Hey, y’all! Brent Perry with Business on Purpose.

Do they know… who are they? 

And what do they need to know? 

Let’s talk about your employees. Basically, we want to know if your employees know what is in your head. Or a better question, are you on the same page?

I just finished a call with a client of mine (he’s a builder), and for the first time since we have been working together, we got his project manager on the call with us. Not the first time I have heard about him, but the first he was able to join us. 

I have heard about him… a lot. I have written his name down in my coaching notes… a lot. I have taken calls from my client about this PM… a lot. 

By now you can see where I am going with this. 

My client is good at what he does. This project manager is good at what he does. But there was something off in their relationship. 

The work being done was inefficient. They were slow to complete jobs. A job or two had to be revisited because of some simple oversights. The amount of trips to Lowe’s, simply baffling. 

Again, they know what they are doing. But these misses were costing the company time and money. So the question we had to answer, what do we do? 

After we chatted for a bit, it became clear…these two were not on the same page. 

Now, if this story sounds familiar at all, it’s because at some time or another you as a business owner have probably felt this way. Actually, it would be hard to imagine if you haven’t felt this way. You have been there. 

If you have been listening to Business on Purpose (via your coaches, podcasts, YouTube, etc.) you have heard us say that 2022 is going to be a year of flourishing. 

Part of flourishing is being on the same page with your people. It is essential to your business. It is essential to you. 

This client is indeed going to flourish in 2022! And for this to happen, he and his project manager need… no have to be on the same page. So where did we point him? 

The first… vision! You must be able to communicate the vision of your business with your employees. 

How do you do that? 

Simple, weekly team meetings. They are essential. 

A few excuses I have heard over the past few weeks from business owners when asked about why they haven’t been doing team meetings…

1. I don’t have the time
2. My employers won't show up
3. They don’t seem to be effective

Let me stop us there. If you are running a weekly / effective team meeting… these excuses don’t even make sense. We would love to help you. We would love your feedback. We would love for you to be doing team meetings in 2022. 

You will not regret it. 

Thanks for listening. 

If you haven’t done so already, subscribe to our Podcast, and/or our YouTube channel.

We mix our own SOIL and get it ready 

FIRST: Schedule Time For People:

Howard Shultz, Starbucks CEO for so long said, “Want to build for one year from now, grow wheat... 10 years from now grow trees... if you want to build for 100 years from now... grow people”

REMEMBER: The product is a commodity, the process is the product, and the people are the linchpin... without people, there would be need for neither

We are not built for commerce... we are built for relationships... commerce is merely a stage by which relationships can connect, form, and thrive

Here is the reality... you are scared.  It’s ok... just admit it.  It can be awkward

We know in order to meet on the stage of commerce, we need to sync our calendars and actually shape our time to have the conversations that matter most

But we’re scared of…

Not saying the right thing

Not saying the right thing the right way

Not being sensitive enough

Being mocked... or being called out for not being sincere

Not having enough emotional energy to listen well

Having the implement another thing that you don’t have time for

That it could get out of control... I AM TOO

Imagine a Coach who busied themselves with administrative things (schedules, jerseys, tickets, etc.).... but never actually coached players?

2022 is the year that the Owners will make time in their schedule to be the Chief Training Officer of the business... doesn’t mean they are leading training sessions, but it means that they are making sure training and development is happening year-round!

How do we MAKE time?

BOP TOOL: That’s what the Culture Calendar is all about... its the reminder you need to do the things that matter most

SECOND: Optimize Process: 

How do plants flourish?  How do they grow?

A PROCESS... photosynthesis... the leaf acts as a solar panel drawing in the energy needed for all other parts of the plant

Here is what DOES NOT happen... Plant A only does 3 steps, and Plant B adds six additional steps today, but tomorrow will only do two of the steps

How do we optimize our process in such a way that it brings LASER CLARITY to our teams?  

We will MAKE time to review our processes as we go!

How?

BOP TOOL - in our weekly team meeting agenda, we will have a 3-minute segment where we simply take a look at the Master Process Roadmap and see if anything needs updating

THIRD: Implement Accountability:

Kayce Dutton.  A ranchman who grew up as the black sheep of a proud, but dysfunctional Montana family.  

He once said, “ I’m always in a position where I need to kill or be killed”

His father John Dutton, played by Kevin Costner places nepotistic expectations on this lone ranger soul to be the male heir apparent to the family ranch.  He often assists w/ his father's dirty work in the hopes of preserving their family's land.  

After one particular fight, he responded this way, “I like having somebody to fight for rather than something. When you fight for a thing, the thing doesn’t care if you win or lose because the thing ain’t alive. But when you fight for people, they care..” - Kasey from Yellowstone

When we set parameters and schedule accountability... and then follow through on it… we are fighting FOR people instead of being distracted by things…

When you spend time with people... they care

Things don’t

Part of spending time with people is having honest conversations about

How they see the business living out its mission and values

What they are seeing and thinking

What blind spots they may recognize that you don’t

What they need from you

And what you see and need from them?

How do we do that?

BOP TOOL - that’s where we begin scheduling those brief, intentional, check ins with each person

Which leads to the L of SOIL...

Lifelong Learning: 

When you ask, you learn

When you look, you learn

When you make time, you learn

When you are present, you learn

Learning requires pausing and listening... and more importantly MAKING time to learn and listen

Learning is passive (initially)... we have to learn to sit quietly in order to learn 

None of these are skills that you were told were priorities when you start your business or started your job.  

We live in a pedal to the metal society... go, go, go

We are back… as many of you are watching Yellowstone, like my wife and I. I always leave the show thinking. While it’s driven with action and filmed in the heart of a breathtaking landscape, it’s the dialogue and sometimes lack thereof, that drives the show and causes you to think.

So, we’ll dive back in here in a moment but just wanted to thank you for listening or watching. My name’s Thomas Joyner and I’m a business coach here with Business on Purpose. 

If you haven’t seen this week's episode of Yellowstone, I am going to discuss a scene from it. So, if you need to pause this so you don’t freak out at me and get upset for spoiling a 30-second scene… that’s on you.

At the end of this past episode, Jimmy, one of the guys who’s kind of being redeemed over the past several seasons. Going from meth addict to miserable stable hand, and now sent to Texas to learn how to be a cowboy, is at the end of a long workday. 

The last conversation with his boss, they’re sitting there watching someone work and he looks at Jimmy and says this. “Jimmy, if you really wanna be a cowboy… learn to rope.”

So that night, Jimmy comes home to his little bedroom. Eats the plate of dinner left for him and notices a rope on the wall. He picks it up, walks outside and pulls the little fake bull into the yard, and starts practicing.

As the scene progresses, it’s daylight. First throw with the rope? A miss. Second, a miss. Third, and fourth, and fifth. All misses.

This goes on for hours as it’s late into the night…more and more and more misses. Until finally, the last shot is him roping the bull and pulling it tight.

Now, what are we supposed to take from this? 

What does some fictional former Meth head turned cowboy learning to rope have to do with you running your business?

I think it’s all about what work are you willing to do in private. What work are you willing to do when no one is watching?

THAT… is the work that truly matters. That truly gives you a leg up. 

In the scene with Jimmy, they zoom out and there’s no one watching. No one encouraging him. It’s just him. Because he knows deep down that the only way to be the cowboy he wants to be is to put in the reps. To put the work in. To do the stuff that’s no fun and so far from any type of predictable success that it’s frustrating and downright discouraging.

So, what work are you willing to put in that no one may ever know that you do? Is it taking the time out of your week to pour over your books, your numbers, to make sure you’re making wise choices? 

Is it the hard work of recording your systems and processes to be able to train your team in a repeatable and accountable way? Maybe it’s getting in to work before anyone knows you’re there to map out the day and logistically save your business money by getting everything organized.

Or maybe you, like Jimmy, just need to put in the technical reps to get better at your craft. To take rep after rep after rep knowing that there is no shortcut to success.

I think if I could take something from this scene, it’s that there’s no shortcut to success. No get rich scheme out there. There are businesses out there promising that you’ll crush it if you’ll follow this 5 step program. It’s all fake!

There is no shortcut. You have to pay the price and put in the reps.

But here’s the good news. The encouragement in all of this. One day instead of stringing together one success, it will be two. And then three. And then onward and upward.

I’ll never forget the story of Kobe Bryant before a scrimmage at the Olympics in 2008. He called his trainer at 4:15 am and asked him to come to the gym with him. Even though they had a noon scrimmage. So, they got in a 90-minute workout and Kobe told the trainer, he could head out if he wanted to.

The trainer left, went and got a few hours of sleep before the scrimmage and when he got back to the gym, he went up to Kobe to encourage him on a great workout that morning.

“Great job Kobe!” Kobe just looked at him and said, “Huh?” “Great job this morning. What time did you get back to the gym?”

Kobe just laughed. “I actually stayed here. I wanted to make 500 jumpers from the corner before I stopped and then just decided to make 800 instead.”

Kobe, a guy who was born with more talent than probably anyone, realized the value of putting in the reps while no one was watching. He didn’t just put up 800 shots, but actually MADE 800 corner 3s BEFORE a scrimmage to make sure he was prepared.

Because here’s what Kobe knew… and what Jimmy is in the process of learning in Yellowstone. You don’t rise to the challenge. That’s a myth. You fall to the level of your preparation.

What are you doing when no one is watching to raise your level of preparation to a place where everyone else notices when it’s time to perform? 

That’s the important question.

Have a great day everyone!

Jessie, who has been the longest-serving team member at Business On Purpose, and started almost from the beginning, was sitting quietly staring to my left.

We were in the middle of a very familiar time, our formal weekly check in.  It is a prescribed, 20 minute or so time where we stop what we are doing, and I ask four familiar questions of Jessie (and our other team members).

At the end of that time, I make a statement.

I had just asked the fourth question, “what do you need from me”, and Jessie thought for an unusually long time before saying anything.  

Then she said this, “the second half of our mission is ‘making time for what matters most"... I feel like we do that with conversations like these.”

We chatted a bit more about the challenge of owners investing in their team, and the return they should expect.

What really caught our conversation was the reality that most owners likely don’t have a targeted plan of team investment outside of a couple of special events per year, and maybe some last-minute bonus items around the holidays.

