when discussing the importance and power of the DISC profile. Understanding where a person is on the DISC graph gives you incredible empathy and intelligence when having the right conversations with the right people.
It is not our nature to think about another person when responding or reacting to a situation. We are bent to be me-first thinkers. What is in it for me? What does this mean for me?
It is not surprising that when two, me-first people connect, an explosion is imminent.
But what happens when explosion is the outcome? What happens when the tension of conflict gets red hot. How do we cool that tension, and repair any fractures or brokenness that comes?
We always say, life and business necessarily intersect. You can’t have something happen at work and then successfully “leave it at work” in the same way that home-things follow you straight to work.
John Ussery, who oversees business development at Shoreline Construction in South Carolina, said this recently in one of our coaching meetings, “You can’t change someone’s mind. But you can build rapport, offer empathy, and give them new information so they can change their own mind.”
In other words, the goal is not to try harder, yell louder, talk faster, cry harder, withdraw sooner, or demand more for less.
Instead, your goal is to be a stage-builder.
Stage-builders set a stage for which others have the opportunity to perform.
Stage-builders get very specific instructions from the performers quietly and behind the scenes so they can create the right atmosphere for the show to wow the crowd.
It is impossible for the stage-builder to win if the performer does not win. But if the performer wins, the stage-builder automatically wins every time.
The entire goal of a stage-builder is to, again as Ussery put it, “de-escalate a combustible scenario.” In other words, set the stage so the performer is in position to wow the crowd... then we all win.
In conflict resolution, being right is not the goal, instead, setting the right stage is the aim.
There are four tools to discover that we will equip you with to stock your emotional and relational toolbelt that will allow you to minimize the pain and discomfort of conflict, and instead build relationships that bring mutual joy and value.
The first of these four tools is listening.
Chris Voss in his book Never Split The Difference says, “it all starts with the universally applicable premise that people want to be understood and accepted. Listening is the cheapest, yet most effective concession we can make to get there.”
Listening is discovering, finding out new bits of insight, information, and perspective.
Listening is not thinking while the other person is talking and missing everything they are saying or having your arms crossed and eyes down like a six-year-old. Listening is not, showing apathy, having an attitude of “it’s fine”, or being selective in what you hear.
Active listening requires you to use your EARS...
The second tool of resolving conflict is mirroring; simply repeating the last 3 to 5 words of what the other person just said.
For instance: “you really frustrated me when you cut me off in that meeting”. You respond, “I cut you off in that meeting?” They correct, “well, I felt like my point wasn’t made yet.”
Mirroring forces more details. The goal of mirroring is to allow the other person to keep talking... and talking... and talking. Many times, they don’t want to be right... they just want to know that you are listening with your EARS!!!
Voss quotes Psychologist Richard Wiseman who studied restaurant servers and found the average tip of waiters increased by 70% using mirroring versus those just using the positive reinforcement of “great”, “awesome”.
The third tool of conflict resolution is labeling allowing you to verify the emotions of another person. Voss says, “give someone’s emotion a name and you show you identify with how that person feels.”
Labeling connects you to a person much faster than traditional “get to know you” methods
Voss gives us three phrases to use in your toolbox for labeling…
The final helpful tool to resolve conflict is simply your voice. Your voice can speed things up, or slow things down.
Remember again, rarely is a person defending the emotion they feel on the outside... but instead are instead trying to deal with the turmoil that is happening on the inside. Your goal is to dig that up. We’re not looking to put out the smoke... we want to blanket the fire.
When you are intentional about using these four tools, then you can reasonably hope for two outcomes; empathy and rapport.
Empathy is the capability of sharing someone else’s feelings, and rapport is a close harmonious relationship.
In using these four tools to resolve conflict, our goal is not to be right... but instead to speak to others the way they wish to be spoken to.
Do you let yourself dream about your business?
The same old thing... day after day. Nothing exciting on the horizon. Nothing new to speak of. Sound familiar? Great, let’s talk about how to change that. Happy Friday friends, Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here.
I had a mentor in Young Life that told me something 5-6 years ago that changed my life. Now I like change, by nature. I go looking for it. I like something new and different every day, so systems and routine and schedules taste bitter in my mouth, even though I know how beneficial they are to me and my productivity.
I went to a meeting for all of our regional Area Directors and the guy speaking to us was asking us if we dream. And not just practical dreams, but big, elaborate dreams. Dreams that kind of take your breath away and make you go… ”Man, if that really happened, it would change everything! For the better.”
You see, I think we get so stuck dealing with the fires going on around us, that we forget to dream of a different way of doing things. Or, we get so stuck with one part of our business, that it robs us of the ability to dream about what else we could offer as a product or service. We lose our ability to just wonder...what if?
As I sat there in the meeting I realized that I was in that boat. I hadn’t dreamed anything really BIG in a while. The speaker went on to talk about a meeting he sets with himself at 2 pm every single Friday. He calls it his “New/Next/Nap” meeting.
It’s exactly what it sounds like. He blocks out an hour at the end of every week on Friday afternoon at 2 pm. If someone tries to meet with him, hey I’m booked at 2 that day. It’s non-negotiable. And he does one of three things. He dreams about something “New”, something that could come “Next,” or some days he’s so beat, he just takes a quick power nap to recover from a crazy week.
This was a man who was responsible for 100’s of people, that made a meeting every single week to dream or take a nap. There was very little on the agenda. Some days he would dream about starting Young Life in a new town, so he would get in his car and drive over there to pray at a local high school. He might walk in the principal’s office just to meet them and see what happened.
Other days he would just make a phone call or two to see if anyone had any connections or just start writing down thoughts on what’s next. But here’s the cool thing. The growth and things that were brought about from one hour every Friday was game-changing. New ministries were started, new teams built, new plans were hatched to reach new communities. And some days he just realized his limitations and took a nap. Because he realized to be his best he couldn’t burn out.
You think... well that works in a ministry setting, but we have stuff to get done. I can’t just daydream and actually run a profitable business.
Oh really???
Google has recently started something called the 20% Project. They allow (and in some cases mandate) their employees to use up to 20% of their paid hours at work, working on personal projects. Working on things that may go nowhere. On innovating, developing...and DREAMING.
So, if it works for Google... one of the largest companies in the world, why can’t it work for you?
Don’t get so locked into the day to day that you can’t dream about a new product or service or a new business idea. It’s why we build it into our Vision story. We want you always innovating and always poking holes in your workflow so you can continue to get better at what you do.
So get into your Weekly Schedule. Start making time for it. I’d be surprised if it wasn’t life giving to you. You see, we don’t start a business so we can do the same thing day after day until we die. No, we get into business because we see that we can do things a better way from the get go.
And yet, somewhere along the way, we lose that.
So here’s my challenge today. Next week, go ahead and schedule your “New/Next/Nap” meeting with yourself. Fight to keep it on there and not push it aside. Be consistent with it over the next month or two. I guarantee your business will benefit from it... even if it’s just having a more rested, more productive owner.
Have a great weekend everyone and if you haven’t subscribed to our YouTube channel or our podcast, search my business purpose and join the family. We’re releasing new content there just about every day!
Take care!
What To Know Before Entering A Business Partnership... And Why Many Don’t Work
I’ve heard it said many times that “the only ship that doesn’t sail is a partnership”.
Why?
People.
We’re emotional creatures. We have shifting thoughts, ideals, perspectives, and interests.
What excites us today may not excite us tomorrow. For those business owners who are married, you already realize that marriage is a lifetime process to work at and build. Partnerships are not much different from the perspective of setting expectations.
The emotions of a partnership can range from relief to appreciation to frustration and even so far as paranoia.
Partnerships are mysterious. If a partnership is 50/50 then what happens when there is no consensus on an issue?
Typically, partners will push the can down the road until... BOOM, explosion.
Partnerships can work when great care is taken to make them work.
Here are a few things that need to take place before a partnership is ever entered into.
First, both partners must share a vision. If two partners have two visions, then they are likely to compete for resource and energy pushing the vision they most align with. A partnership with two visions has no vision at all.
Second, both partners must preemptively have hard discussions. How will ownership be divided? What day to day role will each partner play in the business and what is the fair market compensation for that role? Do you agree on the debt tolerance of the business? What about time commitments, non-competes, intellectual property, and entity endgame (sale, cash flow)?
These conversations are better discussed prior to the launch of the partnership instead of post-startup, or even worse, not at all.
Third, partnerships need to be mutually aligned and very aware of each personality within the partnership. Is one partner passive and the other active? Is one partner a driver and the other more compliant? Is one partner more loose to laws and regulations where the other partner is a stickler for compliance?
A partnership must function at the same speed... together.
Fourth, partnerships must discuss and agree on the financial details like reinvestment, debt, compensation, and draw percentages.
Running pro formas and budgets beforehand can save a lot of time, headache, and frustration on the back end.
Finally, partnerships must have a set weekly time they meet to discuss the business part of the business. Even better if these meetings have a set list of questions that the partners ask each other.
Questions like, what blind spots do you see? What opportunities are we missing? What support do we need to be extending to our team and customers?
These are hard things. Partnerships should only exist where the skill of one partner fills the gap for the lack of that skill in the other partner. If not, it is likely best that you stay away.
Ships are meant to sail. Partnerships often sink, but it doesn’t mean they all do.
A business coach is well placed to help mediate the regular communication of partners. Every partnership needs a dedicated, long term coach.
