Join Scott Beebe, Founder of Business On Purpose, and Thomas Joyner, BOP Director of Coaching, as they break down the 30-Day Business Owner Challenge. Learn about preparation, key takeaways, team strategies, and driving business growth in this insightful discussion. 

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Are you working IN your business or ON your business? Do you have all of the foundational elements that will liberate you from the business chaos?  Take the assessment to find out which areas you can grow and improve on. 
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For the last 9 years, my two sons and I have made a pilgrimage to Camp Ridgecrest in Black Mountain, NC for the annual father/son weekend camp. 

A weekend marked by meaning, muscular pain, intentionality, and ibuprofen, this time may be the most momentous in our relationship as dad and sons.  The regularity, frequency, and repetition of daily life is wildly important, of course, and these dedicated moments of focused intentionality have bred special awareness.

This year was different for two reasons.

Both of my sons are now living away from home, each maneuvering through their own experience outside of the daily, in-person interaction of mom or dad.  Both were working as staff members of father/son camp for the weekend while I was able to participate as a volunteer cleaning floors and watching dads walk with their sons to play frisbee golf, hike through hornet's nests, and most meaningfully, sit and read what they had written.

There is a tradition that has been manufactured through premeditated repetition; if a dad is not careful, he will miss it and so too his son(s).

The second uniqueness of this year’s father/son camp is that a key leader and influencer of the day to day function of camp lost his father suddenly this past year.  What may customarily be a localized and isolated experience impacting only this leader, his family, and a few close friends; this year, every participant at father/son camp was impacted without most being aware.

A hallmark of father/son camp happens each year on Saturday morning when a couple of hundred boys and teenagers are ushered away from their dads to go lose themselves in jovial amusement for an hour or so.  During the hysteria of boy fun, not yet even laced with an ounce of Mellow Yellow or Sour Patch Straws, the dads are invited into a complementary experience.

For years, Mike Pineda wrote.

Every single morning, Mike’s family would wake up to an email in their inbox.  These daily emails became a stalwart foundation for anyone who made the time to read them.  Periodically, one of these emails would “leak” and those of us nearby would feel the coolness of wisdom blow to influence the direction of our day and our thoughts. 

I never met Mike in person, and yet Mike has a significant influence on our decision-making, our thoughts, and our parenting.  

Why?

Mike wrote.

Mike was not a New York Times Bestseller, nor a Pulitzer Prize nominee.  Mike was a husband, a dad, and a friend, just like many of us. 

Mike made time to write so that the meaning of his thoughts could slow-release into the narrow scope of his influence.  Mike’s son now oversees the camp where hundreds of dads are invited on a Saturday morning once a year…to write.

Each dad was provided with a piece of letterhead, a pen, and a beautiful place spread out to be alone.  Writing requires time;  time to think, time to reflect, time to go after wisdom, and time to get all of those thoughts down on a piece of paper so that the echo of their minds rings through the peaks and valleys of life's realities.  These dads write so their sons can see and hear what they really want to say in a way that leverages the value of thought and contemplation. 

Saturday night, each dad walks under the night sky with his son(s) to a place prepared by quiet and clandestine volunteers with a small firepot and a couple of chairs.  With limited distraction locked on the shimmering tongues of small flames, each dad sits with his son(s) and his letter(s).  

The son sits as a recipient, the dad as the giver.  Dad reads because dad wrote.  

I’m not even sure it was Mike’s pattern of writing that stoked the need for dads to write letters to their sons each year at camp; but I believe the continuation and longevity of this important rite has been, in part, perpetuated because of Mike’s precedent.

In business and leadership, we obsess about the power of writing things down because of the down-stream value of replicable systems and processes.  We push you to write because it unlocks the freedom of your team to run.

Now stocked with the deliberate wisdom of dads and granddads at father/son camp, sons all over can run with the freedom of knowing what their dad has to say about life; and more importantly about their son.  

Mike made time to write so that we could see, hear, and run.  

Owning and operating a business is a continual streak of tests that ultimately prove the trustworthiness of the business that built.  The business of scammers and hucksters fall apart over time forcing them to be in a state of constant reinvention and re-huckstering.

Traveling various parts of our historic world over the past few months has reminded me of the longevity and duration of things.  Walking the streets of Rome flanked by artifacts from late B.C. and early A.D. eras has a way of sobering the hardships of your time.

Walking through the carved caves of the Cappadocia region of modern Turkey sobers you to the challenges and hardships of previous cultures. 

Every culture endures testing.  Every generation is put on trial so as to mark the trustworthiness and endurance of that generation.  Endurance allows for longevity and the hope of seeing the days that are hoped for.

Without endurance, life is short and hope is fleeting.

The ingredients of our words fuel much of the cocktail of what is continually being tested through the swishing and swashing of the minds of those around. Each word that comes from the mouth of a leader is filtered through the taste buds of life’s mental truth machine and filed away in the vaults of our minds. 

“But you said” has caught many a leader in moments of double-speak not realizing that a mere fit of external processing was being received by all others as gospel truth.

In your strategy to be more decisive, more creative, more inventive, or more direct, always remember that “a fool who keeps his mouth shut is considered wise” (Proverbs 17:28).

Your words enter the world with the longevitous ink of a tattoo.  Once out, your words are nearly impossible to cram back in and the surfaced emotions are floating for all to sense and respond.

If you are a leader or an owner who uses words (ahem, all of us) then here are a few devices that will bode well for you to adopt and deploy.

First, be slow to speak and quick to listen.  

This was wisdom provided to a group of Jewish citizens who had been thrown out of their homeland and were living a scattered lot in unfamiliar territories.  Their house was not their home, their streets were not their domain, and the people were not their people.

Look, see, listen.  Very rarely has a winning strategy been speak then think.  The fire of anger is stoked by the sparks of unfiltered words.  

Want to throw a small group into a frenzied rage?  Make a habit of speaking the first thing that comes to your mind and you too will have created a remarkable and unfortunate riot, or at least a really frustrating place to work.

Speak slowly.  Listen quickly.

Second, place a timeline on your ideas.

An idea is often birthed into an assumption of perpetuity meaning it never ends.  Want to start meeting in a small group?  What happens when you are tired of meeting?  

Want to start volunteering?  What happens when it is clear that your voluntary role has run it course?

There is no shame in running ideas through a test period of limited time.   Take an idea and declare, “We will try this and monitor the results for the next 3 months and then decide on DATE/TIME whether to extend or extinguish.”

The boundary of a start and stop timeline will allow everyone involved to feel a sense of urgency, and also a sense of freedom knowing that if the idea does not provide its intended outcome, then we mustn’t be married to a bad idea for life.

Third, remind yourself that your words are sticky.

The words that come out of your mouth as a leader carry a volume and camera-like photograph that burns itself into the emotional landscape of the people with ears to hear.

Your words tend to stick longer and with greater weight than other because they directly impact the day to day lives of the people you work with.  

Be careful with “just spitballing”.  It is probably best to remember that spitballing can be construed as truth-telling and there is not much you can do to change that.  

We can say, “Well it’s not my fault that is what they heard!” 

The RPMs of great leadership can guide us in how we should speak.  Repetition ensures that what we say has fidelity over time.  Predictability ensures that what we say will remain consistent over time.  Meaning built into our words will ensure that we have baked in the mission and the values that we hold dear to our decision-making over time.

Your words matter, and the matter of your words stick.  

Remember that Billy Joel song We Didn’t Start The Fire?

It is a maniacal mantra sequencing decades of rage into a lyrical pounding intentionally crafted as a relentless onomatopoeia; the song feels like it sounds allowing us as listeners to likewise feel the chaos.

That song could be the soundtrack for so many chaotic business owners who are on a remorseless campaign to find the next great marketing hammer that will crack open a whole new world gushing with leads and sales because, in their minds, sales solves everything.

The myth of that last statement will have to be fleshed out on another date and time; for now, we need to confront the restlessness and confusion of marketing.  It is good to turn the volume down, or maybe off completely for a moment, and sit in the silence of what is rather than the snake-oiled and empty promises of what could be.

We’ve said often that marketers are like gypsies and business coaches (a bit self-deprecating seeing that business coaching is our profession); the barrier to entry into each profession is low and broad.

The good news for marketers is that the human brain is wired to respond to hope and promise often neglecting reality and objectivity.  Marketing is always susceptible to the “Clark Stanley-anization” of theatrics and promise.

Clark Stanley (aka The Rattlesnake King) was known as the true snake-oil sales pioneer.  According to Wikipedia, in the late 1800s Stanley began hawking his snake-oil linament at a variety of expos and shows throughout the United States.

The nothingness of the snake-oil linament was exposed in the early 1900s and eventually led to a series of food and drug laws that would be the precursor to the modern U.S. Food and Drug Administration.  

Stanley sold on what could happen forcing people to neglect the balance of what has happened.

Both perspectives are helpful; for without seen historical learning we will miss the obvious, and without unseen hope life will lack wonder, invention, and creativity.

Are all marketers like Clark Stanley?  Of course not…just some.

So how can you find a marketing strategy, leader, or team who will generate leads that convert to sales in a meaningful way?

Let’s start by looking in the foggy rear view.

One question that our coaches ask every one of our clients when they bring up the topic (usually in frustration) around marketing; where has 80% of your business originated from in the past?

We are continually stunned by the number of business owners who are ready to burn the boats, bomb the bridges, and cut off the parachute of what has brought predictable clients and customers in the past.

Where has 80% of your business come from in the past?  

Start your new marketing strategy there!

But wait, “most of our clients are word of mouth”.  That statement has become a bit of an arrogant monicker of recent as if to declare, “We’re so good we don’t have to market.”

NO!!!  

That misses the point.  

Marketing is tucked into every hidden crevasse of your business.  The cleanliness of your bathroom markets.  The quality of your material markets.  The clarity of your communication markets.  Every process, every system, every deliverable, every payable, and every receivable communicates something to your existing and potential clients and customers.

When you allow your business to be lulled to sleep by the apathy of word-of-mouth marketing you are building your real estate on someone else’s property and you are robbing your business of the challenging creativity to innovate on what has already worked.

As an example, we work with a sizeable number of homebuilders and remodelers in the construction space.

Every time we present at a builder event we are asked about marketing at because of the assumption, “If I can just figure out where the faucet is, then we can open it up and have a constant stream of business.” 

More leads and sales added to a poorly systematized business will do nothing but hasten the end.

The system must be built to handle the load.

If your dominant marketing strategy is “word of mouth”, then how do you build a system to capitalize on the mouths that are spreading your words?

Throwing your hands up and hoping for the best is not a winning strategy.

For homebuilders and remodelers, one of the best lead sources for new works are the professionals that live upstream.  Who are the professions that receive early indications that new projects are coming down the pipeline in construction?  Developers, Engineers, Architects, and Real Estate Professionals.

Everytime we have built a simple process for homebuilders and remodelers to proactively, repetitively, and systematically make time for these professionals, magically new leads begin to come in.

But doesn’t that require face-to-face (in-person or virtual) interaction?  

A side note, generally (not always) if you wish for a digitally scalable marketing option that limits or eliminates face-to-face interaction, then the entire culture of your business will be changing also.  Not to mention, digital marketing and advertising will usually require a lot more money and resource expertise that you think and are typically prepared for.

Stop right now for a moment.  Where has 80% of your business come from in the past (or some majority)?

Stop overthinking all of the unproven ways to go generate new leads and begin building a repetitive, predictable, and meaningful process that will add value to the lead channels that have already proven themselves in your business.

Down the road you can create a marketing slush fund for some skunk-works type activities when you have proven your predictable marketing model.  

For now, turn the volume of marketing options down.  Just calmly walk on past Clark Stanley’s snake oil display, have confidence in the objectivity in what you already know, and take courage in building on that objectivity with the unseen hope of what could be. 

Brent Whitaker Business on Purpose. I wanna dive right in. So we were sitting the other day with some folks, and, y'all have heard this song, “You can't always get what you want.”True.

Well, you definitely can't get what you want if you never define what it is that you want. This came up because I asked a couple in real estate, and I said, Hey, what is it that you want?

And it was like deer in headlights. Like I'd asked them some quantum theory question and they paused and said, I don't know. And I said, well, definitely can't get what you want if you don't define what you want. I said, why is that a, you know, difficult question for you.

“So we're just so busy” Ask anybody how they're doing lately, man, I'm good. I'm just, just busy. I don't know if being busy is a good or bad thing, but they were so busy they haven't slowed down enough to ask that question. What do I want?

So that's the question today is if you're driving, if you're sitting, I'd encourage you, if you're in your office to grab a pen, if you're driving, maybe a voice memo after this is over, what do you want?

You're allowed to ask and answer that question! And then write down what it is that you want. And dream a little bit. We’re not allowed to dream anymore.

It feels like we're so task-oriented that we don't dream. We get to the end of our lives and we say, Hey, how did I end up here? Well, you never defined where it is that you actually wanted to be.

It's one reason we build out a vision story, both for family and work. Cuz those things intersect. You can't compartmentalize those. What is it that you want? Write it down.