We asked ourselves, “how do owners invest in their employees?”

In short, it’s likely the total opposite of what you think.  

The bean bag chairs, free food, the team building... those are commodities and are meaningless without the true investment of at least these four items: 

TIME

ATTENTION

REPETITION

IMPLEMENTATION

First, your time is a non-renewable resource which strikes at its value.  The time I am spending writing this post is time that I will not get back, so I have to determine if it is worth the time writing.  

Our mission is to liberate business owners from chaos to make time for what matters most.  I believe this article will help liberate you from chaos, therefore it is a good investment of time.

Unfortunately, we often give our time to things that are time-wasters.  The easiest way to determine the resourcefulness of your time is not necessarily looking at checklist-able productivity (although I do love a checklist), but instead determining if the task you are working on is aligned with your mission.

When you make time to spend with or for your team and their growth towards the vision, and mission of the business, that is time well spent.

Do a mental audit of last week, how much time did you actively (not passively) invest in your team?  

Second, your attention is another non-renewable resource.  Attention is bound directly with time.  It is quite possible to spend time with an employee and yet your attention be elsewhere.  

In order to fully give your attention to something, it is helpful to have mapped out what you wish to accomplish while with that person/place/thing.

Obviously, you can over schedule a relationship; but most of us are guilty of the opposite, having very little purpose for the engagement of our team.  

The best, simplest, and easiest tool to put in place to aid with attention is to simply write a BASIC agenda for your time.  How long, what will be discussed, what is the follow-up?

That’s it.  

The check in discussion I referenced earlier follows a very basic outline and each of our team members knows exactly what I’m going to ask... because I ask them every week!  

That leads to the third element of investing in your employees; repetition.  

Zig Ziglar said, “Repetition is the mother of learning, the father of action, which makes it the architect of accomplishment.”

I’ll ask a business owner, “did you all start doing your team meetings (or whatever)?”  More times than I care to remember the response is, “yeah, we tried that (once) but it didn’t work.”

Even untalented actors get gigs.  Why?  They repeatedly continued to ask long after the rest of us gave up.

Monster biceps come not from a long, extended 8-hour workout at the gym.  

They come through long, extended 8-hour workoutS (plural) at the gym day after day.  It may not be fun...but it is effective.

Finally, Joe Calloway says it best, “vision without implementation is hallucination.”

I have a Monday checklist that I work through each Monday morning.  Some of the “tasks” on that Monday checklist directly impact our team members; small investments of time, attention, or repetition.

The Monday checklist does not pull itself up on my computer...it does not scream and yell at me for attention.  The Monday checklist sits there lifelessly until I pull it up and use it.

Business owners... we must implement the tools we have access to.

There is no silver bullet, but there is time, attention, and repetition...if you wish to implement.

These four things make the bean bag chairs, the ping pong tables, and the team-building not a farce, but something of real value for your team.

Hey, y’all! Brent Perry with Business on Purpose.

So, what is your word for 2022 going to be? 

As I am recording this, it is December 1st, we have officially made it to the last month of the calendar year. In a few quick weeks, we will be closing the books on 2021, and heading straight into 2022. 

When I joined the Business on Purpose team earlier this year, one of the first questions Scott Beebe asked me was about “my word for the year.” Now I’ll be honest, I had never done a word of the year before, so I didn’t have one at the ready. It felt like a big decision, one word that would define the year ahead. I wasn’t sure where to start, or how to narrow down my outlook on the upcoming year to just one word. But nonetheless, I started the process. 

I wanted first to take a look at what others had to say about choosing a word for the year...here are a few quotes I came across..

The website Mountain Modern Life says, “I don’t know about you, but I love the idea of choosing a Word of the Year vs. New Year’s Resolution because it helps bring focus and clarity to what we want to create in our lives.”

Elizabeth Rider says, “Use your Word of the Year to help guide your decisions and continue moving towards what you want.”

A different Elizabeth, McKnight, states, “The practice of choosing a “Word of the Year” is that, instead of setting a lot of different New Years Resolutions, you select one single word to be your focus for the year. You can use that word to set goals or intentions for each area of your life, but have them all tie back to the single word.” 

There is even a popular website that has popped up recently around this idea...oneword365.com

So again, I want to ask you, what will your word for 2022 be? 

I mentioned earlier that our Business on Purpose team takes this idea to heart. Some of our words for 2021 included…

Abundance 

Heart

Explore

Disciplined Peace

Transformation

Embrace Normal

Each of these words holds a special place to us. A word that we can keep coming back to in the midst of this year. 

So do me a favor today. Take a few minutes and pull out a pen and a piece of paper...yes we are going old school here. I want you to write it out. Take 3-5 uninterrupted minutes (phone on airplane mode, no music or podcasts, no calls or emails...just you and a piece of paper. 

Jot down some ideas. Some thoughts. You can start with phrases or sentences. But look back over your year in 2021, and start to get some ideas of where you want to head in 2022. 

Thanks for listening. 

If you haven’t done so already, subscribe to our Podcast, and/or our YouTube channel.

There’s a hit show out right now called Yellowstone, and while I can’t fully endorse it due to there being quite a bit of language and adult content, there have been some amazing quotes that have caused me to think. So... for the next several weeks I’m going to dive into some of these quotes and talk through their application to business and life. Good afternoon friends, Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here. 

Ok, so why Yellowstone? Why pick a show that’s basically a Wild West version of a soap opera? Instead of sarcastic words, using guns... Well, Because all of life is learning. And I feel like in watching it, I’m learning and using this stuff to make sure I’m not off-axis in any area of my life.

That’s why one of our core values here at BoP is Relentless learning. Because in every situation in life we want to listen first, process, and then learn and implement from that. So that’s what we’re going to do today.

So... before the quote, some backstory in case you haven’t watched it.

Kayce, one of the main characters is haunted by his past and is trying to save his marriage. He takes a new job as livestock commissioner in helping the rural farmers and cattle ranchers in any way possible.

He comes home one afternoon and his wife looks at him and says this.

“You really love this new job don’t you?”

Kayce’s response is what struck me.

“I feel like for the first time I’m fighting for people. I like having somebody to fight for rather than something. When you fight for a thing, the thing doesn't care if you win or lose because the thing ain't alive. But when you fight for people, they care.”

How powerful is that? “When you fight for people, they care.”

I wonder what you’re fighting for? When you look out over the next several years of business, what is it you want? And if you get it, can hold onto it, in your hands... do you think looking back that it will make you happy? Will you be satisfied? Or will you just kick the can further down the road knowing you missed the mark?

Here’s the interesting thing we’ve seen over the past several years. Money can’t be that object. History is littered with people who made it financially and they are just as miserable today as they were 10 years ago. We have seen numerous businesses “make it”... doing more business than they ever thought and bringing home life-changing money. But... if the relationships in their business aren’t sound, if all is not well at home, if their marriage is struggling, it may help, but it doesn’t satisfy.

Look at shows like Shark Tank. These billionaires sit in on these presentations just trying to add a few more millions to their portfolio because all they know how to do is add more.

What if we flipped the script and started chasing after what we really want. And that’s healthy relationships and equipping people. 

Because you never sit with someone at their death bed and they say…”I wish I’d made more money in my life.” Or, “I wish I’d worked 5 more hours a week.” No! That never happens. People always wish they’d spent more time with the ones they loved most and invested in the people around them.

So, what does that look like practically?

Is it sitting down with your employees and hearing them out? Figuring out what their dreams are and help them achieve them?

Is it planning some team days where you do speed dating or team day at the go-kart track to promote some laughter and community?

Is there some serious work that needs to be done on the culture of your business so that your team knows you care about them? Do you forget birthdays/anniversaries, do you acknowledge big wins, and celebrate hard work?

Or is your team just punching in and punching out, just waiting for the next Friday afternoon or next week-long holiday?

You spend too much time at work to NOT invest in the people around you. That’s why I love that quote, money, products, your business, it doesn’t care if you win or lose... it’s just a thing.

But people... PEOPLE always care.

So start fighting for the right things. So that years from now, you can look back and realize you were working for the right stuff all that time. So that when you see people succeed and success is lying in the palm of your hand you won’t be wishing you fought for something else.

People care if you fight for them... Man, that’s good.

Have a great week everyone!

You know that moment when you open the mailbox and you see the letter with your name on it?

Not the spam mail, the credit card offer, or the latest internet bill.
That feeling you get when you open a letter personally addressed to you, Hannah or Jason. Behind those words are thought, courage, joy, laughter, tears, surprise, or motivation.

Words are powerful, especially when they are directed to you. Words matter. The thoughts and intentions behind those words matter. The way those words make you feel or react matter.

Think about this.

Every major global religion is all based on a holy book. Writing.
The door to every major global movement or cause has typically stemmed from a book, a song, a poem, a prepared speech, or manifesto. Writing.

One of our favorite phrases is, “if it is not written down it doesn’t exist.”

So why don’t we write more often? We’re scared we’re not that good at it.

Novelist Louis L’Amour said, “Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”

One of the most powerful, durable, and recordable ways to share your human thoughts as a leader is to write them out, personally addressed to your team.

Of course, you have doubts. Poet Sylvia Path helps us confront our doubt saying, “... By the way, everything in life is writable if you have the outgoing guts to do it... The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

When you write a letter to your company you have immediately created recorded history. When your business is two, or ten, or forty years off into the future, those future team members and leaders will be installed with the founder's or previous owners' principles, ideas, innovations, and foundations.

When you do not write a letter to your company, it gets lost to time.

We are encouraging you and challenging you to write a letter to each member of your business every year and personally mail it to their home with their name on the top.

The first exposure I had to a powerful annual letter is Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos in his 1997 Amazon Shareholder letter. I used it in my first-ever coaching session with a client as we built out their Vision Story.

In his letter, Bezos works through some key elements that we can put into a simple template to help you think through your powerful letter.

First, Bezos begins his letter with key milestones that Amazon has achieved throughout the year. It is short and sweet and very powerful coming right out of the gate. No fluff, dive right in. You may say something like…

Dear Hannah,

We saw ACME, Co. grow beyond our projections by about 5% and YOU were a huge part of that. Our goal is to move beyond where we are at now and for next year become the second largest XYZ company in our county...

