The U of SC football program had just won the first Bowl Game in the 100-year plus history of the school.
After joining the rugged and tough SEC in 1992, the Gamecocks were still struggling to be the elite SEC teams like Florida and Tennessee.
Tennessee had a young QB with a head-turning last name…Manning. We had a pony-tailed enthusiast named Taneyhill, along with two offensive lineman, two running backs all headed eventually to the NFL.
We were desperate for a signature win in the SEC.
JAMES DEXTER STORY at Tennessee turning the table over, driving down to the five-yard line
Often, in life, sports, and business, we do desperate things in desperate times in order to solve desperate problems.
The last 2 years have created a desperate longing. Let’s articulate the challenge that you are up against today.
PAIN - Skyrocketing material and sub Pricing, Uncertainty, Subcontractor frustrations, Schedule delays, unrealistic clients, and PEOPLE PEOPLE PEOPLE!
Let’s think through some of the desperate things you (or someone you know) may have tried in the midst of a desperate situation in your business…
We are running around, spinning in circles, a slave to an over-heated market, the client, to the employee, to the sub, to the vendor.
And we just want it to STOP. Just for a second so we can catch our breath.
Talked to a custom builder in Kentucky two weeks ago who said, “I’m actually looking forward to a market slowdown.” I was waiting for lightning to strike.
You had a grueling week, and then you have a Saturday where you are fired up about a late breakfast where you are going to eat donuts, cinnamon rolls, pancakes, bacon, cheese grits…then after you’re done you turn on a game on tv watching world-class athletes and think, “I need to work out!”
Chaos can often translate to unhealthy habits because we are vulnerable. In the chaos of the market, we tend to rest in the cash flow, while KNOWING that we are neglecting the discipline of purpose, process, and systems that will create a long-term FIT-ness for us, our team, and the mission we are on in our business.
I’ve seen it reported recently that both Quarterback Russel Wilson and basketball megastar Lebron James each spend over $1 million on the health and fitness of their mind and body.
A friend of mine, Chad Jeffers is the lead Dobro player for Carrie Underwood. He was passing through Columbia, SC a couple of years ago as we were in town and we had coffee in the lobby of the downtown hotel he and the other band members were staying at.
I asked Chad a simple question that I had never asked, “what is it like to play in front of all of those people?” His response was sobering.
He mentioned that most nights he forgets where he is at, and that the “repetition of the event” can get quite boring. In order to be great and find joy in touring, you’ve got to go back to THE FITNESS of your repetition and training.
In preparation for Carrie Underwood’s Las Vegas residency shows, Chad said
"Typically for tours (including Vegas), we will rehearse for a month and a half to 2 months (7 days a week) prior to the first show. Personally, I prepare for the rehearsals about a month prior to that (especially if we are learning new music)."
Kobe Bryant was 41 when he and his daughter died tragically in a helicopter crash in January of 2020.
He was notorious for his relentless work ethic. Writers Scott Davis and Connor Perrett chronicle some of Bryant’s more remarkable disciplines.
Here is a question for us. It’s easy to scream, yell, turn over tables, run out of the tunnel with a new idea, rally the troops for a momentary push.
But what about the long hard grind of repetition over a long period of time?
The best bourbon is aged and evaporated.
The best wine comes with full ingredients and time.
The best friendships have intentionality and longevity.
Some of you are coming to the BuildExpo hoping for a hail mary, hoping for a silver bullet, a bright idea that will change the game for you.
I want to offer you something else.
When explorer Ernest Shackleton was preparing for his Trans-Antarctic Expedition, he needed the right team. It is said that he published an advertisement…
"Men Wanted for Hazardous Journey. Small Wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success."
The advertisement may not be true, but Shackleton’s expedition with his crew aboard the “Endurance” was heroic and transformative for an entire British society.
Reading through Alfred Lansing’s aptly titled book “Endurance”, you realize what kept Shackleton and his men alive during months of isolation and loneliness in what has been billed as one of the most remarkable pictures of survival in modern history.
What two things kept these men going, when all other expeditions facing similar challenges, died?
FITness and repetition.
In the new Post-COVID reality, do you want to stop spending your days putting out silly fires? You want to discover REAL purpose in your business? You want to make time for what matters most?
To emerge out of the fog in this post-COVID reality, you must commit to becoming F.I.T.
1. Fundamentals
The most fundamental step to creating a FIT business, is to painstakingly spend time on the fundamentals. Blocking, tackling, throwing, catching
The second step in becoming FIT, is to…
2. Invest In People
We must go back to the fundamentals, we must invest in people, and in order to grow in the post-COVID reality, we must…
3. Trail A Mentor
FINAL STORY:
Sitting w/ the APD team. Nicole’s biggest win…the OWNER being away from the business for 7 straight days with little to no check in. That was NICOLE’s BIG WIN!