Who is a step ahead of you as an owner?
Do you have a business mentor? Why do you even need one? Let’s talk about that today... Good afternoon y’all! Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here.
When I started in Young Life, who I worked for almost a decade. I’ll never forget it. The first meeting we had with our Regional staff, they asked us to fill out this form and send it back to them. They asked for two names. One name of someone who’s a peer. Someone who’s praying for you, who knows you well, and who is walking alongside you as a friend.
Now, that one was easy for me. I had some great friends and had no problem thinking through 4 or 5 names to write down.
The second thing it asked for is a mentor’s name. And they wanted their phone number and e-mail so they could check-in with your mentor from time to time. I kind of broke out into a cold sweat as I realized I didn’t have one. I went and asked my boss about it and he said, “Hey, that’s fine for today, but you need to have one by the end of the month.”
So, I came home from the meeting and immediately started thinking about who might be willing to mentor me. I had to humbly go up to that person, tell them why I was asking them this, and then ask them to start meeting with me once or twice a month.
Here’s what I quickly came to realize about this relationship. It started off a little awkward, but as we met every other week for lunch, I soon began to feel so comfortable that everything topic-wise was on the table. Relationships, work, faith, masculinity, family, fitness... ANYTHING.
And I had someone that was pushing me to be the man that I wanted to be.
Now, if that worked in my personal life, why shouldn’t it work in the business world? I think sometimes we believe a bunch of lies about business owners. We believe that they’re too busy. I couldn’t disagree more. We make time for what we value.
I also think that sometimes we’re not humble enough to ask for help. If you’re a business owner it means that you have drive and can take initiative and are probably incredibly talented. But can you be humble enough to ask for help? Can you be humble enough to let someone in and actually take the advice they are giving? That can be a huge challenge.
The last thing I’ll say is I think we believe the lie that we’re the only business that has these issues. Here’s a trade secret...you’re not the only one struggling with employees, or cash flow or training, or vision... OTHERS JUST LEARN TO HIDE IT BETTER!!!
Trust me, there is not a problem that your business is experiencing, that someone else hasn’t already walked through and dealt with. And probably learned both the WRONG way to deal with it and the RIGHT way to deal with it. Don’t get stuck feeling alone in your problems.
So, how do you go about finding a mentor or a coach for your business? Well, find someone who’s business looks like what you want yours to look like. When I needed a mentor, I looked for someone who’s marriage I respected and who was a step ahead of me in life.
That process was simple, I went up to them and just said hey, I respect who you are as a person, as a man, and as a leader. I’ve been wanting to have someone speaking into my life and just someone I can bounce things off of a couple of times a month. Would you be willing to do that?
Maybe in the business world, it goes something like this…” Hey, I’ve always respected your business and your leadership. Could I take you out to lunch once a month and just pick your brain on some of the stuff going on in my business? I need some help.
People are encouraged to see they’re respected. People want a platform to give back and to encourage others a step behind. And here’s the thing... if they say no, ask someone else! They aren’t rejecting YOU, it may just not be the right time.
Everyone needs a mentor or a coach. Can you be humble enough to ask for one?
Think about great athletes, great writers, great leaders... they’re almost always directly linked to a great coach, mentor, or group of individuals surrounding them and offering feedback.
You don’t have to do it alone.
We tell people all the time, whether you hire us, or not, hire a coach or find someone to speak into your life. It’s the only way to get where you want to go as a business owner... and a person.
Here’s the last thing I’ll say. When you have a mentor or business coach, turn around and do the same for someone else. There’s always someone a step ahead of you and always someone a step behind. Be for someone what you want someone else to be for you.
Have a great weekend y’all! Don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube and podcast for some incredible content every week.
Take care.
Are you putting in the work?
What separates the good businesses from the great ones? The ones that get by from the ones that excel. Well, let’s talk about that this morning... Happy Monday friends Thomas Joyner here with Business on Purpose.
My wife and I tested positive for Covid this week, so I’ve been ripping through some books. I’ve loved it as I’ve read a book for fun, one for education, one for growth in my faith and I can just kind of bounce back and forth between them.
Now, I married a girl from Kentucky, a state known for its bourbon and, naturally, I’ve grown to truly love tasting new bourbons and hearing the story behind them. This may sound overly introspective, but the families that produce bourbon spend their entire lives perfecting their bourbons and I can appreciate the work that goes into it.
A few weeks back a friend handed me this. Pappyland, a story of family, fine bourbon, and the things that last, by Wright Thompson. It’s masterfully written and incredible storytelling as the author walks through his own family’s history and weaves it in with the story of the most famous and hard to come by Bourbong in the world, Van Winkle Family Reserve, or Pappy.
It didn’t take long for me to start taking notes as the story truly affected me. In 1972, the bourbon business was in a nosedive. Profits were meager and the distillery that the Great Pappy Van Winkle built was sold by his son and cheap imitations were made under the same label. They began to use a new yeast to produce the bourbon and, while it technically worked, it lost some of its uniqueness and intricacies that made it truly the best.
The author said something that I initially passed by and then came back for a second read. He said, “More and more today, we don’t want to do the work or take the chances required for greatness, and we try to fix all those shortcuts on the back end with marketing and branding- modern, fancy words that mean lie.”
Whoa! Let’s unpack that a bit. What’s he really saying?
He’s saying that too often we won’t do the work it takes to truly be great, to truly solve the problems our world needs, or we settle for something that’s good enough.
But greatness requires something else entirely. Greatness requires hard work and taking chances. Now, most people equate taking chances to foolishness. But I don’t think the two go hand in hand.
It’s not foolishness to innovate and try new things. It’s not foolishness to invest time into training our teams or making sure our client experience is the best it possibly can be. But, so often we stop short of that. We settle because IT’S. HARD. WORK!
That’s something we tell each client we work with. There’s no magic wand to wave that can magically fix your business. And if there was, we would probably charge a lot more for it!
It takes hard work. Day after day, week after week, month after month to build a great business. But here’s the amazing thing... what’s leftover after the hard work is the thing that lasts. Think about it with home building. When we use quality supplies and a creative approach, we build a house that lasts, not one that falls apart within 15-20 years.
So, the question stands. Where are you taking shortcuts? Where are you using marketing and branding to try to maybe in a roundabout way, lie to the customer? It’s one of the things I love talking through with business owners when we write out their unique core values. When they say things like excellence or extra-mile customer service or we want to be the best... I make sure it’s not just lip service.
Because you can’t take a shortcut and accomplish things like that. There is no shortcut to get there!
Have you ever put out an ad and thought, “I don’t even believe that about our company, but maybe it will drive sales?” We can do better than that.
I’ll finish with this... during my quarantine, I’ll admit that I got sucked down some rabbit holes on YouTube. I found myself watching an interview with Jeff Bezos the CEO of Amazon (and I know he stirs up mixed emotions, but hang with me here), but it was an interview with Jeff Bezos from 1999. The interviewer was asking him about the viability of a company based solely on the internet. Which sounds crazy to me 22 years later, that this was even a question!
But Bezos had some incredible answers. The one thing that struck me, was in 1999, in the midst of something that was a risk, something that had never been done before, Bezos said this about his company. “That’s what we’re about, if there’s one thing Amazon.com is about, it’s obsessive attention to the customer experience end to end.”
That’s not taking a shortcut. That’s innovation... obsessive attention to his work in a direction that invokes change.
So I’ll send you off with a question today. Where are you tempted to take a shortcut or where are you tempted to not put in the work in your business, that’s robbing you of being able to be authentic with who you are to your customers.
Let me say that again...Where are you tempted to take a shortcut or not put in the work in your business, that’s robbing you of being able to be authentic with who you are to your customers.
That’s a heavy question, I know, but doing the hard work will be what separates you over the long haul and builds lasting relationships with all who do business with you.
Thanks so much for listening, take a few minutes while you’re here to follow us on YouTube and subscribe to our podcast. I promise it’s worth your time.
Have a great week!
What do 18 mo old swimming lessons have to do with your business?
It’s almost spring and all of our friends are having their kids get refresher swim lessons... so what does that have to do with you and your business... well let’s jump on in. Good afternoon friends, Thomas Joyner here with Business on Purpose.
I was on the phone the other day with a good friend and client, Stephen Page with Guild Mortgage here in Bluffton and we were just catching up on life. We went through the normal routine of wives, work, and kids and he started telling me about his 18 mo old daughter taking swim lessons.
He was obviously a proud dad as he said he sat there and watched his daughter, who started walking a few months ago and who was now jumping into the pool, spinning around and getting back to the side.
At 18 months old!
And he said something that struck me... He said, “It’s amazing all the things she’s capable of at such a young age. I guess she just needed the opportunity to do it!”
We hung up, but that thought went round and round in my head. “I guess she just needed the opportunity to do it.”
How often can that be said in our own businesses? How often are we holding back the people we’re responsible for from growth, from succeeding, or from accomplishing new things?
One of the questions Scott has started asking me in our weekly onboarding time is this. “What do I need to let go of so you can continue to grow in your role?”
He seriously asks me that every week. What does he need to let go of, what is he holding onto too tightly, that is keeping me from growing in my role. Because his desire is to have team members that are owning their roles, growing daily and weekly, and never staying stagnant.
You see he realizes an important thing when it comes to managing us... our team can only ever maximize its potential if he’s willing to let go of things and allow me to fail, then learn, then grow, then accomplish. And maybe along the way we realize that I and the rest of our team are way more capable than we ever realized!
