I was volunteering as the public address announcer for the team my son plays on at his local High School.
Armed with a cobbled-together sound system, a prescribed playlist, a microphone, and a few corny dad-jokes, we try to provide a little light humor throughout the competition of a High School game. Most games are a lot of fun. But the off-field activity of this last game was not.
Parents from the visiting team began heckling when we did not announce their children’s names each time they scored: we never have for any visiting team for a variety of reasons.
On a spring evening in the beautiful low country of South Carolina, in a sport where very few players will go on to play in college, parents began rebuking the volunteer Dad running the music and making some announcements.
Why?
We struggle with empathy as a culture. We are in a civic landscape where if someone is not 100% right or good, then they are immediately painted as 100% wrong or bad.
There seems to be little in between, little grace extended, little camaraderie, or lightheartedness.
The core of our disdain for our neighbors, even the ones who are volunteering their time and effort has to do with shame.
Shame is a two-way activity; as I deliver shame, I am able to build myself up while concurringly tearing you down.
In her important book The Gift Of Imperfection, author Brene Brown defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.”
Brown says that shame needs three ingredients to “grow out of control in our lives”; secrecy, silence, and judgment.
In a description that hits too close to home, Brown describes shame as “that warm feeling that washes over us, making us feel small, flawed, and never good enough.”
Shame typically enters our practical vocabulary when accountability has been breached. Either we fall short, or someone we know or work with falls short of expectations and immediately we armor up, batten the hatch, and began launching shame grenades in an effort to cover up the discrepancy.
Someone missed this mark (even if it is us) and we go to war to protect our reputation and standing among our network. Shame is an effective short-term tool with blistering short-term results.
Unfortunately, for shame’s sake, we live in a long-term world where relationships and connections are vital to human flourishing.
Shame tears down with no plans or strategy to rebuild. Shame embeds itself like a tapeworm looking to grow and shut down the entire system. The seeds of shame produce a lifetime of shameful fruit.
Accountability is vital to life. Without accountability to drinking water or eating food, the human body shrivels and wastes away. The human body has been designed with an accountability feedback loop alerting the mind to present starvations.
Accountability is vital to organizational life. Without accountability to finance, product development, team leadership, marketing or sales, the organizational body shrivels and wastes away. The organizational body must be designed with similar accountability feedback loops that alert the leadership to present starvations.
The mind doesn’t blame the body when the body doesn’t have enough to feed on. The mind simply responds with what the body needs as efficiently as possible.
Accountability is a healthy process that has been badly battered through the delivery system of shame.
A different delivery system is needed that will allow healthy accountability to be dispensed over a healthy and sustained duration.
That long form delivery system is encouragement and empathy.
To lead with encouragement is to literally inspire with courage.
When we respond to a team member with encouragement, we lend them courage so their courage grows feasting off the courage we share.
In order to lend courage, we must first be able to understand where the discouragement is coming from.
Empathy is a powerful tool in understanding the challenge or discouragement of another person. Empathy is to feel what another person feels, or even more intensely to feel the suffering of another person.
We all have joys and we all have sufferings, empathy is when we actively make a hard choice to keep our shame grenades locked away, and instead begin to proactively share courage with another person precisely at the point they feel or show weakness.
How do you balance the truth of accountability with the courage of empathy? There is no balance, we may feel free to use both in endless quantities with a blank check. Accountability can only be effective for the long term when empathy is the delivery mechanism.
Even though my response to the heckling parents was primarily internal, it was equally as shameful as I created a dirty list in my own mind of what I would have said had an opportunity developed.
It did not. They went home probably embarrassed by their actions. I went home embarrassed by my more private response.
We have a choice on what to share and how to share it.
Our family’s mission is to be a light through wisdom, adventure, and time around the table.
Our family mission ties directly into the mission we have here at Business On Purpose which is to liberate heroic business owners, just like you, from the chaos of working IN your business.
So that you can ENJOY your business, maximize the impact that it can have on your family and your community, and make time for what matters most!
For a ground rule...IGNORE THE NOISE and distraction…
“It pays to curate the incoming, to ignore the noise, and to engage with voices who are willing to show their work.”
