Listen to Thomas Joyner, Director of Coaching, and Brent Whitaker, Business Coach, as they discuss the importance of having a clear mission statement. They talk about the difference between passion and purpose, and how purpose is what drives us forward even when our passions change. They also discuss how a mission statement can guide a business and why it's important to define your own mission instead of letting others define it for you. Ultimately, a well-defined mission statement helps us understand the "why" behind our work and keeps us motivated to push through difficult times.
LISTEN HERE to learn more!
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Partnerships are hard. I’ve heard it said, “the only ship that doesn’t sail is a partnership.”
Partnerships sound great in theory, almost a no-brainer structure for a small business. You get two (or more) minds, two skill sets, and twice the available time that in many cases can lead to an exponential outcome.
You also typically get two visions, two opinions, and divergent expectations.
Many partnerships function just enough but don’t thrive.
In the hundreds of partnerships that we’ve been exposed to we’ve only seen two that can seriously claim that the business is in far better shape due to the partnership than without.
I met with a startup excavating contractor who laid out his plan for his young business, including the threshold levels that would be achieved in order for a second person to be given 49% of his youthful company.
My first question to this eager and excited business owner was, “is this formally agreed upon and in writing?”
“Yes.”
He assured me that the friend-soon-to-be-owner would be bringing skill sets that the founder does not have. While I’m sure that is true, often it will also force the owner to miss out on lessons that will be crucial for him to learn up front that will be buffered and absorbed by someone else.
Nonetheless, the deal is inked, so the next question becomes, “how do I work with a partner in a synergistic, agreeable, valuable, and productive way?”
There are three non-negotiables of working in a co-owner environment that must be committed proactively.
First, you must co-write a multi-page vision story that defines the future snapshot of the business. Where there is a vacuum of vision a business and its people become chaff subject to the various swirls of the wind and will (not might… but will) be blown in a variety of non-congruent directions.
You will scatter.
Once written the partners will be well served to review the written vision no less than every-other-month and make appropriate adjustments based on new information.
The partnership is akin to a boat floating out on an ocean in need of an immovable lighthouse reminding each of the unified direction of the business as life evolves and emotions manipulate.
This regular review of the vision offers each owner a reminder of the agreed upon direction along with an opportunity to clarify.
Second, the partnership must prioritize a dedicated, face to face check in no less than once monthly. This check-in should incorporate pre-determined questions that will uncover desires, blind spots, encouragement, frustrations, and a platform to have the conversation that each may wish to avoid.
This meeting will be easy to bypass due to “busy-ness” or an apathetic “we’re ok”. This meeting should be non-negotiable no matter how good or bad the relationship is going; preset on each calendar and no excuses to allow retreat.
The third element to help maintain the communication channel of a partnership; each partner needs a written non-owner role that supports the organizational day to day of the business.
Most partnerships play the excuse card of “we’re too busy to have roles, we just need to do what needs to get done.”
This is an endless cycle of chaos and inefficient busy-work which leads to bitterness because inevitably one partner will perceive themselves to be working far harder in the business than the other.
Each partner needs a written job role and that role carries a salary. All partners should be compensated in two channels; salary and owner draws.
The partner salary may include incentive compensation based on the role, and is the salary that the partner budgets her life around. The owner draws should be scheduled throughout the year with a pre-determined draw schedule or agreement.
For instance, Mike Michalowicz, the author of Profit First recommends setting up a bank account entitled “Profit”, a set percentage of receivables gets swept into the profit account twice monthly and then the first of each quarter (April 1, July 1, etc.) the owner's draw 50% of whatever is in the profit account.
You can coordinate whatever draw schedule you would like but it should be predetermined, written, and followed with no exceptions. Money disagreements will implode a good partnership with swift expediency; most never see it coming till it is indeed too late.
When a partnership has a collective vision, a means of regular communication, and clarity of day to day role, then the partnership has the necessary channels for partner communication setting the stage for a thoughtful flow of your ideas, thoughts, concerns, desires, and dreams to be heard, vetted, and decided-upon.
Partnerships of any kind are hard because they involve the moveable and oft unpredictable variable of emotion and subjectivity. Not all is black and white, but there are foundations of understanding that can be poured well in advance of an emotional hurricane.
When you enter a partnership you willfully give up certain levels of predictability and controls. You can fight to maintain 100% autonomy, which will end in 100% meltdown, or you can set a course of pre-planning, clarity, and frequency of communication.
In a partnership, that is a voice you do have.
For 21 years, Ashley and I raised, led, and parented our daughter. On a beautiful Friday afternoon in April, I had 56 seconds to walk her down a sweepingly curved walkway of gray pavers under an aged live oak tree into the hands of another man who within a few minutes would become her husband.
My time as her dad did not end in the 5 o’clock hour of that Friday afternoon, but my time as the primary male influence in her life did.
In the months and years leading up to this moment, I felt calm and intentional thinking through where we were trying best to lead our children. In the hours and days after those 56 seconds, my emotions began stirring in realization of a new reality, and one that can bring a man either to joy or regret.
I will relish those 56 seconds. I remember them. Those few paver-stabilized steps were clear, and I even remember telling my daughter that we should slow down because I had waited 21 years for this short walk together.
The song being sung in the background was entitled Gratitude.
The wind swayed lightly.
The sun peeked through the canopy of the oaks to catch an overhead glimpse of a Dad soaking it all up.
Remembering the meaningful steps that you will take in the future begins with taking intentional steps today, and those hard, often unseen steps set the moments to experience gratitude when we are invited into the brief, 56-second steps.
The question you will answer on the backside of the 56-second moment is this, “was I present?”
Too many Mom and Dad business owners are too busy in the weeds of their business that they don’t make time for the intentional steps that are required before the 56-second moments.
The presence of the 56 seconds is earned in the minutes, hours, weeks, months, and years leading up to it. Then, poof, life moves on.
Were you present? Were you in this moment while you were in this moment?
A banner that you can begin to fly over the hope of your life is the word intentional.
You own the years and the 56 seconds when you create a life of intentionality; of being deliberate.
A deliberate business owner is one who has carefully thought through the weight of life, the relationships that matter, and actively builds a business that will support the desired life.
Too many owners are growing just to grow and the growth leads to increased burden (more time at work, more people to lead, more money to steward) that they have little desire for.
Being deliberate carries with it the idea of carefully balancing weight on scales, slowly and carefully adding an ounce here, and removing an ounce there to get the scales balanced.
Balance will rarely be achieved of course because we are human, fragmented, broken.
A third-century Rabbi Shemuel ben Nachmani said that: “We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.”
If you are chaotic, frantic, distracted, and unintentional, then life will remain that way for you, even in the 56-second walk.
If you are boundaried, scheduled, coordinated and thoughtful, then life will shape itself in that way for you, even in the 56-second walk.
Intentional owners hold to a mission and values and repeat it over and over again. This does not lead to the misnomer perfection of The Truman Show or Disney-like perfection. Life is hard and business is hard, but it is made all the more meaningful when we have a mission to pursue and values to guide our decision-making; both in life and in our business.
Intentional owners decide now what they wish for their future presence to look like. I did not want to be distracted in the months, weeks, and hours leading up to our daughter’s wedding.
I began maneuvering my schedule months prior to the 56-second walk so that I would think of nothing but this stunning bride and leading her to her husband. Nothing else had my attention except that walk in that moment or in the moments leading up to it; no personnel thoughts, client thoughts, billing thoughts, service-delivery thoughts…nothing.
Just walking with smile-induced tears.
Intentional owners necessarily empower others to do the work day to day leaving space and margin in the schedule and in their heads to do the hard, uncertain, un-kept work of pioneering, visioneering, and direction setting.
We have three primary meetings in our business. Two of those meetings are weekly, and one is twice monthly. I lead none of those meetings.
Our team has been and is being equipped to lead in a powerful and agenda-driven way so they have autonomy and freedom to lead within a clear set of boundaries and outcome expectations.
You will only have 56 seconds for one action that you will have waited her whole life for.
Will you be present?
She sent us a voice memo saying, “I don’t see my husband or my kids anymore… money is not the issue, I just don’t have the time…I feel trapped by my business.”
This Mom is trying to wear the superhero cape in life and at work and feels she is doing neither very well brewing a mental cocktail of disillusionment about the value and gift of business, while also fueling 100-proof guilt straight from the still of societal expectations.
Life and business necessarily intersect and can be of mutual value to each other.
Humans were created as a gift to one another, so to work was created as a means of mimicking small little moments of creation each and every day. This treatise that I am penning now is a small act of creating something new… a small contribution of work.
This morning I was able to sit with my daughter for a short breakfast a mere five days before she is to marry her fiance. I cannot hide my family emotion from my work creation, or vice versa. The space for breakfast was set and crafted long before this morning.