It's a brain dump as they say. Then ask the question, what's getting in the way of what it is that I said I wanted? Identify those barriers. Just write 'em down, all of them. Then as you kind of marinate on that, digest that, let that metabolize a little bit as they say, what will life look like? what will life feel like two, three years from now if nothing changes, if we keep moving in the same manner, on the same trajectory that we're moving in now and, and changing nothing, what will life look and feel like? And then what are you willing to invest time-wise to get what you wrote down or verbalize that you wanted?

That's why we create that vision story. We write it down, we get really granular, right, with what it is that we want holistically, life, work, finances, health, and then we make a plan to move forward in the direction of what we want and decisions are made in light of the vision story that we create. So I hope you pose that question to yourself today.

Maybe with your significant other or just to a buddy. Hey, what do you want? See what the responses are, but then take some time to really unpack what it is that you want. 

Maybe you've done this, most folks I have talked to have it. So we've gotta set the target. We've gotta create this vision of what we really want and we've gotta identify the barriers that are in the way.

And it really gives you motivation when you ask yourself, Hey, what will life feel like if I do nothing different? No, I've said those several times. So unpacking the day, that's one of the things we do here at Business On Purpose.

We do not start anything in our coaching roadmap, our installation roadmap until we define what it is that folks won't. Y'all have a great day. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time.

While in Turkey, we were struck with curiosity as to the various wars and struggles that entangled Asia Minor leading to the rules and regimes that have inhabited the intersection of the world in modern Istanbul.

Netflix had an interesting historical presentation of the Ottoman Empire with a focus on Mehmed II that details how the Sultan empowered his forces with relentless raids on the impenetrable walls of Constantinople.

They eventually took the city and rules the regions for centuries. 

While watching Rise of Empires: Ottoman I was struck by the number of messages that were sent by couriers, or delegation of one side directly to the leaders of the competing side.  

These were soldiers who had but one task; deliver a message from the leader in its exact form and for its intended purpose.  Mehmed II or Emporer Constantine were the originators of the message, and the courier its delegate.   

Delegation is birthed from the Latin delegere and according to latin-is-simple.com  carries the idea that you are assigning and entrusting an appointed trustee to carry out the wish and desire of the original delegator.

Delegation is not a modern concept, it has been used in organizational growth since the beginning of time.

In the midst of a time of overwhelming demand on his leadership, there is a story about Moses who was warned by his father-in-law, “‘This is not good!’ Moses’ father-in-law exclaimed. ‘You’re going to wear yourself out—and the people, too. This job is too heavy a burden for you to handle all by yourself.’”

Leadership is an infinite cycle of emotional labor.  Leadership is the constancy of assessment (seeing, hearing, and experiencing), deliberation, decision, evaluation, rinse and repeat.

There is not a clocking in and clocking out of leadership which is I why the statement “rest is resistance” is an imposing idea.  The leader must artificially will moments of sabbatical (minutes, hours, days, weeks, or months) in the crevices of leadership.

A strategy for healthy leadership is found in the power of healthy delegation.

There is a difference between delegation and abdication.

Whereas delegation aligns with trust, equipment, and empowerment, abdication is the intention to leave a post or a task with no desire to return; a resignation.

Abdication does not require equipment, training, thought, care, empathy, or intentionality.  Abdication simply wipes its hands of responsibility and walks away, at the ready to blame any nearby candidate for the failure that it will spawn…and spawn it will.  

One of the privileges and massive responsibilities in leadership is to delegate well.

Three elements will stock your toolbox for healthy delegation.

First, setting clear expectations which can be found in writing things down.

Is it a role or a task that you will be asking someone else to complete for you?  Write it down, record a video, and capture that role or task in such a way that will scale easily to those you wish to delegate.  

Violate this step, and you will cascade downhill into the bitter valley of abdication.

Just last week we had a couple of clients that were “sort of not documenting their processes” and it was causing unnecessary delay in important hiring of new team members that would ultimately bring these leaders freedom.

Their homework was easy; “Record two videos by Friday of the tasks you are going to ask this person to do.”  That’s it.  No excuses…write it, record it, video it.

Second, build a simple scorecard of what success looks like.  All humans will ask at some point, “Am I doing this right?” 

Give a simple checklist of “here are the five, or eight things that will need to be done each week to ensure that your role is airtight.”

A scorecard is what winning looks like.

Build your first version, and then adapt as time progresses.  

Finally, build repetitive, predictable, and meaningful communication points.

Repetitive, pre-determined meetings times are your friend.

Each person who has been delegated to must have time on their leader’s calendar that is pre-set and has a pre-determined set of questions that are aligned to the role, scorecard, and culture of what is being asked.

We have regular (twice monthly) check-ins with our team members in addition to a weekly team meeting, a weekly coaches meeting, and every-other-monthly vision days.  

The goal is forced conversation.  In the absence of information the mind makes things up; a wandering mind is good for innovation, but not delegation.  

Clarity wins, and clarity demands repetition.

Are you abdicating?  Or are you delegating?

Abdication brings burden and imprisonment.

Delegation brings clarity and freedom.

Join Patrice Miles, BOP Business Coach, as she interviews Conner Fennell, BOP Intern. Discover Conner's experiences, the hiring process, DISC test insights, tasks for BOP, and how this internship is shaping his goals. Don't miss this valuable internship discussion!

WATCH THE VIDEO to learn more!

Are you working IN your business or ON your business? Do you have all of the foundational elements that will liberate you from the business chaos?  Take the assessment to find out which areas you can grow and improve on. 
Take our Healthy Owner Business Assessment HERE ➡️ https://www.boproadmap.com/healthy

SIGN UP for our Newsletter HERE ➡️ https://www.boproadmap.com/newsletter

For blogs and updates, visit our site HERE ➡️ https://www.mybusinessonpurpose.com/blog/

LISTEN to the Business On Purpose Podcast HERE ➡️ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-business-on-purpose/id969222210

SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube channel HERE ➡️ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbPR8lTHY0ay4c0iqncOztg?sub_confirmation=1

Join Patrice Miles (BOP Business Coach) and Jessie Barber (BOP Director of Client Experience) as they share essential tips on hiring interns. Learn the hiring process, overcoming obstacles, internship length, finding the right candidate, compensation, onboarding, and communication. 

LISTEN HERE to learn more!

Are you working IN your business or ON your business? Do you have all of the foundational elements that will liberate you from the business chaos?  Take the assessment to find out which areas you can grow and improve on. 
Take our Healthy Owner Business Assessment HERE ➡️ https://www.boproadmap.com/healthy

SIGN UP for our Newsletter HERE ➡️ https://www.boproadmap.com/newsletter

For blogs and updates, visit our site HERE ➡️ https://www.mybusinessonpurpose.com/blog/

LISTEN to the Business On Purpose Podcast HERE ➡️ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-business-on-purpose/id969222210

SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube channel HERE ➡️ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbPR8lTHY0ay4c0iqncOztg?sub_confirmation=1

It is my first day back and my mood is curious.

Today is July 31st, on June 30th I sat in the Houston airport awaiting a flight to Paris, then Rome, and promptly deleted my email and Slack apps from my phone.  For the next 30 plus days I would not be available to the BOP team for any business-related items.  

Of course, we could send some personal pics and updates, but no business communication.  

While away the BOP team had a straightforward mission: grow the business by one client.

After founding Business On Purpose (BOP) over 8 years ago in 2015, it was time to take an extended time away from the day to day of the business.  

Ashley and I just navigated a string of massive life milestones; our daughter’s wedding, our final son’s graduation from High School, and celebrating 25 years of marriage all within two months of each other.

I also wanted to test the sea-worthiness of the BOP ship with me not at the helm.  

As I write this I still do not know anything that happened over the last four to five weeks, I still have not opened my email or checked our internal Slack since June 30th.

I am sharing how I plan on re-entering in such a way that does not overwhelm the team nor myself here on day one of my return.

First, I spent time quietly thinking and reflecting back on the last month in gratitude for a gracious creator who provides opportunities and a vast world to explore along with a strong passport that gains access to those places.  That gratitude continued as I think about the team that has led BOP in my planned absence, and the clients I serve who were kind and flexible to adjust coaching schedules and plans.  

Our clients were curious and excited as well because this is in part a model for what I push each of them to do as well.

 Overwhelming gratitude is a wave that flood’s my mind on re-entry.

Second, I wrote down a list of the things that would be most helpful and least intense on day one.  My tendency is to come in a rain down a list of revelations and ideas that will be sure to revolutionize what we are doing.

Throughout our time away, I continued to quietly repeat a Pilgrim’s Credo I read that was attributed to Fr. Murray Bodo:

I am not in control

I am not in a hurry

I walk in faith and hope

I greet everyone with peace

I bring back only what God gives me

Hurry must not be priority mode on re-entry lest I alienate and put our team on the defensive.  

My first trip to Nigeria was a lesson for me when I returned home and began to tidal wave Ashley with all of the details of this new adventure.  Over time I began to realize that while I was away, she was still parenting a 5, 3, and 1-year-old; right now she needed a husband and dad at home until the home calmed down at which time she would be ready to really listen and embrace the adventure.  

One of the things on my list is to have a simple call with each of our directors to simply see how they are doing and listen to whatever they would like to share, and then we will have a more intentional conversation about the last month when they are ready; now or later.

Third, I intentionally delayed my start time today just to remind myself to be slow.  I typically work from home on Monday’s beginning immediately after exercise and getting ready.  Normally breakfast comes upstairs with me as I launch into the work day.  Today, I took my breakfast on the back porch with no work just to remind myself that I am not in a hurry.  

Finally, I will not open my email or Slack until later in the day; likely around mid-day.  This is a step I am taking to intentionally remind my mind that email and digital communication are not the priority of our mission to liberate owners from chaos to make time for what matters most.

Email and Slack (or whatever internal messaging system you use) are supporting tools instead of life or death tools like we have allowed them to become; they should never be the primary actors.

Well, here we go; the time has come to go play my role on the BOP team to help liberate owners from chaos!

For too many business owners it is a pipe-dream scenario that would allow them to leave their business for one month while it not only continue, but also grow in their absence.

We are in the middle of doing it right now.

After a full Spring of 2023 of working as a team to liberate more clients from chaos professionally, and celebrating some major milestones for our family (daughter’s marriage, final child graduating, and 25-year wedding anniversary), Ashley and I made a decision a while back that we would setup an epic adventure to lean into our family mission of being a light and creating space through wisdom, adventure, and time around the table. 

On the last work day of June 2023 we left; and will not return until the first workday of August 2023.

By leaving I mean that I, the owner, have no availability to the business team at all.  Email… deleted from my phone.  Slack…deleted from my phone.

The only correspondence with any team member or client has been entirely personal to share pics and stories of our adventure. 

Zero business talk or email.  

The last two weeks of our time, I will do a small amount of designated client work in specific time windows that was planned well in advance; but no business meetings for me.

At this writing, I trust that all things are going as planned.  Ashley (runs our financial accounting) is still working and she has access to messaging, but I have asked her to not relay anything to me good or bad.  

It has been a joy, but not a picnic.  

The value of this time is that Ashley and I are enjoying time devoted to each other, and in celebration of 25 years of adventure while we plan and dream for the next season in some inspiring places that have become pillars of much of the world’s modern culture.

We have walked, read, rested, and had plenty to eat.  

Productivity thoughts try and creep into to my mind, but a dear friend had me prepare some thoughts that I can begin to recite on repeat when distractions come into my mind, and one of those was a sobering truth that another mentor of mine shared with me back in 2015, “Scott, God’s favorite thing about you is not your productivity.”

It stung when he told me that, and yet I am grateful.  I have been productive on this trip, but I have also been “intentionally wasteful”; another sobering thought this mentor gave me.

This time away did not just happen.  It was not a burned-out festered mid-life crisis decided on a whim; this has been planned.

Here are a few things we set in motion prior to my leaving the business for one month.

First, we wrote down the desire that we had to go on this epic 25th anniversary trip.  Don’t skip this step.

Second, we ensured that we as a business team were habitually working the systems and processes that we already had in place.  Reviewing the vision, mission, values, following our financial processes, team meetings, coaches meetings, check ins, handbook training, content writing and distributing, marketing, sales, etc.  

We have the majority of our business mapped out in our Master Process Roadmap; it’s our business on one sheet of digital paper.  It’s a must to have, and it is a must to implement what you have.

Third, we paid special attention to, and updated our financial processes.  One of the BOP Coaches asked a few months back, “What happens if something happens to both of you (Ashley and I)?”  In other words, how does payroll get processed, bills get paid, and income get received?

We revised our financial processes in recorded videos along with a two-page “financial playbook” complete with contact names for each area of our financial wheel (payroll, bank, insurance, processor, CPA, etc.).

These videos are on a private hard drive in a secure place where one of our team members has access to in case of a legitimate emergency.

Fourth, we communicated our plan about 3 months in advance both to our team and to my direct clients.  