We are about to SHOW you our work. It’s up to YOU to implement
Surveying hundreds of heroic business owners just like you over the past few years we have heard loud and clear one of the biggest challenges that you face in your business...the feeling that you will never be able to step away from your business b/c you are SO busy working IN your business.
Imagine the day, a lady named Josephine comes walking in your workspace, opens up a combo-locked suitcase and says simply…
“I am ready to buy your business at a 4 times multiple of your annual earnings IN CASH right here on the spot...with two conditions…
...First, we have to be able to run your business the same EXACT way that you run your business right now, from the sales calls, to the payroll schedule, to the lead generation, to the production and everything in between. I will not require you stay on an earn out...but we need the entire business map so your valued customers will never feel the switch…
Second, you have 30 minutes to make your decision and we will expect the roadmap to be in our hands and training to begin immediately using ONLY that roadmap as our training (you will not be allowed to “wing” any of it from your head!”
Could you do it?
You might say, “No one would ever do that.” Ummm, we’ve seen crazier.
Then you will say, “that is totally unreasonable to expect that a business owner would have her entire business mapped out SO THAT THE TEAM COULD RUN IT.”
Or is it?
We can say with definition that your business is certainly more “sellable” with a comprehensive systems roadmap in place because your team can run it!
Of course, this entire example may be totally lost you on because you would never have the intention of selling your business anyway.
No problem.
But wouldn’t you like your business to depend LESS on you, and more on the RIGHT TEAM? That is a business that compensates you with intentional time, meaningful freedom, and the money to pay for it all?
Don’t you want your business to help facilitate your passions and convictions? To serve others without killing yourself?
Wouldn’t you love to do what Eric Burton did, and leave your business for 31 days and it would continue to hum along?
We have determined through our own experience that about 8 out of 10 Small Business Owners are being OWNED by their business which means that even if they wanted to sell, no one would ever pay to OWN a business THAT OWNS THEM!
How do we break out of the prison of our own business?
How do we finally get off the treadmill?
How do we stop constantly putting out fires and feeling pulled in 17 different directions?
How do we stop the habit of throwing Hail Mary’s in our business everyday?
One way to try is to simply continue doing things the way you have been doing them. Of course we know where that leads...INSANITY!
The other way is to replicate the delivery of every part of our small business and make it so predictable others can run it the EXACT SAME WAY WE WOULD.
And, it also gives those team members the FREEDOM to use their skill set instead of being slowed by confusion.
We are so obsessed about trying to find the right people…when in reality the more predictable strategy is to build a great SYSTEM where a variety of people can come join in.
Remember the old Jewish phrase?
In Jewish lore, there is a powerful statement that we have found to hold true since the centuries it was first written, “Write the Vision down so that those who read it may run!”
The same is true for the processes that make up the Vision. In fact, we may even make our own statement to say, “Write the processes down so that those who read AND IMPLEMENT THEM, may run...the business!”
Truth is...if you don’t write it down...you don’t OWN it…and neither can your team
Did you know that your business doesn’t have to own you?
Did you know that you DON’T have to feel like you are on a treadmill?
Did you know that owning a small business doesn’t have to feel like a daily cliff dive with no visibility and no parachute?
Owning a business can be the ultimate opportunity to set others free to live in their skill set, to serve customers, employees family’s, vendors, your local community, and your global community...all at the same time!!!
That’s right. Your business can be a MASSIVE force for living out your convictions and serving others. BUT, it will never get there by doing the things that got you to this point.
As I built this presentation, over my screen was an incredible view of the tidal creek behind our house in the lowcountry of South Carolina. It is a constant reminder of a real, living, breathing process that just operates on auto-pilot every day.
Behind our house, the tide comes in anywhere between 7-9’, and then six hours later is completely empty. That’s right, 7-9’ of water floods the marsh and then completely empties out...EVERY 6 hours, 12 minutes and 30 seconds the tide comes in and the tide comes out...EVERYDAY!
The tides are a process. Just like the earth’s rotation and the seasons are a process. Processes are simply a “a series of repeatable actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end”.
When process is NOT in place, what you may get is creative, but it will not be repeatable creativity...and if it is not repeatable then OTHER people will not run it the way you want them to…they will make it up as they go.
When process IS in place, what you get is a replication of the original creativity. I’m so glad the sunset is a process, b/c it is something that we like to enjoy on repeat!