Tim and the APD team have spent the last few years getting FIT: focusing on the Fundamentals, Investing In People, and Trailing Mentors…
And a distraction-free picture from the Mountains of N. Carolina is the outcome…
THAT’s punching chaos in the mouth and setting yourself up for growth in the NEW post-COVID reality.
ACTION: Which of the 3, needs to be your 1st priority after you get out of your seat?
Fundamentals?
Invest In People?
Trail A Mentor
If you want to test your business fitness, go to mybusinessonpurpose.com/healthy
What do you value in life? Does it get the appropriate time that it needs every week? Maybe, maybe not. Today I want to talk about how to not stop short of making time for what matters most!
Hey there friends, Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here.
It’s so, so easy as a business owner to have blinders on. To be the one that sacrifices every day and makes sure that nothing falls through the cracks. To just keep your head down and grind until you succeed.
But, what gets sacrificed in the moment…and what gets lost if it takes longer than you’d planned to arrive? Well, many times it’s your mental health (which we’re seeing is a much larger deal than we’ve ever realized), other times it's your marriage and family, and other times it’s just joy and fulfillment in life.
So, if you’re honest, which of those, when you go head down and grind out those 50/60/70 hour weeks really gets lost in the shuffle? And now let’s take it a step further…
Let’s play this out 20-30 years. Is success in your business worth the tradeoff? If you were to look back on your life and see it all in hindsight, is that tradeoff worth it, or is it worth digging in and finding a different way to do things?
We hear excuses like this all the time…” Thomas, this is the only way I know how to do it!” That’s great, let’s start asking around and finding a different way to do it.
Or maybe it’s this, “Thomas you just don’t understand, if I hire someone else to manage those things, then I’ll have to raise my prices to cover it, or I won’t make as much money.” Ok, then the thing you’ve lifted into that position of what matters most, is the almighty dollar. The take-home paycheck. And is that worth it when you look back 20 years from now?
So…if you need to stop this recording after I ask this next question, do it. It’s that important. You may need 5-10 min to really be honest with yourself. Cut it back on afterward and finish the last few minutes.
“What matters most when it comes to how you spend your time?” What matters most when it comes to how you spend your time.
It’s why we spend so much time crafting a vision story. So we can know exactly what we value. It’s writing things down like, what time do I want to leave every day, because we know that if we leave it to chance we’re going to work way longer hours than we should, and the things that matter will get pushed aside. It’s writing things down like what the trips we want to take and how often to take our spouse on a date. It’s making sure the main thing stays the main thing.
Now, I know it’s not realistic to say you want to go home at 2 pm every day and think that your business is going to thrive. That may just not happen, but I also know that if you don’t paint a realistic picture of what your week looks like, with boundaries around it to keep you from getting carried away, then you don’t stand a chance at staying at hitting your target. Because 9 out of 10 times, there’s always another task you COULD do, another sales call you COULD make, and another number you COULD double-check. And on and on it goes.
And here’s where it starts getting serious. If you realize that your business is keeping you from what matters most, it’s not worth it! Nothing is worth sacrificing your mental health, your family, and your joy in life. NOTHING!
So, find a way to do it differently. We believe that the BOP roadmap liberates business owners out of chaos and frees your time up for what matters most. We’ve literally walked hundreds of business owners through it and gotten them back engaged where they truly need to be engaged.
Last thing I’ll hear regularly from clients…the business is doing great, our numbers are up, the staff is tracking and we’re just doing awesome.
I love hearing that! But I go back to those personal pieces on the vision story and start asking about other things. When was the last time you went on a date with your spouse? Well, last year. Ok, let’s try another…you said you wanted to take your son out for breakfast one Saturday a month, have you done that? No….ok, how about that weekend camping trip in the fall that you thought would inject some life back into your family? No, and no and no and no.
We have to press pause and make sure that our business isn’t thriving at the expense of what matters most. We have to make for darn sure that we’re not stopping short of making time for what we, and by we I mean you, believe matters most. So that 20 years from now we can look back and be proud of the things we made time for. The people we made time for and the experiences we made time for.
We at BOP truly believe that’s our work worth doing…every single day. So, if you struggle with that, let’s take an inventory of if your business needs help. Would you take our healthy business owner assessment? Go to myboproadmap.com/healthy. It takes about 7 minutes and you will see how your business is set up on things that we believe will liberate you from chaos.
And then let’s have a conversation about how to find you more time for what matters most.
Life and business necessarily intersect.