Without a predetermined understanding of what our business was intended in the first place, I could have easily slotted some urgent-felt task into that slot that was unmoveable. Years ago I made the determination that I would not do my core work of coaching on Mondays or Fridays.
Why?
I needed space… margin.
Foregoing Monday and Friday coaching options was also a confession that we would also be limiting our possible income due to the restriction of available revenue-generating hours in any given week.
This does not mean I do no work on Monday and Fridays. On the contrary, some of my deepest creation work is done on Monday and Friday as I create a series of one-on-one appointments with myself to create and implement that work that will ultimately benefit hundreds and thousands beyond me for years to come…including this humble article I write now.
Those are hours that I have cashed in for the margin of availability. Availability for my daughter to have a final breakfast before she assumes a last name and role that I no longer have a primary say in. Availability to hop on a call with a frustrated client, to chat with a wisdom-seeking team member, to stare out the window and contemplate next steps.
The burden of being trapped is usually at the fault of providing ourselves no boundaries, and therefore no margin.
Watching a basketball game on television, you will quickly see that the boundary of the court offers the margin for spectators, journalists, team trainers, coaches, and a variety of other support that allows freedom for the players to do what they are best at.
Could the leagues cram more games into a season and theoretically earn more money? Yes, to what damage?
Exhaustion. Fatigue. Bitterness. Frustration. Isolation.
All are planted in the soil of a boundaryless life; a day to day without proper forethought, scheduling, and perspective.
Five days out from walking my daughter into a new life, sending her off into a new narrative with a new teammate it is hard to run from the cliches of time chasing you down reminding you that your parents and grandparents were right when they pinched your cheek, pitifully cocked their head and softly spilled the truth that time really does move fast.
Success is not a metric, but instead health, presence, eyes to see and ears to hear.
In the popular book In Praise of Slowness Carl Honore writes, “studies show that people who feel in control of their time are more relaxed, creative and productive.”
Apps have turned much of life into a competitive league of perpetual window shopping through the grams, reels, and snaps of our incessant posting. In her well-written book Saving Time Jenny Odell laments that “you can shop for life itself in a virtual mall where posts about self-care and retreat come across as ads for self-care and retreat. Tap to add this to your life.”
No corner of our attention is spared from the incandescent glow of the best of everyone else in contrast to the dark world of my own limitations.
We work harder like desperate gamblers trading in another bank of minutes from our limited supply out to the open market in hopes we will strike it big in the form of achievement knowing that it too will soon be gone.
Ironically, I was at a funeral yesterday, six days prior to my daughter's wedding. A powerful paradox. A juxtaposed emotion from what soon will come. In two hours of funeraling, there was not one mention of the 89-year-olds net worth nor one accolade of the overtime that he put in.
The one theme throughout the two-hour reflection was…presence.
“He was there.”
“He was silly.”
“He was faithful.”
It used to be thought that she who dies with the most toys wins.
Instead, she who boundaries her time to be available both on the court and in the margins… wins.
She who makes time for breakfast with her daughter and the planned team meeting.
She who makes time for exercise and budget reports.
She who makes time for kids activities and sales appointments.
The bad news is you are only allowed 168 hours in a week.
The good news is you have access to a full bank of 168 hours in a week.
For the most part, you decide how those hours are used and who those hours are used for. It will cost you either way, and you alone will determine the value of that cost either for the short term, or the long.
You can window shop the infinite screens of the other, or you can content yourself with the value of who you have been built and designed to be; which is finite and unique.
Balance is a myth, rhythm is a reality. Boundaries allow for rhythm, both on the court and in the margin.
For many, work has become an unavoidable and sustained pot hole along the chaotic highway of our day to day that knocks the alignment from the goal of peace each of us has in life.
Beckoning a variety of responses from the menu of emotions available to us throughout the day, we respond to life's potholes with entitlement and exasperation feeling betrayed when we get thrown off track.
We want happiness, when truthfully, we expect a nonlinear annoyance to be the theme of our Monday through Friday.
It would serve us well to contemplate a novel concept; happiness is spasmodic, temporary; joy is manufactured and intentional.
Canadian psychologist Philip Brickman and American psychologist Donald Campbell coined the aptly named phrase “hedonic treadmill” in the 1980s. It is the thought that happiness is fleeting, always seeing it in the short jolts by which it comes, and yet always looking for more. The elation or misery that comes typically returns to a baseline emotion quickly.
The happiness we seek in our work will under-satisfy because the treadmill of life marches on at a steady pace forcing us to continue moving on rarely allowing us to sit in those happy moments for long.
Each moment ceases quickly to become embraced with gratitude in favor of being installed as a new level of expectation.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau warns that “these conveniences (think happy moments) by becoming habitual had almost entirely ceased to be enjoyable… men were unhappy to lose them without being happy to possess them.”
In our work at Business On Purpose with heroic business owners, we’ve achieved a notable level of chaos-busting tools and coaching, and yet a failure that we have had since we started in 2015 is building an incentive compensation structure and coaching module that works for everyone. 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?
Maybe the joy of possessing them was immediately rooted out by the numbness of expecting them.
Employees are hoping for a “hit” when they get the next pay bump or are lauded with the next award. It wears quickly and returns to baseline leaving us in need of more. More hits. More substance. More of something to numb the reality I feel that you cannot see… the reality that I live with internally but rarely share with you.
Recently, we began asking a new question during our every-other-weekly individual check-in with team members:
Can you describe a hard moment that you experienced these past two weeks, and how you found joy in that moment?
We focus on joy rather than happiness because it seems that joy is a choice, where happiness is a feeling.
Feelings will not sustain because we rarely control them, choices will sustain precisely because we have the option to opt-in or out.
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 himself was later beheaded because of his teaching and his body buried in Spain.
What sort of teaching could be so vile that it results in a man’s beheading?
This is a paraphrased excerpt of a key element of James’ message, “(In all things) joy… make it your in-front-of (first before any) thought”.
That’s it.
A message of actively choosing joy in front of any other response is a core part of the message that ended a notable man’s life.
Joy is the “willful acceptance that a situation has brought you favor” and it brings long-term value. Hard things bring testing, testing provides conditioning and endurance, that endurance reinvests into growth and fullness, and fullness counteracts the isolation of emptiness.
Joy says, “I accept hard things to endure because the outcome is fullness.”
Our modern work environment shuns and works endlessly to mitigate difficulty.
Conditioning, endurance, growth, and fullness cannot divorce themselves from quandary and perplexity. To garner the refreshment of fullness, we must walk through the pluff mud of decomposed problems.
If problems did not exist, then there would be no need for your labor to solve those problems.
Problems are a fundamental reason for work. Problems provide opportunity both to solve the problem and to build endurance.
How do we choose joy while staring down the barrel of problems?
Joy willfully accepts the problem realizing the outcome and the long-tail value that outcome of endurance and fullness.
How do you rediscover joy at work? Begin by reframing problems as endurance-developing opportunities knowing that fullness is on its way leaving you spent and satisfied instead of exhausted and vexed.
Ick... that’s what most Owners AND team members think when they hear the dreaded phrase, “Performance Review”.
To the Owner, you might as well have said, “Hey, you want to spend loads of hours preparing for an uncomfortable discussion that will be totally worthless?”
To the team member, you might as well have said, “Hey, would you like for me to stick a hot poker in your ear?’
Truth is that Performance Reviews are very rarely an actual review of performance and are more often than not a mis-matched reflection of previous work with no clear outcomes nor forward-facing objectives.
Are they even necessary?
We would like to propose a different type of review... an actual PERFORMANCE REVIEW!!!
It’s the same words with a completely different method and purpose.
Ultimately, the Owner wants the team member to do what the business needs, to accurately assess the team member and how they are doing relative to what the customer and the business needs them to do in their role and beyond.
The team members will want the question answered, “am I doing what is needed and beyond, and what can I get even better at?”
We’re going to make this quick because we want it to be intentionally simple.
You need FIVE tools for a great culture of performance, and for reviewing the performance. In fact, these tools will not only be used on Performance Review Day but EVERY DAY!
The very first tool you need for great evaluation of performance are the unique core values of your business. The values are those filters for great decision-making, and the curbs along the side of the road keeping you in bounds towards the vision.
It is possible to have great performance and effort misaligned with the values which will lead the team away from the vision.
Your unique core values serve as an anchor for each team member to ensure that all performance is progress-based performance that ultimately leads towards the vision.
Next, each team member needs a written Job Role.
If you have not already been through our module on Job Roles, please refer to that module and make sure that EVERY SINGLE team member in your business has a role, is clear on the role, is relentlessly trained on the role, and is reminded of the role.
YES, all of those things I just mentioned.