The second thing I wanted to point out is how this mindset of limiting our capabilities is actually crippling our businesses performance as a whole.
Think about this... how often do we dream about what might be in our business? How often do we say, “I wonder if we could grow to that?” Or, “What if we could do this in addition to what we’re already doing?”
So often, our lack of dreaming and courage is the only thing holding us back from growth! That’s why in our 12 week planning, we always have a future section. We want to keep track of ideas that will challenge us and not limit our possibilities. We want to push ourselves to a place of knowing our limits. Maybe it doesn’t work out, but at least it won’t be for lack of vision.
It’s what is so powerful about the 12 week plan. Let’s figure out 3 important things that need to be done, or 3 areas of growth over the next 12 weeks, and then put action steps, a real plan in place, in order to accomplish it.
That’s what being a business owner is all about. Empowering your employees, pushing them to grow and realize their potential...and then putting a plan in place for your business to continue growing for years to come.
Don’t wait on this! You can accomplish so much more than you realize you’re capable of. If we can help you put a plan in place or help you equip your employees, reach out to us. We’d love to run alongside you.
Make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel and our podcast for more amazing content we release every few days. Have a great weekend!
How Do You Build A System For Marketing, Not Just A Strategy?
So many folks we talk to want to talk about Marketing strategies, but not build a marketing system. So how do you do that? Well, let’s talk about it. Happy Monday friends, Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose.
I spent countless hours at Clemson University studying marketing. It was my major and something that actually made sense to me. Accounting, not for me, but Marketing... I loved it!
I had a professor that spent months every semester drilling into the 4 P’s of marketing. Product, Price, Placement, and Promotion. He drilled that marketing mix into our heads every minute we were listening to him... and it worked. For years!
However, I was shocked the other day, when a local business owner puts words to something that we have felt for a while.
“The 4 P’s are out... it’s the 4 E’s now!” he said. Now this man has started and built more businesses than I can shake a stick at, so when he speaks, I listen.
But everything he said, made sense as he put words to things we at BOP had been feeling for a while now.
In this new model of marketing, the consumer has grabbed hold of the power. They are more informed, less patient, and more demanding than ever. Gone are the days of being able to maintain your advantage over a competitor for months or years.
No, sometimes now your advantage can be only for a few minutes before someone knocks you off and offers a similar product at a similar price.
So, where does that leave us? Well, with the 4 E’s of marketing.
The first E goes from the product to the “Experience.”
The challenge becomes not just focusing on the product's deliverables, as your advantage may only last a short while, but focuses more on the customer experience and workflow you provide. How can you deliver the best product, WITH THE BEST EXPERIENCE, in a way that creates long term customers?
The second E goes from place, to “Everyplace.” Typical marketing was an on/off switch that interrupted people during their normal day. Think billboard advertising that grabbed a customer's attention away from their morning commute or a commercial in the middle of a football game that interrupts your experience.
When we shift the mindset to “Everyplace,” we’re trying to intercept the customer in a way that is convenient for them, and at the time they are most receptive to our marketing efforts. Think about apps that walk you through the sales the moment you step in a grocery store or an interactive video series that helps give you the pros and cons of a specific decision. We must begin to, as Brian Fetherstonaugh said, “Today we have to intersect consumers on their turf and on their terms. And that could be anyplace or every place.
The third E goes from Price to “Exchange.” Everything we do has a value attached to it and it’s not always monetarily. Think about Toms Shoes for example. They weren’t amazing shoes, but they were attached to a cause that made people want to jump in and engage. There was value passed along that wasn’t just about the money but was about the fulfillment to the customer.
So do you even know what is being exchanged to a customer when they buy your product? You must master explaining that in a meaningful way, especially in a climate where the price is no longer the only means of decision making.
Lastly, the final E goes from promotion to “Evangelism.” Marketers used to find one benefit add of their particular product and stick to that time and time again to sell. Today, that’s simply not enough.
Today, customers want to be tied into a mission and customer experience that makes them raving fans and more likely to rave about you to their peers. That’s the ideal sell, right? Create customers that sell for you. This may be a new term for many of you, but it’s creating a replicating marketing program that, like the energizer bunny, keeps going and going and going.
It’s social marketing because it appeals to all of our sense and need for belonging.
So take those 4 E’s. Don’t just think through a strategy, but build a system to engage all of them in the marketing of your business. When it comes to the experience, build out your ideal customer experience, write down the processes that need to happen and then build out holes in your workflow to accomplish it.
For everyplace, find creative ways to intersect your ideal customer and build repeatable actions that come alongside them. Don’t just waste money throwing it out the window, but build a marketing system you can track and analyze to make sure it’s worth it.
For exchange and Evangelism, build a powerful mission to go with your business that is the thread that ties it all together. Make sure your widget is not just a widget, but something that truly changes the client’s life for the better.
When you do all of these things, you bring marketing to a place that it will radically transform your business and the lives of those you sell to.
Thanks so much for listening, make sure you check us out on YouTube and subscribe to our podcast!
Have a great week!
How Do You Actually Get Things Done?
How do you filter through the noise, the constant barrage of images and content thrown at you on a daily basis? Well, let’s jump in and talk about it. Thomas Joyner here with Business on Purpose!
I read a statistic this week that blew my mind recently!
“On average, over 500 hours of content is added to YouTube... EVERY MINUTE!!!” That’s outrageous, over 500 hours of content is uploaded to YouTube every minute. That means you can never catch up.
Another statistic for you... Netflix currently has 200 shows and movies under production to be added to their streaming platform to be added during 2021. That means you could binge-watch a new series (not individual show) or movie every day for almost 7 mos and still not watch the same thing twice. That is mind-blowing!
In fact, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings recently was quoted as saying that their “biggest competitor moving forward will be an individuals sleep!”
Think about that for a second, your attention is being fought for day in and day out...every second of the day. But your attention is being attacked not just to keep you from sleep, but to keep you from working hard, spending time with your family, being productive, getting healthy, every aspect of your life is being fought for by outside influences.
So how do you fight back? How do you filter through all of the noise and begin to implement things in your business or organization that truly can change it!
Well, it starts with putting down the distractions for a bit and making time for what truly matters most.
I was sitting in a coaching call with several of our clients last week and several of them all sat there and said, Thomas, it’s so hard to just find time to get started! I have great intentions of doing the Roadmap, but I just get caught up and stuck and I look up and the day or week is gone!
So, we pointed them back to the Weekly Schedule. It’s why we implement this with every business owner we work with. Until you can dictate what your schedule is, you don’t stand a chance to move past the chaos. You have to set a time, EVERY WEEK, to work on your business. We call it dental chair time…
Think about the last time you were at the dentist with that hygienist all up in your mouth cleaning...you don’t ask them to stop so you can answer an email or take a call or put out a fire. NO! You’re in a dentist appointment. And here’s the funny thing, we believe that a dentist appt is a better excuse for being off the radar than taking time to work on and build our business.
It’s no different! Set time in your schedule every week to implement. Imagine the clarity you would have if you took 2 hours a week as time to get perspective on what is going on? Imagine how freeing if you just cut your phone off or put it on do not disturb and closed that email tab at the top of your browser to give yourself enough time to filter through some of the noise and make game-changing decisions about what you want to implement.
Chaos is fighting for your attention! There’s no doubt about it. The question is can you push the pause button on the distractions long enough to do something about that. To cut through all of the awesome content that’s being thrown at you, to process it, and figure out what you’re going to implement in your business.
As Scott loves to say and Joe Calloway made famous, “Vision, without implementation, is hallucination.”
Don’t fall into the trap of getting distracted, but build your week up the way you want it to look, and then DO NOT WAVER from it. Implement, implement, implement. It’s the only way to take your business where you want it to go.
Welcome to this online tutorial for How to own your fitness...and not get discouraged! Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here, so this year at BoP we’re spending a good chunk of time on you, the business owner or key leader, as a person and not just in a business role. We want to touch on every area of life...and that has to start with your health...and your fitness.
The first thing I will say is if you knew me in the past you would laugh that I might be teaching a tutorial on this. I led an active lifestyle, I loved all things outdoors and loved to move as long as it was attached to an activity.
But...going for a run? Nope, not unless I’m being chased. Working out? Couldn’t have thought of a worse way to spend an hour of my day. I wanted it to be fun and exciting and to see results instantly.
Friends of mine used to actually make fun of me as I would work out for about 6 weeks a year, get bored and decide it’s just not worth it. Rinse and repeat for the next 8-10 years until...I was married and had a kid...or had two kids.
All of a sudden, I realized I want to be around for years. I realized that my future health affects people around me. But here’s the thing. It doesn’t just affect me 25-30 years from now, no it affects me today. Of course, I want to be around for a long time. I want to know my grandkids and teach them to hunt and fish, but I can’t just stay motivated by something 25 years in the future. No, I need some positive reinforcement today.
Here’s what I’ve realized through this process of beginning to own my fitness...it’s lowered the stress levels I have running throughout the day. I get a good workout in the morning and I respond to life differently. The way I can play with my kids and chase them around with more energy. The clarity with which I move through the day and the sleep I get at night is all improved. I’m a better husband, dad, friend and employee because I’m getting moving and getting in really good shape.
I’ve heard it said that, “When you are healthy, you have 1,000 dreams, when you’re not healthy, you only have one...GET HEALTHY!”