In the last 13 weeks, we’ve seen births, divorce, death, war, inflation, new hires, sales records, con artists, cancer diagnosis, treatments, remissions, birthdays, renewed vision, record monthly revenue, and record monthly expenses.
There is a word that is being suggested in the public discussion of psychology right now that is worth taking a look at… the word LANGUISH.
To languish is to “lose or lack vitality… being forced to remain in an unpleasant place or situation”
Author and Org Psychologist Adam Grant says…
It’s not burnout, because we still have physical fuel.
It’s not depression because we still have hope.
So what is the unpleasant place?
What is causing us to feel weak and withered, to feel LANGUISHED?
DISTRACTION
Translation - we are willfully allowing ourselves to be pulled apart… pulled away.
Distraction (distrahere in latin) = PULL APART
We’ve all felt being pulled apart before…
This is our new reality, and with it, we must find new ways for each of us to Flourish… new ways to both remain attached and ignore the things that will distract..
NOW is a time for something different.
NOW is a time to pivot, to stop staring at the ball of fire that was the last two years, to see what was melted down, turned to ash, and begin to till that into the soil of something new.
On average…
Grant suggests that we do not fight Languish with Optimism (that’s empty)... but instead we fight Languish with FLOW
Before we do… what is FLOW?
Johann Hari has written a powerful book entitled Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention - And How To Begin Working Deeply
In his book, Hari describes flow as a state of mind when “you are so absorbed in what you are doing that you lose all sense of yourself, and time seems to fall away, and you are flowing into the experience itself.”
Flow is not focused on results. In fact, sometimes the outcome can bring a bit of sadness because the project is complete.
We don’t know how to prioritize the limited resource of time we have. So how do we find our FLOW?
Fascination (Desire)
Like-Mindedness (People & Culture)
The third element of FLOW is your
Operational Process
The final element of FLOW
Wealth that you can draw from
When we find our FLOW… we FLOURISH, liberate ourselves from chaos, and make time for the things that matter most.
Hey, y’all! Brent Perry with Business on Purpose.
To get “pipped to the post”-
To be defeated or overcome by someone by a very narrow margin or at the final, crucial moment, especially in a race, competition, or athletic event.
I remember a coach once showed us a video of a college track meet. It was honestly just the last 30 or 45 seconds of the race, and the video only showed 2 runners. The leader was a guy running for the University of Oregon and he had a sizable lead. In the back of the frame, you could see a runner from the University of Washington, but as the video started it looked as though the race had already been won.
So much so that the runner from Oregon was letting up a little and waving to the crowd to get them pumped up and on their feet.
But as the clip continues, and with incredible Grit and Determination, you see the runner from Washington gaining ground.
And yes, and you can probably guess by the definition I shared at the beginning, the runner from Oregon did get Pipped at the Post. Meron Simon from the University of Washington came back and won the race right at the Finish Line. He didn’t let up and ran with purpose until the end.
When you hire a new team member, do not get pipped at the post!
You’ve just hired a new team member, and there is probably some excitement / some relief that you are finally filling that role that you have been needing or dreaming about / and there is probably a little anxiety.
And as your new team member prepares for the first day with your business (and yes, this includes full-time, part-time, virtual assistants) it’s time for the onboarding process to begin.
Onboarding is making sure the right people are trained in the right way with crystal clear expectations and insight into your business.
It should be an intentional, methodical process that empowers your team members to run towards the vision.
Being diligent in the hiring process, but not taking the time to properly onboard a new hire would be like running the race and letting up at the Finish Line.
At Business on Purpose, we believe in the importance of onboarding so much, we have an entire module dedicated to the process. We have even built out templates looking at day one, week one, month one, two, and three.
In your businesses, you need to run with Grit and Determination through the Finish Line. Make sure you have a process for onboarding your new team members. SO they can run with you towards your vision.
Thanks for listening.
If you haven’t done so already, subscribe to our Podcast, and/or our YouTube channel.
Also, check out our website here, and if you haven’t done so already, take the Healthy Owners Assessment located on the home page.
Employees and hiring, hiring and employees… that’s so much of what we’re being asked about in our coaching sessions. So, what’s the trick? Why is it so hard and is it going to ever get easier? While I don’t have the answer to all of that, I’d love to give you some thoughts today on how to make it easier.
Hope you’re doing well today, Thomas Joyner with the Business on Purpose Podcast today! Excited to have you listening and watching.
There really is nothing more pressing right now for small business owners than the topic of hiring and acquiring really great employees. It’s so frustrating… and look at the numbers. 4.3 million Americans left their jobs for somewhere else… in August of 2021 ALONE!!! That’s insane. And since the pandemic started, surveys are recording 20% of people have switched careers. In 2 years. 1 in 5 people! So what do we do with that? All of that uncertainty and the knowledge that everyone is hiring and everyone is looking around?