Next, Bezos then goes on to discuss multiple opportunities that are in front of them. Even if you are staring down the barrel of a recession, opportunity is in front of you. What is it? What could your business do even if you don’t know the “how” quite yet? Writing this letter forces you to see opportunity and then take the risk of sharing that opportunity.

Use wisdom, use discretion, and be bold. You can do all three together.

Third, Bezos begins sharing true stories that are aligned with their unique core values of “long term” and “obsess over customers”. With each of those stories, he is also diligent to layout bullet points of what the impact will be to Amazon from those stories, both the fun parts and the challenging parts.

For instance, an impact of “long term” is “When forced to choose between optimizing the appearance of our GAAP accounting and maximizing the present value of future cash flows, we’ll take the cash flows.”

He’s honest and discrete. Bezos shares what he can share, but I’m sure doesn’t share everything.

Also, remember that Amazon is a publicly-traded company so they will tend to be more open about their financial numbers due to their public transparency. You may wish to not share those.
With whatever you write, just ask yourself, “how will this impact particular team members when they read it.”

The overall goal is to celebrate, encourage, inspire, motivate, show appropriate vulnerability, and vision-cast through your annual letter. Use your discretion with how much information to share.

Next, Bezos shares some key metrics that make sense to the Amazon team. What will make sense to your team? Is it the number of increased contracts signed this year compared to last? Is it the user ratings that have increased this year over last? Your performance rating? Safety metrics?

What are those key metrics that matter to your team? This may be a great place to share them.

Fifth, Bezos devotes an entire section just to the Amazon team... to celebrating them. He is aspirational, saying things like, “The past year’s success is the product of a talented, smart, hard-working group, and I take great pride in being a part of this team.” Bezos is also sober mentioning, “It’s not easy to work here... but we’re building something important.”

Near the end of the letter, Bezos then goes into full-on vision-casting and goal-setting mode. It is a sentence by sentence power punch to the soul of each team member as if to say, “I so value you that I’m going to stretch our horizon, so you will always have a place to RUN by doing your highest and best work.”
Where are you headed? What are the broad steps that it will take for you to get there? Remember the words to the Jewish Prophet Habakkuk, “write the vision down so those who read it may run!”

Finally, Bezos signs off with a two-sentence summary. This would be a great place to reinforce your mission statement saying something like, “This was a powerful year to (insert mission statement), and I am beyond grateful for you. Thank you for your work, your commitment, and for your devotion to (insert a core value here).”

Hey, y’all! Brent Perry with Business on Purpose.

Let’s take a look at where you are as a business. I am going to keep my content short and sweet today because I have a homework assignment for you…. Yes, you!

Have you assessed your business? Lately? Quarterly? Yearly? Ever? 

Maybe you have, and maybe you haven’t... But there is a good chance this is a good season for you to take a little time to get a fresh look at where you are as a business. 

And good news... Business on Purpose has a tool for you. 

I don’t know about you, but I’m not a huge fan of going to the doctor. No offense to any in the medical profession, it’s just not my jam. The waiting room, the needles, the sitting on the table where my legs can’t quite touch the floor and did I mention the needles? It’s not my favorite place to be, but I know the importance.

Just a few weeks ago I was back at my local doc getting my annual check up. The whole kit and caboodle. I even let them take my blood to check all my levels. I wanted to be anywhere else, but I also want to make sure my body is healthy and functioning at its best. 

Sometimes assessments aren’t the most fun experiences, but they can provide us some incredibly valuable insight. 

And so here is your homework. Right now, head over to boproadmap.com/healthy 

One more time, that is boproadmap.com/healthy, and get started. It’s that simple. Should take you 5-10 minutes to complete and get your score. 

And the good news, whatever your score may be, we have some ways to improve on what you have going on. 

Take the assessment to see where you are as a business today. 

Thanks for your time, we know how valuable it is. We are thankful for each and every one of you. 

If you haven’t done so already, subscribe to our Podcast, and/or our YouTube channel.

6 weeks left in 2021! Supply chain issues everywhere, in-laws on the way in town next week, presents to order for Christmas!

Take a deep breath, carve out some time for some Personal Prep for 2022. Good morning everyone, Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here.

Two weeks ago, we talked about tweaking and refining your Vision for your business. Last week we looked over your finances and built out a budget for next year. Today, we tackle some personal things in life you need to have a grasp on before moving on, along with a very important conversation with whoever shares your home. 

So let’s not waste any time, let’s dive right on in!

The first thing you need to make sure you are ready for is with a few simple Estate Planning items. A few years ago Scott sat in the Mikkelson Law conference room and told them the truth…” clients have NO IDEA of what they need when it comes to Estate Planning, and they get even more confused when they walk into an Attorney’s office.  Can we build something that makes Estate Planning clear?”

They built a powerful tool that allows you to get the conversation started with your Estate Planning Attorney.

Here is the tool and how it works.

For key leaders and other employees who do not own the business, they should begin by looking at and discussing the two columns on the left side.  

For business owners, you begin looking at the 3 columns on the right side to begin the conversation with your Attorney.

Ask them, “what do I need” and they can use this tool to put an Estate Plan together for you.

It is simple, it’s easy to understand, and ready-made. So if you already have your will, your power of attorney, but just want a copy of this, please let me know and I’d be happy to send to you.

Estate Planning can feel a bit like going to the Dentist, you know you need to, but you don’t like it.  Please schedule time, and don’t put this off.  Estate Planning is an important part of your 2022 PREP for both your home and your business.

The next piece of prep work to dive into is all based around Insurance. I sat in with Landon Papay of Papay Allstate AGency and asked a similar question. Insurance is so nuanced, but this document is at least a starting point, so you can know what to ask your particular insurance agent about.

Everything from personal lines, life insurance, accident plans, and Key Employee Life can be discussed, but you need a starting point. Schedule your call with your insurance provider today or get in touch with us and we can connect you to ones we use.

Lastly, We want you to have a conversation we like to call the Financial Barn!

The financial barn is a conversation WORTH having. It’s powerful to connect and dream a bit about what the next year will hold. 

Here is how it will work.

Get out a blank sheet of paper and a pen, and begin drawing out a stick figure Barn. Don’t get crazy, it’s intentionally going to be simple. 

In a very BOP-like way, let’s go ahead and address the elephant in the room…”What if I don’t WANT to have this conversation with my spouse or partner?”

Seriously, if that is you, then we as a BOP team are asking you to come speak to your Coach directly for advice and a plan.

The number one reason for the breaking up of relationships is a lack of communication about finances.

Remember, we care about you as much personally as we care about your business.

Start adding in rooms to the barn. Living expenses, rent or mortgage, giving, tithe, college fund, 401k, vacation...everything you plan on putting money towards next year and a dollar amount next to it!

Now add those numbers up to see what you need to earn to reach your goal. Is it reasonable? Is it attainable?

So many people just earn and earn and earn and don’t tell their money where it needs to go. If you go over, you can be incredibly generous, knowing you hit your goal.

Let’s get on the same page financially in your own home and it will be a powerful jolt for the financial health of your business and family too!

So those are the 3 areas to knock out before the end of the year. Estate Planning, Insurance Planning and the Financial barn.

Stop what you’re doing and do it right now! Set up meetings with professionals and a time to discuss your home with your spouse or whoever shares your home. It’s that powerful and that worth it.

As always, let us know if we can help!

Have a great week and a great thanksgiving! We have much to be thankful for.

Near the end of each calendar year we walk our heroic business owner clients through a powerful three-day experience we call BOP Prep Week.

For those of you who were High School football players, think back to the dedicated week known as summer camp, or two-a-days.  It was intense, grueling, and wildly necessary.

Those are times that teams grow in their camaraderie, intuition, trust of each other, and anticipation of how to handle a variety of situations.

It prepared you for a long, exciting season where you would experience ups, downs, and everything in between.

An upcoming calendar year for your business is filled with the same twists, turns, blindside hits, and touchdowns as a regular sports season.  

Amidst the business preparation that you must pay attention to (vision, culture, systems, processes, finances, team, etc.), there is another, as important conversation that must be had headed into a new business season; a conversation that is rooted at home.

Anytime we bring up the idea of home, or family, within a business conversation we can hear the sub-conscience of those around us beginning to ask, “but wait, I thought we were just keeping this to business?”

Indeed, a conversation about home is very much a conversation about business due to the reality that business and life necessarily intersect. Rarely does a woman or man have the capability to keep “work at work and home at home.”

Hands-down, the most common reason for the break up of relationships is conflict in arguing. The number one topic of conflict and arguing is… money.

A key feature of prep week each year is that on the third day we have each of our heroic business owners make time to spend with their spouse or partner if they share the home, and walk them through a simple and thoughtful framework around their personal finances.

We do not lead the discussion, and we do not make decisions, we merely invite two people to have a thoughtful, facilitated, guided, human discussion about money together.

How can you talk to your spouse or partner about money and not get in a fight? 

Here are four elements that can help you get started.

First, commit to having a thoughtful conversation instead of a heated argument. Your goal is not to win, your goal is to get on the same page and to create clarity around the idea of money.

Imagine that you had a miniature jail cell sitting on the table in front of you. That jail cell exists only for your thoughts. Imagine that every thought that pops into your head as you were in conversation with the other person first gets locked in that cell so it can be analyzed and thought through before it ever comes out of your mouth.

Incarcerating every thought in a holding cell before it comes out and becomes official takes great emotional strength, but will lead to a more human conversation.

Second, acknowledge openly your own biases and predispositions to money.

There is a Wisdom saying that says, “where your money is, your heart is there also”.  You may have grown up where the responsible idea was to put your money in a savings account. Because your money is in a savings account, means that your heart is with the idea of saving and potentially storing up.

For others, you may have grown up with a responsible idea was to spend what you had, therefore your money is with things, or experiences, which means your heart is there also.

How did you grow up, and what biases have you brought into the relationship regarding money?

Third, set a goal of what you want to discuss and communicate that goal. Do you want to discuss saving more? Spending more? Traveling more? Moving somewhere else? How to spend what you currently have? Why do you want to have this conversation?