And it’s so true!
So, what holds us back from taking ownership of our fitness?
The first thing I think we struggle to do is find the right motivation. For me, it was making sure I’m around for a long time for my wife and my kids. So, everytime I’m trying to decide if I’m going to wake up, I picture their life without me in the future, but it’s the motivation I need to get my tail out of bed and get in there at 6 am.
One of my favorite things Dave Ramsey asks his call in guests is, “Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
Obviously he’s talking about finances, but is it any different with your fitness? Are you sick and tired of being overweight, stressed, having a lack of energy, or concerns about future health? Until that statement is true and you find the right motivation, you’ll never get into the gym or out on a run.
So what’s it for you? Is it your family? Is it being a better version of yourself today? Is it an improved day to day life with more energy and a healthier lifestyle? Find your motivation and hold onto it in a way that propels you to success.
The second thing we struggle to do is make an investment that actually costs us something. Part of my problem is I wanted to get in shape until it cost me something. And I would always stop short of that moment.
Think about it...why do you think 9 out of 10 machines in a Planet fitness are empty? It’s because 10 bucks a month isn’t enough cost to get you off your butt and into the gym! It’s just not. If you have the option of binging another show on Netflix or sleeping in or get to the gym, you never made a significant enough investment to force you to go.
Now, please, do not use this as a reason to buy a $2,000 Peloton if you don’t have the money, or hire a personal training. If you have the money for that great!
But I know, for me, I chose a gym that was not the cheapest, but the one that was a big enough investment that I force myself to take advantage of the investment and actually get something out of it. I’m too cheap to pay good money for a CrossFit membership and NOT use it!
So what’s the investment for you? I had a buddy one time who wanted to get in better shape and he couldn’t find the motivation. Finally, I looked at him and said if you really want to get in shape here’s what you do. Put $250 bucks in a checking account. Every time you skip a workout you pay me 20 bucks. He looked at me like I was crazy.
No, seriously, you value your money enough to not just want to give it away. Plus, every time you workout it will feel like you’re saving 20 bucks. So, we did it and the first time he missed, he was ticked! But, I held him to it and he venmo’d me 20 bucks.
Again, two weeks later, he missed. 20 more bucks! And he was hot about it! For the next month he never missed a workout and by that time had built the habit necessary to make it work and he was past the initial misery of starting.
So don’t do it alone and find someone to hold you accountable if that’s what it takes.
The last mistake most people make is focusing on the end instead of the process. Instead of improvement! Most people sit here and say...gah I need to lose 10 lbs. That’s the end goal, right? But what we need to do is build a process to accomplish that goal. The question we need to ask is, how can I make small changes in my life to accomplish the goal. Then, when the goal is accomplished there is a process in place to keep us on track, not some fad diet or workout plan meant to get results fast.
According to a US News Report, “95% of people fail to get the results they wanted when they started the diet.”
They go on further in the article to say that often times people don’t fail at diets, diets fail people. That’s a powerful thought. These fads have very little ability to deliver what you want. They’re too extreme and oftentimes not realistic for the long term. They’re for triage, not for preventative care and health. So build a system targeting the results you want and then trust the process.
Celebrate the wins along the way. Make it fun! Build habits that are life changing!
So what’s the system for you? Do you like reading? Buy a book that will help you get where you want to go or get off on the right foot. Do you like Podcasts? Find a highly recommended one that can help motivate and hold you accountable. Take the first step, don’t get concerned with finishing the race day 1!
For me, I didn’t want to go in and hit the weights 6-7 days a week, knowing I’d burn out and be miserable. No, my goal, and the system I built for myself, was to exercise more days in 2021 than I didn’t exercise. So, that means Monday and Tuesday I work out before my kids get up. I take Wednesday off. Thursdays I workout after work and Fridays during my lunch break. Then I enjoy the weekend, rest and have fun with my family and I’m back to it on Monday. It’s a system that can work for a long period! Not just to accomplish a quick goal.
So my last thing I’ll say is this. Don’t wait to make a resolution. Build a system that works NOW! It’s worth it. Find your motivation, make the investment needed to get you moving, and focus on the PROGRESS along the way
Your health and fitness cannot be ignored, so take ownership of it today!
How To Determine A Return On Marketing Investment
“Ugh.”
That was a direct quote from a client when I asked a simple question, “how is your marketing going?”
This post is as much an encouragement to marketing support service businesses as it is a call to action for business owners who are frustrated with trying to determine their return on marketing investment.
The barrier to entry is about the same for palm readers, business coaches (ahem), and marketing service providers...not very high.
Just about anybody can hang a shingle and call themselves a marketing agency. That loose availability does not mean there is no significant value to be found in a well-run service.
So how much should you spend as a marketing investment, and for goodness sake, how do you realize a return on your marketing investment?
First, let’s discuss how much to invest in the first place. Your planning and delivery of marketing in your business should be as intentional and well thought out as product development, product delivery, accounting, sales, and all other systems of the business.
Resources must be spent on marketing (the definition of marketing is not limited to advertising and promotion) with the same intentionality as resources spent on things like employee compensation, product and service delivery, and insurance coverage.
In conversation with a marketing agency owner, I asked, “how much should a small business invest into their marketing?” His response was, “it depends.”
He went to provide a range that I thought was very helpful.
Three percent of gross revenue (total income minus cost of goods sold) would be a low marketing spend, whereas twelve to thirteen percent of gross revenue would be an aggressive marketing spend.
The question then becomes, “what do we invest are marketing resources into?”
This is an important mind shift in understanding that marketing is not a cross-your-fingers, hope-for-the-best, haphazard shot in the dark.
Marketing is a system.
Just like the conglomeration of all of the bones in your body combine to form the skeletal system, and that system works in calculation and coordination, so all the conglomeration of promotional elements in your business work to form the marketing system.
I like to think of marketing in terms of channels or canals. You have the channel of social media, the channel of your website, the channel of live events, the channel of advertising, or the channel of say a podcast or YouTube.
Each channel provides a connection point for you to connect with your potential or actual client or customer.
The most overlooked, and yet perennially most effective form of marketing for just about every business on earth is quite old fashioned.
Word of mouth. Yes, word of mouth marketing is a channel, and is probably the most trafficked channel your business has.
There are three things you can do with your marketing system and the channels that combine to collectively share your mission with a targeted world.
First, map out the exact channels that should exist in your marketing system and turn a blind eye to the channels that are distractions.
All of your friends may be seeing great success with a certain social media platform. You might even hear a podcaster say, “you’ve got to be on Mashblot (a fictitious social media channel I just made up)!”
No, you don’t. You should invest in channels where your target client or customer is paying attention. If they are not looking at Mashblot, may be best to bypass and go to a channel that fits.
For some, you may not need to be on social media at all. We coach many contractors who are far better served to set up two lunches per week with vendors, general contractors, Architects, and Developers instead of trying to generate leads on Facebook, YouTube, or the platform du juor.
What channels are your clients paying attention to? Map it out.
Second, create a process to nurture and educate that channel. You can ask a simple question, “what is the end game?”
For your social media...what is the end game?
For your in person lunches...what is the end game?
For your website...what is the end game?
Our coaches spend a significant amount of time face to face with business owners. Over lunch or coffee, our end game is to coach! When a non-client reaches out to us to “learn more”, we try to spend less time talking about the features and benefits of our deliverables, and instead we actually coach them during that time.
It allows our client to get a feel for actual coaching and to evaluate their need for transformation.
That is our end game, coach well and allow the business owner to experience freedom directly.
For us, our website, social media channels, the My Business On Purpose podcast, and Live Events all exist to facilitate an in person or virtual meeting where we can coach in real life and understand the reality of a particular business owner.
Once you have your specific and finite channels, each channel must have a process all aimed towards an end game.
Thirdly, do the work and track.
Marketing is often characterized by a flowing group of artistic free-thinkers, and instead is both art and science. Certainly marketing requires ongoing creativity, that then gets packaged into a system for repetition.
Free thinking by design is not repetitious, and yet marketing demands consistency and repetition.
Business owners must know that in order to market well you must harness the ideation of free thinking, and then do the work.
For example, each one of our coaches writes one article per week between 500 and 800 words...every week.
Our coaches are not journalists, they are not career writers, they are business coaches. Yet the repetitious work of marketing requires content, and content requires writing.
Writing for our coaches is a time for each to reflect back on the questions and challenges their clients have faced the week prior and to simply answer those challenges. Just like I am doing in this post.
Once written we then turn that content into blog posts, LinkedIn articles, a podcast episode, a YouTube episode, and sometimes as a keynote at a live event. All that from one article.
When the channels are mapped, the processes are spelled out and the work is being produced, you can then do the important work of tracking your progress.
Each week we record metrics on a simple client spreadsheet where we track downloads, visitors, purchases, members, book sales, views, and other metrics that give us a picture of the progress within our marketing system.
Marketing has been billed of late more as the Vegas-style luck of inserting one dollar into a machine and getting two dollars out of the machine instead of the blending of art and science, free-thinking and repetition.
Marketing is a whole lot more than hoping to hit the jackpot on the simple pull of a lever, and it is worth you doing the work to uncover it.
Scott Beebe is the founder of Business On Purpose, author of Let Your Business Burn: Stop Putting Out Fires, Discover Purpose, And Build A Business That Matters. Scott also hosts The Business On Purpose Podcast and can be found at mybusinessonpurpose.com.