Most businesses think if they can just craft the right indeed ad or just find the right spot to market themselves to potential hires it will all go well. But there is so much work internally that needs to be done to attract the right talent.
There’s an old quote in the church that applies incredibly well to business. What you win them “through,” you win them “to.” What you win them through you win them to. What that means is this. The means through which you attract people will be what you have to continue to use to keep them.
Think about this in your business. If you hire someone away from another business by offering an extra $2/hr or an extra 10k in salary, what happens the next time someone offers them more money? You either have to pony up the cash or watch them ride off into the sunset. You won them to you through money, so you have to keep them with money.
Maybe you explain to them that they will be on some really cool projects or innovating in the industry. Well, once work gets boring they will start looking around for greener pastures or other businesses that may be more innovative than you.
So, how are you trying to attract new employees? Have you put in the hard work to not just market your business to new clients, but new employees. Are you a “destination” business that has all the right ingredients to attract top end talent? Or heck, even just reliable talent?
Are you pointing to your Vision, and inviting in people who want to go where your business is headed? Are you pointing to the culture and having your employees highlight how great it is to work for you? Are you marketing yourself as a place that respects work/life balance and allowing your team to spend time with family and actually take vacation. I know I dogged on compensation, but healthy and competitive compensation should ABSOLUTELY be a part of that sales pitch.
Can you ask yourself this question… what is the person I’m looking for… looking for? I know that feels weird to say. But if you draw up your ideal employee, what kind of business do they want to work for?
And are we working hard to build our business into that type of place? That the people we’re looking for would come… and ACTUALLY stay?
Finding the right people doesn’t just happen by accident, but only when we look internally first, knowing that the means by which we win our employees over will be the same reasons they choose to stay for the long haul.
So be intentional about those things. Know who you are and why you’re that way! And watch quality employees choose to stay with you for years and years… even in the midst of opportunity elsewhere. We’ve seen it time and again as business owners, we work with lead with Vision and intentionality.
That’s a powerful team that anyone would want to be a part of!
We have a saying that we have found to be true over time and thousands of hours of 1 on 1 coaching with our heroic business owners, “life and business necessarily intersect”.
There is not a business owner or key leader that we have yet to meet that has figured out how to separate life and work.
What happens at home cannot help but follow you to work. What happens at work cannot help but follow you home. They are interconnected, as is all of life.
Even our global society is unable to insulate itself from the actions or reactions of decisions around the world.
Russia stages a war against Ukraine and the corner gas station in Iowa is immediately impacted.
Life and business necessarily intersect.
We try to act like it is not true with statements like this, “well, it’s just business” or, “I keep work at work and home at home”.
It is a ruse.
How do you separate yourself from your business? You don’t… as long as you have your business.
A few weeks ago I met with a dear friend who shared about the turmoil within his marriage and the unfortunate end towards which it seems to be heading.
It has and will continue to affect his work.
What are some ways that we can operate from a place of health both at home and at work when neither may be ideal?
First, understand what triggers you.
You can’t help but bring work home at times. What you can help is knowing what things tend to set you off and act as a trigger that cascades you to bad places.
Part of understanding these triggers means taking time to work with a skilled advisor to help dig into the things that shaped those triggers.
Some triggers are born from trauma and others born from elation. All are triggers and all carry with them a “shots fired” response.
When we understand our triggers we can be better prepared to practice discipline in our responses when the triggers are switched.
Second, we must vigorously define the boundaries of our time.
Johann Hari in his important book Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention – And How To Think Deeply Again reveals a simple and profound statistic saying, “one study found that most of us working in offices never get a whole hour uninterrupted in a normal day.”
Just sit on that for a second. One hour.
Can you think of the last time you had one entire hour focused completely on one thing? No buzzes, dings, alerts, notifications, email checks, social scrolls; just deep work on one important thing.
Ashley and I recently stayed with a niece and nephew of ours while my brother and his wife got away for a night. For one entire hour, my nephew and I buzzed, squealed, roared, rolled, colored, built, and laughed in the playroom. No distractions and it was hard.
An hour is a long time in a modern world. Out of 168 hours in a week, we cannot find one, to be solely focused on one important task of deep work without being impulsed to check something.
If you want to separate yourself from your business and have time to breathe, you must vigorously put boundaries on your work time. It will require the hard work of sitting quietly and thoughtfully with your calendar and manufacturing the time you are working versus the time you are not.