Every other month we host a one-hour “Vision Day” with our entire team via Zoom.  On a pre-scheduled Thursday afternoon, we all hop on a call having asked every team member to already have skimmed back through our written vision story.

I come prepared with a series of Green/Yellow/Red flags based on our twice monthly Director’s Meetings where we are prompted to write out some Green flags (things that are going great), Yellow flags (things we’re aware of, but not freaking out about), Red flags (things we need to pay urgent attention to).

After gathering those over the course of our twice monthly Director’s meetings, I then share them with the entire team during each Vision Day.

During a Vision Day in the Spring, we shared with the team of our plan for me to be away from the business.  

Fifth, we re-clarified our organizational structure prior to leaving with a focus on “who’s responsible for what”.

We host an annual, off-site team day for our entire team each year.  This year we prioritized time to work through a host of organizationally clarifying tools; a rebuilt Org Chart, new job roles (including my new “CEO” role moving forward), and clarifying responsibilities and expectations all towards our mission of liberating owners from chaos to make time for what matters most.

Everyone had insight and buy-in, and a clear perspective on how communication happens both internally (with us as a team), and externally (with our clients and partners).

Finally, I set everything to leave.

Setup a clear email response.  Check.

Sent a clear email to all of my clients reminding them of our plans and how they get the support and help they need while I am away.  Check.

Sent a final video to our team while at the airport about to leave.  Check. 

Deleted email from my phone.  Check.

Deleted Slack from my phone.  Check.

It has not been easy, and it has not been a psychology beach with endless Mai-Tai’s.

It has been more abundant, more restful, more inspiring, and more enlightening than I expected.  

We’ve got two more weeks in some pretty amazing places that we’ve never experienced, and it has been space filled with light to share adventure, wisdom, and time around a variety of amazing tables; including Nico and Greta, our AirBNB hosts in La Spezia, Italy who we never would have met and learned of their story if not for making a plan and implementing that plan.

Teşekkür ederim, and arrivederci for now.

It’s summertime… school will be back in session before we know it and the routine will be upon us! So what questions do we need to ask our business BEFORE fall hits? Let’s dive in…

I’ve sat in with clients over the last month and summer is always a weird time. It seems like there is a ton of work, but payments are slow coming in, employees lack motivation or are just absent, and we begin to see the sprint towards the holiday season quickly approaching. 

So what questions do we need to ask today to prevent chaos down the road? Well, I may not hit all of them today, but I’ll touch on 3 important ones to ask and engage your team with.

1. Where are we in relation to our written down Vision Story?

Don’t have a written Vision Story? Well, start there. Touch on the life you want for your family and the things you want in relation to freedom from work. Talk through your business financials, the products and services you need to offer to hit those financials. Walk through the team size and the culture. All of that. And write it down so you can revisit it regularly and stay on track.

Already have it written down and documented? Perfect! Now pull it off the shelf and dust it off. Or open up that google drive and open it up. And read through it bullet point by bullet point. Color code it… red/yellow or green. Green means it's done! Accomplished, check it off the list. Yellow… it’s in progress. Red, not started yet. Having a visible representation on the progress is so much better than just a simple reminder. If it’s all red, better schedule some time to get to work! 

Things changed over the last 6 months? That’s fine. Adjust, tweak it. It’s your vision. The thing we’re hoping for is when it’s all said and done and we arrive after accomplishing it, let’s be excited and grateful that this is what we wrote down. Not upset because we didn’t place the bullseye exactly where it needed to be. 

So, step one, pull out that Vision Story and find out where you are!

2. What are we consistently doing that we need to revisit?

This was a question we asked every year in the Young Life world. Sometimes you get stuck in patterns and habits that you never intended to get stuck in. So, look at your team meetings, your production meetings, and any other areas you meet with the team regularly. Are they accomplishing what you want them to accomplish? If not, why not? 

Don’t stop there, pull out your dashboards you use to track your cash and finances. Are your percentages right? Do you know your numbers? If not, what else do you need to track? Or do you need to look at them more frequently? Do you need to get better at job costing or forecasting? What help can you pull from your numbers? 

Even look at things like your culture calendar? Is it producing the culture your hope for? What do you need to add or take away? This is a great time to start some new habits or engage the team to see what’s working!

Ok, now you’ve revisited your vision, you’ve looked at what you’re doing consistently and audited that…

3. What do we need to start now that will make life better at the end of the year?

Think about this for a second… most businesses wait for the opportunity to arise instead of doing the work on the front end. They end up missing out on the full effect, simply because they weren’t prepared and ready to take advantage. 

Maybe it’s making a hire by the end of the year. Great! Start your hiring process now. Interview multiple candidates. Update the job role. Put the performance metrics together. Add processes to support the role!

Maybe it’s knowing your numbers for next year. Great! Start forecasting and job costing now so you have 5-6 months of data to pull from for your budget. 

Maybe it’s adding a new sales role or productions role. Great! Add the processes needed to train that role now. That way when you hire or split job roles up, the support is there for them to succeed. 

Maybe it’s adding another bank account to your business and starting to file away some cash for the next truck in the fleet or maybe even the next hire. That way you have the cash on hand and don’t have to pull on your line of credit or finance anything and can simply take advantage when the time is right.

Thinking through all of this now gets you ahead and allows you to take full advantage of the opportunity. Don’t wait.

Don’t let the fall sneak up on you. The next few weeks will go by quickly! You can keep your head down and push through them, or you can take one question a week to think through and prepare for the end of 2023. It’s going to be a great finish to the year… but prepare to completely maximize it.

Look over your vision, think through what habits you do consistently, and begin doing now what will make the end of the year better.

Hope this is helpful for you! Have a great week

What do we pay our new hires? How do we know what the compensation package needs to be? Well, I can tell you it doesn’t start by asking, what is industry standard!

One of the questions we get most frequently right now is “What should we pay our new hire?” Now, the first thing I’ll say is if you haven’t listened to any of our podcasts or content on your hiring process, you need to start there first. 

You need to make sure you have a Job Role, performance expectations, all the processes needed for their role documented, and have communicated the Mission/Vision and Values of your business. Great, we’ve got that out of the way…we’re ready to hire someone, how do we know what to pay them?

Well, I’ve sat with multiple business owners in the past month who have asked the same thing. They always start with, “Well, what are other businesses paying their Project managers, or admins, or sales guys…whatever they’re hiring for.”

Friends, let me stop right there and say…that is a dangerous game to play! And it sets you up to either under or over-compensate your employee from the get go.

Let’s talk through that. If you start with industry-standard, instead of what your business is designed to pay that role, you will always be chasing the industry instead of what your business can afford.

In two cases recently we moved past the industry standard conversation quickly and into what the business can afford. We walked through the numbers and what the role would allow us to grow our sales to or free someone else up to sell.

It was like a lightbulb went off. To maintain the profitability they wanted, it was in black and white. One scenario the business actually could afford to pay significantly more than industry standard for the position they were hiring. They were able to go after their number 1 target and make an incredibly competitive offer.

In the second scenario, they realized that they couldn’t afford to pay industry standard. The business was not ready to hire for the position yet. So they either had to find someone new who they could train up and pay a bit less than was typical, or build up some more cash reserves, improve their forecast from the sales side, and re-enter the hiring process in another 3-6 mos.

Either way, they didn’t get themselves hamstrung from a cash flow perspective by offering MORE than the business can afford.

And yet how many times does this happen? We don’t really know our numbers so we throw a random number up and decide that the business can do it. And then we look up 6 mos from the hire date and wonder what happened to our cash!

That’s no way to set your business up for success.

We need a job role. Need clear expectations. Need to know what will happen BEFORE we hire. And then once we have all that we can make an educated decision based on projections and adjust as necessary.

Here’s the awesome thing about this. A lot of people want to say that it’s being too stingy or it pushes you to underpay people for maximum profitability. And yet what I’ve seen is the opposite. It actually allows you and frees you up to pay what the employee is worth to the business and takes the stress off of that relationship. You’re not coming up with a number out of the blue to where they can say, “Oh my boss won’t pay me more, because they don’t like me.”

No! It frees you up to say, “Here’s what your role is worth to the business, and with your experience here is what we can pay you.” It takes the relational side out of it, which is necessary during the hiring process, and allows you to base compensation on value added to the business.

Let me say that again, compensation must be based on value added to the business. Not how long the person has been in the industry or what a past employee made or even what the person wants to make. It has to be directly tied to what value they will add to the business and what they will free the business up to make or grow to in the near future.

So, the next time you hire…leave out the “Industry standard compensation” myth. It will lead you down a road you don’t want to go down.

And if you need tools to walk through this or an extra set of eyes, please reach out. This is part of the chaos that we wake up every morning to liberate you, the business owner, from. And we’d love to work through it with you.

Thanks so much for listening today, have a great week!

I’m a huge NBA fan… but I was struck by something the coach of the Denver Nuggets said minutes after winning the championship this year. Let’s dive in and talk about it today.

Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here, thanks so much for listening in today.

People who say the NBA is trash are just flat-out wrong. It’s absolutely incredible to watch what the Denver Nuggets were able to do this postseason. Their win percentage for the year actually improved in the playoffs, which is unheard of. They humiliated arguably the hottest playoff team of the past few years in the Miami Heat and Jimmy Butler. Nikola Jokic found about 25 different ways to impact the game whether it was driving the ball, launching threes, getting assists, playing defense, you name it!

It was insane to watch the way that team came together to reach the mountain top of professional basketball. But here’s what was fascinating to me. The confetti is falling, everyone is holding their kids, hugging, crying, laughing, dancing… all of it. And in the midst of the trophy presentation, they bring up the coach Michael Malone to interview him.

The interviewer does her job and basically just invites him to give his thoughts. He thanks the fans, rightfully so, but then, without flinching, says “I’ve got news for everybody out there, we’re not satisfied with one, WE WANT MORE!!!” And the crowd goes wild. “We want more!”

I was up entirely too late, and it just hit me. That’s so sad. Think about the message that sends to everyone. The players, the coaches, everyone. We’re not satisfied with a career-defining moment. We’ve worked our entire lives to reach the mountaintop, only to realize that there’s another mountaintop and another. So sad that you don’t even have time to celebrate before voicing your discontentment and realization that maybe it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be. 

 And if there’s one prevailing thought that would define our culture right now it’s probably that…We’re not satisfied. We set sales goals and hit them, and then without celebrating, we set more that are bigger, and that are the goals that we should have set all along. And then we subconsciously say… WE WANT MORE.

We hire a new crew and begin to enter a new corner of our industry and become really good at whatever it is we do…and at the end of the year, we hit our numbers. And what do we do? Ok, that was cool, let’s do it again, but bigger and better next time! Why? Because…WE. WANT. MORE!

I felt so sad for the Nuggets coach. He’s worked his way up from an assistant coach in college, to head coach in college, to assistant in the NBA, had multiple stops as a head coach in the NBA and now sits atop the throne and in what would be the crowning achievement for most coaches, he blew right past it to whatever's next.

I remember hearing a story about Urban Meyer, head football coach at the University of Florida where they won multiple championships. He said he knew it was time to hang it up for a bit when immediately after he won the National Championship for the 2nd or 3rd time he found himself in a dark room texting recruits, telling them how excited he was to run it back with them. He had lost his way and so have we.

So… what do we do with this? I think it starts with two things.

We’ve forgotten the ability to celebrate and truly be grateful for the journey! Or… we don’t spend enough time on the front end defining what we want and what truly matters!

Let’s start with being grateful and celebrating. What do you do as a business to celebrate? When was the last time you celebrated without feeling the need to drop that motivational minute at the end that quietly tells the team they aren’t doing enough? 

I think we’re terrified to celebrate without motivating. We think our team will just stop. And yet, what we see, time after time, is that people just want recognition for their work and effort. Not to have it glossed over and minimized by the thought of…We. Want. More. 

We’re terrified because we don’t know what to do with the feeling that we actually got what we said we wanted and it’s still not enough! So… we do what everyone else does. Oh, it must mean we need just a little bit more! So we push and push and push and burn out everyone around us with this endless hamster wheel of success.

We need to set up a time regularly just to be grateful and celebrate. Now there may be years or periods where we don’t do this. I’m not saying we just blindly celebrate mediocrity or subpar results, but I am 100% saying we set time aside to celebrate a job well done.

The second thing we need to do, and this needs to be done way before this, but we need to spend some serious time contemplating what we truly want out of work and life. There’s nothing more depressing than putting years of work into something to only realize that it wasn’t what you hoped it would be. So what are the things that, if at the end of a chapter in life, are worth the work? 

Is it making sure you set aside times for kids' games, date nights, lunches with your teams? Is it making sure you plan in regular times for a weekend away so you don’t “miss it” and look up years later to realize life passed you by?

It’s why we spend so much time on Vision. To make sure that if in 2 or 3 or 5 years, if we hit the bullseye, we will be able to smile and enjoy it! And not think… we want more. 

That feeling only comes from knowing you prioritized the right things at work and at home. And didn’t get sucked into chasing someone else's vision. 