For me, I want to have a conversation with my wife because I want to have a meaningful mix of spending for the things that we wish to experience, great generosity for the things that we wish to contribute to, and thought for saving and investing so we can build appropriate wealth and be prepared appropriately for the future.

With that goal, it allows my wife and I to set a number that meets all of that criteria, and then try to create a plan to shoot for that number.

Where things get dangerous is when the conversation is left open-ended and the goal is either endless savings or endless spending, with no floor or no ceiling.

One final element that will help when having the tough conversation around money is to schedule the conversation, the location, and grab a pen and a  piece of paper.

We like to go to a hotel for an overnight, and sit at the bar and begin to map out a stick figure barn. In that barn or multiple rooms.

We have the “living expense” room, the “401k” room, the “hobby” room, the “generosity” room, the ”college savings” room, and so on.

Within each one of these rooms we place a number, and that values the value that we believe that we want to shoot for this year to fully fund that room. Once complete with all the rooms, we simply add up all the numbers, and that gives us the primary number that we want to shoot for this year.

Anything over that number, we go ahead and agree upon what we will do with any excess.

From there on, we set time throughout the year to follow back up on the stick figure financial barn that we’ve written out and do our best to hit the dates of saving, and giving that we have pre-planned.

Part of the reason that money can cause so much tension is this true statement “the love of money, is the root of all evil.”  

Money is not the problem… Loving the money more than other things is where things begin to break down. 

Let’s commit to these thoughtful elements, and instead of fighting with our spouse about money, let’s unite with our spouse, get on the same page, and leverage money as the neutral tool it was intended to be, for the good things that you want to see.

Alright, 7 weeks left in 2021. We spoke about the first step in your year-end business checklist last week. So, if you missed that... stop this real fast, go back and listen and then come back to today. It’s that important and I don’t want you to miss any steps! What do we need to do in our business, to prepare for 2022? Good morning everyone, Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here.

Last week we spoke about Tweaking and Revisiting the Vision for your business and communicating that with your team through a year-end letter. It’s simple, yet unbelievably powerful. Today I want to start by diving in on your end-of-year financial checklist.

A quick story for you... a few weeks ago I was working with a local business and we jumped back into their financial dashboard, we call it the level two dashboard, to just look at a few things. They had subdivided their bank accounts into 5 separate accounts. Profit, operating expenses, owners compensation, taxes, and an income account that everything gets deposited into. Simple, yet effective.

We spent some time looking back over the highs and lows of the year and the numbers told us a few things. First, having updated books isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Necessary, yes, but doesn’t give you an accurate picture of your business always.

“I’m looking at our P&L and it’s telling us we made “x” dollars so far this year. Why isn’t that in our bank accounts?” 

Exactly why we do this. Sure enough, all of their cash bank accounts were lower than anticipated with exception of 1. It allowed us to ask questions…

What do your receivables look like? Do we have any big accounts that have yet to pay that will really move the needle? How do we need our team spending their time to make sure we collect on those receivables? Do we need to forego overtime for a period until we can get back to a better cash position? Do we hold off on new equipment or buying material in bulk until we can collect on overdue invoices?

All of this helps give you, the business owner, a better idea of what you need to run your business off of. Imagine if we had just looked at the P&L? Tons of billing, expenses look normal, revenue is up, but everything is not necessarily attached to cash in the business. So you go about your business as usual, spending away and digging yourself a hole.

That’s why we use our Level Two Dashboard. It tells you what you can run your business off of today! And allows you to make informed decisions.

And the beautiful thing about this conversation. We saw that two checks needed to be picked up asap...AND the business owner could actually give himself a small raise and his guys a small raise in the coming year.

That’s why we track our cash position weekly!

So, if you haven’t already. Subdivide your bank accounts. If you haven’t already, go back and listen to our Multiple bank accounts podcast or set up a meeting with us to go through it. It’s magic!

Then, begin tracking your cash position in each account weekly or biweekly. Make sure you’re including payables and receivables so you have an accurate representation of all that you need to know. 

If you have all of that setup, look back over the course of your year. What information can be taken from your cash swings? Are there months that are lower, that you need to cut costs? Can you afford to give yourself a raise? Do you have the money for new hires? What is your ACTUAL net margin??? That’s a big one. Not the one you think you have on a P&L. 

All of this gives you the information to look at next year and put together a simple budget. Nothing too fancy, but project out your work, your expenses, your payroll and do it on purpose instead of just running your business hoping for the best.

It puts you back in charge and helps you make informed decisions going into 2022.

So do it right now! Look back over your level two dashboard and build a simple budget for next year. Do you need to change any percentages, allocate for costs anywhere? Give anyone a raise or change anything up?

Now is the time to make those decisions! 

Alright, that’s all for today. Remember, step one was tweak and revisit your vision and writing a letter to your team. Today was all about financial readiness with subdivided bank accounts, a dashboard to track them, and a simple budget to capitalize on the information for next year.

Now go and do it right now!

Have a great day.

I was sitting on the backside of an eight-person round table in the middle of a high-ceiling, golf club meeting room clearly designed with interiors from the 1980s and yet to be updated.

In the middle of a presentation on resource management the presenter said this, “you can always make more money, you can always make more friends, but you will never be able to make more time... time is a non-renewable resource.”

Huh.

My mind began weaving through all of the available resources that we connect with every day realizing that almost everything that came to mind had the potential to be renewed; except time.

The second that just passed is gone and it will not return.  

Taking a doomsday approach to the non-renewability of time is not helpful, and yet being aware of time’s terminal tick is a wise base for thinking, planning, and preparing.

Whether it is a Mom or Dad tired from juggling work, kids, bills, and friendships, or a newly retired person fatigued from a life of that same juggling, all of us would like to find the silver bullet to having more time for ourselves.

Similarly, we also wish to know the secret for having more time with those we love, with the things we love, with the causes, we are passionate about, and the hobbies that feed our soul.

But, how?

Our clients are asking the same question at the time that I am producing this post. 

This is a special week that happens in November of each year, it is Business On Purpose PREP WEEK where each of our business owners makes time to work ON their business in preparation for the upcoming year.

Most business owners feel a need to “get prepared” in the same way that a dehydrated athlete feels a real need to chug water on a hot, muggy, practice day when after an hour of running drills... they crave it.

Unfortunately, most business owners never make it to the cooler to drag a swig of water before heading off to the next drill.  Over time the inevitable happens, they cramp up and are no longer available to the team for their particular skill.

Business owners are notorious for never making it to the cooler of refreshment for their business.  They wake up to a fresh and exciting new year, with a tired and fatigued mind.

How can business owners make time to work on the business... or just make time for themselves?

First, you must come to your own conclusion that time, in fact, is non-renewable and that you wish to take advantage of that finite resource.

Look no further than the 2020 pandemic for evidence of the non-renewability and fragility of time.  

Care and desire are undervalued realities in the push for personal transformation.  You have to care, and you must have the desire to leverage the resource of time for the mission that you are uniquely built for.

Second, you must stop seeing every detour and distraction as an excuse to making good use of your time.

Truth is, most important things are not urgent.  Where we get caught up is when others place the burden of their own urgency and lack of planning on us!  

This is a sobering statement, “your lack of planning and preparation does not mandate my urgent responsibility.”

Sure, if you are a medical or security professional, or run a nuclear power plant, urgent responsibility is in your job description, but for the rest of us, we spend far too much time reacting to the problems and chaos caused by the lack of preparation of others... or because we have not planned ourselves and are simply responding to THE LATEST, LOUDEST VOICE.

Third, create appointments in your schedule with yourself or with a project that you are working on.

When asked, “hey can you grab coffee tomorrow at 3?”, you simply respond, “I have a meeting I cannot move.”  No need to share that the meeting is with yourself.

That time you are spending in reflection, thought, or project building, is time spent serving others.

Can you imagine a speaker standing up in front of 100 people with no notes and confessing, “I have been so busy responding to unplanned requests for my time that I have not been able to prepare notes for my talk... but at least I made those other people happy!”

She would run out of the room, as frustrated attendees bemoan this colossal waste of the time of 100 people!

Instead, when that presenter blocks three hours to work on that talk instead of reacting to the last-minute distraction, it is as if she is holding a meeting with those 100 people.

We must reframe how our time alone is spent.  Technically, as I write this, I am not meeting with anyone, yet it is on my calendar as a meeting.  My phone is not in the room with me, my email and other notifications are not even turned on.  The only person I am thinking about right now is you... the reader, the listener.  

Life can go on without the buzzing and dinging that we have become addicted.  We don’t have to live like Pavlov’s dog.

Finally, put accountability in place around you regarding your time.  Create an ideal weekly schedule and then share it with a small group and make them ask you about it.

The loving encouragement and gentle push of small group who are pulling for you can be just what you need to make the time for what really matters.

This week, as business owners prepare for the upcoming year they will tweak their vision story, write an annual letter, populate their culture calendar, assess their team’s feedback, review their financials, prepare budgets, and plan their personal budgets and planning.. .all because they have decided to MAKE the time.

K.I.S It's not that kind of tutorial, keep it simple..

Hey, y’all! Brent Perry with Business on Purpose.

I think there are times that we can overthink our businesses. 

Our strategies, our processes, our employees' production, our sales, you name it... we can overthink it. 

An article written in the Harvard Business Review written by Melody Wilding, states, 

“Deliberation is an admirable and essential leadership quality that undoubtedly produces better outcomes. 

But there comes a point in decision making where helpful contemplation can turn into overthinking. To stop the cycle of thinking too much and drive towards better, faster decisions you can: Wilding suggests. 

Put aside perfectionism, right-size the problem, leverage the underestimated power of intuition, limit the drain of decision fatigue, and construct creative constraints.

I remember planning out the proposal to my wife. I spent weeks going through different plans and ideas. It had to be special. I wanted it to be perfect. The wheels were turning. It felt like it was all I could think about. And a couple of weeks into the planning of the big day, I noticed... I was way overthinking this moment. I’m talking about the actual moment of the proposal. I had stopped thinking about what this moment stood for, the fact that I was going to ask the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, to marry me. 