We all know that your mind will bleed those boundaries and there are moments you will be thinking about business-related things while you are in non-business-related time; the goal is not perfection. The goal is doing a much better job than we’re doing right now.
Thirdly, we must communicate our boundaries to others in a way that promotes the mission of both your family and your business.
Too many times people will announce their schedule to peers and colleagues with a spirit of “don’t mess with me or else I’ll lose it!”
Our calendars and our boundaries need to be built in a way that serves both your personal and work missions and brings more value to both rather than less.
Healthy businesses are those that work with their teams to maximize their team members skill set and time, while also acknowledging the need for healthy relationships with work and family/personal time.
Finally, the purpose of work is in part a fleshing out of the skill sets that have been woven into the fabric of our individual personas, in part a mutual value-add to our local and global communities, and a useful means to provide resources that fund our personal time allowing you to apply the fruits of your business success to the mission of your personal and family mission.
Hey, y’all! Brent Perry with Business on Purpose.
In the 2014 NBA draft, with the 3rd overall selection, the Philadelphia 76ers drafted big man Joel Embiid.
At the time of the draft, the 76ers had come off a season with 19 wins and 63 losses with a ranking of 14th in the eastern conference… making them one of the worst teams in the league at that point.
In a courtside, interview with Embiid the following year he had a response that would quickly become the rallying cry for the city of Philadelphia. He was asked by a reporter if he had anything to add to the interview and Embiid, with a smile on his face looking directly at the camera, replied “trust the process”.
It became everything for this fanbase. Shirts, posters at games, hats, social media… it was everywhere. Trust the process.
But what many fans didn’t realize, this wasn’t the first time these words had been used. It’s been documented that the coaching staff would tell the players before everything… coming straight down from the ownership of the team… trust the process.
Since the 2014 season, here is how the 76ers have fared in the NBA…
2014 - 18 wins 64 losses - 14th in the eastern conference
2015 - 10 wins 72 losses - 15th in the eastern conference
2016 - 28 wins 54 losses - 14th in the eastern conference
2017 - 52 wins 30 losses - 3rd in the eastern conference
2018 - 51 wins 31 losses - 3rd in the eastern conference
2019 - 43 wins 30 losses - 3rd in the eastern conference
2020 - 49 wins 23 losses - 1st in the eastern conference
2021 - currently at 38 wins and 23 losses sitting 3rd in the eastern conference
From one of the last place teams in the NBA, to being a top 10 team in the NBA for the last 5 years. Simply because they trusted the process.
It didn’t happen overnight, and it has come with it’s ups and downs, but the improvement this organization has seen has definitely been noticed in the sports world and beyond. They built a process, and then all stacked hands to trust in that process.
My question to you today, what process or processes are you trusting in your business? And maybe the first question to ask is, have you built any processes that can be trusted?
The good news is that it is never too late to start.
As owners and key leaders, most of the time “building a process” simply means getting some of the knowledge and information out of your head and written down. You probably have the processes all thought through and detailed out, but it’s time to get it written down.
Sales processes, administrative, operations, marketing, team and culture… all processes can be documented.
An easy place to start… next time you are working through a process, record it. Simple as that. Or take 30 minutes in your schedule each week to work on creating processes that will further your team and your business this year.
We’ve been saying this year can be a year of flourishing for your business, and getting processes documented will be a great step along the way.
Thanks for listening.
If you haven’t done so already, subscribe to our Podcast, and/or our YouTube channel.
Two business owners in the past week have both said, “once we get (insert challenge here) wrapped up, then we will be ready for coaching.”
It sounds like a fore-thoughtful thing to say, and yet we know deep down it is likely not true.
We know that time typically breeds the soil for distraction to set in, for busy-ness to compound, for mis-aligned interruptions to continue unmitigated, and we wake up in six months in greater chaos and numbness than we are in right now.
A man in his seventies was recently reflecting on life and was asked a thoughtful question, “looking back, what do you wish for?”
His response, “a simpler time”.
Although we tend to look in retrospect with the tinted lenses of simple, easy, and wholesome; a tour of the history books will remind us that world history is peppered with moments we would rather forget.
Complexity is on the increase.
In his research-rich book Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention - and How to Think Deeply Again, author Johann Hari.
One study that Hari discusses shows that the majority of office workers “never get a whole hour uninterrupted on a normal day…the average American worker is distracted roughly once every three minutes”.
Business owners are longing to build a team of people that will commit to the same desire and focus that they have given to get the business started.
Unfortunately, most people live under the presumption that they can multitask.
Hari explains that multitasking was a term devoted to technology that was capable of doing more than one task at a time because the scientists were able to install additional processors (think of it as multiple brains in one technological body); it was never intended to be a description of human capability because humans are essentially incapable of legitimate multitasking.