Why I Can't Focus And Get Clarity
My wife and I were at a gala recently...it was a socially distant, sparse crowd celebrating the culture-changing work of Martin Luther King Jr.
A business owner came up to me and said, “I’m reading your book and want you to know that I feel like you are writing directly to me.”
Curious, I asked, “what's in the book made you feel that way?”
Her response, “I’m in constant chaos.”
We regularly poll our clients and those who attend our in-person live events and online workshops and the number one piece of feedback we receive from business owners and key leaders is, “I cannot focus.”
Focus is an interesting word that carries with it the ideas of clarity, center, core, or bull’s eye.
We blame the current culture of screens, screams, and scram. The truth is we don’t have to scroll the devices (screens). We don’t have to turn on the news and noise (screams). We don’t have to do everything we have been invited to do (scram).
Hundreds of years ago the word focus was synonymous w/ a fireplace in a home... a hearth that was the center of the room where people gather.
I love a (controlled) fire. Honestly, one of my favorite places on earth may be wherever there is an outdoor fire that we can stare at. I’ve heard it called “nature’s tv”.
It’s true. I cannot stop staring, constantly stoking this dancing stage of contorted and vivid flames; never the same shape or rhythm and yet in constant motion.
Business owners tell us they feel like they are constantly trying to put out little fires that always exist. But what if those “little fires” are not threats to the business, but instead are lights along the path towards the vision that has been laid out.
What if those are fires not meant to be extinguished, but instead meant to light the path to the real destination.
We cannot focus because we do not want to put in the effort to focus. Please don’t be offended, but for most of us (save our first responders whose job is to intentionally respond to chaos), we react to chaos because it makes us feel needed; harrowed.
Robert Cardinal Sarah in his book The Power Of Silence says, “Without noise (chaos), man is feverish, lost. Noise gives him security, like a drug on which he has become dependent…noise is a whirlwind that avoids facing itself.”
We get to tell people when they ask how we’re doing, “I’ve just been so busy.”
Busy is not envied. Busy is not the goal.
Helpful, meaningful, transformational, impactful, useful….those are worthy goals.
Busy is... busy.
How do we stop succumbing to busy, loosen our addiction with the “feeling needed” that chaos brings and instead be content in who we have been made to be?
We need to introduce more silence into our day-to-day.
Sarah goes on to say, “Without the capacity for silence, man is incapable of hearing, loving, and understanding the people around him. Clarity is born of silence.”
Clarity is born of silence.
Do you want clarity? You will need to make more time for silence that Sarah contends leads to a heart “that is able to hear, to listen, and to welcome.”
One you go silent, all the sudden you will begin to hear the things that truly matter instead of just the things that are busy.
Silence used to be a societal value, now noise has assumed the podium. You can take it back... and gain the clarity you are looking for.
Scott Beebe is the founder of Business On Purpose, author of Let Your Business Burn: Stop Putting Out Fires, Discover Purpose, And Build A Business That Matters. Scott also hosts The Business On Purpose Podcast and can be found at mybusinessonpurpose.com.
What does it mean to “Turn the Corner” as a business?
What are we aiming for when you come on as a BOP client? What’s the goal and how do we get there?
Happy Friday friends, I’m excited to talk through that today it’s Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose.
A few months ago I had a couple come in to talk about potentially taking them on as clients. They had great numbers. Great sales and revenue, a solid team, a thriving business, and satisfied clients. But they were exhausted from wearing all of the hats in their business and feeling like they could never take a break because 100 different balls would drop if they did.
So, I looked at the husband and asked, “So what happens if you keep going like this.” He looked at me with full sincerity and said. “I’ll die, no literally I’ll probably have a heart attack.”
And I don’t think that feeling is foreign to you if you’re a business owner. The constant pressure to keep things moving, to not let a single ball drop, and the pressure you feel to help provide for your employees and their families... it’s a HUGE burden.
But it doesn’t have to feel like you’re going to die. In fact, we prefer that it didn’t.
Fast forward almost 5 mos. That same couple is sitting in a coaching meeting with me last week and were absolutely beaming about a new hire. But not just any new hire. A new hire that they had prepared for and were able to offload so much extra work to. We’ve spent the past almost 5 mos developing a system for their new admin to thrive in, so that now that they made a great hire, this person is fully able to do the job she’s hired to do, EXACTLY the way they want it done!
They looked at me in our coaching time and said, “Thomas, we feel like we’ve turned the corner.” Obviously, I’m smiling as it’s just fun to be in the room and watching them so excited about where their business is headed, but it was more than that. Because they are above the chaos right now and could dream about where they want their business to go for the first time in years!
We got to talk about new neighborhoods they wanted to serve and new services they could offer. They can pour back into their team as they finally have the time to offer them. They can even focus on the little details that always slip through the cracks as they had the margin and the capacity to handle the little things again.
And THAT, is what we want for businesses. That’s “Turning the Corner” as a business owner. Being free to work ON your business and not simply in your business.
We went on to talk about a lot of things last week, but as I gave them a heavy load of things to jump on, he looked at me and laughed. He said, “I’m going back to the office to jump on this right now,” because his business was in a place where he was freed up to be the owner and work ON his business.
That’s freedom folks! That’s being liberated from chaos! And the fun thing for me to watch is now he’s a better husband, a better father, a better employer, and has 10x the life satisfaction he had because he’s not running around 24/7 in panic mode. He put in the hard work, and trust me it’s hard work, to build systems that work whether he’s the one doing them or not.
And HE WILL NEVER GO BACK!!!
Stories like this are why we do what we do. We want to be a part of your businesses story...your businesses liberation from chaos! To partner with you and provide perspective from thousands of hours of business coaching across an incredibly broad collection of industries to help you, as a business, turn the corner.
If we can help in any way or you just want to hear a bit more, please feel free to reach out on here, or check us at out mybusinessonpurpose.com. Subscribe to our podcast and youtube channel and begin the journey.
And know that we hope to do it alongside you!
Have a great weekend!
What’s your word for 2021?
How do we stay laser-focused and provide personal accountability moving forward in 2021? Well, we’ve got some great ways to help this morning…
Happy Monday friends! Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here.
So, a few years ago, my brother in law and I were sitting around the pool over the 4th of July just talking about the year. He was asking me a few questions about my year and how I stay focused on the direction I want to head.
I was a little confused about what he meant, so I asked him to elaborate a bit on what he was asking.
“Well, my word for the year is ____ and it’s been a great way for me to stay focused on what I want for our family and for me as a man.”
I was kind of embarrassed because I didn’t have anything like that. Now, I’ll be the first to say that I like being a free spirit. Putting labels on things feels so constricting and feels like it sucks all of the spontaneity out of life. Just ask my wife about the battle it was to just get me to click that little box on Facebook about being “IN A RELATIONSHIP!”
I felt like it would take the fun out of life and lock me into a life of boredom.
BUT...what I’ve realized as I’ve begun this practice is it doesn’t lead to a life of boredom, but a life of freedom. Freedom to choose what really matters in life and to go chase it. Freedom to stay focused on what I really want to focus on and not get distracted by the junk that tends to get in the way!
So...the past few years I’ve started to take the first week of the year to think, pray, marinate on the word or phrase I want to use and chase after for the year. Some years I’ve knocked it out of the park and others I’ve looked up in June or July and realized I haven’t even thought about it since January. Having a baby or two will do that to you.
This year, my phrase for the year is Disciplined Peace. Disciplined Peace.
What does that mean?
Well, I felt like 2020 was marked by a lack of peace. The entire year felt like anxiety was constantly right below the surface. Chaos was forever in our face. For me, my discipline went out the window as I felt like I was putting out whatever fire was right in front of me and just trying to survive.
What I’ve seen at the start of 2021 though, is that the fires are still burning. They aren’t going away. So how can I have discipline in my faith, with my family, with my fitness, with my friendships (man a lot of F’s right there)...with having fun, with learning to rest, with my work. All of that! How can I be disciplined in the areas that matter, so that it frees me up and leads me to Peace.
At the end of the year, I want more peace in who I am, who I was created to be, where my family is headed, in my marriage and in living life.
So...Disciplined Peace. Knowing that if I’m disciplined in the things that matter, it will lead me to a life of peace.
Ok...let me turn it back on you. What’s your word for the year? What’s the phrase you want to hold onto to push you where you want to go this year? Don’t just make something up. Take a couple of hours or a few mornings this week to process it.
I’ve actually set aside time in my weekly calendar to ask the question, “Was I disciplined this week in a way that led me to peace?” I want that question before me all the time. So far, the answer has been yes! I’m excited! I’m motivated. And I’m making time for what truly matters.
How can you do the same? Please feel free to comment your word for the year. I’d love to hear what you’ve got and see how we can encourage each other over the next few months!
If you’d like to hear more and get more content, please make sure to bounce over to mybusinessonpurpose.com and subscribe to our YouTube channel and podcast. It’s gonna be a great year!
Have a great week!
Get Rid of Resolutions... Lean into habits!
Any idea what percentage of Resolutions are still intact after the month of January? Well, let’s get into it.
Happy Friday everyone, Thomas with Business on Purpose here.
Recent studies have shown that just under 30% of resolutions stick beyond the month of January! That’s wild!