I still felt that way, and yes, we are happily married to this day... but in that moment I took my eyes off the big picture. It became about one singular moment that I felt had to be just perfect. And in reality, that wasn’t even the point. Did Alissa deserve a great gesture in the proposal, yes... did she care about how grand the gesture was... no. I had to put aside perfectionism for a minute, and go back to telling myself what this moment was really about, and what it represented. 

It puts the proposal into perspective, and helped me make it our special moment. 

So, are you overthinking in your business? Again, let’s go back to the quote from the Harvard Business Review…

“But there comes a point in decision making where helpful contemplation can turn into overthinking.”

There is a balance after all. As a small business owner, if you’re not thinking and planning in your business, who is? But don’t get trapped into overthinking some of your decisions. 

A couple of suggestions:

     1. Go back to your vision story! 

As we say at Business on purpose, “Vision is historic, vision is necessary, vision is powerful and when vision is absent it leads to chaos.”

     2. Review your core values. 

A lens through which powerful decisions should be made. 

     3. Trust the accountability in your life. 

This can be a coach, a teammate, your spouse, a mentor, a group like a mastermind. 

These are just a few simple ideas to help you keep it simple in moments you feel yourself start to take your eye off the big picture. 

Your business is important, and decisions need to be made everyday. Some of this requires you to do work on the front end (i.e. create or update your vision, writing out your unique core values, etc). 

But you will be thankful for the time in the long run as you begin to K.I.S. (keep it simple).

Thanks for listening. 

If you haven’t done so already, subscribe to our Podcast, and/or our YouTube channel.

We have 8 weeks left in 2021, even less if you subtract time for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years! So, what do you need to do before then? Let’s build a checklist together!

Good morning everyone, Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here. Real quick. If you have not already, go to boproadmap.com/healthy and take our healthy business assessment. If you’re curious at all about how well your business is running, it takes about 10 minutes and will let you know your score immediately! Again, boproadmap.com/healthy.

So, it is NOVEMBER! What? How? It feels like summer just finished and now it’s a full on sprint to the end of the year. 

So what do you need to do between now and then to make sure your business is ready to take on 2022? How do you proactively dive in and make sure that you’re intentional about 2022 being the most chaos free year yet? Well, it starts with hitting on three areas of your business and life. I’m going to take a look at 3 workshop days you need to take for yourself before the end of the year to ensure that your business is ready for everything 2022 will throw at you.

1. Tweak and Revisit your Vision

The end of the year is the perfect time to look at the next year and make any necessary changes or tweaks. Are you well on your way? Is your Vision still possible? Is it too bold or not bold enough? Just read back through it by yourself, and then with your team. Keeping your vision always in front of you is a powerful way to make sure you hit the bullseye! 

A few questions to ask yourself…

-Am I living the life I want for my family? Am I spending time with my spouse and kids. How is my mental health? Are there healthy rhythms I can continue to live in for a long time? If not, write down what that needs to look like and make changes.

-Is the business producing financially the way you had hoped and worked for? Are there any factors leading to that? Do you need to hire or let someone go? Is there anything standing in the way? Are there any new areas of opportunity for the next year that you hadn’t noticed in the past? How do you take advantage of those?

-Do we need to expand or shrink our product line or services to better reach our vision? This is huge! Too often we do what we do and never switch it up! I have a client right now who started offering Christmas light hanging, as they noticed their cash flow dropped in December and January. It helped him stay focused on his financial goal for his business and served a really unique need in his community!

-How is our culture? Is there anything incongruent between who we say we are and who we actually are?

Is there anything we need to do differently? Recommit to team meetings, do some staff development workshops, maybe play together outside of work? Does anyone deserve a premature raise! So often we wait until employees ask, but what if we went on the offensive and decided that to keep the people we want on the bus, we may have to give them raises before they ask for them to show them we value them! Man, what a way to build a positive, culture of appreciation!

Lastly, write your team a letter to celebrate. Too often, we don’t take time to celebrate! What did we, notice I said WE, accomplish. This is a team. Give credit where credit’s due. Don’t blow smoke at your team, but tell them how grateful you are for them. Tell them where you were this time last year...  acknowledge the hard things and shed light on the areas of growth!

Your team wants to feel like they’re on a moving train, so tell them where you’re headed next, but do it in the context of gratitude for a lot of hard work over the past year! That builds culture. That pushes them to want to stay in YOUR business vs look somewhere else. 

Put it in writing! Tell them to hold onto it. That way every time they get discouraged, they can read where you’ve been, see where you’re going and get excited about the direction they’re running. 

Celebrate, Celebrate, celebrate! Don’t just keep pushing. Take a deep breath and celebrate.

Alright, that’s step one...do that this week! I’ll have step two for you next week, but Revisit your Vision and write a letter to your team THIS WEEK! Don’t wait. I promise it will get lost in the holidays if you let it. 

Have a great week and I’ll see you back here next Monday to talk through what you need to look at in your business finances before the end of the year.

Take care.

We have massive expectations at the end of a year headed off into the wild optimism of what a new year might bring... new products, new opportunities, new revenue goals.

And then we look up and it’s March...June...August... and we do it all over again, hoping that we’ll take it more seriously next year, but never stopping to make the time to give next year the pre-planned attention that it both needs and deserves.

It would be silly to show up to an event and the organizer welcomes you with this statement, “although this date snuck up on us and we just sort of woke up to the reality that you all were coming, we’re hoping to make this a great event and are glad that you are here... so let’s make the best of it!”

You would be infuriated and frustrated.  All of the time, attention, and investment it took for you to attend that event; and the event organizer treats it as “not a big deal” that they are not prepared. 

This is how many of us live out our year to year, on the year-end treadmill that methodically and non-dramatically waltzes us into a new year hoping it will be better, but knowing that we did not put in the pre-planned work to ensure that better will happen.

How can we ensure that we take advantage of the freshness of a new year and launch into an optimistic twelve months, having laid the groundwork aligned with a vision of what we see?

Here are four steps to building an annual business plan.

First, you must make time to plan.     

“I just can’t find the time... or don’t have the time.”

We all have the time, but you will never make the time if you don’t first go and find the time to make.

We all have time, and we all have a choice in how we spend that time.  

SPEND time.

Time is a non-renewable currency.  Money is renewable.  Time is not.

You have a finite amount of time, which makes the value of that currency wildly expensive. 

The tasks that you constantly get caught in, are they worth the value of the currency of your time.

You have the time... you must now make the time you have to prioritize preparing for the time that is coming.

Make the time to plan.  Schedule it in your calendar.  Communicate it with your team and your clients and customers.  YES!  They will appreciate your intentionality.

Second, spend the first part of your annual business plan on the vision of your business.

There are three elements that will provide clarity in your vision, so you and everyone else knows where the business is headed.

Remember, wisdom tells us that where there is no vision, people scatter.  So let’s follow the ancient Jewish wisdom to write the vision down so those who read it may run. 

You should have a written vision detailing the snapshot of the future of your business.

With that vision should also come an annual letter that brings clarity to yourself, your team, and your stakeholders and friends.

The best example of an annual letter is the 1997 Amazon Shareholder Letter from the pen of Jeff Bezos.  It’s powerful and filled with vision.

Write an annual letter each year, so you have a vision template of what is coming, along with a chronicle of what has been.

It’s powerful to go back and read what you were thinking back then.

Third, you should spend the second part of your annual business plan on the financial preparation of your business.

Every business will be served well by subdividing their bank accounts so that the revenue that flows in may be allotted to its appropriate destination (profit, cost of goods and materials, taxes, compensation, and operating).

Financial planning comes with time spent on subdividing the infrastructure that holds your cash.

Also, every business ought to have a simple dashboard that tracks the ABCs of the business; cash Accounts, Bookkeeping (receivables, payables, etc.), and Customer metrics (leads, touchpoints, views, etc.).

No business is complete without a simple budget.  SIMPLE!

A best practice is to go back and review the last few years of your business profit and loss statements to review the cost codes and categories.  Evaluate your various expense categories, update where necessary, and then begin to apply anticipated dollar projections to each one based on the vision of the business and where you see it headed in the coming year.

The fourth step of a proper annual business plan is our own personal preparation.

How is your personal estate setup?  Do you have the legal instruments in place you should have; written agreements, contracts, powers of attorneys, will(s) and trust(s)?

Have you met with an Attorney to go over a list of legal instruments that will help protect you and your business in the coming year?

The same holds true for insurance?  Are you overinsured or underinsured?  Have you had an insurance advisor walk you through your insurance options, needs, and future realities?

Personal preparation culminates with an exercise we call the Financial Barn.  A storied exchange took place between a sage and a wealthy man.  The wealthy man was bragging about the growth of his farm and how the yield on his crops grew exponentially requiring him to either put it to use, give it away, or to build bigger and bigger storage facilities.

The man decided to increase his real estate portfolio with more storage barns where the produce would sit.  In his mind, he thought, “I’ll have plenty so I can eat, drink, and be merry.”

The sage responded, “you fool, tonight you will die... and what will happen to your stuff” (my paraphrase).  

It is not wrong to save and store....and it is also not wise to hoard up and build bigger and bigger barns to hold more and more stuff.  

A Proverb says, “in the blink of an eye wealth disappears, for it will sprout wings and fly away like an eagle” (Proverbs 23:5).

A Financial Barn simply outlines the size of your “barn” for the upcoming year, and anything more than that is given away or sold off.  It’s a powerful exercise of generosity, contentment, and taking care of what we have.

With these four steps of an annual business plan, you make the time, cast the vision, set the budget, and ensure the integrity of the business that you are building.

Owning a business is a powerful gift and a burdensome responsibility.  We must treat it as both.

In six days, I had flown on seven planes, spent the night in five cities across three time zones, and finally landed back satisfied and fulfilled.

It was a whirlwind tour to meet new business owners and to connect with some of our long-term clients.  

A theme emerged immediately within a group of 17 remodeling contractor owners that I was speaking to in Vancouver, Washington, and that theme continued throughout the duration of my around-the-country tour; how do I grow my business by replacing myself?

That theme emerged in a variety of different questions, like…

How do I stop doing it all in my business?

How do I find the time and the people to delegate?

How come no one can do the job to the level I can?

Employees.... ughh!