When you are starting your business, every time you bake that cake, repair that brake, or stack that crate, you are doing something that could be processed so you NEVER have to do it again…AND you are equipping someone else to live out their unique skill set.
When you process all of the individual steps, you are equipping and empowering others to bake that cake, fix that brake, or stack that crate so that you can focus on the other elements of serving customers, like payables, receivables, inventory, and office management.
Then once those are processed, then you are again equipping and empowering others to facilitate payables, receivables, inventory, and office management, soooooo that you can focus on generating new leads and onboarding new customers.
Then once those are processed, then you are again equipping and empowering others to facilitate to….
Hint: Rinse and Repeat
Do you see where this is going?
Imagine you had EVERY process in your business documented. It could be written down, it could be recorded on video…regardless, it brings massive clarity to every one you might bring into the business.
Imagine, just like NASA has EVERY single detail of flying a spaceship to the documented...imagine that you had EVERY process in your business documented.
THEN, once documented, you focused the majority of your time on training the processes to capable people who could replicate your brilliance and creativity!
Every basic franchise has done it from hamburgers to window washing. That’s what a franchise IS. When you buy a franchise, you are essentially buying a process map to walk you step by step through how to make a hamburger, or pick up garbage, or unload a truck, or change brake pads, or build websites.
Franchises exist for EACH of those services and thousands more.
I’m not even saying that you want to franchise your business...but wouldn’t it be great if others could run your business with the same clarity, MISSION and focus that you run your business with?
IT CAN HAPPEN!
You can do it!
See you at the top!
INSERT MOTIVATIONAL CLICHE HERE!
Welcome to the process map. On this one magic sheet of paper, you will document the title of EVERY major process that makes your business work.
With this one magic sheet of paper, the process clarity that comes with, AND (never forget) LOTS OF REPETITIOUS IMPLEMENTATION, you will create a repeatable business that pushes you towards your Vision, consistently lives out your mission, and is completely in line with your unique core values.
With this one magic sheet of paper, you will have built a curriculum for training that will make you feel like you are running a full scale business university for your team. Training will become a hallmark of your small business. The product will become less and less the focus and training your team to deliver a great product will increase with habit and time.
Story: Gerrick Taylor planting 52 palm trees...now GT spends his days working ON Taylors (vision planning, training, pioneering new locations, etc.) and coaching middle school football
In order to create a business that could run without you, you must build a team that is excited to run without you…which means you must build a map that accurately reflects your business so those who read it may run.
Welcome to the construction of a business.
In business, we tend to get distracted by what is on the outside. We see logos, signs, branding, and products and we think “Wow, they are CRUSHING IT!”
While inside, the owner of that business feels like they are the ones being crushed by the weight of chaos and burden. They own the business…but in reality the business owns them and they feel like somewhere deep inside what they have really built is a house of cards.
Every business has five cornerstones, on concrete slab foundation, and four wall systems.
These are the PRINCIPLES of the business…
Harrington Emerson, the American efficiency engineer known for his pioneering contributions to the field of management, once said, “As to methods (processes), there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The person who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The person who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.”
Let’s dive into PRINCIPLES
First, the five foundational cornerstones of every business whether you are building homes, remodeling back porches, selling ice cream
Next, every business must have a sturdy concrete foundation that is made up of the ingredients of culture and planning.
Finally, every business has four primary systems that must operate with repetition and predictability…again whether they are selling sport coats, architectural services, or decking products.
We must be careful that we are not so lost and distracted by the day to day fires of payables, receivables, sub-contract challenges, material delays…and instead we build systems and people to work through that while YOU focus on the emotionally taxing and important work of working ON the business.
Don’t become so focused on the beauty of the interior design, that you forget to take care of the foundation.
To understand each of these is to build a business that makes time for what matters most with the one resource that is non-renewable…your time.
Talk to business owner after business owner and the one thing they will constantly preach is equipping and training their team. Talent grows as training grows, yet too many of us rely on “raw talent” and get burned in the end.
Give me world-class training with average talent who implements EVERYDAY over world-class talent and average training...EVERYDAY.
The little known secret is when you begin to offer world-class to average talent...the talent will eventually rise to the training!
Let me show you how to build a process roadmap that will buy you time for what matters most and get you off of the treadmill!