More than 2 out of every 3 New Years Resolutions are given up on by the end of January. I laughed when I read this, but there’s even a day called “Quitter’s Day” where Scientists expect you to fail on your resolutions...and it’s January 19th!
So, make it past the 19th and you can successfully say you beat quitter’s day!
I’m kidding, but the obvious question stands to be asked...how do you follow through? How do you make it? How do you implement change?
Well, if you subscribe to our podcast, which you should, or if you’ve followed along on Facebook, which you need to be doing, you’ve heard us talk about Habits. Habits are what is left over after your resolutions have failed!
So... STOP MAKING RESOLUTIONS!!! Start making habits.
So how do we do that? How do we make sure to instill habits that will work for a long period of time instead of ones that are quickly over on “Quitter’s Day?”
Well, I’m going to give you a book to read, and 3 practical ways to begin implementing habits that last instead of resolutions that fade.
First, a book to add to your list. It’s called Atomic Habits by James Clear. It’s powerful, practical and a quick read. We don’t get any kickbacks from them, just want to help you on your way to accomplishing your Vision for 2021.
Ok, so the first thing I want to do is touch on a pitfall that keeps people from creating habits and combat that with a practical strategy.
The first Pitfall I see is people focusing on the finish line instead of the process. People spend all of this time thinking about the destination, the end result, the losing 20 lbs, the doubling your revenue. But you can’t lose 20 lbs if you can’t lose 2. You can’t double your revenue if you can’t grow sales this week.
It’s why we focus so hard on the 12 Week Year! It’s splitting your BIG goals into bite-sized chunks and doubling down on the process instead of the end result. Do you know what happens? You build daily habits for achieving those goals. You find ways to get it done today...instead of getting overwhelmed with getting it done for the year! Habits start with baby steps and it’s so easy to get overwhelmed and defeated by focusing on the end goal that’s so far away.
Number two...have no skin in the game! This is why 90% of the machines are sitting there empty at Planet Fitness. There’s not enough skin in the game. If you don’t go work out, what’s the big deal...it’s only $10 a month! It doesn’t sting, it doesn’t propel you to go and make good on your investment. Now, don’t go and throw money away! But there is something to taking a step that you FEEL. I spent years saying...I’ll get in shape. But not until I spent my hard-earned money did I start going 4-5 days a week. But the cost forced me to make a habit! And that’s what counts.
So, what are the investments you need to make that will force you to develop a habit? That will sting until you do something about it? Is it investing in a new employee? Is it spending money on an estimating software that you know you need? Again, don’t throw money away, but put enough skin in the game to force yourself to learn a new habit and get moving! Trust me, those motivating factors can get you going immediately.
The last thing I see all too often is people trying to do it alone. It sounds like common sense, but having someone to push you and hold you accountable is paramount to establishing habits that last. Who have you shared your resolutions with? Who have you told your Vision/your dreams with? Is someone checking up on your progress weekly?
That’s why we speak about our 12 week plans every single week in our team meetings! It’s accountability. There’s nowhere to hide! But if I know I’m going to be asked about my goals...I start building habits to get there.
So who do you need to invite in? Who will help you on your journey? Encourage you when you’re frustrated? Pick you up when you need it? Find that person or that group and do the same for them. We can’t do it alone! We weren’t designed to do it alone, but were created to do life in community. Don’t believe the lie that you can do it alone.
So get after it today...revisit those resolutions that you set for 2021 and figure out what habits you need to implement to reach them. Again, your habits are what’s left after your resolutions fall by the wayside. So use those habits to push them all forward and accomplish your Vision for 2021.
I promise you it will be worth it.
Make sure to subscribe to our podcast and YouTube channel for tons more content this year!
How To Make Time For Everything
Amidst the various equalities throughout our world; wealth, culture, educational opportunities, food security, etc., there lies one resource that will always be provided in equal measure.
Time.
Every week our clock resets with 168 units (hours) of time that systematically tick off each second for 604,800 consecutive beats.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Edward called me last week and asked simply, “why does Cynthia stay till 630 every night to get her work done? Every week, she is logging overtime in a role that has never needed over time.”
Business owners around the world are asking, “how do I make time for everything?”
Key leaders and employees ask the same, “how do we make time for everything?”
Before we suggest a helpful strategy, it is first crucial that we dive into why we can’t seem to make time for everything.
The answer lies somewhere within the not-so-forgotten path of silence.
During the year 2020 the American culture played its part in a pandemic that was plagued by rhythmless noise without the solid drumbeat of coordination, vision, and planning. Within that pandemic lodged a feverish height of social, political, and racial topsyterviness.
The beginning of 2021 did not relent as the Government spiraled in response to an insurrection within the Capital building fueled at the highest level of power.
The headline for each evening news program became a ping pong match of interchangeable breaking news revolving between COVID and protests.
Over time, although both were incredibly serious and important, the coverage became noise...not sound, not information...noise.
Interesting to look at the evolution of the word noise.
It is said to have meant “quarreling” in the Middle English voice.
More insightful, though is the Latin room that noise is birthed out of... nausea.
You know that green feeling you get when you are on a boat in the ocean and it just won’t stop pitching and yawing? That is what incessant noise does to us.
It nauseates the mind. It causes a seasickness of sorts for the brain that creates a fog where our only goal is to stop feeling sick.
I heard recently a couple say this of the importance of our physical health, “when you are healthy you have a thousand dreams, but when you are ill you have but one dream.”
Why can’t we make time for everything at work? Why can’t we make time for everything at home? Why can’t we make time for everything regarding our hobbies, interests, and relationships?
We have mind-nausea in response to the breaking news of everything.
We have only one next step...turn the noise off and embrace intentional silence.
In his reflective book The Power Of Silence, Robert Cardinal Sarah writes, “Without noise, man is feverish, lost. Noise gives him security, like a drug on which he has become dependent. With its festive appearance, noise is a whirlwind that avoids facing itself.”
Sarah goes on to write, “Agitation becomes a tranquilizer, a sedative, a morphine pump...But this noise is dangerous, deceptive medicine, a diabolic lie that helps man avoid confronting himself in his interior emptiness. The awakening will necessarily be brutal.”
Wow, “noise is a whirlwind that avoids facing itself.”
Why can’t I make time for everything? Because we do not want to do the hard work of facing ourselves...facing our real work.
It is so much easier to bang out some emails in the name of work.
It is so much easier to watch a tutorial video in the name of work.
It is so much easier to do the easier thing in the name of work.
It is so much easier to listen to the latest, loudest voice asking us to do something that seemed important in the moment, just to find out it was another distraction along the neon-lit path of noise.
Noise to me is a lot like Vegas; a lot of lights, a lot of motion, a lot of activity, a lot of busy…
And a lot of regret.
All the while noise rages and the important work gets left undone.
Still, Blaise Pascal’s quote remains one of my favorites, “All the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot sit quietly in their own homes.”
Noise is hitting refresh on the news site. Noise is scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. Noise is a life on auto-piloted repeat with no thought of stopping or interjecting. Noise is whatever is taking you from your real work.
In one of the great parenting moments in history, Manoah, a Jewish father at the time that Israel was led by a series of judges, asks God, “what is the mission of this child to be?”
In other words, what is the important work you have created this child to carry out?
That is my question for you today, what is the important work that you have been created to carry out?
It might be bookkeeping, teaching, sweeping, coordinating, calling, documenting, estimating, bidding, flying, diagnosing, or calming.
Noise will most certainly keep you from that important work and lock you into a nauseating diet of ick.
The question remains, how do you make time for everything?
You don’t.
Instead, make time for the things that matter...and not everything matters.
We train our heroic business owners and key leaders to build a simple ideal weekly schedule.
If you were to list out all of the important work that you need to tackle each week, what is it and how long would each task take?
Block it all out throughout a weekly calendar in what Cal Newport would call “deep work” blocks of time.
Share that weekly schedule with the people that matter most and ask their permission to help you live by it. Cut out the noise. Cut out the nausea. Get healthy and all of the sudden you will have a thousand dreams...instead of just one.
Greenlights
Well, happy new year friends! I hope you were able to relax over the holiday season and rest with those you hold dearest. I hope it was a great time of reflection on the past year and a time of eager anticipation for the year to come.
My holiday was spent wrestling with my kids, trying to run the sugar out of them at every turn, and being genuinely thankful for everything my life consists of. It’s far from perfect, but I’ve realized that a heart of gratitude is where I want to be no matter what life throws at me.
I spent a good bit of time over the break reading and reflecting. One of the best books I’ve gotten to absorb is called Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey. If you haven’t picked it up yet, do yourself a favor and listen on audible. McConaughey reads it himself and adds so many nuances that you cannot get in the printed text. He’s an artist in every sense of the word. You will be shocked, you will laugh, you might cry. But you will also be left in awe at a man who has kept a journal for the past 40 years...from someone who has WRITTEN his life down and has taken the time to look back on his successes, his failures and the lessons learned along the way. It’s spectacular!
Now, a small/large disclaimer. This book is not for kids, it’s full of foul language and quite a few adult situations...please know that in advance and if that is not your thing, this may not be the read for you. But, if you can push through some of that, I was amazed at some of the things shared and left to process through what I’ve heard in a way that makes me a better man.
One of the most powerful vignettes he shared was from one of his first movies. He had spent years grinding and living off his talent. Years just winging it and letting his “true self” shine through. Until one day he showed up to set and 5 minutes before they called action, he looked at the script. Not one, not two, not 3, but 4 pages straight of a monologue...IN SPANISH...was sitting before him. Nowhere to hide, nowhere to run. He was exposed.