“But I showed them the role when they started!” Yes, and assuming that you are hiring humans, we all need to be reminded regularly...even you.
The third tool needed to review great performance is a simple 12-week plan or whatever consistent goal-setting tool you use in your business.
The goals you set throughout the year should be tracked for their implementation and effectiveness towards the vision.
Again, refer back to our module on goal setting with the 12-week plan and IMPLEMENT!
Finally, you need a repetitive series of one-to-one check-ins to reflect back on.
These one-to-one check-ins should occur no less than once monthly and should include core questions such as…
Where have you seen a true story this week that lives out our mission or values?
What are you seeing/thinking?
What blind spots do you see?
What do you need from me?
Here is what I see/need from you…
Ask those questions sincerely and repetitively, document the responses, and that will give you excellent content when it is time to conduct your performance reviews.
One more tool that will ensure that your performance reviews actually happen at a time that is valuable to you and your team members…your calendar.
Go ahead and set the dates on your calendar in November of the previous year for the following year's performance review dates so there is no surprise.
Here is how these tools will play out to create a Performance Review that actually works and doesn’t suck the life out of your days!
At least once per year, the you (or the immediate manager) will sit down with the team member during Performance Review day and walk through the performance review template; reflecting on how the team member has lived out the core values, how they have met (or not) their top 3 job role tasks, how they completed their priority goals throughout the year, and listening back in on the general themes from your no-less-than-monthly one-to-one check-ins.
There is a final section in the template for you as leader to provide feedback on how the team member can grow in their role over the next 6 to 12 months.
The values ensure each person is in-bounds with their performance aligned to the vision.
The role ensures each person is owning the tasks needed to help the team move forward.
The goals ensure that each person has a hyper-focus on any adjustments that are required throughout the year.
The check-ins ensure that each person has a platform for feedback and coaching.
The calendar ensures that we make the time for each of these items.
By the way, any gaps in performance require YOU as the leader to take ownership of the disparity first. How will you ever coach the mindset of ownership if you are unwilling to own it yourself?
There is one more tool... the missing piece to the power of pushing towards great performance reviews for you and your team... it’s IMPLEMENTATION.
I will take a half-baked plan with full implementation versus a perfect plan with half-baked implementation.
I quote Joe Calloway all of the time because it is so powerful, “Vision without IMPLEMENTATION is hallucination”.
If you take time to build out proper software with proper processes, you will have greater clarity in the WHO of your business.
Now go live out your business on purpose!
Multiple Bank Accounts are a nonnegotiable for a growing, thriving business. We've received a lot of pushback on this one, so let's talk about it.
Business On Purpose is here to talk financials! Scott Beebe and Thomas Joyner are giving us an overview on subdividing bank accounts, whether or not the "it's so much work for my bookkeeper!" is a good enough excuse, and why P&Ls may not tell you everything you need to know.
If you're wanting peace of mind around your businesses' financials: profitability, "do we have enough for taxes?" and growth planning, you need to listen to this episode!
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
The irony of this training is the fact that I am writing the script while flying on a private plane from a secluded island in the Bahamas after spending 3 days spearfishing, eating, and hanging out with friends and clients.
That was a moment of privilege.
Spending your days with continual electricity is a privilege.
If you are listening to this talk, you have privilege.
Privilege is “a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group”.
A more direct definition is to be “exempt from an obligation from which others are subject.”
How do you know if you are in a class of privilege? Others shoulder a burden you don’t have to shoulder.
It wastes our time to try and determine if we are privileged, and instead to ask “because we have privilege, what does that mean?”
In the barren desert of the middle east, a man hears a message. “I will bless (privilege) you so that you can be a blessing (offer privilege to others).”
This training is about the so that.
When you have privilege that goal is not to consume the privilege you have, but instead to inventory the privilege, proximity yourself among those who do and don’t have your privilege, and then offer privilege to others in a way that allows them to follow the same reinvestment strategies.
The problem with privilege is that we tend to see it as terminal; either it stops with us (because we consume but don’t re-invest, OR it stops with the direct person we share it with because they consume but don’t re-invest).
Brian Fikkert co-authored an aptly named and important book “When Helping Hurts” that opens our eyes to understand that when we have privilege, we want to share that privilege, and too often the privilege we share ends up doing more harm than if we would have just kept the privilege ourselves.
It would help to redirect the privilege discussion back into the context of Executive Leadership and tie privilege back to our definition: proximity to motivate a team to pursue the named future you see.
Let’s look at consuming and deploying privilege through three lenses of our definition.
First, privilege can bring proximity.
There is a template for leveraging the privilege of money to influence friendships. Of course, we are not condoning nor suggesting bribes or payoffs. Instead, you can choose to deploy your money in places that provide you proximity for connection.
We were at a resort with our family, clearly a place of privilege…it was a once in a lifetime type of trip. This resort puts us in immediate proximity to people who had the same or more privilege than we had.
We get to talking with some of the other vacationers and over time get the direct email of a very well-known and influential music industry executive who has put some of the greatest acts in the world on the stage. We sat and watched a World Cup match with he and his young son and developed a relationship. The inanimate tool of our money provided us with “a special right…granted or available only to a particular person or group.”
It is good to consistently ask, “how can the privilege I have provide proximity to bring that privilege to others, or to provide new relationships that breed new privilege.”
Secondly, privilege can breed motivation.
When you have access to privilege you often have something someone else would like to have but is unable to attain.
Think about the privilege of a well-known athlete who is willing to step down from his throne of notoriety and sincerely show up to read a book to a Kindergarten class, or visit patients at a hospital and offer encouragement.
The athlete has the privilege of notoriety, influence, and voice…they offer that to those who do not and thus bring a unique motivation that might help that Kindergartner grow up to have a unique impact, or provide the motivation for the mental fight that a patient will need to conquer their disease.
Privilege reinvested breeds new and novel privileges that can be perpetuated.
Privilege consumed breeds bitterness, expectation, and myopic arrogance that pushes the privileged to think they are the ones responsible for their own privilege ignoring all of the investment of privilege that has been planted into their own lives.
This training exists in part because we don’t want you to slowly become that.
You are too generous, and you are too intentional for your life to slowly devolve into arrogance and self-importance.
Thirdly, privilege helps to jump the various hurdles on the way to the named future that you see.
I enjoy Guy Raz’ How I Built This Podcast…it is a fascinating look at the emotional inside of some of the world's most interesting businesses.
Towards the end of each podcast, he asked a staple question, “Does your success have more to do with luck, or with skill?”
I love the podcast, and I hate that question.
Remember the old adage, “the harder I work, the luckier I get.”
When we have moments of momentum and success that we cannot explain we tend to call it luck. Pausing to reflect we can actually align our “lucky moments” to moments of privilege; privilege that you had that connection, or were in that specific location.
There are things we coordinate or manipulate for our benefit, and there are things that “just happen”. Pay close attention, ask yourself, “would this have happened if I did not have access to a certain privilege that others don’t.”
One day I might meet Carrie Underwood… it would feel like “luck”, but a short audit of my relationships and privileges reveals that I had the privilege of being a paying member of a mastermind group, that mastermind group offered me the privilege of meeting and getting to know a very talented guitarist and Dobro player, and that very talented guitarist had the privilege of being the Dobro player for Carrie Underwood.
What looks like “luck” to most is actually privilege dressed in a lack of awareness and context.
History’s wealthiest and wisest person whose privilege was well documented once declared, “all is vanity and chasing after wind.”
When we make privilege the end game, we become the walking dead.
When we look at privilege as an investment to enjoy and reinvest… we make time for what matters most.
Finally, privilege can and will be a load to bear. Share that load with people who have wisdom. The word “team” has its roots in the concept of a team of pack horses…a unified group pulling heavy loads in a specific direction.
Privilege requires building a team to help advise, direct, and hold account your privilege so that it remains a value to all, and not just you.
A business owner had accrued a significant sum of money in a profit account that he had setup to build up as his business grew.
As we were reviewing progress I told him, “Congratulations on how you have grown that account.”
He looked at me with a blank stare and responded, “just one more problem I’ve got to handle.”
When you have resources, it is your responsibility to manage those resources. Of course, most people are bent to desire more instead of less, and the more you have, the more you are required to distribute.
The ultimate question you must answer is “what will you do with what you have” knowing that your response to that question will reveal the desire and state of your ultimate motivation.
Be mindful, slow, and wise with the privilege that you have.
On the outskirts of Atlanta, we drove past the waterfall, walked through the front doors, and stepped into a world of positivity and smiles. Each delivered through a well-rehearsed cocktail of sincere stories that provided a peek into why this “chicken business” is a homebase of hope and life-change for so many.
One small business is a powerful, accessible opportunity for so many teenagers and adults to engage in their community, develop relationships, solve problems, earn income, and develop powerful and usable skills.