I’ll end here. Last week we spent a full day putting on a done-with you team training day for about 15 businesses. We ended the day giving the owners and employees time to think through their personal vision. After that we had them all stand up, to share one thing from their vision story that they wrote down. 

It was honestly one of the most powerful moments of my coaching career as they, one after another, said out loud what they hope for in life and work, and family. It was all about people. The people they loved the most and what they hoped for those relationships.

A room full of people just like you opening up in a powerful way. 

It was such a refreshing reset…to see people “get it”. To understand and reorient their priorities in a world that just says more more more.

So will you do the same? 

Will you take the time today to plan some time for deep work and thinking through your vision? So that when you finally hit the bullseye you can celebrate, and be grateful and not immediately push past to that awful thought…We. Want. More.

Do it today! If we can be a part of that with you, please let us know. Have a great week!

Business owners are in a constant state of wondering to what depth they “share the numbers” with employees regarding revenues, budgets, profit and loss statement, and/or balance sheets.

A client relayed a story of their administrator going to the mail and coming back with a check for $38,000 to which the administrator looked straight at the owner and said, “Wow, your going to be able to do a lot with $38,000.”

Ugghhhh.

Business ownership is challenging enough and demands continual responsibility around the health and well-being of employees, budgets, products and services, marketing, sales, customers, and clients. 

It is a game that does not stop so how can you relay financial information in a way where employees can begin to understand and positions each employee to see how their work has direct impact on both the top and bottom financial lines of the business?

First, you must have clarity on your numbers.  Owners that “wing it” with the finances will scale down their confusion.  

Every business owner must carry a past/present/future perspective regarding the business finances.

The profit and loss statement and balance sheet offer a rear (past) facing perspective of a business finance.  It is a static snapshot of what has been in the past (and in some cases, what is today).

For the present look at finances, each business should have sub-divided bank accounts.  

Think of it as a Dave Ramsey-style cash-envelope system, but in digital format for the business.  When a dollar enters the business (receivables), that dollar ought to be sub-divided into various homes (bank accounts) for which the portion of that dollar is earmarked.  A portion to profit, a portion to cost of goods sold, a portion to operating expense, a portion to taxes, and so on.  

The definitive work on the subdivision of bank accounts has been whimsically written by Mike Michalowicz in his important (and fun) book Profit First. 

Supporting the sub-divided accounts should be a weekly tracking sheet that we call the Level Two Dashboard (Level One being the sub-divided accounts themselves when pulled up on your bank’s portal).

The Level Two Dashboard is simply a weekly snapshot of your sub-divided bank accounts for that week so we can watch a historical flow of cash (that’s the REAL cash flow we like to see).  We can also add line items for receivables, payables, debts, etc. to help us see what actual cash the business has access to today, and historically has had access to.

The future look of our business finance will be spelled out in simple budgets and pro formas.  The budgets give us a general idea of how much we have allotted for the various systems of the business, and the pro formas educate us on what would happen if we took on a certain decision.  

When you have the confidence as a business owner of knowing that you are taking a three-pronged, past/present/future snapshot of the business then it is time to do some based financial literacy for your team.

There are three principles that would be helpful to communicate along with a fun exercise.

The first of these three principles are 

1. A dollar is not a dollar.

When a dollar comes in the top of the revenue funnel, to our earlier example of the administrator’s dismay…not all of that goes to the owner…in fact the majority of that income goes elsewhere.

It leads to principles two and three…

2.  A dollar out is always MORE than a dollar

3. A dollar in is always LESS than a dollar 

As for principle two,  a dollar out is always MORE than a dollar, I went to a pizza place this weekend with my family.  The pizza was a published price of $20 but for some reason, I paid almost $22.

Why?  

 A dollar out is always MORE than a dollar.

With taxes, fees, and other surprising elements, the price that is published is rarely the price you pay… a dollar out is always MORE than a dollar.

As for principle three, a dollar in is always LESS than a dollar, has there ever been a receivable that has come into your business where you have been able to retain 100% of that receivable for yourself?

Not even an all-cash business can say that.  Even an illicit, all-cash business must pay overhead, employees, cost of goods, etc.

A dollar in is always LESS than a dollar.

There is a fun exercise that we have shared with our clients and their teams a number of times where you take a roll of 100 pennies and a solo cup.

Dump the pennies out onto the table and start working through the percentages of your profit and loss statement in general terms (or you can use an example company from a similar industry).

35% goes to cost of goods?  Put 35 pennies in the solo cup.

26% goes to employee payroll?  Put 26 pennies in the solo cup.

Do that until you're left with your remaining pennies and then remind the team that we still have not accounted for taxes or mistakes and other overages.  So even if the profit and loss shows a profit, that number is rarely the cash that is actually available to the business.

It is not reasonable to assume your employees understand the basics of business finance.  When they hear that your business generated $5,000,000 in revenue last year, there is an assumption that you are a millionaire, when in reality you spent the majority of that money to run the business.  

A dollar is not a dollar, and employees need to hear that message.

“I don’t have much to do in my business these days” were the exact words from a business owner I met with last week. 

You could get a sense that the words almost scared him as they came out of his mouth and left a concerned sense somewhere between, “I can’t believe this is actually true, ” and, “Am I missing something that I should be seeing?”

As business coaches, we can’t help but be excited, and offer a bit of a chuckle when we see business owners arrive at the place where their business is running consistently without their direct, hour by hour, day by day input and effort.  Not by unhealthy abdication, but instead by thoughtful, consistent, intentional leadership rooted in purpose, people, process, and profit.

After a few seconds of joy and enthusiasm, we quickly move into a mode where we want to ensure that the owner is in a healthy place, and the team is in a healthy place.

Frankly, it makes me a bit uneasy to think about a driven personality with a forward-leaning mindset to be equipped with marginal time and marginal resources.

Ever heard the story of the successful entrepreneur who was engrossed in a twisted and bazaar mid-life crisis?  The marginal time and marginal money paradox is the most common breeding ground for such an unrestrained crisis.

The very first thing you should do if you are bored in your business is to pause and make sure you have health in your personal disciplines.  Boredom has been made out to be a non-productive territory littered with heat, dust, and tumbleweed...a wasteland to progress.

It’s not true. 

Boredom can actually breed healthy solitude which becomes the catalyst for proximity to motivate a team to pursue the named future you see.

It is in boredom where restoration can happen, insights can emerge, problems and opportunities can be clearly seen, and experimentation can flourish.

Busy automatically cranks the volume knob to 10, boredom gives you control of the volume so you can think.

Boredom is not bad; it offers value, flexibility, and opportunity.  Boredom provides an opportunity for you to indulge in your thoughts, either good or bad.

Instead of asking “What should I do?”, if and when boredom sets in, change your perspective to “What can I hear?” or “What can I see?” now that I have the wide open space of boredom.

The Jewish Rabbi compelled his followers to allow for “eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to understand”.  

Your mind has a trainload of thoughts, and boredom is the train station for those thoughts to disembark and lounge for a while.

The second opportunity that emerges with boredom is a chance to revise your future destination.  

We travel back and forth to Nigeria on a regular basis, which usually requires four airports along the way.  I follow a similar, subconscious routine at each airport reviewing my flight app to check boarding times, seat assignments, and the itinerary on the ground once we get there.  Inevitably, sitting in the boredom of the airport terminal, a new idea that alters the itinerary will pop in my mind, and bring with it some fresh ideas that I can breathe into the trip.

You have a written, multi-page vision story, and that vision story will be tweaked (as opposed to wholesale changes) throughout the year as you have new insights in the context of the boredom spaces. 

Boredom allows a business owner to re-evaluate and revise the written vision, drawing in a tighter and tighter focus on the final destination.  

Boredom can also be an impulse to revise your role.  You should never be without clarity in your role within the busy, especially when you are not in the day today.

A unique way to gain insight into your new role is to ask your key leaders, “What does the business need from me above all else.”

I asked this question of my team and here is how they responded, “We need you to help provide momentum, organization, tools, and leads.”  After some discussion and clarity, their insight provided clarity on my role and allowed me to craft it towards the elements where I too thought my time was best spent.

That vision and role may include doubling down on what you have already written.  It may involve selling your business and starting something else.  You may uncover a pivot in your business or personal life that you simply had not seen or heard prior because the distraction and the volume were too loud.

The third thing you can do when you are bored as a business owner is to embrace the time and rest.  

It is said that even God himself rested.

Probably an indication that we too should have moments of rest.  Rest defined is to “cease work or movement in order to relax, refresh oneself, or recover strength”.  

Rest can be reading a book, self-converting a sprinter van, napping, writing, exercising, or just sitting and staring.

This is where you need to be mindful of where your rest leads you, and it is best to have someone else help hold you accountable to how you rest so you maximize that time for good, and not for backward movement.

Finally, when boredom hits you it’s ok to just sit still.

We undervalue stillness, silence, and solitude.  

Thomas a’ Kempis said, “in silence the quiet soul makes progress”.  The history of the Executive Leader pushes through rest in an effort to outwork others for an elusive prize that does not exist.  

Dallas Willard has a modern spin on this idea in sharing that each of us “must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.”

A dear friend has been in a health battle for the past two years and he recently shared his journey meandering through the dark values of stage three Melanoma, in concert with severe kidney trauma.  

His takeaway to the audience he was sharing with was not “woe is me”, but instead, “the world has forgotten the joy of silence.”  Shortly after he said quietly in the words of author Frederich Buechner, “Pay attention.  As a summation of all that I have had to say as a writer, I would settle for that.”

He has spent hours waiting in the last two years.  Waiting on doctors appointments, waiting on prognosis calls, waiting on the next treatment...waiting.  

As he has waited, he has been reminded of the power and gift of boredom.

If and when you get bored working on your business, don’t rush, don’t run, slow down... and listen.

Executive Leaders pre-plan their anticipated marginal time in a way that provides proximity to motivate a team to pursue the named future you see.

That proximity empowers a team to convert your marginal time into the business's marginal return.  

In business, money is constantly moving.

A cash flow statement is a bit counterproductive.  As the cash flows, we can see trends and movement.  The moment we snapshot the flow of cash into a static cash flow statement, the cash stops flowing.

Taking a snapshot of a rushing river means the river is no longer rushing; it is still.  You can clearly see the river, the level, the color, and the shape, but the rushing-ness of the river is lost in the stillness of the snapshot.

The mass publishing of the now infamous story of Chris McCandless documented in John Krakauer’s book In The Wild has led to a surge in the number of me-too explorers who wish to track McCandless’s fateful footsteps.  To reach the famed bus that McCandless made home explorers must trek through and across the Teklanika River.  

After safely crossing the river many inexperienced explorers fail to take into account that rivers trough and crest often at unpredictable times leading to many of these post-McCandless explorers stranded in need of rescue, or in some cases left for dead. 

The metaphor is not much different in the trough and cresting of the cash in your business.  

With a little preparation, you can begin to have greater insight into the reality of the future tides of the river of your business.  

Static financial statements and reports are incredibly valuable, including the cash flow statement, and yet still can be of only momentary help to a business owner who lives in a dynamic, constantly moving world.  

The statements and reports themselves need a means of tracking the flow, the peaks and troughs, and the standard deviation of that volatility so we can make a point-in-time-decision in the midst of a constantly flowing market.

The Executive Leader is looking to create proximity to motivate a team to pursue the named future you see, therefore must be able to cut through the financial fog and pay attention to reliable instruments that are always calibrated within the values of the business.

Just as in an airplane cockpit, the pilot maintains a panoramic view of the horizon (vision) the Executive Leader must also build in a panoramic view by which to view the financial health of the business that is tracked with repetition, predictability, and meaning.

Three tools will aid the Executive Leader in having such a panoramic view past, present, and future.

First, the well-tested profit and loss statement (P&L) provides a still shot of what has-been with one major caveat; the data you retrieve is only as helpful as the data that has been input.

The P&L helps you to understand your Cost of Goods Sold which in turn immediately helps you to understand what Mike Michalowicz calls your Real Revenue.  Your COGS is a number that theoretically goes away if sales goes to zero, everything “below the line” would continue as-is and gives you a great snapshot into your other expenses or overhead.

A great monthly exercise is to simply march down the P&L and see if any of the percentage numbers have changed from month to month, quarter to quarter, or year over year.  

The net income number on the bottom of the P&L is nice, but let’s be clear, it is not an actual reflection of how much cash remains in the business.  It drives me crazy when someone says, “Congratulations, you made X in net income.”  Your net income seems to be more advantageous regarding your taxes than it does in showing your actual cash profitability (the funds you really have access to).  

You could not take your P&L to the bank and ask to withdraw your net income…I know it’s silly to say, but that is how many think of the net income number.  Your P&L is more of a value of past “actuals” related to income, real revenue, costs, and expenses…it is the history less for your business.

For the present, merging two ideas has been of significant value to so many business owners making the pivot to Executive Leadership.  The first of those two is the subdivision of cash entering the business.  When a dollar comes in, that dollar should be physically subdivided into separate accounts or expense homes where you are able to see what cash is actually available to the business for real-time decisions.