I was listening to this in my truck as I drove up to a family farm and I was moved by something he said. It was so powerful I played it again. As it rang in my ears I pulled the truck over to the side of the back country road and played it a third time so I could write it down. I didn’t want to miss it. Here’s what he said after his embarrassment.
“We have to prepare to have freedom...we have to do the work to then do the job. We have to prepare for the job so we can be free to do the work!”
That’s it! I can’t put it any better myself.
Preparation...for whatever 2021 throws at us. It won’t just happen. There is no shortcut to success, it’s brick by brick.
So what does that look like for you today? Is it taking the time to write down goals? Is it building a weekly schedule so you can focus on what matters? Is it recording a process or two and building systems that work? Maybe it’s all of the above and you need to set a time to just begin working?
All I know is EXACTLY what McConaughey said…”We have to prepare to have freedom!” The freedom we’re looking for is just on the other side of the preparation and the work. Don’t miss that and also don’t be intimidated by that. If I or BOP can help you with that, please reach out.
2021 is going to be a great year. There will be many twists, turns and unexpected surprises along the way. I don’t know about you, but nothing monumental happened at midnight on New Years Eve...much of life is the same.
But, if we can focus on what we can control…”Preparing for the job so you’re free to do the work,” then whatever is thrown at us this year we will take it in stride.
Know this year that we are for you and will do whatever we can do to help you succeed. As always, check out our website at mybusinessonpurpose.com, we’re offering one month free to our member site. There’s zero excuse to not give it a shot. Head over to mybusinessonpurpose.com/thomas28 if you want to. Subscribe to our podcast at the business on purpose podcast and check out our youtube channel for TONS of new content this year.
Let’s get it!
Have a great week.
Your Preparation informs your performance…
How prepared are you for the work ahead? Well... let’s find out. Hey, Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose.
I was sitting in a men’s breakfast this morning listening to a good friend of mine share about his experience serving in the Marines. He’s been through things I’ve never dreamed of and we’re blessed to have men like him defending and serving our country. His name is Joe McNamara and he has some amazing stuff on leadership, so make sure you check him out.
He said 4 or 5 things that stuck with me...things like “It’s called Leadership, not Likership.” This thought of our job is to lead our teams, not necessarily be liked by them. He said, “Attitude is a weapon.” Your mindset is a weapon that you can use to combat any situation.
But the one that stuck out most to me was this…” There’s no such thing as rising to the challenge.” There is no such thing as rising to the challenge. Your performance is always an indicator of how well you prepared.
I thought about how true that is. I have seen countless talented people just wing it... expecting to “rise to the challenge,” and time after time their performance is less than it should be.
I was reading an article recently about a basketball player that has been playing some really good ball recently. His coach was bragging on him saying, “You guys have just now seen what we’ve been watching for months.” The reporter asked him to go a bit deeper and the coach elaborated. “He won’t leave the gym until he’s made 300 3 pointers after practice.”
That’s where his success is rooted. He doesn’t just wait until the game to try to show up. No, he knows that he will fall well below his performance ceiling if he does that. So, he spends hour after hour, with no fans watching, so that he knows he’s prepared when his moment arrives.
My friend speaking this morning, was talking about how proud of his men he was. As some really, REALLY intense stuff starts happening, they remained calm and performed, BECAUSE THEY WERE PREPARED! Because day after day, they trained in the morning, trained in the evening, tried it in light, in the dark when they were rested, when they were exhausted. Until they could perform at any point.
And when the moment was upon them and it really mattered, they were ready for it!
How prepared is your team? Is your sales process documented in a way that frees your sales guys up to perfect it and REALLY be prepared to capitalize. Is your Admin team ready to take on the constant barrage of phone calls with customer complaints that they get every day? Or do you just leave them along, hoping/praying that no one calls and complains about...Is your team trained to be able to handle the business without you if something were to happen to you? Trust me... it’s happened to normal people just like you.
My purpose in saying these things...is all of this preparation happens when you do it ON PURPOSE! It’s why the name of our business is My Business on Purpose. Because we know that to be successful it doesn’t just happen in crunch time. No, it’s day after day of doing things the right way, so you’re ready to capitalize on opportunities.
I hope that makes sense. And I hope you go connect with Joe McNamara. I really look up to him and the way he’s served all of us and the thoughts he has to share on leadership.
Have a great rest of your week!
Stop Making Resolutions And Start Making Habits
For some it’s a book, for others it’s a cigarette, and for others, it’s a phone call. Each evening throughout the world a sequence of nighttime habits are taking place in every home, apartment, flat, and dorm in the world.
For me the routine is to enjoy something sweet; a cookie, a small piece of pie, a handful of chocolate chips. Not just a quick bite, but instead a long sit down alongside an ice cold glass of milk. That’s my routine.
At the beginning of each new year, I consider a resolution to do something different each evening moving forward, maybe some fruit or a cup of hot tea. But I never do.
Why do I do that? Why do I do the same thing every night?
In fact, why do I repeat most things most days over and over again? The good things and the bad things?
It’s like they are on repeat.
What is going on?
In his powerful book The Power Of Habits, Charles Duhigg lays out a three-step “loop” that we all experience that creates the habits we repeat.
After I share this three-step loop from Duhigg, I’m then going to challenge you to ditch resolutions which have a history of not lasting, and instead replace a resolution with a habit.
What habit?
Email.
There. I said it.
Email.
A McKinsey analysis found the average worker spends 28% of their workweek “reading and answering e-mail.”
I can hear many of you right now, “but you don’t understand...my job revolves around email.” I hear you loud and clear.
Let’s OWN your email and do something different.
If there is no plan, or habit, email can come to a place where it dominates your day, dominates your mind, and dominates your ultimate agenda, and keeps you from transforming your business on to the purpose that you intended in the first place.
I heard someone say once, “email is someone else’s agenda for your day!”
What a horrible truth.
Let’s not just resolve to change it in our minds, but let’s actually change it in our habits.
Duhigg shares a powerful three-step loop that will help us.
The three steps: cue, routine, reward
The cue is the thing that provokes or sets off the actual habit...it’s what launches you into the very habit you do.
The routine is the actual behavior that you are looking to change. The routine is eating the chocolate before bed, drinking three cups of coffee before 7 am, or checking email obsessively throughout the day.
The reward is the feeling, emotion, or response you receive as you complete the routine. It’s that immediate gratification or satisfaction you feel, see, touch, or experience.
Duhigg makes the case that simply by replacing just one part of the three-step loop, you can transform your habits.
It is difficult, and in some cases impossible for us to control the cue. The cue might be a time of day, or something that happens naturally in our course of life (i.e. bedtime). You cannot change that...you will always have a bedtime.
The reward is tied to your psychology and physiology which of course can shift over time, but again, much harder to master.
Duhigg suggests that replacing the routine, the second of the three-step loop, will provide the key to changing your habits.
Let’s apply this to our email challenge.
With email, the cue may be “arriving to work” or “scrolling my phone” or “don’t know what task to do next”.
In fact, think through your last few days at work and answer this cue question, “why and when do you check your email?”
Is there any rhyme or reason?
Some habits are very methodical like eating sweets before bedtime but not as much throughout a normal day. Some habits are erratic like scrolling phones.
Simply being aware of what drives you to email, or coming to grips with the reality that maybe it is unrestrained, will be an important step in you owning email rather than email owning you.
Now that you know the cue, let’s now change up the routine.
For most, the cue that launches you into email is erratic, not scheduled. You keep it that way under the false truth of “but I have to be on email all day because that is how people communicate with me”.
No problem! Let people continue to communicate with you that way, but YOU change the routine.
Instead of being on email throughout the day on other people’s schedule, YOU SET THE SCHEDULE.
“Can I do this?”
YES!!!
YOU can set your own routine for email (or anything else for that matter).
For many business owners and key leaders we have seen a three-times-per-day routine work really well. They read and respond to email for 30 minutes in the morning, 60 minutes mid-day, and 30 minutes at the end of day. It is still around 20-25% of a typical workday, but it is blocked in focused time so you are not distracted from the real work.
For other business owners and key leaders, we have seen an every-other-hour-for-30-minutes strategy work.
For both of these strategies make sure to literally set a timer on your phone. This is part of making a new routine which will eventually make a new habit.
From now on, align your cues to a new routine, and you will receive an even better reward...the result of a new habit!
How To Write An Annual Letter Like Jeff Bezos
Sometimes we can get lost in the repetition of the process, a good thing, to the neglect of the humanity that can be found in our words. Your team wants to know what you are thinking. They want to know your ideas, your plans, your real-time thoughts, and your reflections; they want to know what you are seeing.
One of the most powerful, durable, and recordable ways to share your human thoughts as a leader is to write them out, personally addressed to your team.
Of course, you have doubt. Poet Sylvia Path helps us confront our doubt saying, “... By the way, everything in life is writable if you have the outgoing guts to do it... The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
When you write a letter to your company you have immediately created a recorded history. When your business is two, or ten, or forty years off into the future, those future team members and leaders will be installed with the founders' or previous owners' principles, ideas, innovations, and foundations.
When you do not write a letter to your company, it gets lost to time.
We are encouraging you and challenging you to write a letter to each member of your business every year and personally mail it to their home with their name on the top.