A collection of aligned small businesses, if well led and obsessively focused on vision, mission, and values, has the opportunity to scale the hope and life-change beyond one or two locations.
This is the opportunity for Chick-Fil-A.
Indeed, their chicken sandwich is remarkable, use of “my pleasure” noticeable, and waffle fries laced with a special serum of deliciousness - and their support of local small business is a Master’s class of intentional scale.
It is not lost on the Support Center staff that their primary purpose is the support of the almost 500,000 team members among the chicken-diaspora across North America (and soon to be other International markets).
You cannot walk a meaningful distance in their appropriately named Support Center without confronting a well-broadcast corporate purpose, mission, unique set of values, and foundational principles.
Purpose is as pervasive as a number one combo meal on a Saturday after the little league game or dance competition. Purpose is intentionally over-communicated with three distinctives that were tangible and delivered in a kind, sometimes goofy package of care as defined by competence and warmth.
Truett Cathy took one restaurant and built the systems and the team to scale that one restaurant to nearly three thousand. That is good news for business owners with one location or three…with two employees or thirty.
What scales up, can also scale down.
There are three simple elements on display at Chick-Fil-A central for the exponential spread of culture that require the grit of an entrepreneur and the roll-your-eye goofiness most entrepreneurs struggle to hurdle.
The first of these three simple elements is consistency.
One task completed with consistency over a long period of time makes a mark.
One task completed without consistency is a fad with little impact.
Inherent within consistency is the concept of a fanatical and firm footing, a concrete base with very little movement that can be trafficked relentlessly. Faith is placed in solid things because reliability, albeit goofy, beats the in-the-moment hipster vibe of trendy unsteadiness.
How can Chick-Fil-A ensure the now famed “my pleasure” is repeated millions of times daily?
Relentless consistency…even when it is goofy.
The second element that leads to the exponential spread of culture is amplification.
Pandemics spread through amplification; genetic copies spread from carrier to carrier at high speeds with consistency.
Your local municipal water system might be distributed through amplification. A series of pump stations systematically placed throughout the distribution channels of the pipes that run throughout your city or town. Each pump offers a boost to the system so that the home furthest from the source has the same pressure as the home closest to the source.
Messages too spread through amplification. A small group of message carriers spread their consistent message to other carriers over and over again.
That message requires the third element that leads to the exponential spread of culture…repetition.
“Repetition is the mother of all learning”; a refrain my first manager would share with me…repetitively.
I’ve heard it said, “if you are not annoying someone with your message, then you know your message is not landing.”
We tend to look down on repetition as non-innovative. Truthfully, our real struggle is with repetition void of meaning, warmth, sincerity, care, empathy, and intentionality.
Business owners look around and wonder why the big companies are “lucky” to have great culture. At the Chick-Fil-A Support Center, consistent, amplified, and repetitive messaging is…well, consistent, amplified, and repetitive.
Not requiring a degree, or the “right conditions”, business owners big and small have an opportunity to rinse and repeat.
Business On Purpose Founder Scott Beebe and Director of Coaching Thomas Joyner talked about the importance of Vision.
Know the answers to the following questions:
➡️ What is vision?
➡️ How does it differ from your mission and values?
➡️ Why is knowing where you're headed important and what does that do for your team?
➡️ Lack of vision from business owners, why does it matter?
➡️ Why do you think it's become cliche or stale and really lack the punch it needs to have?
➡️ Why does having accountability from a source outside of your business important?
➡️How does it get you where you need to go?
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
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For blogs and updates, visit our site HERE ➡️ https://www.mybusinessonpurpose.com/blog/
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An influential teacher was slowly traveling towards his intended destination and along the way would make time to connect in a variety of towns.
As is the case for most teachers, politicians, musicians, and artists of influence, this teacher had supporters… followers.
There was one controversial stop along the campaign route where the local population was more hostile to the teachers message.
Argumentative conflict ensued.
The supporters immediately asked the teacher's permission to antagonize and put the locals in their place.
The teacher said “no”. In effect, he censured his supporters.
His supporters desperately wanted to control the narrative…to make the locals either like the teacher and the message that they themselves liked, or else they wanted to burn the place down.
Instead, the teacher provided a model of having self-control and realizing that it is impossible to mandate conversion to any sort of message.
Labor to control others and you will either get blind subjects or chaotic revolt.
Live under control guided by a defined vision, mission, and values of your leadership, and you will create well-equipped and well-intentioned supporters who have self-elected into your sphere of influence, or you will get people who self-elect out of your sphere.
Leading by controlling mandates that the leader be in a constant, exhaustive grind of devising new tactics of adherence.
Manipulative strategy.
The mission of a controlling leader morphs into a focus to find and retain a growing list of followers.
The mission of an under-control leader is to equip the right willing supporter to go out and perpetuate the message.
The leader who is controlling mandates and micro-manages the mandate and the method asking the right questions at the wrong times, or asking the wrong questions at the right times.
The leader who is under control sets a clear and repetitive vision (what the future destination looks like), constantly reminds the supporters of the ultimate mission (why they are doing what they are doing), and guides each supporter to think independently within the agreed upon values (the guardrails) to ensure alignment on mission…even though the method may vary.
In full disclosure, I tend to lean towards controlling.
Controlling the narrative, the method, and the outcome.
I am having to learn to set an overly clear picture of the destination (the vision), provide examples of how to get there, the guidelines for what the field of play looks like, and then extend trust to provide the freedom and latitude to allow each team member to run the plays they best think will get us to the endzone within the sidelines of the field we are playing on.
There is not one play that has been run that I (the controlling leader) don’t think can be run differently.
A leader who is under control realizes the mechanics of the play are not important, but that the play is in bounds and moves us closer to the endzone.
The controlling leader will never experience the freedom and joy of watching a team perform based on autonomy and proper equipment, but will be in a constant state of frustration because it will never be completed in the replicated method of the leader.
Just because it worked “back then” doesn’t mean it still works the same today.
The leader who controls will be stuck in the small town trying to handle the uprising they have created through force and manipulation, and be deprived of the joy of their final destination.
The leader who is under control will share their offering, identify the supporters, and keep moving towards their ultimate destination.
We recently hosted an online Masterclass on how to build your entire business on one sheet of paper.
Near the end of the Masterclass, a business owner lobbed this question into the chat window, “How do you ensure, your processes aren't stolen and replicated by employees who leave?”
The short answer is, “you don’t.”
Owning a business is risky, leading people is risky, serving customers and clients is risky, and bringing your product and service into an open market is risky.
What are some things you can do to ensure that others don’t “steal” your proprietary process?
First, legally it is always good to have each employee sign an employee agreement that has been drafted by a legal professional.
Within that agreement, there can be language and clause that reflects the desire to maintain “trade secrets" and proprietary process.
Some would say that the agreement is as valuable as the paper it’s written on. Maybe, however, you would rather have that signed in the rare case it would need to be referenced.
Second, this is all the more reason to work diligently to create a culture where each contractor and employee has bought into the mission and has a desire to add value instead of extracting value to take elsewhere.
Owners cannot take for granted that a job and a paycheck are good enough reasons to be engaged, and remain engaged.
The fruit of culture is a direct result of the ingredients that you put into the culture. While the vision that culture is leading towards is largely at the determination of the owner, the methods towards that vision can be a powerful way to engage the team and to build longevity with each person.
We all have a desire to leave our fingerprints of value-add to anything we do.
The best way to ensure that no one takes your process is to create a place they never wish to leave.
Finally, although the fear is real that someone could steal your process, the likelihood of their implementation is typically low.
YouTube hosts completely free content on how to do just about anything in the world. Want to build a sprinter van? It’s there. Want to start a bookkeeping company? The answers are there.
Truth is, our processes are actually not very proprietary. Remember, “there is nothing new under the sun.” Instead, there is implementation. As Joe Calloway says, “vision without implementation is hallucination.”
Someone may take your process, and yet it will be hard to implement.
There is no competition to a well-run business in a needy and growing marketplace.
Build an unleavable culture, and you will be even more incentivized to share your process.
“Nobody wants to work anymore”...the problem is that has been said for well over 100 years now!
I saw a headline all the way back to 1894 declaring that “nobody wants to work anymore”. This is not a new problem.
If we’re not careful, our negativity will breed a culture where work is seen as…
Cursed
A means to an end
As a lifeless 9 to 5, tryin’ to make a livin’
Hallucinating that it’s 5 o’clock somewhere
Something to “take and shove it”
Just another Manic Monday
Work is deeper than that, more powerful than that
Work is an opportunity…
Proverbs 12:11 - “A hard worker has plenty of food, but a person who chases fantasies has no sense.”
We say, “nobody wants to work anymore!”...when in reality they just don’t want to work for you because you are grumpy!