SHOW PROCESS ROADMAP and highlight…
“Yeah Scott…we’ve got this…but it’ll just sit on the shelf like everything else”
You’re right…IF YOU LET IT.
So where do you put it so you will use it?
YOUR TEAM MEETINGS
Allow me to give you a real life example.
Our BOP Coaching team realized we had a breakdown in our New Client Onboarding process. One of our coaches brought this up, we added it to our Weekly Coaches Meeting written agenda…we reviewed it as a team.
Our process was updated, our Master Process Roadmap reflected it, and we moved on
The greatest gift you can give your business and your team is the gift of clarity from chaos.
How? IMPLEMENTATION.
I will take a half-baked plan with full implementation versus a perfect plan with half-baked implementation.
I quote Joe Calloway all of the time because it is so powerful, “Vision without IMPLEMENTATION is hallucination”.
If you take time to build out proper software with a proper processes, you will have greater clarity in the WHO of your business.
Josephine is standing with a briefcase of cash…could you take the deal??
FInd out right now…while you are sitting here and we go into Q&A time, I want you to scan this QR code and take this Healthy Owner Assessment that will give you a tangible metric as to the health of your business.
It’s free and wildly helpful.
STORY
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 slow down.” 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 pricing increases or material delays, we tend to rest in the false comfort of 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.
Here is a hard reality…trying to control pricing and material logistics is like trying to control the weather…you can’t control the weather, BUT you can forecast and adjust plans based on the latest information…and PRE-PARE.
I love the world prepare…it’s actually two words in Latin
How do we make ourselves and our business ready BEFORE the next step?
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 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.
What about you? In the face of unpredictable pricing and material concerns, and personnel challenges, and disrupted construction schedules…will you commit to play BEFORE the lights come on??
The best bourbon is PREPARED before it’s aged and evaporated.
The best wine is PREPARED with full ingredients before it sits.
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 27 man crew 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 unpredictability, 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 unpredictable market, you must commit to great preparation by becoming F.I.T.
1. Fundamentals
a. We convened an emergency meeting of our clients in March of 2020 and talked openly about our concerns and realities...and then all committed...
i. “We WILL NOT contribute to chaos, but instead will simply respond to this call-to-action so we can implement the leadership that we have all been invited into.”
b. What are some of the fundamentals of that leadership??…
i. It’s realizing that your business is not a slot machine that you put money in and hope for the best!
ii. Your business is constructed in the same way that your projects are constructed:
1. Five Foundational Cornerstones
2. Firm Foundation made up of 13 Ingredients
3. Four Structural Walls of Admin, Ops, Marketing, and Sales
iii. Your business has a lifecycle just like you do as a human that goes through stages
1. Five Stages Of A Business
2. Each stage requires different engagement from people, and different leadership styles from you
iv. Great News! You can actually build predictability and stability into your business…sure, the tide and tradewinds of the market will impact you, but YOU determine your course
c. STORY:
i. Custom Homebuilder from the West Coast comes into 2020 with a cash account of $32,000 available dollars. $32k on $12mm worth of contracts. That’s it. Within 12 months, by going back to the foundations, they began 2021 with over $300k of available cash, and it continues to grow. What was the silver bullet????
d. FITness and repetition…no silver bullets. Knowing your cash gives you OPTIONS!!!
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
a. NY TImes Headline: people are discontent and leaving for “greener pastures” (UPDATE: 4mm quit in January 2022)
i. We can either gripe about the Millennials/Gen Z…or you can stop whining and start investing!!!!! It’s not as expensive as you think…HOW?
b. Invest with Clarity
i. If your team does not know where you are going…THEY WILL NOT FOLLOW YOU and they cannot make great pricing and material decisions!
ii. How? WRITTEN Vision, Mission, Values
iii. How? WRITTEN Cockpit and Master Process Roadmap
iv. How? A clear, old fashioned WRITTEN Org Structure & Job Roles
v. How? BASIC Financial Accountability and Tracking…SIMPLE SPREADSHEETS
c. Invest with Communication
i. Priority…SCHEDULE, SCHEDULE, SCHEDULE
1. Common refrain, “I don’t know why she is so freaked out about missing the Electrical/Framing schedule…we’ll get the billing eventually!”