To help you, we are going to walk you through a simple template you can use to write your powerful annual letter.
The first exposure I had to a powerful annual letter is Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos in his 1997 Amazon Shareholder letter. I used it in my first ever coaching session with a client as we built out their Vision Story.
In his letter, Bezos works through some key elements that we can put into a simple template to help you think through your powerful letter.
First, Bezos begins his letter with key milestones that Amazon has achieved throughout the year. It is short and sweet and very powerful coming right out of the gate. No fluff, dive right in. You may say something like…
Dear Hannah,
We saw ACME, Co. grow beyond our projections by about 5% and YOU were a huge part of that. Our goal is to move beyond where we are at now and for next year become the second largest XYZ company in our county...
Next, Bezos then goes on to discuss multiple opportunities that are in front of them. Even if you are staring down the barrel of a recession, the opportunity is in front of you. What is it? What could your business do even if you don’t know the “how” quite yet? Writing this letter forces you to see an opportunity and then take the risk of sharing that opportunity.
Use wisdom, use discretion, and be bold. You can do all three together.
Third, Bezos begins sharing true stories that are aligned with their unique core values of “long term” and “obsess over customers”. With each of those stories, he is also diligent to layout bullet points of what the impact will be to Amazon from those stories, both the fun parts and the challenging parts.
For instance, an impact of “long term” is “When forced to choose between optimizing the appearance of our GAAP accounting and maximizing the present value of future cash flows, we’ll take the cash flows.”
He’s honest and discrete. Bezos shares what he can share, but I’m sure doesn’t share everything.
Also, remember that Amazon is a publicly-traded company so they will tend to be more open about their financial numbers due to their public transparency. You may wish to not share those.
With whatever you write, just ask yourself, “how will this impact particular team members when they read it.”
The overall goal is to celebrate, encourage, inspire, motivate, show appropriate vulnerability, and vision cast through your annual letter. Use your discretion with how much information to share.
Next, Bezos shares some key metrics that make sense to the Amazon team. What will make sense to your team? Is it the number of increased contracts signed this year compared to last? Is it the user ratings that have increased this year over last? Your performance rating? Safety metrics?
What are those key metrics that matter to your team? This may be a great place to share them.
Fifth, Bezos devotes an entire section just to the Amazon team...to celebrating them. He is aspirational saying things like, “The past year’s success is the product of a talented, smart, hard-working group, and I take great pride in being a part of this team.” Bezos is also sober mentioning, “It’s not easy to work here...but we’re building something important.”
Near the end of the letter, Bezos then goes into full on vision casting and goal setting mode. It is a sentence by sentence power punch to the soul of each team member as if to say, “I so value you that I’m going to stretch our horizon, so you will always have a place to RUN by doing your highest and best work.”
Where are you headed? What are the broad steps that it will take for you to get there? Remember the words to the Jewish Prophet Habakkuk, “write the vision down so those who read it may run!”
Finally, Bezos signs off with a two-sentence summary. This would be a great place to reinforce your mission statement saying something like, “This was a powerful year to (insert mission statement), and I am beyond grateful for you. Thank you for your work, your commitment, and for your devotion to (insert a core value here).”
To summarize, here are the eight elements that we have pulled from Jeff Bezos’ 1997 shareholder letter that will help you write a simple, powerful, and meaningful letter to your team.
| Personal | Write their name at the top of the letter and mail it to their home |
| Celebrate Milestones | Key milestones that the business team has achieved throughout the year |
| Opportunities Ahead | There are always opportunities...find them and share them |
| Value-Based Stories & Their Realities | True stories and a simple layout of the impact of those stories |
| Key Metrics | What are those key metrics that matter to your team? Highlight them. |
| Celebrate The Team | Highlighting all of the “insider” things that it means to be a team member. “We say all of the time…” |
| Vision-Cast and Goal-Set | Broad vision of the future of the business along with a few broad steps of what it will take to get there. |
| Sincere Summary | A simple, thoughtful summary of the letter and a shot of motivation to press on! |
That’s it. Proof your letter, send it to a team member along with a trusted advisor for review, read over it one or two more times, and then personal address each one and send it to their homes.
Scott Beebe is the founder of Business On Purpose, author of Let Your Business Burn: Stop Putting Out Fires, Discover Purpose, And Build A Business That Matters. Scott also hosts The Business On Purpose Podcast and can be found at mybusinessonpurpose.com.
How To Help Employees And Yourself With Money Problems
Through our work with business owners, we have seen some who have had access to significant money. Not all, but some.
A few weeks ago I was on the phone with a business owner who has what some would consider to be “life-changing” money...meaning, he wouldn’t have to work anymore if he didn’t want to, and he still has at least half of his life left to live statistically.
He has houses, boats, cars, toys, investments, commercial real estate, and access to a lot of other people who have the same.
We talk frequently, but this one particular conversation he ended with, “it’s ain’t what everybody thinks it is”.
When money becomes THE thing instead of just A thing, then EVERYthing changes.
Lynne Twist wrote a great book entitled The Soul Of Money. In her book, she writes of money, “Money alone does not guarantee a fulfilling life, and excessive amounts of money more often become an obstacle to it.”
“Money is the most universally motivating, mischievous, miraculous, maligned, and misunderstood part of contemporary life.”
“Money has only the power that we assign to it, and we have assigned it immense power.”
How do we know when money has become THE thing?
It was said this way of a rich person. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich person to enter into freedom.”
Why can money be so dangerous? Why is it warned against and yet lauded and cheered? What’s our obsession with money?
SO WHAT’S BEHIND OUR OBSESSION WITH MONEY?
It’s not the joy that money brings, it’s the fear that we might not have it.
Scarcity.
Twist calls scarcity a lie, and even goes on to define the lie as “the mindset that tells us we can never have enough and drives us to strive above all and against all for more and more.”
Scarcity is not only a lie, but it thrives under the umbrella of three myths…
Myth #1: There Is Not Enough To Go Around
Myth #2: More Is Better
Myth #3 That’s Just The Way It Is...
How can you help employees with money problems? Train them about the myths of money. Embrace the mindset of sufficiency and abundance, and live your own life in a way that shows that money is not an obsession, but a tool for generosity!
Scott Beebe is the founder of Business On Purpose, author of Let Your Business Burn: Stop Putting Out Fires, Discover Purpose, And Build A Business That Matters. Scott also hosts The Business On Purpose Podcast and can be found at mybusinessonpurpose.com.
How To Prepare Your Business Financially For 2021
Order cannot come out of disorder and yet we cross our fingers at the end of each year in hopes that next year will be better.
2020 punched us all in the mouth forcing us to play our cards and either set processes aligned with the vision, or plunge deeper into chaos and disorder.
For many of our clients, this has been a year quietly spying on their financial resources and being more aware of where it is all being allocated. This goes beyond simply pulling an Aging Report from Quickbooks or running a Profit and Loss Statement and staring at the Net Income number to determine success.
We had a client who started the year with a dangerously low amount of cash and a dangerously high amount of payables. We began tracking their cash accounts, receivables, and payables every single week on a single, simple spreadsheet.
No fancy apps or software, just a simple spreadsheet.
In August of 2020, after nearly running aground just 10 months prior, this owner exclaimed in a meeting, “I feel like we are printing money.”
What he was really saying was, “before we tracked it through a simple process we spent whenever we wanted to”. It’s as if untracked bank accounts have holes in them and money leaks out. Pay attention to the leaks and you’ll begin to plug them and it will soon feel like your business is growing at a pace you have not experienced before.
As the year is winding down, we have walked each of our heroic business owner clients through a two part “2021 Readiness Plan”.
Part One is the readiness of the owners’ vision, mission, values, systems, and structure. We go through and re-read the existing vision, mission, values and make updates and tweaks, or in some cases wholesale changes so there is massive clarity for the next steps.
We then take that vision and open up the organizational chart and master process roadmap to ensure that the “vehicle” or structure of the business is aligned with the ultimate destination for where the owner desires to go.
Part Two of the “2021 Readiness Plan” is to focus your attention on the simple financials of the business.
We ask each of our clients to subdivide their bank accounts so they can partition resources into various buckets; profit, taxes, owner’s compensation, operating expenses, and others where it makes sense.
Then we make sure that each business owner is simply documenting those cash accounts each week in a spreadsheet; we call it a dashboard. Add to that their receivables and payables each week and you have an ongoing snapshot throughout the year.
We then work through simple revenue projections and a matching budget that align with the vision worked out during Part One.
From there it is asking them to think through where they are at with estate planning (wills, trusts, power of attorney, etc.) and insurance.
Finally, we ask each owner to write an annual letter to celebrate and reflect back on the prior year, while also offering a vision for the upcoming year. These annual letters are encouraging and allow the team to mobilize around the words of the visionary. For the owners that have written annual letters each year, it has become a hallmark of their leadership and is an incredibly powerful history lesson for each business.
You may think, “but I don’t have time to do all of this!”
Order cannot come out of disorder, but you can choose to stop disorder and create a new environment of order for you, your team, your customers, and your family.
I challenge you to do it. Make the time, create order, and you will begin to be liberated from chaos!
Scott Beebe is the founder of Business On Purpose, author of Let Your Business Burn: Stop Putting Out Fires, Discover Purpose, And Build A Business That Matters. Scott also hosts The Business On Purpose Podcast and can be found at mybusinessonpurpose.com.