Instead, we need to build A CULTURE WHERE PEOPLE DO WISH TO DO HARD THINGS!
There will always be a mountain to climb in building a culture of intentionality within your business.
Business is hard…running a business is even harder.
Let’s stop pretending that our circumstance is unique…because business is hard, business can also be good.
So what is the mountain of our time?
Dr. Tim Elmore would argue that one primary element is the unprecedented generational diversity, we are experiencing because it is the number one topic that he is asked to speak on as a researcher of youth culture.
How do you mix the soil of culture so that it is rich enough to handle the diversity of generational seeds being planted? How do we mix that culture so that it makes the next generation…ALL generations, excited to work?
FIRST, WHAT IS CULTURE?
Culture is not a business term…it is a biology term
Culture is a Petri Dish: what goes in the dish is what grows out of the dish
Good in…good out (give examples)
Bad in…bad out (give examples)
The culture of your business is a DIRECT RESULT of the ingredients that you allow to enter the mash bill.
Here are 4 ingredients to mix in the cocktail of a healthy business culture that the next generation will be excited to work in…
FAM Time: Team Meeting
Must have a means of communication (Imagine if the underwater cables were cut between the US and Europe?)
STORY: Story written by Capt. George O. Squier in an article for The National Geographic Magazine in Jan, 1901 said, “the submarine (cable) is a powerful instrument of war, more powerful, indeed, than battleships and cruisers, since by its wonderful and instantaneous, communications of thought, it brings distant countries (team members) and colonies (teams) together in sympathy, which is the only true and permanent tie.”
A culture that is missing the nutrient of human connection
When communication is choppy, infrequent, unpredictable, or limited …you have missed opportunities and Low Morale
Thought, ideas, implementation, updating process, engagement
Clarity, input, teamwork
The opportunity for sympathy and empathy…which is the “only true and permanent tie”
When communication is repetitious, predictable, and meaningful…you have →
The second thing that the next generation needs in order to work and lead?
GET “LIT”: Line-Item Training
Every sports team, every military command has one thing in common…if they aren’t playing a game or fighting battle…they are practicing and preparing for one
Your vacation policy?
How to properly perform an electrical walk?
How to post a bid schedule?
How to job cost?
How to identify an ideal client?
How to properly dress?
When was the last time you trained your team on…
Admit the “L”
The hallmark leadership trait of the older generation is defined by…
Stuffy
Know it all
A “Chotch” - someone who is unpleasant to be around
Find the Spotify playlist of someone younger than you and commit to listen
Eminem - lose yourself in the moment, you own it you never ever let it go
Post Malone - I was patient, aye, oh, Now I can scream that we made it, Now everyone, everywhere I go, they say 'gratulations…I pick up the rock and I ball baby, I’m looking for someone to call baby, but right now I’ve got a situation…
Start learning new things
Self-deprecation goes a LOOOOOONG way among a younger culture
ACTION → ask someone younger than you for their playlist, listen, and share what you heard
STAN the culture calendar
“Stan” - be obsessed but not in a creepy way
The culture calendar is a business playsheet with scripted plays.
It is simple to build and will require you to think through a few different categories.
First, layout the months and dates by weeks at the top of your culture calendar.
Then, on the vertical column on the left hand side you will break this down into different categories. We recommend starting with weekly, monthly, quarterly, twice-annually, and annually.
In other words, what are the “business ingredients” you wish to make part of your culture each week, month, quarter, etc.
You don’t need to waste time and energy grumbling about how “nobody wants to work anymore”. They just don’t want to work for grumps…they want to give all they’ve got to a great culture by…
FAM Time: Team Meeting
GET “LIT”: Line-Item Training
Admit the “L”
STAN the culture calendar
It was five days since I had called to check in on a contractor owner with no response.
Finally, hoping everything was ok, I texted another check in, to his simple reply, “Honestly, when I said I work all the time I wasn't embellishing the truth. I just wrapped up another long day and headed home now.”
That was on a Sunday night for a business that shouldn’t have much to do on the weekend.
For too many business owners, the harsh reality is that the business is owning them and it may be time to sell.
There are three helpful filters to flush a decision through when timing a potential sale of your business.
First, do you have a desire?
Desire cedes ground to opportunity that has lured many business owners down the path of “profitable distractions” - where the potential of profit distracts from what the owner desires.
Ownership is hard, and owners must have a continued desire to own and lead the business in a way that others desire to follow.
Second, are you at a relational impasse?
Many owners are leading their business based on the expectation of generations before that this would “always be a family-run business”.
There is no badge awarded to the longest-running family-owned enterprise; the odds are often stacked strongly against. Each person has their own unique skill set and we should not assume that our children or kin either have the desire or the capability to run the business.
It should be their dream and not yours.
The third filter to use when thinking about selling is to ask, “would others lead the business better than you?”
Life runs in seasons.
The Byrd’s (quoting the Jewish Proverbs) remind us that there is “a time to plant and a time to pluck up.”
Just because you have owned your business for 10 years does not mean you need to own it for 40 years. What season of life are you in? What season of life is your business in?
Merge those questions with desire and relationship and you will start to focus on the value and timing of selling your business.
"Recruiting And Hiring: The 4 Systems Every Homebuilder And Remodeler Owner Needs To Build The Right People That Builds The Right Business"
Thursday, February 2, 2023
Austin Build Expo
by Thomas Joyner
Director of Coaching
Business on Purpose
People, people, people! How do we find the right people to hire? How do we find ANY people to hire?
The Boomers retired early, and the emerging generations are much more selective in the work they choose. How can you find the right people, recruit them the right way, share the right vision, and then onboard them the right way that aligns with the right mission?
This life-changing and engaging 45-minute talk pulls from our work with hundreds of contractor owners that led to our proprietary and proven roadmap.
This roadmap will equip you to beat chaos with predictability and to build the team that will build the business to make time for what matters most.
"How Homebuilding and Remodeling Owners Attract The RIGHT People Like a Division 1 College Football Powerhouse"
National Association of Home Builders- International Builders' Show 2023- Las Vegas, NV
Wednesday, February 1, 2023
by Scott Beebe
Founder | Headcoach
Business On Purpose
As a Division 1 Football player in the powerful Southeastern Conference (SEC), Scott has seen firsthand the behind-the-scenes system that is being constantly updated and refined to ensure that athletically talented 16 and 17 adolescents choose the right team.
Remodeler and home builder owners are in a season of work where they have a choice: see the next generation as a hindrance with excuses like “they won’t work” or see this new generation as an opportunity to pivot with a renewed mindset like “I’m excited to see how they own the mission!”
There is a shortage of workers for the old-school methodologies, but there is no shortage of people willing to work… toward the right mission.
However, chaos creeps in, and owners feel they spend their days constantly putting out fires and cleaning up messes left by other people and resigning themselves to exhale in frustration, “It’s just easier if I do this myself.”
This life-changing and engaging 30-minute workshop pulls from our work with hundreds of owners and gets you on the path to building a powerhouse team.
You will be equipped to beat chaos with predictability and to build a business that brings stability, life, and time for what matters most.
"The Secret To Getting the Next Generation Excited To Work And Lead"
National Association of Home Builders- International Builders' Show 2023- Las Vegas, NV
Wednesday, February 1, 2023
by Scott Beebe
Founder | Headcoach
Business On Purpose
We’ve been led to believe the myth that a good custom home-building company culture is more “luck of the draw” and less “intentional sowing and fertilizing”. This eye-opening program will help to uncover what the next generation really wants and what elements lead to business health. Get clarity on the difference within the generations, how to listen and speak to your team with a compelling language, and what elements are needed for each team member to thrive day-to-day. Leave empowered with a tool that you can implement immediately, providing a clear roadmap to multi-generational engagement in the custom home-building workplace.
What does generational diversity mean? What challenges exist when multiple generations work closely together?
Learn about the solutions that you can implement to build a culture that attracts the right multi-generational team.
"Navigating Gen Z & Building a Company That Attracts the Right People"
National Association of Home Builders- International Builders' Show
Las Vegas, NV
Tuesday, January 31, 2023
Presented by:
Patrice Miles
Business Coach
Business On Purpose
Over the course of meeting with hundreds of business owners about their coaching needs, we will be asked this question from time to time — What’s the difference between a business coach vs. a business consultant? And do I need to hire one of each?
Coaching and consulting are different, and there is value in both.
What’s the difference between a business coach vs. a business consultant
While these phrases are sometimes used interchangeably in everyday conversation, this is actually a misnomer.
A business coach's role (much like an athletic coach’s role) is to constantly research and study the “game” of business, work to develop playbooks, roadmaps, and techniques that each business owner and key leader (players) can follow, and then show up enthusiastically and repetitiously on a predetermined schedule to create the necessary push and conditioning through accountability and implementation.