2. Not realizing that the payroll bell rings EVERY month whether you bill or not
3. In Ted Lasso, Danny says “Football Is Life”...in construction, “Schedule Is Life!”
4. The pricing and material challenges leave ZERO room for unpredictable communication…so HOW?
ii. Non-Negotiable Weekly Meetings (cue eye roll)
1. Weekly meetings don’t have to be pointless, boring, worthless, and a waste of time…
a. If they are consistent, agenda-driven, and leader-led…weekly meetings offer a consistency that your team craves!
b. These are NOT project meetings…those are separate…these are business meetings that build clarity, focus, and camaraderie centered on the MISSION!
d. Invest with Compassion and Empathy
i. The real crisis of our day is not all of the things we think exist from the cable news tapes…the real crisis is a crisis of compassion and empathy
ii. STORY: talking with the psychologist who said that young people now have the capability to show empathy without FEELING empathy
iii. STORY: 3 weeks ago a biz owner walks into our coaching time: Wife whose husband stole her money. They showed AND felt empathy
iv. Your team will be more prone to stay on top of the unpredictability if you lead with empathy and laser focus on the vision
v. Professor Sherry Turkle of MIT has written extensively for decades on the necessity of empathy. What is her solution for the crisis of empathy we find ourselves in?
1. Reclaim the Face to face conversation
2. Brene Brown wrote “People are hard to hate up close”
3. HOW? 5 Question Check Ins at set times on set days
We must go back to the fundamentals, we must invest in people, and in order to restore business FITness in an unpredictable reality, we must…
3. Trail A Mentor
a. Bill Gates famously said, “Everyone needs a coach!”
b. Pricing variations and material disruptions are not new…find others who have navigated past storm patterns…everything has a pattern if we’ll stop long enough to see it
c. Right now…
i. I have a business coaching group I am a participant of weekly, a psychologist monthly, and a speaker coach, two wisdom mentors I meet with 4 times per year, and two guys locally that we meet together for breakfast about 25 times per year
d. …And I’m a professional coach!
e. Everyone needs a coach, because everyone is broken…just admit it!
i. Mentor: (find someone who has a different perspective and who is farther along that you)
f. At the height of their game: Ronaldo still has coaches, Simoan Biles has coaches, Serena Williams has coaches, Tom Brady has coaches, Lebron James has coaches.
g. (PAUSE) - Who is someone further along than you, who is actively mentoring, pushing you right now?
FINAL STORY:
FITness is no longer optional.
Les and Sara Claxton…Les PREPARED, he made ready, everything is volatile in his world…and he was ready.
Are you?
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
CALLS TO ACTION…
https://mybusinessonpurpose.com/healthy
2. What questions do you have?
If you want to test your business fitness, go to mybusinessonpurpose.com/healthy
It’s beautiful outside and if you’re anything like me, you’re getting excited for summer right around the corner. It’s so easy to get distracted and to hit that wall at work, so here are 3 questions to ask yourself today, to push through that stall wherever you may work.
Good morning everyone, Thomas Joyner here with Business on Purpose.
It’s natural that around April 15, you’ve mowed your grass a couple of times, spring break just passed, you hopefully paid your taxes and you got your first taste of the summer lifestyle. And then just like that… it’s Monday… yet again!
You lose motivation, your problems start to feel magnified as if they will never change and you feel less and less inclined to put in the work to actually change them!
Am I alone in feeling this way? I don’t think so.
So I want you to write down the 3 questions I’m going to give you today and find some time to think about them. Hopefully, it’s right after we finish, because you and I both know there’s a fire burning in your business the second you stop this video and if you don’t stop to process now, you may never get around to it.
So how do we push through? How do we collect ourselves and commit ourselves to doing work that matters and rising above the chaos? Well, here are 3 questions to help get you on the right track.
What’s your why? Capturing why you wake up and go to work is essential to recapturing that fire in your belly again! And hear me say this. It probably has very little to do with what you do in your day to day. There’s a why behind it all that fuels that work and keeps you going.
2 weeks ago I spent a long time working with some clients of mine who do heavy install work with commercial kitchens. We wrote and wrote and wrote and finally arrived at this… we exist to provide solutions, serve our customers, and set the standard. BOOM! When it was written, we all kind of took a deep breath and said, yep that’s it. You’ll notice that the things that get them excited have very little to do with commercial kitchen installs. But their why resides in being a resource for solutions, service, and being an industry leader by setting the bar.