You might begin to feel a draw to defend the balance sheet, or the cash flow statement, or a simple spreadsheet as a means to do the trick.  Here is the major problem, most business owners and executive leader (heck, most accounting professionals) struggle to keep up with the daily tracking of cash on a spreadsheet.  Also, the balance sheet or cash flow statements are static, not following the flow of cash (different meaning than a cash flow statement).  

When the cash is subdivided into multiple bank accounts the decision-making for the executive leader has a much faster turnaround because whatever is in the account is what we have to work with, period.

Each week, a team member documents the balances of those multiple accounts and begins to watch the peaks, troughs, and up/down deviations.  Sure, you can always log into your bank account or quickbooks to check today’s cash balances…but what about watching those balances at hundreds of waypoints over the years to see trends?  

The Level Two Dashboard is a tool (Level One is your online subdivided bank accounts) that requires about 5 to 10 minutes of work each week and provides hours of time saved and in most cases a retention of money earned without losing it to the thief of leakage.  The more you have access to, the more prone to leakage.  

The Level Two Dashboard also has options to track receivables, near-term payables, and a water-level number called the all-in/all-out number.

This number answers the question, “if we grabbed all of our available cash, grabbed the receivables we are owed, then paid all of our tax liabilities, and paid our near-term payables (not long term loan balances)...then this is the money the business should have access to.”

The goal of the all-in/all-out is not to get stuck on one week worth of data, but instead to watch the flow of that number over time and determine an appropriate “water level” of your business.  

The P&L will educate you on the past, the subdivided bank accounts and Level Two Dashboard will educate you on the present, and your future can be planned by building a simple budget ironically based on your past P&Ls.

A simple and well-built budget will take a forward-gazing future look towards the vision of the business.  What good is a budget if it is being spent on items that are steering the business away from the vision, or in haphazard directions?  A budget will have line items and categorized for things that will push you and the the business towards the vision.  If a line does not align with a healthy vision, then it is simply removed from the budget.

A simple and well-built budget will take a backwards-gazing historic look towards the previous spending of the business.  Starting a budget from scratch without looking at prior spending is akin to a amnesia-riddled pilot learning how to fly a plane everytime she climbs into a cockpit.  That is not a plane you want to be on!  The quickest way to look at past spending to simply run a profit and loss report from prior years making sure that the expense categories are visible.

Finally, a filter for a simple and well-built budget is making the appropriate time to actually sit down and build your budget.  Have you ever jumped out of your seat in the airport terminal and sprinted into the Zone 4 boarding line for your flight the second your boarding announcement came across the crackline terminal speakers?  All that sprinting just to stand their and wait in a line akin to a cattle stall.  

That is NOT how we want you to budget.  

Instead, block the time, maybe no more than 1-2 hours to sit, review your vision, review your previous profit and loss reports project what you think you might need in each category in order to hit your near term goals (see 12 Week Plan module) and your long term vision.

The Executive Leader will make proximity towards the past P&Ls, the present subdivided bank accounts and Level Two Tracking Dashboard, and plan the future with a simple annual budget.  A constant awareness of your triangulated (past, present, future) financial position will allow you to offer rapid motivation that emboldens your team to pursue the named future you see.

“Soaking it up in a hot tub with my soul mate.”

How many of you played sports in high school? How many of you have listened to a voicemail that you left for someone else and cringed at the sound of your own voice? For some reason, we decided having a podcast was a good idea, and every time I hear one of mine I’m like…is that really what I sound like? It’s Painful!

I remember being in high school and watching film. Anyone remember film sessions?

All the guys in here who peaked junior year of high school are like… oh yeah! Should have seen my film! They called me freight train! Haha.
Here’s the thing with watching films… there’s nowhere to hide!!! The film doesn’t lie.

Here’s the thing in that first clip…Uncle Rico, the character talking there wasn’t willing to look at reality…and probably NEVER watched the film. He wasn’t willing  To look at hard things and say…maybe I’m just not any good. To think critically. No, he lived in this dream land where he was the victim and wasn’t even remotely living in reality.

So what’s the opposite of that? What’s naming the hard look like?

For us…we started adding questions regularly to our team check-ins…yep the same check-ins we ask you guys to have, we put into practice every two weeks. Here’s the question we ask…

Where are we, as a business or team, NOT who we say we are?

Where are we overpromising and underdelivering? Because here’s the thing. I guarantee when you get referred from someone, they are hearing about it. Everyone who works with you already knows. So, if we’re not answering that question internally, we’re lying to ourselves. We have to pull back a bit and watch our own film as a business owner. To listen to our sales calls, which we do also, and ask…are we delivering on what we promise our clients? To look at our marketing and ask if that’s really what we offer? To intentionally make time to identify the hard things so that you can move past them or at least deal with them…and for lack of a better word, to watch the film on our business and know what we truly look like? 

So here are 3 questions I want you to kick around as a team…

1. Where are you, as a business or team, NOT who you say you are?
2. What are the biggest pains in the business today (which ones have we overcome in the recent past)?
3. What frightens you as a business or what adversity is coming your way?

We assume, because of our modern loneliness epidemic, that being alone is bad, not realizing that there are healthy forms of loneliness and unhealthy forms.  

The legendary John Prine wrote a powerful song entitled The Speed of The Sound of Loneliness.  His lyric lends insight into a common reality for leaders, “you’ve broken the speed of the sound of loneliness, you’re out there runnin’ just to be on the run.”   

After launching, incubating, or purchasing a business, the owner or founder begins running at a speed that very few can or will match in the remaining days, years, and decades of the business.  For many, it is a hyper-speed, superhuman pace, unsustainable over time.  

There is a sound to loneliness, a narrative, a rhythm that can be of great value to the leader, but for most, they ignore and blast right through the speed of the sound of loneliness and they continue running at a superhuman pace because it is the only way to give momentary satisfaction for our obsession of productivity.

We make excuses and say that we really do care about “quality” or “customer service”, when in reality what we really care about is that this “perfect” business we grew has no spot or blemish when placed into the care of others.

Loneliness forces us to see the warts, the blemishes, the imperfections.  

Loneliness forces us to reckon with our own humanity… our limitations.  

Loneliness offers an opportunity to find joy in the imperfections, or to deny that imperfections can exist and pick up the speed of our running so that we can “feel like we’re doing something”.

A dear mentor of mine told me in November of 2015, “My favorite thing about you is not your productivity”.

It stung.  

I am well known and regarded precisely for my productivity and affinity for systems and processes, and my friend to a surgeon's scalpel to the thing that I embraced the most. 

His encouragement felt like rebuke, and it was needed.

It would have never been heard without time and space for relationship…an ironic twist on solitude.  

There is healthy loneliness and unhealthy loneliness.

There are healthy relationships and unhealthy relationships.

If you are to be an executive leader of impact, then you will make time for solitude.

Recalling the story of how Nike wooed Michael Jordan as its game-changing endorsement personality Sonny Vacarro was shocked when Nike founder Phil Knight decided to change his mind and commit the entirety of the Nike basketball endorsement money to one player.  Originally against the unprecedented idea, Vacarro asked Knight, “What changed?”  

Knight’s response?  “I went for a run.”  The story may not be true… but the principle is.  

A portion of that solitude will be committed to a few, meaningful, sincere, and intentional relationships.  

Relationships with people in person, and with people in publication.

Nearly one out of every two adults has not read a book in the last 12 months.  That is not an option for an Executive Leader.  

If Executive Leadership is creating proximity to motivate a team to pursue the named future you see, then part of the proximity you create are towards relationships that can provide mutual sourcing for motivation and vision.

Rarely does a person develop a vision from nothing.  We all generate vision from a body of source material, experiences, and inputs.  

Leaders need curated input, but too often we crank up the volume of the masses in the search for a non-caloric “silver bullet” instead of eagerly pursuing the small, subtle voice of wisdom that is dripping with sustenance.  

How do we know if our time is being devoted to wise solitude, whether alone or with someone, or to noisy isolation as we infinite-scroll the doomsday logs at the ready in our feeds? 

The Solitude Matrix helps us to understand where we can make time for solitude; both alone and with others.   
 
Imagine a quadrant where your horizontal axis on the top is devoted to substance and on the left and surface on the right.  The vertical axis on the left side is devoted to solitary at the top and social at the bottom.

When a leader devotes themselves to surface-level conversation in a solitary surrounding (top right) it leads to the hopelessness of unchecked voices in our minds, a belief that what you see is always because perspective has no access, and solutions are fabricated many times to problems that don’t exist (or at least are not significant).

When a leader devotes themselves to surface-level conversation in a social surrounding (bottom right) it leads to an interaction that feels fake.  Not a relationship, but instead an obligation.  In these fake interactions, we find ourselves obsessed with “who’s got it more together”, and wanting to become the highest “spender” so we can steal the show.  Fake conversations leave us empty as we leave hoping that our social standing improved during the interaction.

When a leader devotes themselves to substance-level conversation in a social surrounding (bottom left) they are actively building relationships.  There is a focus on connecting with a healthy mix of emotion and empathy.  A relationship interaction from a leader is comfortable with awkward silence because simple presence is valued, and there is a shared decor (SWAG, music, food, or event) that is meaningful.  

When a leader devotes themselves to substance-level conversation in a solitary surrounding (top left) they achieve the hallmark of leadership; wisdom and vision.  Healthy solitude allows for active listening by reading or thinking, writing to capture what they hear, thoughtful planning to map out clarity, and intentional reflection to celebrate wins and mourn losses. 

Sherry Turkle defines healthy solitude as “the time you become familiar and comfortable with yourself...Without solitude, we cannot construct a stable sense of self.” (Turkle pg.. 61).

Solitude with distraction robs us of that, leaving us confused and setting us up to hurt other people.  This leads to the myth of the modern brainstorming sessions to be our primary mode of breeding helpful bouts of creativity.  Turkle (pg. 62) goes on to say that “Our brains are most productive when there is no demand that they be reactive...new ideas are more likely to emerge from people thinking on their own.  Solitude is where we can learn to trust our imagination.”

Solitude is the healthy version of being alone

On the other hand, the philosopher and theologian Paul Tillich says, “Language...has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of being alone.  And it has created the word ‘solitude’ to express the glory of being alone.” 

Loneliness is painful because it allows the space for shame to be revealed.  Shame in our past, shame in our present.  When we medicate with the substance of busy-ness then we ensure that shame remains safely swept under the rug.  

Loneliness is not the same as solitude.

Picasso said, “Without great solitude, no serious work is possible”.  The human spirit NEEDS healthy alone time.

Sitting in a room listening to a variety of presentations, most of them non-engaging with slides that looked like this.  HUH?

Then a physician stands up and begins to relay a series of statistics accompanied by stories.

The suicide attempts among college girls have increased from 1% to 2%...a 100% increase in a 2-year span.  Nearly 1 in 3 girls have contemplated suicide. 

We have a college-aged daughter and two college-aged sons…this woke me up. 

After the presentation, I waited until the presenter was finished shaking hands and walked over into a quiet corner where he was refreshing coffee and asked, “What happened?”

His response, in paraphrase…” it is well documented that there is a two-year reversal in behavior among HS and college students in general…so instead of an 18-year-old dealing with 18-year-old things, you have an 18-year-old who is developmentally 16, trying to deal with 28-year-old things because of the unfiltered availability of information.”

Thirty years ago, a small subsection of people in the lowcountry of South Carolina would have known of the intimate details of the Alex Murdaugh trial… now there are people in New York, California, and Indonesia whose lives have been impacted by a very very local story.  

That is 28-year-old Grown Adult information, being straight-veined into 16-year-old minds in New York City while also trying to deal with acne, prom dates, and asking, “Should I download Snapchat OR TikTok OR  Tinder OR all three?”  

There is a narrative that we have heard around the country as we have spoken to groups in Tampa, CLT, ATL, Houston, Dallas, LA, and Vegas….

“Nobody wants to work anymore.”

The business owners are looking at the labor pool, and looking at the modern “flexible work environment” and concluding…

“Nobody wants to work anymore.”

The key leaders are looking at the teams they are leading, and/or the people they are trying to hire and train and conclude…

“Nobody wants to work anymore.”

But let us reason together for a moment.  

Really ask, do people REALLY not want to work?  REALLY?

Do people REALLY want to wake up in a fog, sit around on the couch, indulge in meaningless things all day, eat dinner, watch Maury Povich and Dr. Phil, go to sleep, and do it all over again day after day after day?

No.

You know what people want?  What YOU want?”

MEANING

You want to be-the-better you know you have the capacity to be!

You want what you do to matter!

You want what you do to move the needle!

You don’t want to stand around the cubicle wasteland and drone on and on about the TPS report. 

To do meaningful things, things that matter, there are 3 things that I want to reiterate, remind, and regurgitate…

First, you need hard coachING and you need TO coach hard

• A reshaping is needed (chucks pottery example sermon 2/26)

  • It offers mobility, portability…

  • And yet, periodically needs to be reshaped and reformed.

