My very first job in High School was working for my neighbors who owned Country Boy’s Home & Garden Center in Greenville, SC.

My office space was an outdoor nursery filled with plants, herbs, shrubs, pine needles and produce.  Allen and Lucy were generous to provide me with more responsibility than a 15 year old kid should have had.  It was a great training ground.

From there my office spaces consisted of a cubicle, a car, an airplane, and now a secluded space overlooking a beautiful lowcountry view.  

Even with seclusion, distraction is just a click away.  Owners and key leaders must have incredible discipline to resist distraction and to set space where distraction is a minimum.

Enter the “owners space”.

While working with a non-governmental organization I spent time with a number of stakeholders of the organization.  One such stakeholder was a much older man who was a land developer and philanthropist in North Texas. In the 2000’s, his office still carried the interior design touches of an office outfitted in the late 1960’s.  Not much had changed; mustard yellow kitchen appliances, retro toilets, shag carpet, and brown panel walls. It was gross and touching.

What struck me was the desktop computer in his office that was never powered on.  On one occasion I walked into his office and asked to pull up and article, he spun around in his chair and called for his assistant to come power up his computer.  He had no desire to even learn the simple power button. Just another distraction.

This owner was focused and locked in on developing land and giving away money.

Your workspace is important.  We are constantly encouraging owners and their key leaders to paint the walls of their space with heads-up-displays of mission, values, process, and workflow.

Recently, during one of our Architect coaching calls (Architecture Firm Freedom Formula with myself and Enoch Sears), one of the firm owners shared this picture with us...

This is the owner's space.  Notice a Master Process Roadmap (the large printed image), an updated Org Chart (the smaller printed image), printed process, books, notebooks, and no computer.  

Obviously we are not saying you do not need technology, you do, but it needs to be harnessed in boundaries.

The owner’s space should be setup like the dashboard of a cockpit with all of the necessary instruments to fly your business.  What are those?

First, every business owner should have their vision story, mission statement, and unique core values printed out, posted and reviewed continually.  These are the ultimate leveling tools to help you the owner determine if you are on course with the correct heading. 

I write about how to develop a vision story, mission statement, and unique core values in full detail in my book Let Your Business Burn: Stop Putting Out Fires, Discover Purpose, And Build A Business That Matters.

Write them, print them, post them, and implement over and over.

Second, every business owner should have copies of a current Org Chart, Weekly Schedule, and Master Process Roadmap (all processes that exist in the business...see the larger printed image in the picture above) printed out and posted on the wall.

Also, owners should consider using our Business On Purpose Implementation Dashboard.  It is a brief snapshot of what you should be thinking through daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, semesterly, and annually as a business owner.

Finally, every business owner should have completed and printed their updated 12 Week Plan.  Brian Moran has written a powerful book, 12 Week Year: Get More Done In 12 Weeks Than Others Do In 12 Months.  

We have sent hundreds of these books to people over the past couple of years.  We even run an entire event based on these principles every 12 weeks so our local and virtual business owners and their teams are on the same page with their 12 week plans.

Your space should be set apart, special, unique, and should facilitate your highest and deepest level of work.  

If technology or those trophies from 10th grade are distracting you, move them somewhere else and setup your office on purpose.  The owner’s space should be an intentional place to think, to lead, to vision, to innovate, to build, to design, and a place that empowers you to say “yes” to the right things and “no” to the wrong things. 

Scott Beebe is the founder of Business On Purpose, author of Let Your Business Burn: Stop Putting Out Fires, Discover Purpose, And Build A Business That Matters.  Scott also hosts The Business On Purpose Podcast and can be found at mybusinessonpurpose.com.

Too many owners see their businesses either as an irritation to endure or as a machine merely for profit-generation.

A business is so much more.

Business and commerce are incredible tools in the hands of thoughtful owners that can be leveraged as a powerful force for life transformation in the major areas of life-- faith, family, finances, friends, etc.

Ryan O’Shaugnessey’s is a growing Project Manager at Premier Exteriors LLC.  Ryan and his wife are an intentional young couple who have been working hard to set up into adulthood found themselves, as so many do, in debt that placed a constriction to the household.

Zack Howard, the head of Operations for Taylors Quality Landscape Supply likewise found himself swimming both in “big boy toys” and swimming equally in debt. 

Culturally it has become the norm to look down the proverbial block and see what “The Joneses” have and make a subtle, often subconscious, and consequential decision thinking, “surely if they can afford that then I can too.”

Credit lenders abound in both their availability and often their simplicity in extending what Dave Ramsey so comically and truthfully stated is money to “... buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like.”

For some it is the “Joneses” mindset, for others it may be student loans.  Regardless, owing other people money stinks and is well cautioned, “the borrower is slave to the lender”, I’ll add, no matter the purpose, the terms nor the interest.

Owing a debt is usually a weight.

Justin Harvey owns Premier Exteriors and Gerrick Taylor owns Taylors Quality Landscape Supply.  Both owners separately saw an opportunity to leverage their business as a force for personal transformation and began to offer Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University to their team members as a means for personal growth and development.

Gerrick partnered with Live Oak Christian Church who provided trained facilitators for the course.

After the entire 13 week course was complete for both Premier and Taylors team members, the results were almost unimaginable.  

The O'Shaughnessy's systematically and courageously paid off $68,000 in 15 months!  That is a weight of $151 every day for 450 days they got rid and whimsically whisked away to the beach to celebrate!  This letter from Ryan and Amber is a tangible momento for Justin and proof that you can build a business on purpose.

For Zack, he single-handedly starting barreling down his debt to the point he paid off $50,000 during the course of the program.  Gerrick as the owner provided the opportunity and the vision, Zack brought the hard work and implementation. Vision without implementation is hallucination.  

To prove Zack’s lack of hallucination he courageously stood in front of the entire Taylors team and shared, numbers and all, his journey and success.  It led to eight other team members filling up another Financial Peace class so the momentum could continue.  

Your business IS your mission.  Your business can transform the lives of real people.  As the owner, leverage your business for profit, leverage your business for connection, leverage your business for impact, and leverage your business for the transformation of lives!

Here are three ways to leverage your business for the transformation of your team and the people they influence.

First, write your business vision down on paper and share it with your team.  Seriously. Don’t just think, “oh, that’s a neat idea!” Do it. Write it down.  Share it openly.

Your business vision should have seven categories you write out: duration (18-36 months ideally), family and freedom, financial, product and/or service, team and employees, client type, and what your culture will be.  

Once you have shared your vision invite your team to write a vision for their family or household.  What do they want for their family, their faith, fitness, finances, and friendships?

Next, teach financial literacy in your business and provide opportunities for your team to work on their own financial stewardship. Talk about how a dollar that comes into the business does not remain as a whole dollar.  Explain that every dollar gets fractionated out in payroll, taxes, cost of goods, etc.  

Also, talk about the importance of personal financial stewardship both at work and at home.  Bad stewardship should never determine compensation either way.  

Finally, tie a team members work back to the community they serve and the purpose they have in their life.  Of course this requires that team members know their purpose. Walk with them through a simple process of asking each person, “what motivates you?”

Real transformation will not take place the first time you take advantage of any of these opportunities but instead evolves over time and repetition.  Team meetings and intentional time calendaring serves as the invitation for solid repetition.

Scott Beebe is the founder of Business On Purpose, author of Let Your Business Burn: Stop Putting Out Fires, Discover Purpose, And Build A Business That Matters.  Scott also hosts The Business On Purpose Podcast and can be found at mybusinessonpurpose.com.