A coach will push the stagnate, temper the overenthusiastic, motivate the exhausted, learn from defeat, and celebrate growth.
A business coach works with the business owner and key leaders, both in season and out of season, and their outcomes are tied directly to the goals set out through long-term vision casting.
For a business coach, it is more important that they study and coach the foundation of business than it is that they have specific industry knowledge.
Business coaching by definition will be ingrained across all systems of the business. Of course, there are situations where a business coach may drill down into specific niches of the business, for instance, a marketing coach, or a sales coach.
Business coaching tends to focus more on the accountability and implementation of long-term systems and processes, and less on short-term strategies that could change quickly.
Coaching is a long-term relationship that runs through the broad scope of emotional seasons of a business.
The business consultant is typically a current or retired industry-professional with decades of experience within their given field. If you own an ice cream shop, then you would hire an ice cream shop consultant. If you own a steel rigging and erecting business, then you would hire a steel rigging and erecting consultant.
The business consultant tends to bring a portfolio of best practices from their industry into a specific area of your business (i.e. accounting, or operational efficiency) and then advises on how to integrate those best practices into your day to day process.
Both coaches and consultants analyze existing performance and trends, the consultant compiles findings with suggested solutions, the coach creates a game plan from studying the analytics and then creates a repetitious accountability schedule to push the owner towards results.
Business consulting tends to focus more on mapping out a strategy of ideas and advising on those strategies, and less on the accountability of execution.
Business consultants tend to work more on a “fly-in, fly-out” contractual agreement where they come in for a defined period of time, say 6 months or 12 months for example, and then their contract is fulfilled.
Business coach and a business consultant can work closely together, and both are invaluable to the growth and maturity of a business owner and their key leader(s).
We’ve found consultants to be more prevalent in larger companies (100 employees and above), and coaches to be more prevalent in small businesses (under 100 employees).
A third-party voice in your business is an irreplaceable resource that can provide you with clarity, lend you courage, and re-motivate you and your team back to the mission and vision that you once had.
Macroeconomics are complicated. Highly complex minds maneuver highly complex algorithms and data points to determine economic sea changes and tidal flows, the currents of which move entire societal habits.
When the news channels report a sweeping new change or movement about this or that in the market, we are immediately programmed to assume the news piece directly affects us.
At the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, John Elderidge released an unknowingly timely book entitled Get Your Life Back. A key concept of his writing was the practice of “benevolent detachment”.
Elderidge describes it this way on his blog, “Everybody has a junk drawer, that black hole for car keys, pens, paper clips, gum, all the small flotsam and jetsam that accumulates over time. Our souls accumulate stuff, too, pulling it in like a magnet. And so Augustine said we must empty ourselves of all that fills us, so that we may be filled with what we are empty of. Over time I’ve found no better practice to help clear out my cluttered soul than the practice of benevolent detachment. The ability to let it go, walk away—not so much physically, but emotionally, soulfully.”
We are presuming that a recession for the global economy, or at least your national economy, means a recession for you.
You are wrong to assume that.
Some of our greatest small and large businesses were launched in the midst of recession. And because much of a business's exponential growth comes during its first years, it would be silly to blindly buy into the broad narrative that recession equals bad.
A recession does not mean no business by and large…instead, a recession equals less business - but not for everyone.
We have clients standing on the front step of a new year with realistic projections of already-contracted business for this year that yield growth - in a recession.
Following the wisdom of Augustine, “let us empty ourselves of all that fills us so we may be filled with all that we are empty of.”
The pandemic years lulled many to sleep and turned many salespeople into order-takers (not all of course…but many) bellied up at the bar of new business deciding what they wanted and when they wanted it.
We have been emptied of hope and opportunity. We have been emptied of hustle and proactive, forward-leading customer engagement.
Instead, we have filled ourselves with the infinite scroll of reactionary firefighting responding to the latest, loudest fear-screamer believing that the end of business is near.
Value-added commerce, trade, and transactions have been operating for centuries throughout the litany of cultures and societies. We are microscopic players on a macroscopic world stage and it would do us well to walk outside and pay attention to the even more microscopic bird, Jesus the teacher reminded us it does not plant seeds, it does not harvest its food, it does not store its food and has all it needs.
A recession provides the needed jolt to sharpen our focus, to not take for granted the work we have been invited into and built for.
A recession is often the push we need to lean forward, take our mission to the right people (marketing), make a mutual commitment to serve those people (sales), and fulfill that service within the values that we have laid out (operations).
A recession is also a reminder that home runs are not a winning strategy. Base hits work and base hits require repetition, predictability, and meaning - all products of thoughtful action.
Recessions do not favor those bellied up at the bar taking orders at will all the while watching the breaking news merry-go-rounds fretting the what-ifs.
Recessions do favor those who are sober, proactive, and willing to hit the streets – those who realize that while the weather in some locations might look cloudy and rainy, the local weather is what really matters.
There might be less business overall, that might just mean more opportunity for you.
Their news is not your news unless you allow it to be.
If we could boil this entire morning down to one phrase, I think it would be captured in the phrase “intentionally engaging”.
Intentional - done with purpose… deliberate.
Engaging - charming and attractive.
Patrice talked about the time, effort, and money spent in recruiting, hiring, and onboarding a new team member.
I had the opportunity to work with Pfizer and was told that the onboarding of a new team member cost the company around $200k.
Certainly compelling, but that is not the real reason that you don’t want to lose team members.
The real reason we want a cohesive team that values longevity is for the same reason that we go back to the same restaurants, revisit the same destination, pull for the same sports team, and drive the same route to work.
We really do value stability, community, and “being known”.
Every Tuesday at our house we are humbled and honored to host a group of young men that over time has become known as “Man Up”
Back in 2016, I began meeting a group of HS Freshman guys at Wendy’s in Pritchardville.
We would compete in silly challenges like spitball competitions, squat relays, and light matches in the restaurant.
We would have some serious conversations about things they were dealing with and write some thoughts down.
Over the last six years, that small group of five has grown into a group of about 10 to 20 each week, and already a group of about 15 or so who graduated a couple of years ago.
That group is marked by intentional conversation, prom-dance-floor-destruction, their own vernacular and language, a plunger that serves as a sort of armour, and a flag that is made up of torn underwear from the years of wedgie initiations underneath the Lemon Island bridge in the dark. It’s a group that discussed money, relationships, sex, music, career, college, parents, confusions, and life principles that are now a part of their toolbelt.
They have their own language, their own grunts, their own body sounds, and their own nuances. They have a culture that is not based on money, status, or how-can-I get-more.
That is what we all REALLY want. Stability, community, and “being known”.
And yet, what are small businesses known for?
We can answer that by listening to what those same man-up guys think big businesses are known for = stability.
But is that true? Have you looked around to see all of the big business laying off thousands of people at a time? Does that feel stable?
Small businesses are known for instability and chaotic community.
How do we build a culture that is unleavable?
Pal’s Sudden Service vs. Taco Bell
Elements of a powerful culture…
I want you to use your Culture Calendar as the HUB of this next workshop time.
Think of your existing team, AND your new team members.
For the first 10 minutes, I want you to create as many intentional, thoughtful, whimsical, and creative ideas as you can about ways to build culture that will require more time than money.
For the second 10 minutes, I want you as a team to rank order those ideas from most impactful to least… and then bake them into your culture calendar with dates and frequencies, and the process by which who/how they will be done.
The last 50 years in world history have led to influential inventions, and yet still the top four inventions are the wheel, the nail, the compass, and Gutenberg’s printing press.
Dutch Philosopher Erasmus of Rotterdam lived in chronological proximity to the printing press and was able to expand the influence of his writing. Books were a non-negotiable for Erasmus, saying, “When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.”
Indeed Erasmus was reported to have little money and so fought through hunger pains for the pleasure of reading.
Attributed to Mark Twain is a saying that should serve as an accountability nudge to leaders, “The (person) who does not read good books has no advantage over the (person) who can't read them.”
Here are three books I have read that I would challenge you to consider reading in 2023 in order to grow in fortitude.
Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect, Will Guidara
A friend and client Chris Kornman (Entablature Construction and Entablature Realty, New Orleans, La) recommended this book. Reading during a trip with my family I left a trail of dog-eared and underlined pages of thoughts and ideas.
Guidara walks through how he and a team took the famed Eleven Madison Park restaurant from a nice New York City establishment and transformed it into the number one restaurant in the world according to The World’s 50 Best Restaurants, along with four stars from the New York Times, and a coveted three Michelin stars.
Guidara caps a simple thesis of the book with this statement, “whatever you choose to do, be in the hospitality business.”