Compounding these two basic realities, people are constantly distracted from meaningful work, and the work they are doing is so fragmented because of the myth of multitasking, and you get a cocktail that is ripe for frustration and a fragmented mission.
Why is coaching important in the workplace?
It begs to ask the broader question, why is coaching important at all?
A coach provides at least five values that the player cannot provide for herself.
First, a coach provides perspective and clarity. In its most simplest concept, the coach brings perspective the player cannot, simply because the coach is not the player.
The coach is living life outside the day to day of the player. A player is always at her altitude, pitch, speed, and angle. A coach can adjust angles when needed in order to gain a different perspective of the same issue.
A good coach is one who simply relays what they see and then converts that information into something actionable.
This leads to the second tool in a coaches toolbelt, time to gameplan. Armed with perspective and unique information, a coach will then go into deep focused time to gameplan what they see, think, and hear and contrast it with. A game plan not only dives deep into what the competitor is planning but also navigates all of the factors influencing the game or the mission.
A good coach, armed with perspective and insight, builds a game plan and then readies themselves for the hardest challenge of all.
Third, the coach shows up to practice even when the player doesn’t want to. An NBA scout once showed the contrast between the preparation-loving Kobe Bryant and his rival, the showtime-loving Allen Iverson saying, “Iverson loved to play the game when the lights came on, Kobe loved to play the game before the lights came on.”
The repetition of practice is a direct influencer on the success of the game. The consistency of each game is a mirror of the consistency of practice.
Without coaches, practices would be far less frequent, and far less effective.
The fourth value of a coach is in their ability to lend courage.
We were almost seven years into our business and I knew a change was needed. I was essentially working two full-time jobs in the same business and my fuel tank was running on reserve.
My mastermind group was meeting in Nashville for a long weekend to dig into each other’s world and situation.
The verdict from my group of 10 guys was clear and unrelenting, “cut your time in half and double your rates…no exceptions.”
For years I was undervaluing my rates and overdelivering on my time in front of people. It was an unsustainable mix.
But I was scared and my mind was flooded with what if scenarios that ultimately led to a place of grief and terminal conclusion.
I needed courage, the will to stare fear in the face, and methodically walk through it. I did. And I didn’t die. In fact, the business didn’t die either… it grew because I now had more time to devote to the health and nurture of our team.
A coach, an outside team of advisors, lend courage.
When all of the values of a coach have been installed, the culmination of those efforts requires reflective monitoring to adjust for overages or underages.
Without monitoring, we don’t know where we need to make adjustments and modifications.
Why is coaching important in the workplace? Because coaching is important in life, and work is where we will spend a significant portion of our life.
Everyone needs a coach because everyone is distracted thinking that later will be the best time not realizing that later is here right now.
What’s the excuse that keeps holding you back from success? Is there a monkey on your back that you just can’t shake? We see it all the time… and I want to talk about it today.
Hope you are doing well today, Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here.
We ask mostly the same questions every time we meet with a new business. We want to know what’s holding them back from accomplishing the things they want to in their business.
It’s typically the same three things or some variation of these 3. Not having enough time to get everything done, not having the right people, or not knowing our numbers.
Let’s tackle those case by case.
Not having enough time to get everything done. Typically this happens because we live in chaos. We don’t intentionally move throughout our week with a weekly schedule, so whoever is yelling the loudest gets heard and gets our attention.
Just last week I had a business owner training where attendees were dropping out left, right and center. Business owners who had it on the calendar and just got pulled a different direction and into the chaos. We’re trying to buy you an hour of your week to help you work ON your business and it gets derailed.
It can be hard to watch because we know the thing that they need is within their grasp and yet they get distracted by the chaos. It’s almost like the overweight person texting their gym buddy telling them they got caught up finishing a bag of chips and didn’t make it to the gym.
The very thing keeping you from health as a business is what distracts you from being able to put the work in to fix it.
Let me say this… if you don’t make time to work ON your business, you will constantly be putting out fires with little hope for doing anything else. Some days you have to change it up and you need an outside perspective to help with that.
Not having the right people distracts owners too! The same event on Friday I heard things of employees not being able to be trusted to get something done, so it’s your job, the owner to dive in and save the day yet again.
So, when does that change? The ceiling for the business is being held back by your inability to train, lead and delegate in your business.
Or maybe it’s not knowing your numbers. Not knowing if you're paying your team enough or too much, or pricing your jobs correctly, or what the Net Income number on your P&L even means. So, instead of finding someone who can help, you just keep going. Thinking if you can just add more to the top line, find more revenue out there the problem will get fixed. Friends the problem is rarely the amount coming in. It’s often the amount leaking out the back door that is hurting your bottom line.