• • Pottery shifted an entire economic culture 

  • Allowed for portable societies

  • The beauty of the pottery metaphor is that…

  • Solid, hard coaching re-forms, both as you receive and give thoughtful coaching 

• The alternative of this is to ignore coaching, the sound of which just sounds idiotic.

• • Kyrie Irving/Kevin Durant (audio) 

• Nothing good will be done that is done outside of wisdom and accountability 

• Tech will change, languages will change, empires will come and go

• • Wisdom and accountability have and will always be

• Instead of seeking principle wisdom, We PURSUE THE BEST books, conferences, podcasts, and new strategies to find non-caloric solutions that will run themselves so we don’t have to work.  THEY WILL NOT…

• • We keep trying to buy the BEST project management software, CRM, billing system…

  • The BEST software is the software that you will actually use!...it requires action

  • The BEST town is the town you will actually live life in…it requires action

  • The BEST car is the one you will actually drive…it requires action

  • The BEST spouse is the one you will actually enjoy spending time with…it requires action

  • ALL of these require YOUR choice, and YOUR action

• WHY did we see a regress of maturity and cognitive capability among a younger generation?  

  • Not realizing that solving problems IS THE JOB ROLE

• • Because outside forces stepped in (including us in this room) and did not allow them to work the muscle of their own independence!

  • What we touted as flexibility became inactivity and apathy…just waiting. 

  • We’ve done much the same in our business trying to remove people from the challenge of solving problems…

• We have a tool called the Ideal Weekly Schedule…it is among the SIMPLEST tools a BOP coach brings in their toolbelt. You want the adherence level of an Ideal Weekly Schedule is? 

  • 30 minutes of pre-work

  • 2 minutes of review daily

  • UNLIMITED discipline and implementation

  • Parkinson’s Law tells us that “work expands to the time allotted”

    • Was challenged to do a duel

    • The night before the duel, he wrote letters to friends…

    • Then wrote his “Mathematical Testament” that changed the entire landscape of modern math…IN ONE NIGHT

  • • Annie Dillard - a weekly schedule is “willed, faked and so brought into being”

    • Give yourself a week and you’ll take a week…give yourself an hour and you’ll take an hour

    • EVARISTE GALOISE A POLITICAL ACTIVIST AND MATHEMATICIAN…and a man of turmoil

• • Less than 20% if we’re being very generous

  • You know what an Ideal Weekly Schedule requires?  

  • A manufactured stricture of our time creates urgency

• Instead of the weekly schedule, we look at the sub-contractor, the vendor, the customer, our own team and point our finger at them blaming our haphazard week on outside forces.

  • We assume all MEANINGFUL time means personal time

  • Assuming you believe in creation, one of the very first things we as humans were created to do was to WORK

  • There is MEANING IN WORK. THAT IS FULL TIME -> BEST EFFORT

• • YOU OWN YOUR TIME, and YOU WANT THAT TIME TO BE MEANINGFUL within the helpful expectations your business has helped set for you

• Not to work ALWAYS

• Not to work SOMETIMES

• We were designed to work, and rest, and work, and rest…a rhythm

• When we surround ourselves with the accountability of coaching (internally and externally), we are pushed to work and rest

• When we lead a person who needs to BE coached, we surround them with the accountability to work and rest, work and rest

• REALITY: We are trying to rest, pass it off as work and excuse it as “flexibility”

• • Our current narrative:

“I need flexibility to interrupt the drudgery of work to take care of life”

• Let’s reframe the narrative: 

“Technology has provided the flexibility to check in on life while I’m doing meaningful work, and to be fully present in life while I am resting from work”

Coaching will hold you accountable so you can find meaning in both.  By which YOU can now coach others to do the same.

The Second reminder of meaningful work: happiness is elusive, joy is manufactured

• Full confession - I’m teaching this as a student…not the expert

• Hedonic treadmill: 

• “these conveniences by becoming habitual had almost entirely ceased to be enjoyable, and at the same time degenerated into true needs, it became much more cruel to be deprived of them than to possess them was sweet, and men were unhappy to lose them without being happy to possess them.” - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• TRUE STORY: We’ve achieved a lot of chaos-busting tools and coaching, and yet a failure that we have had at BOP since we started in 2015 is building an incentive compensation structure and coaching module that works for everyone

  • A constantly rising tide that could go up…or down leaving the business in a tough spot if it doled out its reserves.  

• • We have never seen more than 10-15% of employees offer a sincere and non-expectant thank you for additional compensation received (bonuses, etc.)

  • Why?

  • The joy of possessing them was immediately rooted out by the numbness of expecting them

  • Why have we pushed so hard against year-end, random bonuses?  B/c the human psyche can’t help but see it as a recurring expectation…joy is lost b/c the convenience was never found…

• FLIP THE NARRATIVE IN YOUR HEAD: “All joy…make it your in-front-of thought”

• • James 1:2 - James was the son of an Israeli Construction worker who lived in a village town between Haifa on the Mediterranean and the modern Sea of Galilee

  • When they were older, his brother was falsely accused of a crime, and murdered in public

  • James was beheaded because of his teaching and his body buried in Spain 

  • What was the message he taught?  “All joy…make it your in-front-of (first before any) thought”

• What is joy - a willful acceptance that a situation has brought you favor

  • Testing leads to endurance

  • Endurance leads to growth

  • Growth leads to fullness

  • Fullness is the opposite of emptiness which is what many of us feel now.  

  • Choosing Joy in hard things = Satisfaction and not emptiness

• • WHY JOY?

• ACTION: 

• • A NEW QUESTION TO ADD FOR CHECK IN: “what hard thing happened this week that you can find joy in?”

Third, your job is to swim in a pool of problems and solve them

• This was the wisdom of the great Vanilla Ice - “If you’ve got a problem, yo, I’ll solve it…” 

• Without a PROBLEM, there is no need for a solution, therefore no need for job roles…no need for services and products.  

• • Artif. Intel. can now perform both repetitive and non-repetitive tasks

  • But they cannot solve problems with a human touch 

• Your role exists b/c of PROBLEMS, so it is unreasonable for any of us to be convinced that your role will be without continuous challenge

• Fortitude: courage in pain and adversity…courage when problems persist

• A new training course at USC: How to Fail: A Resilience Building Workshop

• • Universities across the country are seeing the need for proactive training in the area of 

  • a) identifying problems, 

  • b) learn from problems 

  • c) solve problems, 

  • d) endure thru problems

• We are in a space and time where we need to embrace the power both of the problem, and finding joy in solving the problem

• • Billing glitch…opportunity for gratitude that you get to solve it

  • Sub-contractor no show…opportunity for gratitude that you get to solve it

  • Client won’t follow through…opportunity for gratitude that you get to solve it

  • Marketing machine is not delivering leads…opportunity for gratitude that you get to solve it

  • Sales conversions hit or miss…opportunity for gratitude that you get to solve it

It is time to boundary ourselves and get BACK to the work of solving problems where we can use Technology to allow for the flexibility to check in on life while I’m doing meaningful work, and to be fully present in life while I am resting from work

Over the next two hours we have set the table for you to either wallow in a large, easy pool of pity…or to put your cape on, take a deep breath, and go to work to solve important problems that will change your life…and in turn, you will change my life.

One of our 5 core values is WRITE IT DOWN…what is the ONE thing that jumps out at you, you want to work on?

How do your customers and clients feel after they’ve done business with you? Do they feel your gratitude? Well, let’s talk about that today!

Thomas Joyner here with Business on Purpose.

I spent 4 days last week in Mexico with my wife celebrating our 10th anniversary! Gah, what a special time as it was just us for an extended period of time for the first time in 5 years. We’ve done a night or two getaways, but having 3 kids in 4 years meant that we always had a little one at home and so getting any more time than that was challenging.

We walked into the resort and from the moment we were there we were welcomed in a way that we never have been before. Let me paint the picture for you.

The first morning, because it was the west coast of Mexico and 3 hours behind… I woke up wide awake around 4:30 am. I’m used to going 0-60 when I wake up and it was so strange to wake up and NOT be needed by anyone. The tricky part, breakfast wasn’t served until 7 am! I remembered the concierge telling me they had 24/7 room service, so I picked up the phone and dialed it…half expecting it to ring and ring and ring. They picked up on the first ring. Remember, it’s 4:30 in the morning!

Hey is there any way I can get some coffee for two of us? Absolutely, sir! We would love to. I apologize that it will be about 20-30 min to brew a fresh pot for you and your wife, but we will have it there as soon as we can.

Great! 20-30 min later, there’s a knock on our door, at 5 am with a fresh pot of coffee, a tray of fruit, and a basket of chocolate croissants for us to enjoy. It was incredible. 

I just said thanks so much for bringing it so early and they thanked me multiple times and talked about how grateful they were to serve us.

Wow…that leaves an impression. 

Every time we ate dinner, ordered a drink, asked for a towel, needed anything and everything we were met with gratitude and feeling that the employees of the resort were overjoyed to be asked to serve.

So… the question at hand as I was flying home. Is that how our clients and our customers feel when we do work for them? Do they feel the gratitude at being chosen for their work? Do they know that it truly is a joy to get to do the work and serve them?

If I had to wager, I would say not!

I would say more often than not you are at odds with your clients. Left cursing them under your breath as they walk away or as you leave the job site. Maybe even thinking, if we can get through this one nightmare client, maybe we can get back to the good ones!

And some of that’s true. There’s entitlement and a lack of gratitude on the customer side. There’s no doubt about that. But I think it’s more than just that. I think that we’ve forgotten that work is a gift. That we were designed to work and create and problem solve and all of that, in and of itself, is a gift.

Because think about this for a minute. If what you were doing is easy, if it didn’t come with problems, people wouldn’t need you to do it! They would do it themselves and probably not pay someone like you to do it for them. If it didn’t require expertise and planning and calculation and learned skills, you would not be able to make a living doing it!

So maybe there’s a mindset shift that needs to happen. Next time there is an issue, can we train ourselves to be thankful… to feel gratitude for that problem. Because behind the problem itself is the reason we can build a business around solving that unique challenge! That is exciting! That’s something you can retrain your team on.

To feel joy at the challenges because each and every one of them is job security and the opportunity to support your family moving forward. 

I think that’s what the employees of this resort thought. They were grateful to serve because they knew the more people they served in an exceptional manner, the more people would want to come there and a better life for their family! But not just that, I think the gratitude that was present helped them not just, “get through the day,” but helped them enjoy their days working. And there’s a huge difference between the two.

So, how do you need to shift your thinking? What problems in your work need to be seen with gratitude? And do you need to take an inventory of how your customers feel when they are done working with you? I think it’s a great place to start and a great way to enjoy your work more! 

Bring it up around your team and see if it changes your culture and deliverables. Alright! Have a great day…and if I’m practicing what I’m preaching. Thank you for continuing to listen and allow us the opportunity to keep delivering content like this to business owners. It really is a gift to us and a joy to keep doing it. Take care!

If you have ever been interested to see a group of business owners conduct a communal eye roll, bring up the topic of bonus and incentives.

A few years ago we had a client who decided to reward their team from a banner year and forego distributing a substantial six-figure margin to himself and his partner.  There was no expectation created for this one-off distribution.  

It was a $200,000 sum that would be distributed to around 25 employees… you can do the math.  Not bad.  

The response?

Crickets.  

Of the 25 employees, there was a thoughtful “thank you” from three, a casual “thank you” from a few more, and crickets from everyone else.

To add insult to unexpected injury, the next day an employee came in and confessed, “I just got a job offer to go make $10k more per year and I don’t know what to do…”

Candidly, when calculating an employee's compensation, most owners in businesses with less than 50 employees have not considered the additional investment of bonus or incentive outlays.  When the thought finally arrives the plan is usually built from a position of fear rather than a position of joy, celebration, and sharing.  

In other words, “What can I do to make these employees feel more valued so they don’t leave!”

Most owners wish to generously share in some of the margin that has been created over and above what has been budgeted for base compensation and commission.

There is a chasm that exists that almost renders any over-and-above distribution as challenging at best, frustrating, and divisive at worst.

Owners are forced to think of the business finances in terms of the net…what is left over after all responsibilities are payed out.

Employees are often time locked in on the gross… the big numbers that come in at the top or total sales.  

An employee can do math in their head and determine the total sales of either their efforts, or the total sales of the company and think, “Well, look how much I generated for the business, and all I get is my base with a little extra (or sometimes no extra at all).”

The owner looks at the math spelled out on the profit and loss statement, the cash balances in the bank account, and the budget of projected expenses and revenues for the coming year and thinks, “How in the world can we afford to pay out any additional and not be cash-strapped for the future?”

It is a silent stalemate between owners and employees, top line and bottom line, perceptions, and expectations.  

How can employees see additional compensation as motivation and incentive, instead of seeing it as an expectation?