The ultimate quote for busy business owners jumps off of page 116, “you don’t want to have 100 keys; you win when you end up with only one - the key to the front door.”
From Strength To Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose In The Second Half of Life, Arthur C. Brooks
If you are in your mid to late thirties or above it is time to begin reading this book. In 1995, Bob Buford published a book entitled Halftime: Moving From Success To Significance. It was good and helpful. Arthur Brooks’ manifesto is deep and meaningful.
Brooks confronts what he describes as the “striver’s curse…a hidden source of anguish that wasn’t just widespread but nearly universal among people who have done well in their careers.”
Many successful business owners and key leaders build up capabilities and then feverishly work to avoid a decline in their capabilities.
Brooks delivers a needed blow, a thoughtful alarm, in order to wake up the leader who is heading off into their second half of life, “Here is the reality: in practically every high-skill profession, decline sets in sometime between one’s late thirties and early fifties. Sorry, I know that stings.”
This book invites you to prepare for a “second curve” and a reminder that “what got you to this point won’t work to get you into the future - that you need to build some new strengths and skills.”
Brooks then devotes the rest of the book to uncovering those strengths and their rootedness in wisdom, and how those strengths will be diminished in the face of workaholism that keep you tied to the fleetingness of worldly rewards (that rust and evaporate), and your fear of decline.
From Strength to Strength is an important shot of interpersonal cold water with the complimentary encouragement of a loving grandfather.
A New Kind Of Diversity: Making the Different Generations on Your Team a Competitive Advantage, Dr. Tim Elmore
We have culturally assumed diversity as a cross-section of race and skin color and less about the generational differences that illuminate the modern workplace.
Elmore writes, “Millennials and Generation Z will make up 70 percent of the workforce by 2025. We’d better get to know them.”
The older generations say things like, “nobody wants to work anymore” and “the younger generation has a bad work ethic.” Elmore brings a teaspoon of humility reminding us “we’re the ones who gave birth to them and raised them. If they (truly) were unready for the workforce, we must look in the mirror.”
Owners and leaders can moan, complain, and gripe about the new workforce, or we can embrace A New Kind of Diversity.
Elmore’s books are loaded with heaps of helpful and digestible research that he skillfully then summarizes into implementable takeaways.
A couple of weeks ago I heard of a new 23-year-old Director of Marketing at a large company. That same company has a 64-year-old Director of Estimating. That is an unprecedented span of four generations working together on one team.
It will be imperative that we all put in the work to understand generational tendencies, realities, nuances, and grow multi-lingual in speaking to others the way they wish to be spoken to as we all push towards a unified end.
Elmore recommends not just diversity training…but unity training.
Of the books mentioned above, Business On Purpose receives no compensation or recommendation.
Books are always a worthy investment of your time, attention, and leadership.
Test Prep Insight reported that 48.5% of adults did not read a book in 2022…let’s change that and all become book nerds in 2023!
Part of our work at Business On Purpose is working with business owners and key leaders to hold them accountable to the things that will help liberate you from chaos so you can make time for the things that matter…like reading.
Go to mybusinessonpurpose.com/healthy to get a free assessment on the health of your business to get started.
“If one wanted to crush and destroy a man entirely, to mete out to him the most terrible punishment,” wrote Fyodor Dostoevsky, “all one would have to do would be to make him do work that was completely and utterly devoid of usefulness and meaning.”
Peter Segars wrote the sequence to one of the great wisdom lyrics in the history of folk rock in the late 1950s that would be recorded by The Byrds in 1965 and popularized as the theme music in Forest Gump, The Simpsons, and The Wonder Years.
Some have called Turn, Turn, Turn a number one hit with the oldest lyrics. Segars adapted the majority of the lyrics from the wisdom literature of the Jewish King Solomon’s writings in the Old Testament book Ecclesiastes.
The Segars rendition ends just shy of Solomon’s powerful sequence that helps us understand the motive and the value of work.
John Mark Comer in his well-reflected book Garden City says of our modern (primarily Western culture), “The American dream - which started out as this brilliant idea that everybody should have a shot at a happy life - has devolved over the years into a narcissistic desire to make as much money as possible, in as little time as possible, with as little effort as possible, so that we can get off work and go do something else.”
Kenny Chesney popularized a culturally Brazilian story about the fisherman and the businessman in his song The Life showing the contrast between a simple, humble fisherman’s idea of success - catch enough to live that day - and the scale-at-all-costs ambition of a savvy businessman who has the roadmap to create a world-dominating fishing empire, all so we can entice his humble fisherman friend to… do exactly what he is doing today, except with far more effort and stress.
We have twisted work as something equivalent to a modern curse on our humanity, something that we can widdle down to maybe 4 hours per week so that we can get on with the true desire of our hearts…leisure.
Solomon, regarded as the wisest person to ever live, said this of work, “There is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in his labor - this is God’s gift to man.” (Ecclesiastes 3:13)
Have we walked astray from the original design for work? Is work really a gift?
Work is a gift. A gift is “a thing given willingly without payment”, and also something to be enjoyed.
Imagine waking up in a position where you are simply unable to work, to move, to think, to respond, to react. We have some in our society who have not been given the capability to enjoy the gift of work.
Their days are spent in a relentless cycle of managing indifference, wondering why they have been stripped of the gift of working, and only dreaming of the contribution they could make through the gift of work.
We were created to work. Of the world’s major monotheistic religions, there is a collective alignment that points back to an original woman and a man standing in their primitive office - a garden - tending, trimming, sowing, and harvesting…working.
The Jewish have a cultural phrase Tikkun Olam, “the repair of the world”. Work is an active, productive, skill-leveraging way to be in a constant state of repairing our broken world.
Work builds relationships and brings value to ourselves and others.
The Anglican theologian John Stott says that work is “the expenditure of energy in the service of others, which brings fulfillment to the worker, benefit to the community, and glory to God.”
New York City pastor Tim Keller describes work as “rearranging the raw materials of God’s creation in such a way that it helps the world in general, and people in particular thrive and flourish.”
There is a storied tale that was shared in middle eastern Jewish history of a shrewd manager who had just been sacked by his owner. The manager has one final task of employment; to go settle up any outstanding accounts on behalf of the owner.
The shrewd manager begins slashing payments as a way to win favor with the customers, and shoring up relationships…building bridges using discounts and favors.
At the end of the story, we are instructed, “use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends.”
It is a wild story and one I thought would end with a rebuff of the manager.
Put more subtly, author Dan Miller says of the benefits of business and money, “I love having the opportunities that business provides, but I want to be a vehicle for being, for deep meaningful relationships, not just doing.”
For many, the reason we don’t feel a sense of success in our work is because our definition of success is elusive.
Solomon, a man who had far more than you or I will ever have, said this of confusing money with success, “Don’t wear yourself out trying to get rich; restrain yourself! Riches disappear in the blink of an eye; wealth sprouts wings and flies off into the wild blue yonder.”
We have a success problem because we have allowed the eyes of accumulation to define the success of our life. Metrics have become our barometer while our relationships and connections starve.
You know what the fisherman does everyday after he fishes throughout the morning? The tale continues like this, “(I) play with my kids. In the afternoon, I take a nap with my wife, and evening comes, I join my buddies in the village for a drink — we play guitar, sing and dance throughout the night.”
Even the fisherman had a schedule.
Annie Dillard, the American writer saw the value of a schedule in relation to a valuable life, “A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being;”
A schedule, then elevates work allowing it to exist more for relationships than for things. When things and money are prioritized over relationships, then our definition of success is upside down.
We have redefined the terms of success prioritizing the aimlessness of more; specifically more money and more things.
How should we define success in our work? We can start by asking this question, “who have I been created to be?” Each of us has been designed, created, and offered to the society around us as a creator. What have you been created to create?
Think through the filters of skill, temperament, personality, what gives you energy, and what depletes you of energy.
Dillard, a religious none (as detailed on her website) says wisely, “how we spend our days is how we spend our lives.”
Work is a valuable way to spend our lives when that work positions us to do what New York Times columnist Arthur C. Brooks lays out with thoughtful simplicity…
Use things,
Love People,
Worship The Divine.
Start reordering the verbs and work becomes misery.
As you listen to this, how can you shift your mindset, and your success definition to create meaning in a work worth doing?
Will you work till you die? Or will you intentionally shift your mindset to begin working towards an end filled with usefulness and meaning that creates the “cabinet of fortitude” (Arthur Brooks) needed adding value to our collective society?
Thomas just talked about some amazing recruiting practices and you had time to put ideas on paper of how to recruit great talent.
Now What?
You have some resumes that look promising and you're excited that all your prayers might be answered with one of these resumes.
Now it's time to start interviewing.
This is the recruit's first impression of you and your organization. This sets the tone for everything from this point forward.