Problems with inventory and overtime. Problems with vendors and paying for subscriptions you haven’t used in a year. Even things like car payments or excessive benefits. All these add up and limit your profitability.
You need help. Heck, WE need help. It’s why from day 1, we’ve had business coaches ourselves and been in mastermind groups. Because we know we need a coach and need an outside perspective to get where we want to go, as well!
So, what’s holding you back? What’s the thing that over and over and over again becomes the excuse. Is it time? Let us help you figure that out. Is it people? We’ve got a plan for that! Your numbers…there’s clarity and help if you’re willing to ask for it.
Take some time today to figure out if you’ve been making excuses. And ask yourself what are you going to do about it! Does someone else have the answers? Probably so.
Look, being a business owner is TOUGH! REALLY TOUGH. Don’t believe the lie that you need to do it on your own. It’s just not true. And don’t believe the lie that your problems today don’t have an answer or that they will be your problems forever! THere is air above the chaos and we want you to fly there with us!
Let us know if we can help.
Hey, if you would like to see where you stack up, please visit boproadmap.com/healthy to take our free healthy business owner assessment today.
Dani Rojas steps up to the ball as he prepares for a game-winning penalty kick, and in one last deep-breath moment calms himself and exhales with his infamous dogma preached repeatedly on the Ted Lasso sports comedy-drama saying simply and profoundly…
Football Is Life.
For Dani, when the game seems out of his control, and life seems complicated, unfair, and uncomfortable, he calms himself and retreats back to his basic truth.
Football.
Is.
Life.
The show Ted Lasso has provided a pandemic-confused world, a respite of breath with profound insight packaged in off-color, but understandable humor.
When Ted Lasso meets chaos, there is always a bypass to peace. Dani Rojas reminds himself of that bypass with his Football Is Life enunciation.
For business owners, and particularly those in the construction (or processed material delivery) industry, the chaos of material delays, price increases, frustrated project managers and superintendents, client expectations, and global unpredictability have given rise to the schedule unpredictability complex.
What is a schedule? Its very basic definition from dictionary.com is this: “a plan for carrying out a process”.
In any business, every schedule should be a culmination of two parts; the processes needed to be achieved, and the dates and sequence by which those processes should be started and completed.
A schedule is a pre-mapped plan that includes the right processes, in the right sequence, happening on the right timeline.
In order to build such a pre-mapped plan, your schedule must be informed by three pieces of information; past, present, and future.
Past information and experience allow you to more easily navigate trends that have been true up until now.
If material procurement for windows in the past has a normal delivery turnaround of 7 days, then you pencil in your plan a window of 7 to 14 days out.
But wait!!!! Now window delivery times are upwards of 6 months! That brings us to the present and future information.
Present information and experience allow you to see what is really happening in today’s environment allowing you to just to what you think may come true in the future.
If window delivery times are now 6 months, then you adjust your planning based on the latest information you have. You base scheduling projections on the cocktail of…
Past Experience + Present Reality + Future Projections =
Communicated Schedule
You have three options in preparing a schedule for you, your team, and your customer…
Option one, create a schedule with the best information you have, update it daily or weekly, and communicate it with clarity and repetition.
Option two, create a schedule with the best information you have, do not update, and do not communicate it well.
Option three, do not put in the hard work of creating a schedule with the best information you have.
This upheaval culture that we have navigated in a post-pandemic reality has turned past partners into current and future enemies. The ideal setup was that the contractor, client, and partners were a team in coordination. Much of that has been twisted where the client and partners have become the enemy.
An aligned, well-prepared, often-updated, well-communicated schedule will bring that partnership mindset back into play and allow for the production or construction process to be far more enjoyable and profitable.
In the same way, Dani Roja proclaims that Football Is Life, you must believe that in your business Schedule Is Life.
If a project is budgeted to be complete in 12 months and takes 13 months, most would simply look at that and think, “well that stinks, but we are still billing for the project in its full amount.”
The challenge is that by adding an extra month to the project, billing essentially decreased by about 8% because although the full project amount will still be received, there was an entire extra month of fixed overhead added to the project because of the delay. While the schedule can be delayed, payroll and all other business overhead continue to be paid.
The 8% in many cases, eats into much of the profit of the job, and eventually, with more delays, the company just performed that project breaking even or in a situation where it actually spent its own money to complete the project.
How do you build a construction schedule (or any production schedule) that will bring clarity and make time for what matters most?
The secret has to do more with the time you set aside than the innovation needed.
First, you must block time to think through it and build it.