How can owners see additional compensation as a budgeted item to be shared and joyfully extended, instead of seeing it as a fear-motivated mortgage that taxes future growth opportunities (remember, marginal cash is the prime fuel for future growth).  

Most owners desire and have motivation to extend extra-compensation to reward over-and-above effort and to show additional appreciation.

There are however three primary negative motivations for the build-out and deployment of these plans that usually result in a lack of health and longevity. 

Owner guilt is where the owner feels unwarranted guilt for having access to the net income of the business while employees do not.  

What is often missed during boom times is that the owner must use a portion of the net to stack in reserves for when the business has negative net income and wants to continue employing personnel even though the business cannot “afford” it in a particular month of the year.

Another negative motivation for deployment of extra-compensation plans is an owner’s fear that an employee will leave.  It is a crucial principle that all businesses be built to weather a valuable team member leaving the roster.  A business will never be bulletproof from the handicap of losing great talent… but it can be prepared on how to respond.  

Businesses must be cautious about being held hostage by one highly valuable employee; it can damage morale and cash-strap a small business for future opportunities.

A final negative motivation for extra-compensation plans are employee demands in a vacuum of understanding the full scope of the business finances.   

Financial literacy in a business is key to building consensus and understanding around incentive compensation and bonuses.  A two step approach will aid employees in understanding the basics of business finances.

The first of the two steps to financial literacy is communicating with all employees that a dollar is not a dollar because…

• A dollar out is always more than a dollar (think when you pay for a sandwich that costs $9.95…you will pay more than $9.95 with taxes, tip, delivery, time spent, etc.)

• A dollar in is always less than a dollar (think when you receive a payment for $9.95…you will send the majority of that $9.95 to other people before you get to keep what is left over)

The second of the two steps to financial literacy is communicating with all employees that business finances are reviewed in a past, present, and future tense.  

The profit and loss statements and balance sheets reveal what has happened (past).

The subdivided bank accounts and level two dashboards reveal what is happening (present).

Simple budgets and pro formas give insight into what will happen in the future assuming the inputs hold true (future).  

Reminding employees that a significant part of financial literacy is assuming what may happen (future) and so not all hoped-for elements of compensation can be guaranteed.  

Communication of preparation, purpose and payout are the three priorities of creating an incentives program that can yield the hoped for results (notice the use of “can” and not “will”...there will continually be volatility around this issue).

First, in communicating purpose, it is helpful to understand what these programs exist for.

What is a bonus?  Without being punchy or rude, a bonus is simply a bonus, a cherry on top, an unexpected treat, and added benefit that displays generosity.  That’s it.

Bonuses should never be extended for baseline job role responsibilities, for showing up regularly and on time.  

It is not uncommon to overhear someone say, “Well, I’ve been here for 12 years, I should get…”

You have been compensated fairly and regularly for 12 years, that is what you have received.  A bonus is undeserved extra.  No one should ever… ever expect a bonus and should never base any portion of their personal budget on an anticipated bonus.  

A bonus is a bonus.   

The purpose of incentive programs is to incite (same root) an action. 

Most compensation opportunities above base should have the spirit of an incentive compensation in contrast to bonus or “profit sharing” (btw, profit sharing can be a dangerous term, and in some states place the business in a vulnerable legal positon).  What is the business trying to incite, to encourage, to stir up in addition to the baseline job roles and responsibilities?  

Incentive compensation carries an over-and-above idea of performance over-and-above the base job role.  

There are multiple ways to structure incentive compensation plans that all yield various outcomes.  

A few structures of notable mention are…

• A simple lump sum based on a percentage of an employees base salary based on hitting target profit

• Top line percentage of sales based on total volume

• Bottom line percentage of sales based on net income per sale after job costing

• Monthly or quarterly target incentives based on sales, or other measurable activities 

Regardless of the structure you decide, there are a few crucial questions to ask as you prepare for an incentive structure.

1. What will be incentivized?

2. How will it be tracked?

3. What flexibility does the program have to adjust if it is counterproductive either to the team or to the business? 

4. How will the incentive dollars be set aside to ensure profitable payout? (i.e. subdivided bank account?)

5. When and how will it be paid out?

6. How will it be well-communicated when it is paid out to achieve the desired outcome?

Every incentive payout should come with added communication both the celebrate the payout and to add a subtle reminder that this is over-and-above and you should cautiously budget your life based on this pay out. 

One final thought, all incentive structures should be considered to be subject to change at any time, and at least reviewed and updated annually.  You are not required to be held hostage by a bad incentive compensation structure…it will not only ruin the business, but ruin opportunities for each employee.  Don’t allow the benefit of one to backfire and cause the detriment of many.  

Incentive structures can be a value add to a business and to a team IF it is well-communicated, held with open hands to adjust over time, and generously given and received. 

For six years Ashley and I coordinated the meeting of a group of young men who met weekly during the school year.  Some weeks there were four, and others there were sixteen.  All between 15 and 18 years of age and all at different stages of maturity.  

We walked these young men through a variety of discussions, situations, and scenarios and even adapted a five stage growth pyramid for each to understand where they were at in their level of maturity.  

For these young men we relayed the identification of those stages as 

Boy
Adolescent
Man
Mentor
Patriarch

Upon introduction many of the young men in our group presumed that age was the entry point to each stage.  Turn 13 and you become an adolescent.  Turn 18 and you become a man.

One astute young man asked a resonating question around our communal fire pit, “at what age do you become a mentor?”

It was akin to asking, “at what year do you become an expert in your field?”

In 1964 US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart was providing an opinion on the use of obscenity in the public square  in the State of Ohio’s  case vs. Jacobellis who had been reprimanded for showing what was considered by some to be an obscene movie.  

Justice Stewart explains, “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…”

We will certainly do our best to layout helpful marks of maturity within a civil society, and yet maturity can be validated in part under the mantra of “I know it when I see it.”

My response to the young man asking at what age you scale the stages of manhood?  I asked, “have you ever seen a 19 year old boy walking around in a 54 year old body?”

He understood a primary principle of maturity:

Maturity equals maturity.

Age equals age.

You can have age without maturity.

You can have some maturity without age.

You cannot have full maturity without the combination of age and wisdom.

Wisdom is a cocktail of time, understanding, trial, error, learning, teaching, consideration and circumspect, humility, confidence, and curiosity.

Wisdom gone right is shrewd and helpful.

Wisdom corrupted is deception and gaslighting.

The secret to wisdom is this…GO PURSUE WISDOM!

How do we know what to pursue, or what a wise person, a mature person even looks like?

Here are NINE marks of maturation that we can pursue ourselves and begin looking for in others.  These marks do not prove full maturity, but simply a pursuit of maturity at some particular mile marker on the highway.  

First, a maturing person is someone who has written and defined principles (mission, values) for their life.

We all like to think that writing things down and defining “purpose” in our lives is good for the self-help section at Barnes and Noble, but in real life we can never find time for that.

The maturing person makes time to articulate the things that drive them and the things they value. 

Our family has a drive to create space and be a light through adventure, wisdom, and time around the table.

One of the more sacred spots in our day to day is any table we find ourselves at together whether it be our dinner table in Bluffton, a bleacher seat in Winston-Salem, a tray table in row 31 seat C, D, and E somewhere over the Atlantic, or a restaurant table in Cinque Terre.  The table is an indicator for us to limit distractions, share peaks and pits, discuss a wide range of recent events and future plans, and to play 3 rounds of a twitchy card game.

It’s written, we talk about it, and it has become a habit at this point.

If you don’t write them down, they do not exist. 

Second, the maturing person invests a bulk of time into a recurring “thing” (Reps): 

Distraction has become chaos’ tool of choice in our modern battle to fight.  Desire is rarely the enemy that keeps us from progressing to expert status.  We have a desire to fly planes, learn a language, love yoga, travel to Siberia, or hike the Cascades.  

Distraction then hijacks desire in mid-flight rendering us aloof and frustrated not being able to achieve that thing we know would satisfy and re-energize.  

While at the Chick Fil A mothership in Peachtree City, GA we heard a recurring idiom that for a while felt like classic corporate goofiness and then over time was sobered up to a well trained conviction; “Full Time…Best Effort”.  

It’s one thing to “be at work” all day vs. “working all day”.  

While we are at work all day, distraction begins hovering like sand gnats on a warm May afternoon at a southern coastal ball field.  It nips, bites, frustrates, until we either leave, or take measures to battle against.  

Three hours at work is not the same as working for three straight hours. 

One gives the allusion of maturity.  The other implements boundaries which lead to maturity and exponential value to you and the people you impact.

When you mature to give your full time…best effort, choosing not to work in a short series of fits and starts, you are setting the stage for a mass accrual of reps in a given task or skillset providing you a valuable path to expertise and value.

Immaturity always welcomes distraction.  

The third mark of a maturing person reveals a sober judgment and intuition spending time looking at a “thing” from multiple angles.  

For most of my life I didn’t “get” art.  People would sit and look, observe, think, contemplate, review, change angles and keep looking.

“What are they looking at?”, I would think with disdain and arrogance.

Perspective is a hallmark in appreciating great art.  Today I would accept an invitation into just about any display of artistic creation.  One of my favorite art displays is the small, dark Museo Leonardo Da Vinci.  A two minute walk from the infamous Duomo in Florence is a unique museum displaying recreations of da Vinci’s drawings.  

Da Vinci was a prolific illustrator drawing fine details of human anatomy, mechanical machinery, and novel tools.  Many of these drawings were never manufactured into tangible instruments.  The da Vinci museum displays actual (in some cases life size) creations of da Vinci’s drawings like a tank, a flying machine and others. 

These tools in essence jump off the page into real life and the museum gives you a unique opportunity to look at aa Vinci’s mind and work from multiple angles and perspectives.  What might have seemed hideous or impractical on paper is now meaningful and unique when built in real life.  

Maturity is making the time to walk around and see the various angles of a thing not in hopes of proving your opinion, but instead to reformulate your convictions with great understanding.  

The fourth mark of a maturing person is situational awareness; the ability to “read the room” knowing who is in the room, when to act and how to act.

Walk down a terminal in most major airports and he will be nearby, the guy with the bluetooth headset talking as if Nine Inch Nails are playing a live set at the next gate down and he’s got to make sure the person on the other end can hear everything he has to say.

Your response, “READ THE ROOM”.

Solitude is helpful, isolation less so.  We (yes, even introverts) live in a communal society with shared spaces.  It serves us well to read the room and respond in kind to the dynamics of that room.  

If people are tired, frustrated, jet lagged, in a hurry, delayed, short-fused and in need of space and peace, probably best not to add volume to that chaos.  Read the room.

If people are energized, fired up, ready to storm the hill and score the winning touchdown, probably best not to reveal your inner Eeyore.  Read the room.

There is a time and place for everything and the maturing person is willing to reveal their “true self” in moments where their true self will be invited and welcomed.  

Read the room.

A hallmark of situational awareness is the ALL important SELF-awareness.  Spending time discovering the inner workings of yourself will open up a world of insight and aha’s as to why you are the way you are, do the things you do, and act the way you act.

Maturity in self-awareness never uses what you have discovered as a crutch to excuse preference.  “Well, I’m an ‘S’ on the DISC so you shouldn’t ask me to do that.”  Or, “I have no Tenacity on the Working Genius so you can’t expect me to have that done so quickly.”

Profiles and enneagram numbers are helpful; these are third party tools that give us objective insight into the intangible parts of our personality.  As you learn, the mature person asks, “what are the things that I naturally love to contribute, and what are the things that I need to be aware that I am not as prone to so I can push through those areas when needed?”

Maturing people realize that Jim Rohn was right, “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” 

In fact, you are likely the average of the five books you read, the five foods you eat, the five songs you listen to, and the five things you spend your money on.

A new rhetorical question that we are going to begin adding to our hiring process is this, “if I asked you to setup a dinner with the five people you spend the most time with, would you be excited for me to meet with them?”

Life and business necessarily intersect.  Who you are out there, is who you will be in here.  

Run with chaos out there, and you will want to burn the building down here.  Run with wisdom out there, and you will want to build up the culture in here.  

Who are the five people you spend the most time with?  Would I enjoy dinner with them?

The sixth element of a maturing person is they feel compelled by gratitude to reinvest the wisdom they have received into others. 

This reinvestment is less about waiting until you have hit a threshold of wisdom to start giving that wisdom away, and more about immediately teaching the wisdom you have to the people you interact with immediately.

Did you learn something today?  Use it today and teach it today.

Seneca, the Roman Philosopher said, “while we teach, we learn”.  

Benjamin Franklin said, “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.”

In just a few minutes, I will involve you in an exercise that will help teach the things I’m learning so that we can all grow and perpetuate the wisdom to our co-workers, partners, families, and friends.  

The maturing person is always teaching out of the gratitude they have for being taught. 

The seventh mark of a maturing person are the stress-tests they’ve endured.  

Our family loves to hike, to walk along trails in the woods with no distractions and to simply look around and take it all in…to see what is out there and allow our minds to voyage into peaceful places.  