It pushed them to dive back into team meetings and trainings and hiring because they finally realized what they want it their work. That’s powerful and you need to spend some time thinking through your why!
2. What do I need to delegate today to make time for things only I can do?
So often we’re weighed down by things we need to get rid of. Sometimes it’s us not trusting and training our team around us, other times we’ve just don’t even realize it’s something we can finally let go of. But what things bring you energy that you need to spend more time doing!?! What things will make you feel like you’re gaining ground instead of just trudging along. There’s a great tagalong question for this… ask who not how. Don’t ask, how do i do that… ask who do I need to do this.
Believe it or not, there are people who love bookkeeping, who love invoicing, who love estimating, who want to run errands and help with logistics! There are people uniquely wired to love the parts of your business, you find miserable… so ask who, not how. That’s the key.
3. What gains have I made?
There’s a fantastic book called the Gap and the Gain, where they discuss a lot about what high performers do differently to realize happiness. Instead of focusing on the Gap between where they are and where they want to be, they focus on the gain from where they were to where they are. It’s one of the main reasons we have “Write it down” as a core value. It provides so much energy to teams when they realize how far they’ve come!
Instead of constantly focusing on the negative, how far you have to go, you look back for a period of time and celebrate the journey you’ve been on. There’s always a higher mountain peak to climb, but the process must be celebrated or else you turn into a numb, bitter, end goal-oriented business with no life. What gains have you made? It’s powerful
So, stop what you’re doing for 5 minutes and ask yourselves these 3 questions…
Those questions will frame your week in the proper perspective and get you fired up to keep moving forward…and get unstuck!
I hope you enjoy! Have a great day
What are you holding onto too tightly as a business owner? And how is that holding your team back?
Well, let’s get into that today. Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here.
At our weekly Check-ins, Scott always asks me the same 5-6 questions, and he tends to sprinkle in one or two that come and go throughout the year. His question last week? What am I holding onto too tightly that I need to let go of?
It’s a question that’s rooted in humility but also rooted in knowing that this business is his baby. And for years he wore every hat in the business. From coaching to bookkeeping, even ordering the toilet paper for our office bathroom. He’s done it all for years. So, sometimes he doesn’t even realize someone is ready to take something off his plate, because you get locked into these rhythms.
But it’s a powerful question because there are areas I’m ready to grow, responsibilities I’m ready to take on that will ensure I continue to grow in my job role and not grow bored with my day to day.
I had a client a few weeks back lose an employee to this exact situation. He called them in for an exit interview and one of the things they said, was that they didn’t feel like their role had any room for growth. They did the same thing day after day and that things were held a little too tightly by the owner even though they had been working together for years.
From an employee's standpoint, they didn’t feel trusted, didn’t feel like there was any room for upward movement or any vision for their purpose in the business.
So, if I asked you the question, how would you answer? What are you holding onto too tightly as a business owner…and taking it a step further, what are you holding onto too tightly that is keeping your team from growing?
Maybe it’s something you need to sit down each employee and have a conversation around. Or maybe you need to chew on it a bit yourself first and then use the answer to cast some vision and think through what growth looks like for each part of your business.
Think about what that communicates.
So, when will you think through this? Maybe it’s taking a client to lunch and asking them what they see from their perspective. Do you have team leaders you can grab 30 min with and roll this question into your weekly check-ins?
Here’s the pushback we get. Well, my employee isn’t ready for more yet. They can’t handle it. Ok, I get that. It’s your job to communicate that in an effective way and train them up to where they are ready for more.
That’s tough to swallow and hard to execute on, but ultimately if we are the leaders of our business, the whole team is following our lead and so responsibility for team development rests squarely on our shoulders.
Don’t take that lightly!
So what are you holding onto too tightly as a business owner? Take some time to think through it today.
Thanks so much for listening… have a great day
What is the difference between a business mentor, consultant, and coach? And why do we choose to be coaches? Let’s dive in and talk through that today.
Hey there everyone! Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here.
We got a question last week from someone outside our network who asked us, “So what really is the difference between business mentors, consultants, and coaches?”
I thought it was a great question because to most people it’s just a different way of saying the same thing. So what do each do well, and what are the shortcomings of each?