Just last week I was leading a business team through an exercise in helping each team member build their own weekly schedule around their role. While many were skeptical that such pie-in-the-sky exercise would actually work day to day, the team had real wind in their sails when the Director Of Construction pulled out his physical weekly schedule, held it up, and declared, “This works, but it only works if you build it and use it.”
In order to build it, you must make time and do it.
Second, you must block time to update it.
That same Director Of Construction, after months of living out and refining his weekly schedule, then took it a step further and, after blocking time to think and build, created a simple spreadsheet listing out a typical construction billing cycle based on the cocktail of historical experience, present delays, and future projections.
It is not perfect because it cannot be… but it is much closer to useful than nothing at all.
He updates his weekly schedule monthly, and his billing cycle sheet weekly. The time to work on his schedule is actually blocked on his schedule!
Third, you must act both on the information you have today, and build contingency on the information you could have tomorrow.
Stop longing for the past, bemoaning the present, and laboring over perfect projections for the future.
Instead, take what you know from the past, listen to what you are seeing in the present, and listen to what you might be hearing about the future. Mix that cocktail and build the best schedule you can based on the information you have.
Finally, you must communicate your schedule, and it’s fluctuations, early and often.
Over-communication will help cover a well-thought, but ultimately imperfect schedule. Clients, vendors, and partners will have far more grace and forgiveness for a schedule-centered process that get altered by forces outside of your control, than a poorly communicated schedule where you have no defense and everything will seem like your fault.
Communicate when you are going to communicate. Tell them what you are going to do. Tell them what you are doing (even if it is nothing at all). Tell them what you did.
Your schedule is your silver bullet. It’s all you’ve got. Try to wing it, and it will send you straight to the ground. Build it thoughtfully and communicate it well, and you will find that Schedule Is Life and you will bury it in the back of the net.
After its founding, the Roman Catholic Church began to do what many long-standing influential and powerful organizations do; a slow digression into a leadership model of just-do-what-we-say-and-don’t-ask-questions. Stand up, kneel down, sin, confess, pay, rinse, and repeat.
While there was certainly massive value that the early Catholic Church brought the global community from the sixth century up through the Renaissance (and still continues), there were also some clear abuses of power.
As renaissance art, mass publishing, and the globalization of empire building were merging, it provided the fertile soil of louder and more informed and thoughtful voices to emerge and begin asking questions.
In 1507, Martin Luther became a Catholic Priest. Over the next 13 years, Luther would wrestle with the internal realities of conviction, theology, and the written word to come to different conclusions than what was publicly being professed.
Sending his list of 95 propositions to the Archbishop of Mainz on October 31, 1517, Luther decided to lead.
Over 500 years later, an American man, holding Luther’s namesake, decided to share his dream and thus offer his commitment to lead.
Before the reformation of Luther, and after civil rights of Luther King Jr., women and men around the world have been offered to plant themselves in the fertile and charged soil of a louder, more informed, and thoughtful voice of leadership.
Before Luther, Luther King Jr., Anne Frank, Sojourner Truth, Churchill, or Marcus Aurelius; before any of the influential, culture turning, reforming leaders… there was a person or a group of people in need that they translated into an invitation to lead.
There is an invitation to lead standing right in front of you.
Standing in front of you is an ideology that requires 95 counter propositions in a thoughtful way.
Standing in front of you is a child who needs a dream because their surroundings provide no outlet or opportunity for that which seems trivial.
Standing in front of you is a group of people marginalized, put down, underappreciated, taken advantage of, misunderstood, and tired.
Standing in front of you is a job that can either be a lifeless means to a paycheck, or a platform for life-giving transformation through every transaction, production, bookkeeping entry, strategy meeting, and employee onboarding.
Standing in front of you is an opportunity to lead.
Nobody made Luther think, act, or respond.
Nobody made Luther King Jr. organize, speak, or walk.
Nobody made Anne Frank coordinate a hiding place against the devil in her father’s house.
Nobody is going to make you lead, but that doesn’t stop you from having the opportunity right in front of you.
Rob and Jessie Shrieve own Coastal Shores Landscaping. It is understood in the industry that any leadership effort should be focused on the non-field staff while the field team is tolerated and left to float.
The Shrieve’s made a choice that the newest, most unskilled team member would receive the same effort, encouragement, training, accountability, expectations, discipline, swag, perks, and opportunities as the most skilled, knowledgeable team member in the business.
Last week they devoted an entire workday to leadership, technical, and soft skills training for their team.
Every Thursday they provided technical and “Life 101” training to the entire team of over 25 employees.
Nobody made them lead, they accepted and implemented.
To lead is your decision… and we sure hope you will.