My son has a bazaar tradition when we are hiking in the woods, if he sees a tree he thinks is dead or dying he will work to “truck the tree”.  He’ll give it a few pushes casually to see if the tree is vulnerable and off balance; to see if it has some “give”.

After a few pushes he then makes a highly scientific judgment call to determine that tree’s “truckability”.  Can he make that tree fall if he were to deliver a linebacker like form tackle to its trunk? 

Mis-judge the tree and the tree wins whilst you get an Uber ride to the Orthopaedics office.  Judge correctly and you feel like a dominant predator of the woods knocking down trees with your bare shoulders.  

The maturing person has been pushed, pressed, and had tested through a variety of trials and tests both personally and professionally.  It is unreasonable and naive to think that you will live life on Lake Placid, where your waters will always be smooth and your skies will always be blue.

That testing is a gift because it breeds and develops endurance.  Endurance then works itself into hope, into a light at the end of a tunnel that is opportunity, life, conviction, belief, and satisfaction.  It is said that having hope will never disappoint.  

The maturing person will be aware of their response when they are rejected, or when they win.

Notice the maturing person may or may not respond perfectly to rejection or to winning, but they are aware of their response and the impact that response has on themselves and on others around them.

Rejection is fertile ground for shame.  Brene Brown has been studying shame for decades and describes shame as an “intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.”

Each of us has unique shame triggers, events that happen that open the door for that intensely painful feeling because our flaws have been revealed.

You could have just received a stern response, a cross glance, a critique on your work, a roll of the eyes in response to your contribution, or a harsh pushback from a client.  

Maybe your Dad only calls when he needs something or your Mom still treats you like you were 8 years old.

Maturity is not never feeling rejection.  Maturity is being aware of how you feel when you are rejected and then intentionally using emotional tools to grow from that rejection instead of self-medicating with rage, anger, return shame, substances, or loneliness. 

Victory and winning are equally as important.  When you win, how do you win?  Maturity will always lead with humility, joy, satisfaction, and gratitude.  Maturity will never thrive in an environment of arrogance, stand alone pride, gaslighting, and trash talking.

Humility is the currency of the wise.  On par with self-awareness, Shakespeare “A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.”

We are told it is the “foolish things of the world that are used to shame the wise, and the weak things of the world to shame the strong.”

A ninth mark of a maturing person is how they respond to authority, to coaching, and to the less fortunate.

The coaches you remember are the coaches that were hard, the ones who demanded more, and who were convinced that you had more to give.

Dr. David Crutchley was a professor of mine in graduate school.  I studied more for his classes than I did anyone else’s in the history of my education.  I never scored above a B minus on any exam or paper I turned into him.

Frustrated I tried to reason with him as to why I earned higher grades.  His response echoed, “I would rather you get a C in my class and walk away having truly learned, than for you to ace my class and to learn nothing.”

A life of 5.0’s and 10 out of 10’s on everything is a life that is ultimately not helpful towards resilience.  

Karen Arnold, a researcher who followed 81 High School Valedictorians came to an eye-opening conclusion:

“Even though most (valedictorians) are strong occupational achievers, the great majority of former high school valedictorians do not appear headed for the very top of adult achievement arenas….Valedictorians aren’t likely to be the future’s visionaries . . . they typically settle into the system instead of shaking it up.”

This is not license to not work hard, to not grow in diligence, and to not give great effort.  This is motivation to seek and appreciate hard coaching, serious feedback, and honest insight.  

Remember, the launching point into a life of wisdom is to simply GO LOOKING FOR IT.  If you find someone willing to do the hard, emotionally taxing work of giving you honest feedback, GO SIT WITH THEM and go get wisdom.  

Wisdom will be the road sign to maturity.  

Before English was widely spoken in the far corners of the globe, Latin was the lingua franca for much of the European world from the days of the Roman Empire into the middle centuries.

Latin stands at the root of many of our English words and offers us contextual insight into the flavor of our language.

Some Latin words proved so powerful in the fullness of their meaning that we simply adopted them without alteration into our common language.

Such it is with the financially laced Latin phrase pro forma.

With past-centric financial statements like profit and loss and balance sheets, it is helpful to see what-was in the lifecycle of our business.  

With the power of subdivided bank accounts and the Level Two Dashboard merging the perspectives of real-time cash, real-time receivables, and real-time payables, it is helpful to see what-is in the current state of our business in real cash.

We need the what-could-be picture to help us with a complete past, present, and future snapshot of our business.  

The pro forma is a common financial statement with powerful insights.

Pro forma literally means “as a matter of form(ality)”.  In other words, if you want to know the hypothetical future of an element of your business, especially a financial element, then create a form or a formality and run hypothetical scenarios.

The pro forma allows for such scenarios and provides powerful insight.  The downside is that it takes time and focus.  It feels unproductive because it is a future that is not promised.

It is the perfect work and effort given by an executive leader looking to have proximity to the business. 

The good news for a pro forma is that when you have the initial foundation of calculation built on a simple spreadsheet, you can continue running scenarios with often nothing more than a few tweaks to the calculator each time.

Here are some of the key areas you would implement and utilize a pro forma:

• Determining the compensation of a new hire

• Discovering impact to the bottom line through any role (new or existing)

• Uncovering future revenue and or expenses projections based on anticipated sales

• Future plan your product inventory (or billable hour inventory in a service business) and availability based on seasonality

• To simulate a variety of “what if” scenarios with business finances, personnel, and production

A simple pro forma is often the first step to answering the question, “what would happen if…”  If we hire that person?  If generated that revenue?  If we stocked up on that inventory?  If we saw a 10% reduction or a 20% increase in sales?

There are a few basic elements needed to build a simple pro forma calculator for your business.

First, you will need to define the purpose of the particular pro forma calculation.  An example purpose may be to answer, “What is the financial impact to the business of hiring a new person?”

Next, define what categorical outcomes the pro forma will provide… what is the ultimate result or number you are looking for?  In our example, the “financial impact” means looking at the net income of the business if we hire the person and they receive a compensation of X and produce a work-product of Y.

Once you have your ultimate result defined then begin to work backwards to fill in the gaps of values (inputs) you will need to know in order to calculate a final result.

Typical foundational cells or values to include in a compensation pro forma are:

• Base compensation values

• Incentive compensation (bonus) values

• Any other expenses (overhead, etc.) values

• Type(s) of product or service(s)

• Average ticket price of product(s) or service(s)

• A spread of months and years to run your scenarios (Year One/Month One, Year One/Month Two, etc.)

Pro formas can actually be quite addictive as you become equipped with greater objective information to make decisions in a constantly moving subjective climate.  

A pro forma is best situated within a business that runs the RPMs of great leadership.

A culture of repetition ensures that the necessary communication feedback loops are in place to regularly run pro formas for decision-making.

A culture of predictability ensures that the results of the pro formas find a home in the decision-making process.  

A culture of meaning ensures that the decisions made based in part on pro forma generated data is properly and appropriately integrated into the day to day aligned with the vision, the mission, and the values of the business. 

Listen to Jessica VanBrunt, owner of Van Brunt & Company, as she talks about how she implemented processes, a strong company culture, 12-week plans, and effective meetings to achieve business success. 

“It’s just easier if I do it myself.”

“No one does it as good as I do it”

“They just don’t care as much as I do.”

These are all statements that I have heard you make, and they are all statements that will sabotage your Executive Leadership.

The leader could drive the tractor, could fulfill the order, could supervise the build, could execute the transaction, could meet with the client, and could negotiate the material pricing.

But the Executive Leader reminds herself that she has “Proximity to motivate a team to pursue the named future you see”

The Executive Leader creates proximity.  They receive a phone call from the client and elect not to respond, or to immediately pass it to the trained and capable team member who can respond within the core values.

The Executive Leader intentionally withholds their response…even when it is helpful, knowing that their discipline will create an opportunity for their team to get more reps in a crucial part of their business.

When an Executive Leader willfully withholds a natural response in a display of self-discipline, it will be misunderstood and will be questioned… and it will create the value of another rep for the leader to whom that response has been delegated.

John Maxwell famously stated, “If someone else can do a task at least 80% as well as I can, I give it to them.” 

The math of that reasoning tells us that 20% of their work may not hold up to your personal standard… and yet, the 80% that they take from you allows you to be freed up to pursue the highest and best use of your time.

Money can always be regenerated… time and attention cannot.

An Executive Leader must guard her time because nothing she has dominion over is of more value than how she spends her time.  Yet, we waste it on task management and decisions that others could easily make (even if they don’t perfectly align with our decision).  You might have selected a circle while your leader selected an oval, but either way the decision is done and allows the organization to hit on the mission within the guideline of the values.  That’s a WIN!

Starting and building your business required a relentless, red-eyed, sacrificial devotion to doing and seeing it all.

Be free from that.  What you have built is good, valuable, helpful, beneficial, and powerful… but not if you are going to insert yourself in every little task and decision thereby sabotaging growth and therefore opportunity.

When the growth of a business is stunted so too are the growth opportunities for each team member.  As a business grows, so too the roles required of which existing team members have opportunity for promotion.  

Executive Leaders are more like pilots; build the initial systems to operate the plane, and then set the GPS coordinates and allow the people and systems to get you there. 

What are the indicators that you are moving in the right direction of Executive Leadership?

First, You will spend far more time on vision and people, than you will on process and task.

The executive leader will have multiple calendared times throughout each year they gather the entire company together in person or virtual and read back through their written vision story, mission, and values followed by a self-evaluation of “Green/Yellow/Red” flags in the business.  These vision days with the added addition of flag-reflections offers the executive leader and the team a sobering, in-the-moment consideration of where they think they stand in a number of business and personnel areas.

The executive leader will be in a continual state of learning and understanding the art and science of human psychology and personality.  They will take seriously the objective insights of profiles and assessments while pursuing acumen into generational diversity, trends, and norms while training their leaders on what they see and hear..  

Second, you will have a defined and published group of tapped leaders in place, and those leaders will begin showing evidence of building and refining the team to carry the heavy loads of business.  

In this case, published means a visual org chart, formally communicated to the team, while you make space in team meetings and check ins for investing time and attention through line item training and with the culture calendar review.

Published is public and the Latin root “pub” means a collection of people.  If the people have confusion about who is leading, then your leadership is not published.   

The third indicator of executive leadership is revealed when you begin having greater proximity to your leaders; both close and far away.

Proximity towards your leaders comes by way of the RPMs of great leadership that we talk about frequently.

Repetitious proximity is an engagement that happens over and over realizing that once is never enough.

Predictable proximity is an engagement that happens without surprise allowing for clarity and sobriety in thoughtful and timely conversation.  The micro-manager asks the wrong question at the wrong time, whereas the executive leader asks the right question at the right time.

You will also need to prioritize meaningful proximity which will welcome the skill of intentionality…a deliberateness the way a skilled surgeon navigates a robotic arm into a space unseen by the naked eye.  Not hurried but targeted, slow, seeing and hearing what is in front of you, not allowing your mind to be pulled apart to the worthless things screaming for your limited attention.  

When you have well-communicated time away from the “office”, defined meetings structure, and a more closely aligned weekly schedule they offer an unrestrained path to the bull’s eye of what is most valuable in that moment.  

A fourth indicator of executive leadership is when you are making time to pursue the wisdom of 3rd party voices OUTSIDE of your business.  Your internal leaders cannot serve this function in full, they are overseeing the management of the business…they will soon be in desperate need for new inspiration and updated motives to lead.

For some, this 3rd party wisdom will reveal themselves in nature walking, hiking, biking, swimming, or jogging alone outside.

For others, it may be in silent and unruffled stillness; a quiet room with a small chair and a window, or the edge of a wooded park in the middle of a workday when no one is around.

Books are a magical merging of the rustling of words without a sound.  Books are the perpetually evergreen wisdom of the years encapsulated in the products of our earth; the pages, the glue, the string, the binding, the ink all creating a quiet symphony upending our norms and reclassifying our most closely held beliefs. 

As Thomas Jefferson was sending books as a gift to the US Library of Congress, he wrote in a note to John Adams saying “I cannot live without books”, neither should the executive leader.

Many times those books are penned by the hand of a sage, which draws its root from the sophists; a Greek term that doubles for wisdom.

Wisdom from a sage, a wisdom-dispenser brings nuance, clarity, brilliance, and sturdiness.  Like a battered book in an antique shop, a sage presents its attractiveness precisely by their brokenness and scars.  The executive leader has sages, plural, multiple.

The uncoordinated team of sages offers a teaspoon of fresh strategy in favor of a full cup of tested perspective.  The sage is rarely interested in solving a problem that will last a week…they wish to help transform the soul of a person or a business for a lifetime.

At least four elements revealing the growth of an executive leader:

Investing more time and attention on vision, mission, and values…purpose.

A published group of defined leaders in place.

A proximity to those leaders both close and far.

A symphony of sages.

None of these will be purchased in the pre-packaging of modern products, allowing you to “hack” the system.  The elements of executive leadership are only obtained through adventure and pioneering…creating ruts of repetition, predictability, and meaning.