Are you professional?
Are you organized?
Are you intentional?
Are you mission-driven or chaos-driven?
If you are professional, well organized, and intentional, then the recruit knows you mean business. They will either get scared and run or they will show up and show off for you because they want the job.
Wouldn’t you want to scare them off now, instead of 3 months from now when they have cost you over $10,000 to $25,000 in your time and resources, and then you have to do this recruiting, hiring and onboarding all over again?
So, How are you giving the first impression to recruits of your business?
You should be doing this with your 6-Step Hiring Process.
Step 1 Phone Interview
Do you have this mapped out with the specific questions you ask at your phone interview? Is this replicable so anyone in your organization can get on the phone and do a phone interview?
Step 2 1st Live Sit Down Interview
This is the time where you share vision/mission/values/culture to allow the candidate to determine if this is even the type of business they want to be a part of? Do you have this spelled out so you don’t have to think when the candidate comes in for the interview.
Step 3 Due Diligence (My favorite)
This is where we are calling the candidate to tell them we want to move forward and we want to do personality profiling, call their references, and assign homework.
Have you decided on a Personality profiling tool to use?
How about calling on references? Do you have your questions written down on what questions you will ask when calling references?
What homework do you have for the candidate?
For a bookkeeper maybe reconcile a mock bank account, for an estimator, estimate an old job, for a marketing specialist design a logo.
Step 4 2nd Live Interview preferable with other team members
Here you are deep diving into the role and seeing how they act with the other team members.
Again, do you have this written out and documented so you cover everything from their ideal weekly schedule to going over your MPR?
Step 5 Spousal/Friend Dinner/Lunch, social
In his 2011 book “EntreLeadership,” Dave Ramsey recommends that companies vet spouses to make sure their hire is not “married to crazy.”
Dave says, “When hiring someone, you are employing more than just the person. You’re taking on the whole family. And when they are married to someone who is domineering, unstable or simply full of drama, you’ll end up with a team member who can’t be creative, productive or excellent.”
Go to lunch or dinner with your candidate and their spouse to find out if crazy lives at home.
Step 6 Phone call and email with Offer.
Some of you are saying “Patrice we got this, we have been interviewing & hiring for years” Great then how can you systemize it and make it better so anyone can take your hiring process and run with it.
Alright, your Hiring process is complete and the candidate accepted your offer
Yeah!! They start on Monday and all your problems are going to be solved.
Let me tell you a story, Becky. Becky sent her resume to XYZ realty as a marketing specialist. She had all the qualifications for the role and was hired. Her first day she was shown her desk, given her laptop, set up on email, and then voila! She started marketing and it was the best marketing ever done for XYZ realty.
I wish!! Becky isn’t her real name because honestly, I don’t remember it. XYC Realtry was the Miles and Smith Real Estate Group which I owned. Becky was my new recruit. She was going to change everything for our real estate group. We would start getting more leads now then ever with a part-time marketing specialist, right!
Within two weeks I was wondering what in the world she was doing. I saw a post or two on social media, but besides that….I had no clue what she was doing. I sat down with her to ask and she showed me a couple of things but nothing substantial. I asked where her marketing calendar was, where her content creator checklist was, how was she keeping track of analytics so we knew what was working and what wasn’t, what about a newsletter or updating the website, I mean she is a marketing specialist she should know all these things.
How many times as business owners have we said “They should know this, they did bookkeeping before, they did project management before….They should know what to do, why do I have to tell them everything?
Because what is common to you is not common to them. What is common to you is not common to me. What is common to you is not ever common to your spouse or your best friend who knows you inside and out. You have to train, set expectations and hold people accountable so what is common to you can become common to them.
To do this you need an Onboarding Process, Checklist and Training Schedule
Your Onboarding Process will set the tone for the future accountability and performance of your new employee.
Is your Onboarding Process clearly defined?
Your onboarding checklist allows you to list everything you want to go over during the training and who in your organization is going to do the training. Do you have an onboarding checklist with all the Admin/Tech/Projects/Software/Processes and General Company policy and procedures that you want to go over with your new employee during their training time.
Your onboarding weekly training schedule will map out in timeblocks what they are going to be trained on from your checklist. Do you have a weekly training schedule spelled out for at least the 1st week.
So what part of Onboarding do you need to create or perfect?
Breakout.
2. Second 10 minutes spend on your Onboarding.
3. Talk to your team and collaborate on best practices and be prepared to share a few ideas to the group when we come back.
It’s an interesting time to hire right now, right? It’s changed in so many ways because the people we are trying to hire have changed!
So let’s throw out a few fun facts about Gen Z, the group of people entering the workforce. Were born between the late ’90s and about 2008
3. Value Spectacle over substance
This past year, the university of Louisville got more 4 and 5-star recruits on campus than ever before because of this…
They asked their high-income donors to bring sports cars, drive them onto the field and let recruits come take pictures in them and sit in them. They flew in on private jets and let the recruits climb all over them taking pictures. And it worked. They got talent on campus and were able to pitch to them on their football program.
But here was the problem, they had the spectacle, but not a ton of substance. It was a flash in a pan with no championship culture to back it up.
The University of Georgia spent 3.6 Million dollars on recruiting in 2021. And that’s not even including the Name, Image, and Likeness money that was promised. That’s just on attracting, recruiting, entertaining, and marketing to high school student-athletes and convincing them to come to play football at Georgia.
Let’s break that down a bit further, the average recruiting class is around 25 ppl, so you do the math…that comes out to spending $144,000 per student-athlete that signs to play at UGA. That is OUTRAGEOUS.
It is an insane spectacle…but for them and schools like Alabama, there’s also substance behind it. You walk the halls of their recruiting centers and there are massive pictures of their athletes that have gone on to play in the pros, there are trophy cases full of conference championships and national championships. There are detailed meetings with recruits of how they would be used on offense or defense and the plan for them when they come.
Here’s what they don’t say. Just sign on and we got it. Just trust us, here’s what we think we’ll have you doing.
And yet isn’t that what we do? Most of our hiring and prospecting looks like this. We put out a half-hearted ad on Facebook or indeed, that’s vague at best. And we cross our fingers and hope!
Maybe we have an interview process, but not a recruiting process. There’s very little spectacle and if that’s what Gen Z is looking for, we are simply missing the boat. And if we’re missing the boat, then we’re missing the talent that could be added to our teams.
Here’s where I’ve seen that recently. With Ward Edwards engineering. They dared to ask, “What is something we could add to a new engineering grad, that no one else is doing?”
We sat down and talked it through, even went to some of their staff and asked them what some of their frustrations were upon graduation and they came up with this. There’s no plan for an engineer that’s hired. It’s just come on board and do engineering and we’ll eventually get you where you need to be.
And here’s where Allen and Greg and their team took this. They built out a plan to go from Designer, kind of the entry-level position to Professional engineer in 4 years. To actually getting your certification and being ready to be a project manager in 4 years. Now to some of you that sound like eternity, but to an engineer that is unheard of. To look a grad in the eyes and show them the plan and how you’re going to get there, puts substance behind the spectacle.
For us, it was knowing that we want to hire 8 new coaches in the next 3 years. So we have to have a training plan in place. SO it was recording almost 50 videos of how to coach and our mindset and practical tips on working through our roadmap and coaching clients and prospecting and selling. All of it! And then beyond that scheduling out a mentor coach to work with them and putting times on the calendar to get them going and offer support.
It’s not all fluff! There’s substance and intentionality every step of the way.
So here’s what I want you to hear. People no longer show up just to receive a paycheck. The game has changed. How can we start thinking about recruiting like a D1 College football team as they chase after new talent?
So here’s what we’re going to do.
We’re going to workshop some stuff with your team. If you’re one of the younger ones on the team, here’s where we will lean on your wisdom…YES your wisdom. Dr. Tim Elmore calls it “reverse-mentoring”.
We are going to let you build out a recruiting system in two parts, ideation, and process. The first 10 min will be throwing ideas out there. How do you attract the right people? How can you add some spectacle to how you recruit people? And then process, what does that look like year round?
Because here’s the thing, it’s not an IF you are going to hire it’s a WHEN are you going to hire. And the economic impact for waiting on the need is staggering. Thousands in lost revenue and wasted time being behind the 8 ball.
You know the ABCs of selling? Always be closing? Right? Well, what if we changed that to ABI, Always be interviewing. Recruiting is a year-round job that someone needs to have in your business. So, let’s figure out what that needs to look like for you!
You have 10 min to throw out ideas and then we will build out the process for the second 10 min.
Workshop Action: Custom-build the elements of a SPECTACULAR recruiting system. Two sections: Ideate (set timer), then document process (set timer)
WORKSHOP:
“ONE Thing” Around The Room: What was your one big idea whether you implement or not