Well, let’s start with business mentors. Kind of the most unofficial of the 3. Everyone should have a business mentor. Someone who you can take to lunch and just fire off 100 questions. Someone who is a step or two further down the road and may have survived some of the battles you’re facing.
A mentor is a sounding board but largely stays in an unofficial capacity. The beauty of a mentor relationship is they have typically experienced what you are experiencing and can give you some perspective of life on the other side. The drawbacks, well, they are typically not as available to you as you need and are not responsible for holding you accountable. And, from what we see, accountability is huge.
Business consultants are hugely valuable, too! When you think of consultants, they will largely be industry-specific. And there is a time and a place for consultants. If you want to launch a new product line or need industry-specific decision-making help. You need someone who has been there and understands the CRMs and supply chains. Someone who knows the yearly cash flows inside and out and can help you make specific decisions that those outside your industry may not be as knowledgeable about.
Consultants downside? They tend to have a reactive approach to their work. Tell me what hurts and I’ll tell you how to fix it. They can help you through problems in the future, but the majority of their work is reactive vs. proactive.
Consultants typically are temporary. If you hire a consultant who wants to work with you long-term (greater than 2-3 years), run away. They have no stake in the game to help your performance. No metric to reach, just some ambiguous consulting relationship that is open-ended. Now, if you have a 5-year goal to get somewhere and go into it thinking that way, then great! But be wary, if not. By definition, consultants should have a date by which your relationship is dissolved due to the goal being met.
Lastly? Business coaches. Business coaches are somewhat of a hybrid between the two, but like any coach in sports…they have a system. A methodology and philosophy of the way they run a business. Be vary wary of a coach who doesn’t have their system. Just like you would never hire a football coach who couldn’t walk you through their offense or defense, any good coach should be able to tell you what they are walking you through and how much time to install in your business.
Most coaches don’t reinvent the wheel but repackage and organize content in a way that is approachable for business owners and provides incredible oversight and accountability. Coaches don’t want to teach you how to run a contracting business, they want to teach you how to run a business that happens to do contracting work. They don’t want to teach you how to run a landscaping business, they want to walk you through the skills in business that you need to master, to provide a new set of eyes to spy on your business and organize the back end of your finances…for a business that happens to do landscaping.
The downside of business coaches. They are not industry professionals. They may not know high-level accounting or what the perfect sales software is for your business. They can’t be professionals in all industries.
But what they can do is teach you how to run your business, no matter what industry it’s in.
So there you have it! You will probably need all 3 of these positions at some point in your business ownership. We typically coach our businesses to spend between 1 and 3% of their real revenue on coaching or consulting. It’s that vital! There’s a reason guys like LeBron James spend millions of dollars a year on personal trainers, nutritionists, sports psychologists…you name it.
They know that to reach peak performance and to maximize their potential, they need people walking alongside them and holding them accountable to a standard. To use their expertise to bring out the best in them.
The business world is no different. So what are you waiting on?
For us, we specialize in liberating business owners from chaos and we use business coaching as our platform to do just that. If you want a metric for how in chaos you are, take the next 5 min and take our healthy business owners assessment. It’s super easy and will give you a score for how well run your business is on the things that we truly value.
Head on over to boproadmap.com/healthy to take that now!
And please, ask yourself which of these positions could be a value to you today. Have a good one!
3 weeks ago, Shackleton’s ship the Endurance was located 9800 feet beneath the Ocean's surface near the antarctic.
Foundational reality: Your seas are changing, the weather patterns are becoming more unpredictable. Today the swells are 1-2 feet, and in an hour they are 5-8. Chaos is the standard and unpredictability is the new predictable.
Your choice: either take your existing boat out into the unpredictability of the seas… OR learn from what the seas are telling you, and build a different boat.
Would Shackleton, knowing the tumult of the Antarctic, have taken the same boat? Would he have not gone? NO! He would have built a better boat and designed a better map.
Let’s look at the route of the Endurance
28 total men, in barren ice, with torrential weather, full days of either all light/ all dark.
Every single person made it out alive.
But in order to survive, Shackleton displayed the RPMs of Navigating hard things…
New employees are less concerned about the technical expertise from day one, and more concerned about having access to what they need to succeed and feel connected to the culture.