And yet we look around us and see that other business owners have successfully transitioned their business away from the owner-does-it-all model into a model where the team runs the day to day of the business... albeit maybe not just like the owner had envisioned.

How do you grow your business by replacing yourself?

First, you must grow your mindset.

We are quick to look at other things around us to begin finding fault, blame, and breakdown.

As I was going through the various airports throughout the country, I noticed a common theme playing itself out on the thousands of screens that I was exposed to; live sports television constantly asking questions like…

Who is the greatest/worst of all time?

Whose fault is it that this team is so bad?

Who is to blame for this team’s failure to make the playoffs?

It is clear what grabs our momentary attention... drama and blame.

We are constantly looking to place fault while not fully acknowledging that life is not perfect, people are not perfect, and processes are prone to glitches every now and then.

Society is working to groom us with a blame-centered, grab-it-while-you-can, impoverished, and limited mindset. 

In order to grow your business by replacing yourself, we must begin believing that others have been gifted, built, and designed with complementary skill sets and talents that not only have the capability to do a task almost as well as you right now, but also carry the potential to do that task better than you six, or twelve, or twenty-four months down the road…

IF…

You allow them to because you believe they can.

Second, in order to grow your business by replacing yourself, you must grow your predictable communication.

While I was traveling throughout the week, Ashley (my wife) and I had much more choppy, infrequent communication together, and it was all electronic (phone, FaceTime, etc.).  It took a solid twenty-four hours upon my return for us to reconnect conversationally and catch up on all of the happenings.

When we are both together physically, we are much more apt to have choppy discussions throughout the day, and very predictable, engaged, sit-down discussions in the evening.

In business, we tend to presume quality communication on our team under the misnomer that “we talk all throughout the day”.  Talking unpredictably in person, over text, email, or phone throughout the day, usually predicated on project-related issues, is not the same as predictable, sit down (even virtually) check ins and communication.  

Team meetings really do matter, and really do work.

Weekly or every-other-weekly check ins with each of your team members for fifteen minutes really does work.

You are setting yourself up for failure of replacing yourself if your team never has an opportunity to connect with the person who is to be replaced! 

You may think, “but I don’t have the time.”

Then you will not replace yourself.

Either make the time or continue doing what you are doing and cross your fingers.

Finally, if you wish to grow your business by replacing yourself, you must grow your conviction in what is unseen.

Nothing is guaranteed in business.

I know stories of people who have done everything right, and the market just moved away from them... they had to completely re-tool the business.

It is by faith that we own and run businesses.  It is by faith that we hire and train employees. 

Faith is being convicted of something you cannot see.

What do you see?

Do you have a written vision for your business?  You will be challenged to replace yourself if others have not been given a picture of the future of what that replacement life looks like.

You can write a vision.  It will not be perfect, but it will be helpful.

You can prove to your employees the conviction you have in the unseen picture, by writing down a vision of what you see three years from now and then sharing that with your team.

It is not impossible to grow your business by replacing yourself, but it is intentional.

Hey, y’all! Brent Perry with Business on Purpose.

Let’s talk about the impact your business is making. And today, I’m not talking about the goods or services or products that your company offers. I am talking about the impact you are making in your communities. 

Recently I was reading an article from Cumberland Bussiness.com. They had a few things to say about local businesses…

First, they said that “Not only are local businesses important for creating a culture for the community, but they also build connections and relationships with the people.”

Now, you know at business on purpose, our radar goes off when we hear or see the word culture. We love it. We created an entire culture calendar for teams knowing how important it is for the health and success of a business. 

It’s also important to talk about the connections and relationships with the people. Not only is this beneficial to you and your business, think of the pipeline for your leads and potential new hires. 

But business-to-business connections can be an important aspect for long-term success... such as referrals from other business owners. 

The article also goes on to say that

“Small businesses impact their communities in a variety of ways, from interpersonal relationships to local government to the economy.”

Whether you know it or not, your business is likely making an impact already in your community. Even if you haven’t been intentional about it, it’s happening. Now the amount of impact and the kind of impact you are making is really up to you. 

Before I came to work with Business on Purpose, I was working for a local business based out of Columbia, TN. Last year, 2020, with the Pandemic in full swing, kids who were able to be back at school were not able to use the water fountains at school. And all the drink machines had been suspended due to the spread. 

As a company, they raised money, pitched in and WireMasters donated over 533 cases of water bottles to the Maury County school system... it was over 15,000 bottles of water. 

You want to talk about a positive impact on the community. The outpour of gratitude and news coverage and thank you’s from kids and parents were incredibly high. And this is just 1 of many examples we could share from our experiences and our clients experiences from BOP. 

So, is there anything you can do to be more intentional about the impact you are having? Absolutely..

Here are a few ideas if you are looking to impact your communities through your business. These ideas come from The Chalmers Center’s Economic Development Lab who invited our team to a conference call this past week. 

• Give employees 2-3 days a yearly r of paid time to volunteer in the community, either individually or as a staff. Make time for staff to share their experiences. Companies that have done this have watched it transform their culture!

• Pursue a workforce as diverse as your community at every level

• Create community among employees. Host an annual event for employees and their families. Track work anniversaries and birthdays, and acknowledge these. 

• Invite employees to give monthly to create a general fund that is matched by the business and that is used to care for team members who encounter unexpected circumstances. Create a small team of employees to be on the lookout for needs and discern when those funds are given. 

Let’s make a difference!

Thanks for listening. 

If you haven’t done so already, subscribe to our Podcast, and/or our YouTube channel.

If there’s a phrase that describes the small business experience... it has to be “survival of the fittest!” So what questions do you need to ask of yourself and your business to make sure you survive? Well, I’ve got three for you... so, let’s talk about that today.

Hey everyone! Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here.

In the crazy pace that most small business owners run, it’s easy to run through a week, two weeks, a month, and never come up for air! There are sales to make, employees to manage, fires to put out, books to reconcile, invoices to send, voicemails to return, tech issues, supply chain issues, angry customers... and whose shoulders do almost all of that fall on? Yep, you guessed it... YOURS!

So how do we make sure we’re tracking the right direction. How can we grab a small ounce of perspective in the midst of the craziness? Well, I would argue that you can ask yourself 3 simple questions in an owners-only meeting with yourself and have a quick idea of if you’re on track.

So start by putting a 20-30 min meeting on the calendar with yourself. Don’t cancel it for anything. If you need to bring in a key leader from time to time to get some different perspectives, that’s completely fine. I would actually encourage it once a month or so, but cherish this time for the value it can bring to your business.

Question number 1...

     1. Are we distracted by anything?

What a great question to start off with. It forces you to look back at your Vision and Mission. In the context of where we want to go and why we’re going there, is there anything pulling us away from that? Services we’re offering, problems that we need to solve, employees holding us back, things we need to say no to instead of winging it. Is there anything in our life or business that is preventing us from moving forward?

Write those things down. Keep a list. And one by one, begin to eliminate them. I think you’d be surprised by what you come up with when you look back at your vision and mission weekly. I think it would prevent you from taking detours and keep you laser-focused on the goal. 

Here’s the thing, maybe you realize your vision is off... GREAT!!! Write down the updated Vision so that you and your team can run after it. Distractions hold you back, and if you label them weekly, you can push past and through them towards your mission.

     2. What did I implement this week?

We have so many ideas and thoughts every week. But what are we truly implementing? I have a client who is incredibly disciplined as a reader and podcast listener. He’s an amazing learner, really consumes an incredible about of content, but struggles to implement the content. So... we made a new rule. After each bit of content, audiobook, podcast, keynote talk, or whatever. After each thing he consumes, he has to write down and implement 1 thing before consuming the next. 

Because what good is it to consume the information if we’re going to do NOTHING with it??? No, we have to be people of action. It’s what brings freedom and impact to our businesses! So what if you set aside time each week and either wrote down what you implemented or wrote down what you were going to implement the next week? Maybe something from your 12-week plan? Good grief your business would change in 1-2 months!

But we’re so consumed with what’s right in front of us, we forget to implement and forget to continue tweaking everything, every week.

     3. Are we who we say we are?

If you’re brave enough to be honest with yourself, this question is a game-changer. Are we overselling and underdelivering? The answer may be yes or no. Or there may be areas where it’s yes and areas where it’s no. But this gives you the freedom to take an honest look at who you are and who you say you are. They NEED to match up! 

Imagine these past two questions working together as you realize where you fall short and then commit to implementing something that would change that answer. That is powerful! That’s building your business on purpose!

So when are you sitting down and making time for these 3 questions? Who else needs to be asked these questions to help give you perspective. 

I’d wager right now your business would transform if you had the guts to ask these every week for 4-6 months. It can’t help but improve. Do it, be brave, and do it!

1. Are we distracted by anything?
2. What did I implement this week?
3. Are we who we say we are?

Thanks for listening, hey if you aren’t already subscribed to our podcast and YouTube channel, please jump on that! It’s free content delivered right to you every week and it’s changing businesses all over the world. Come be a part of it.

Have a great week friends!

Hey y’all Brent Perry with Business on Purpose. 

Let’s talk about qualifying leads in your business. 

In an article written in Business News Daily, Max Freedman writes,

“Lead generation is important, but qualifying your leads to determine which ones are worth pursuing can save you time and money.” Now I don’t know about you, but saving time and money when it comes to your business should be a priority as an owner.

I spent over a year working outside sales for a company that sells aviation wiring and cables. We sold to the military, major airlines,  mom and pop hangers that flew Cessnas... if you have a vehicle that flew, we sold to you. I got to go to some pretty cool places over that year... Space X out in California, American Airlines HQ in Texas, Salt Lake City to see some guys who are doing amazing work on developing defense technology for the airforce. Literally, we went all over. 

Now, we would usually plan a trip around 1-2 of our biggest customers or suppliers in that area we were traveling to. But we couldn’t go anywhere unless we had 9-10 visits set up for that week. But even a step furthers, my direct boss would make us submit our visits a few weeks in advance, so he could make sure... you guessed it.

These were qualified leads. He didn’t want us traveling week in and week out if we weren’t coming back with something that benefited the company. A new supplier, a new customer, a new point of contact at a company that we were trying to crack. Our trips were all justified because we had the take the time to qualify our leads.

In his book, Business Made Simple, Donald Miller notes that a qualified lead meets the following three criteria…

• They have a problem your product or service will solve

• They are able to afford your product or service

• They have the authority to buy your product or service

Let me read those again…

• They have a problem your product or service will solve

• They are able to afford your product or service

• They have the authority to buy your product or service

So the question is, are you qualifying the leads in your business?

If not, you may be wasting some of your time, energy, and money chasing down any lead that pops up. 

Miller goes on to write, 

“Create a list of criteria that qualifies leads so you can move them into a story that solves their problem and changes their lives.”

If your business already has a list of criteria, great! I would say make sure you are reviewing that list once a quarter or so to make sure you are up to date.

If you currently don’t have that list readily available for yourself or your employees, that's a good place to start. Let’s make sure we are going after the right people. A little work on the front end will save your time, energy, and money in the long run. 

Thanks for listening. 

If you haven’t done so already, subscribe to our Podcast, and/or our YouTube channel.

Why do we push so hard for weekly team meetings? Let’s talk about that today!

Hello there friends, Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here.

So, if you’ve listened to this podcast much at all, you know one of the cornerstones of our system is the Weekly Team Meeting. But why? Don’t most team meetings just turn into a task list that’s communicated verbally to a team? Just a box that’s checked off so we can be face to face for an hour a week?

The painful response to those questions is YES! Unfortunately, most meetings really serve little purpose and could better be communicated in an email. But that’s the Team Meeting of old. In fact, if you do them well, they become a source of accountability for the team. A place to connect. A jump-start of energy. And the lifeblood of training for your team.

Last week I had a client come in and they were frustrated. “I feel like we have the same problems week after week!” Alright, tell me about those, I asked. 

The next 10 minutes were spent listening to a myriad of frustrations and disappointments from the past month. 

My first question…”Well, tell me about your last few team meetings?” I could tell that question was uncomfortable. We implemented Weekly Team Meetings about 10 months ago and they started off with a bang.

“Well, we’re so busy, we’ve kind of put those aside here and there. We’ve probably done 1 in the last 6 weeks.”

“Ok,” I said, “now we know the root of some of the problem... let’s talk through why that is keeping your team from underperforming.”

You see... when we view weekly team meetings as just a box to check off, we miss the entire purpose. It’s so much more than that. So let’s talk through the components of an effective team meeting and jump off from there.

     1. Something that builds community

For us, it’s BIG Wins. We start every meeting with them. For others, I’ve heard talk about their High and Low for the week. But is there something you can put at the beginning of the meeting so that your team feels like a group of human beings, not just a group of employees? That’s building culture and encouraging buy-in.

     2. Accountability from last week's action items. 

Are there areas you asked your team to improve? I know that I, for one, rarely implement things that I know will not get asked about again. But, if I know I’m going to be asked about it at next week's meeting, I will 100% find the time to accomplish it. It works the same way for your team. Don’t just assign tasks without following up and making sure they got done. Without critiquing the little things. That’s how you make sure your team is following your processes. You review it EVERY. SINGLE. WEEK.

I’ll never forget meeting with a client months ago and they told me how powerful that time of follow-up was. My response? Awesome! Now do it again, and again the next week, and again and again and again. The power is in the repetition! 

     3. The action items for the week ahead. 

Not every single little thing, but some areas for emphasis that, you guessed it, you will follow up on next week! Does your team need to work on customer service? Do they need to clean out their utility vehicles? Do they need to improve the estimating process and follow the system? I don’t know, but put it out in front of them and let them know you will discuss the following week.

     4. Last, but not least, a quick time for training. 

Don’t overcomplicate it. Pick a system or process and retrain on it. That way your entire team is trained on every process a minimum of once a year! That’s powerful. I have a client that keeps a notepad in his truck. Every time one of his guys calls him with a question, he writes it down and trains the whole team on the question at the next team meeting. His thought process is that if one guy doesn’t know that answer, he can’t be the only one! And week after week he is getting less phone calls from his guys as they are trained better and better each week. 

THAT'S POWERFUL! That’s a team meeting with a purpose.

Now back to my client. We rebuilt their team meeting process and recommitted to it. Because if they can feel like a team weekly, be held accountable for their actions, trained on the way we want to do business, and then be sent back out to do the work? That’s a recipe for success!

So have you given up on weekly team meetings? Have you just kind of rolled your eyes and done them half-heartedly? 

This is your moment to grab a hold of them and make them matter! Make them truly give you some momentum heading into your week. Your team will thank you. Your business will thank you. And the chaos will slowly start to melt away.

It’s time to start a Weekly Team Meeting if you’re not doing one already. THIS WEEK!

Hope that is what you decide to do this week!

Hey Real fast, one thing most people do NOT know about with Business on Purpose, is if you are a solopreneur or a young business, we have an online Membership that is much more affordable than 1 on 1 coaching. All of our content, PLUS monthly accountability calls, to help you build this in your own business. If you would like to know more, reach out because you need this TODAY!

Have a great week.

As we got started, the mood of the room was tempered.  We were a small group of 20 business owners all from the same town and with a narrow purpose; help each other to discover simple ways to lead our teams into a post-pandemic world.

The volume of life is on maximum decibels and the opportunity to come into a quiet, intentional room to think and respond are becoming scarce.

After a few minutes walking through the reality of where we are today, we began to think deeply about that reality and what it would take to lead in the life geography of what is around the corner.

We admitted that what life looks like today was something that we were unable to predict back in the spring of 2020 with the choppy and confusing announcements being reported and the prognostics changing minute by minute.

We also agreed that we would not be able to closely predict what would be coming around the corner.  We started instead with what we know... human behavior.

While we do not have a roadmap to the future of pandemics and geo-politics, we do have wisdom roadmaps explaining that for human behavior, namely, “there is nothing new under the sun” (incidentally, that wisdom likely holds true for pandemics and geo-politics as well).

We began to think back and ask ourselves the question, “based on what we know about people, what are the areas that people of all types and all situations are positively impacted by, and how can we install those things to lead our team into a post-pandemic world?” 

With no grand strategy in place, our small group of 20 business owners determined three areas that would empower our businesses to lead into a post-pandemic world.

First, play.

That’s it... play.

Twice this year, I can think back to times where I have had a smile on my face that would not come off.

In August, my wife and daughter sent my two sons and I off barreling down the side of a Montana mountain on bikes.  It was a blast!  We would ride up a chair lift, mount up the mountain bikes and race down the hill.

At one point, I was trying to show off for my oldest son who was stopped up ahead, and jumped what I thought were back to back jumps not realizing there was a third jump awaiting my low-skilled experience.  My feet slammed to the ground, and my rear end slammed down so hard on the seat that it bent the seat frame and I was riding the tire.  I thought my foot was broken, and the right pedal dug into my calf looking like a bear had dug its claws in.  My back hurt, my foot hurt, my calf was on fire...and I was SMILING!

Just recently, me and a couple of clients went to a local indoor, electric go-kart track where the cars are capable of speeds up to 40 mph.  Not sure how fast we were going, but for about an hour, I couldn’t stop smiling.  

When is the last time you played?  When is the last time your team members played?

Must I dole on the value of play?  We all know it is healthy... let’s do it more.

Second, we are determined to do a better job of leading our teams into a post-pandemic world by creating higher levels of predictability.

We are obsessed with new, shiny, loud, novel, innovative, and late-model ideas and things.  As we continued to have conversation, we realized that amidst tens of thousands of dollars in bonuses handed out, salary increases, employee benefits, and making sure we had just the right logo, what people care about more is predictability.  

Not boredom, not mundanity... predictability.

Owners are notoriously unpredictable, irrational, and last-minute personalities.

Team members do not typically speak that language.  According to the DISC profile, most people are passive and responsive... waiting for instructions on what to do next. 

When we act unpredictably, it causes confusion, tension, anxiety, and concern.  

The good news is that predictability is within reach.  We can create predictable structure (org charts), vision, mission, values, processes, and systems; all of which bring clarity and confidence.

Finally, in order to better lead our teams in a post-pandemic world, we believe that over communication will win the day.

The irony is, you can’t over-communicate if you don’t have predictability.

Think back to the time you were stuck in an airplane on the tarmac for 15 minutes without moving (or an hour, or 3 hours!).  Wouldn’t have been just a little better if the pilot would have come on to simply explain what she knew, even if it is no new news?

Communication is the simple exchange of information.  This does not give us license to air all things, but it does give us the opportunity to share the things that others need to hear.

Predictable communication happens through planning.  Planned team meetings, daily huddles, regularly scheduled team member check-ins, vision days, and training days. 

We hear the excuse all the time, “well, we talk all throughout the day.”  That is not a winning communication strategy for any relationship, including your business.

Let’s commit ourselves to do a better job of playing, of creating predictability, and of over communication with our team, our family, and our customers.  

Scott touched on it and really hammered it home. Culture is NOT an Accident. It’s fought for, cultivated, intentional, curated, and tangible. 

About a year ago, we were looking to expand our coaching staff and I stuck my neck out for a buddy. He began the interview process, which is lengthy, sat in on some coaching calls and team meetings, went through our Vision Story and I’ll never forget when he called me and said, “Y’alls culture is ridiculous. I can literally feel it when I’m on the phone with anyone at BoP.” 

Now the point of that is not to brag on us. We do have a great team, but it’s to say that culture should be felt by all who come in contact with you. It should be what you hear when you’re standing in line at a restaurant and overhear someone mention your business. It’s that feeling all your employees have when they step inside your building. And it’s the feeling left for your clients after they work with you.

Now, we’ve spoken about what Culture is a ton, but I want to clear up, before this next bit, what Culture is NOT.

Culture is NOT:

100% 5-star reviews

That’s external. There are too many miserable people out there who go out of their way to nitpick every little thing and have nothing better to do with their days than tell the world about only getting two pumps of peppermint in their coffee instead of the 3 they ordered. You can’t measure culture solely off of what reviews are.

Culture is NOT:

More vacation days

Yes, that’s a part of it. Right, we rest AFTER we’re exhausted. We take turns running and running and running until we hit empty and then foolishly try to figure out a way to get back to a full tank. In reality, we run from ½ a tank to Empty all day instead of being proactive and RUnning between full and ½ a tank. Culture is proactive!

Culture is NOT:

A finished product. It’s not an arrival. There’s no app that you can type in the destination and arrive. No, it’s fluid. It’s constantly shifting. As soon as a new project starts, you know what, you have to fight to protect it. As soon as a new client shows up, you have to lean on it. 

But the moment you think you have arrived, you’re one step away from the culture you worked so hard to build crumbling and falling apart. 

So today... we’re going to answer some questions internally. I’m going to ask you all to be honest. If you have a great culture? YES!!! Awesome, what are the little tweaks to make it better.

If you have a crappy culture? Be honest. Forget people’s birthdays? Work too many hours? Burn out your team? Are y’all angry at each other? Do you shout back and forth? Do you do the least amount of work possible? Do people sulk around when asked to help? 

I don’t know, but it starts with being honest. So let’s have an open conversation.

Before we dive into questions for you I want to highlight something we’ve built that I’d like for us all to build before the end of the year. We call it our Culture Calendar.

EXPLAIN:

We’ve realized that without writing it down, planning it out, and being highly intentional, our culture fails. 

-Team Meetings

-Retreats

-Birthdays

-Onboarding/continued learning calls

-Vision days quarterly

EVERYTHING WE FEEL WE NEED TO DO TO BUILD THE CULTURE WE WANT

So what needs to go on your culture calendar.

I’m going to go quickly through these questions. There’s no way to digest all of these questions in the 10 min we have, so write them down and maybe use your team meetings to ask one question a week for 6 weeks. Tackle them together and build the culture you want to be a part of. I’ll give you about 2 minutes to chat amongst your team, but come back to these questions, as we have, and figure out how to implement in your business!

     1. What is our culture today?

     2. How would our last 5 clients describe working with us??

     3. What do we do year-round to ensure we’re building a positive culture that people want to be a part of?

               a. Again, look back at our content calendar…

               b. Team Meetings, Retreats, Onboarding meetings, trainings, Production meetings, etc...

     4. What else could we do?

     5. Is there anything pulling us away or distracting us from the culture we want?

     6. Is there another business culture out there we would like to be more like, what about it are we drawn to, who do we need to ask about it?

These questions matter. They help build your culture into something you can be proud of. So take time with your team outside this meeting to dive in. I think you’ll be glad a year from now when people are sticking around a long time and feel valued in being a part of your team.

Hey, y’all! Brent Perry with Business on Purpose. 

As I am recording this, my beloved UT volunteers just received a good old-fashioned whoopin from the Gators down in Gainesville, FL. 

Now anyone who knows anything about college football could have told you before the ball was kicked at 6:00 pm down at Ben Hill Griffin stadium what the outcome of the game was going to be. 

But I would be lying if I didn’t tell y’all about an hour before kickoff I started thinking, we actually have a little bit of a shot to win this thing. I kept it to myself, I have been laughed at enough being a fan of the Vols (always will be), but over the years sadly losing to good teams (and some pretty bad ones) has become “The Normal” for us. 

6-6 or 7-5 is a heck of a season in our books these days. Beating Alabama, Florida, or Georgia...probably not going to happen. Occasionally we pull off something bigger than ourselves (and we make sure to celebrate it for a long time) because we have found ourselves accept “that new normal”. 

The question to toss around today is, how do we accept the normal in our business? ” And what do I even mean by that? 

When I am talking about the normal, I am really talking about the systems and processes that you create that give you the results you are looking for. Is there such a thing as predictability in business, we think yes. 

What SOP’s (standard operating procedures) have you built that gives you and your team your vision and making those wins regular. 

At Business on Purpose, we use the Master Process Roadmap that holds all our processes in one place. Literally, any process that we have in our business is on this roadmap. 

One of our coaches, Thomas, tells a funny story about his first week in the office with our owner Scott Beebe. Thomas noticed that the trash bag was full in the office and asked Scott, hey where do I take the trash out to, and where are the new bags. Scott’s response, oh just check the taking out the trash process on the roadmap. What? The man had created a taking out the trash process for everyone in the office. 

It went through the details of where to take the trash, where to find the new bags, what to do when the new bags get down to 5 or less, etc. 

Sounds funny, and simple, yet it’s effective. 

Scott doesn’t have to worry about whether or not the trash gets taken care of. Or whether or not the office has enough bags. We all have access to the procedure, and we can use it effectively to accept the normal 

In this case that we will always have trash bags, and everyone on the team knows what to do about it. 

Now this is a very small example. I can’t even begin to count how many processes that have been created at Business on Purpose over the last 6 years. But just like the trash bags, they are all effective. They provide us with the normal results that we can expect and accept from each other. 

So how do you as a business owner accept the normal and get your team on the same page? You have heard us say this before, write them out! 

Get what’s in your head down on paper (or digitally) 

Take the time to create it, and you will not regret it. 

Thanks for listening. 

If you haven’t done so already, subscribe to our Podcast, and/or our YouTube channel.

Hey y’all, Brent Perry here with Business on Purpose.

The question on the table today, how to make your business adaptable? And I guess before we dive into this question we have to take a small step back and ask ourselves…

What does it mean to be adaptable?

And is it important that we are building a business that is in fact adaptable? 

An article written by Martin Reeves in the Harvard Business Review cited that Adaptability is the new competitive advantage for businesses. 

“Instead of being really good at doing some particular thing, companies must be really good at learning how to do new things.”

They go on to describe some characteristics of companies that are willing to adapt. 

“Those that thrive are quick to read and act on signals of change. They have worked out how to experiment rapidly, frequently, and economically—not only with products and services, but also with business models, processes, and strategies.”

As I am recording this, the 43rd Ryder cup of Golf is underway! It’s a fun golf event played every 2 years between the US and the European team. An article in Golf Digest had this to say about the Ryder Cup, 

“One of the reasons many—most—players crave playing in the Ryder Cup is because it is unique in that you are playing for your teammates, for your country... It isn’t, as Koepka points out, just about you. In the week-to-week tournaments that go on around the world, including the four majors, you succeed or you fail. Period. It is why golf is so difficult mentally. It’s all on you.

But the Ryder Cup is different. At the end of the weekend, individual records really don’t matter very much. All that matters is the team result.” 

The best Ryder Cup teams in history have all been able to adapt. 

If you and your company are going to be able to adapt, you have to be ready to adjust to new conditions. 

But how do we do that?

I am glad you asked that question. We have ideas on how you can become a company that doesn't get left behind as you continue to adapt to the ever-changing environment. 

• Evaluate your competitors' strategies and products

• Utilize a wide range of resources

• Collaborate with employees

• Test new product adaptations without fear of failure

• Utilize technology, virtual environments, and online communities

• Utilize your business coach

Thanks for listening. 

If you haven’t done so already, subscribe to our Podcast, and/or our YouTube channel.

Do you give anyone license to speak into your life? Does anyone have a voice? Well, let’s talk about why that’s important today. Good morning friends, Thomas Joyner here with Business on Purpose.

I was driving home from the gym this week and pulled up at a traffic light. Normally I kind of just zone out. Not really taking much in. It’s a great time for quiet and thought before a day of coaching. 

As I’m sitting there at the light, I notice the truck in front of me has a license plate that’s a funky series of letters and numbers. I love quirky license plates. It took me a minute to figure this one out, but the letters were all caps. SG2BME. So Good to be me! 

Bold! Right?

So good to be me! My thoughts started racing. Wonder what that guy's life is like? I mean he does have a nice truck. Wonder what he does? Wonder why it’s good to be him! Haha.

But then, I thought. That’s a pretty cocky statement. Like that dude is flaunting that his life is good. Did no one tell him that? Did he ask for anyone’s opinion about how that comes across? Is it a joke? Does he have anyone close enough to him that they would speak up? Man, I hope so...

Ok, maybe I’m overanalyzing it, but the question should remain. Do we have people in our life we give permission to tell us the truth? Do we have a tribe that we let in on the good and the bad?

Another example for you, my wife runs a small business from home selling teaching curriculum around the world. She’s REALLY good at it. This past week she had a mastermind retreat of several business owners who do the exact same thing. They watched several keynote talks and sat around in the evenings discussing their businesses. They talked about the areas they have momentum, the areas they’re struggling and both cheered each other on and challenged one another. 

It was such a valuable time for her! To have another set of eyes watching her business telling her the truth.

It’s, in all honesty, one of the main values we bring as coaches. Holding business owners and key leaders accountable to what they say they’re going to do. Providing perspective and honesty when necessary. Encouraging, cheering on, challenging, and grounding them when the time calls for it.

But here’s the thing... we have to be invited into that space. I think sometimes we believe the lie that we have it, but we’ve never invited anyone in. We guard that space, because we’re too arrogant in believing that we don’t need it. Or maybe we believe the lie that we don’t have time. Either way, there’s a major area that’s a blind spot for you if you don’t have someone looking and speaking into your life and business.

So, take a minute to pause this video and think through this...who is honest with you? Does anyone have the freedom to tell you, “Getting a license plate that says, ‘So good to be me,’ probably isn’t the best idea you’ve ever had!” Now I’m joking obviously, but who do you allow in to that space?

Do they know they’re allowed in? If the answer is, “They should know!” That’s probably not good enough. Set a time and place for those conversations to happen. Set up a lunch twice a month to facilitate that happening. Tell them you want everything they got!

Do you need a coach? Someone with content to lead you through and game-changing accountability to match it? Yes, you probably do! 

Only you can open up the door for it. Don’t miss out. Don’t be the guy driving around with no clue how he’s being perceived.

Last thing I’ll comment on is this. You may say, “Thomas I can’t spend all my time wondering what someone else is thinking and trying to please them!” You’re absolutely right. That’s why you give that permission to a select person or a select few people. People who care about you and will tell you the truth. NOT everyone else.

Find someone you trust and let them in today. If we at Business on Purpose can do that for you, let me take you to lunch and see where it leads. We’d love to match you up with a coach who can hold you accountable and lead you to a place of freedom instead of chaos as a business owner.

It’s so so worth it!

Have a great day everyone!