We are 6 weeks from the end of the year. What does your team need to hear from you as you finish it out? Well, let’s talk about that today.
Happy Monday y’all, Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here.
We spent hours last week running what we call Prep Week with every one of our clients. Making sure they were focused on the things that matter heading into 2023!
We got all kinds of feedback, from “Yes, we needed that.” to “It’s so crazy, it’s already time for these discussions,” to even “Man, I’m really excited for next year!” And all of those statements are true. What we’ve realized is if we don’t plan intentional time in the year for some of these conversations, they sneak up on us and they get rushed or worse, never happen.
The same can be said for your Annual letter. Many times, we realize we’re two weeks out from the end of the year, so we rush it and lose much of its impact. We write down a few thoughts that have little meaning, print it out, sign our name at the bottom and send it out.
But that’s such a miss! It falls far, far short of what your Annual letter could be. So, I want to walk you through 3 reasons to write a killer year-end or annual letter to your team and maybe offer a few tips for how to make it have an impact.
It’s simple. Your team AND YOU work too hard to not know whether the year was a success or not. They need to hear what you thought of the year and hear it in your voice! Not some quick, thrown together thing, but a well thought out analysis of how much we accomplished this year.
It’s powerful when you read it aloud to them and can celebrate together. If there’s one thing I think we don’t do enough of, it’s collective celebration. Pausing to focus on the gain we have made and all the hard work that was put in to that. Thanking them for all they did to accomplish it and maybe even acknowledging the major hurdles y’all had to overcome. This helps build a team that craves growth because they know it will be celebrated and not just accepted.
Which brings me to my second reason why:
2. Your team needs to know you see the hard work they put in
Use this as an excuse to brag on each person individually. Have 17 people on your team? Tough! That's why you’re starting this now. Take a sentence or two to acknowledge each of their individual efforts, brag on them a bit, and make sure you are specific. They work hard all year long, now is the time you get to show them that you saw them. That you saw their contribution and are grateful for it. If you have 5 people, spend a paragraph on them!
This is such a crucial part of building a culture of recognition and accountability. Because if people are never going to get recognized, I don’t care how motivated they start out, they will naturally wane in enthusiasm if it’s never recognized. But what better way to encourage your team at the end of the year than to brag on them in front of everyone?
And if you have that one employee that this is REALLY tough to find something to brag on them about. Do it anyway. They still deserve it. Take your time and be genuine and show encouragement. I promise it will build loyalty and a positive culture.
3. It becomes an amazing Chronicle of your business journey
It’s so fun going back and reading annual letters from years past. You can tell where you’ve been and it’s so fun to see the dreams you had, the dreams you accomplished, the battles you were fighting and are no longer fighting, the growth, and the journey. It’s amazing to see it and you get to be the one who shares it with your team! Don’t skip it.
So, if you’re one who wants to write a quick email to the team thanking them for the year I would REALLY push back. Spend an hour, shoot or more, writing this thing and making it really impactful for your business. Then let it sit for a week, come back and read it and see if it’s missing anything.
Then print it out, write a small handwritten piece to each employee and then read it aloud at a team meeting or Christmas party. This is a powerful tool if you will take the time to use it and take the time to put some thought into it.
If you need a few examples, please reach out! I’d be happy to send you some examples.
And the last thing I’ll say is this. If you’re a podcast lurker…just listens and knows you need to take action on some of this or begin working with a coach, now is the time. Nothing changed between last Thanksgiving and this one, and unfortunately, you know it! There’s no shame! But there is a different way to do it.
Maybe start by taking our healthy business owner’s assessment to see where you stack up. Go right now to boproadmap.com/healthy and take 5-6 min to take it. And reach out! We wake up every morning to liberate business owners from chaos and we want to work with you.
Alright, that’s it for today! Have a great Thanksgiving!
You don’t have to be a college football fan to understand this story, and yet it would help to understand that college football in the southeastern United States is akin to cricket in India, premier football in England, Formula 1 in Italy, and the carnival in Brazil.
We barter, bet, scream, yell, curse, fret, cheer, cry, and hug strangers all in the course of a four-hour window on any given Saturday in the fall.
Betting college sports, television rights, and now the newly minted Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) rules have driven revenue in college sports to levels unthinkable just ten years ago.
I was able to play football at the University of South Carolina back in the 1990s when assistant coaches barely scratched a living, and graduate assistants took a joyful vow of poverty. All this sacrifice for the privilege of sleeping on cots at the stadium due to the hours required in hopes for a winning season and a chance to continue playing at one of a very few bowl games around the country.
It is not the same game.
Money has skyrocketed, bowls are ubiquitous. The collective tolerance for losing has an inhumanely short attention span.
Our school has compensated its last coach a reported lump sum payout of $12.9 million to not coach.
“Who?” was the first question for many South Carolina Gamecock fans when the list of top head coaching contenders emerged in late 2020.
Coach Shane Beamer emerged as the victor.
A unique, quirky assistant coach at Oklahoma who had never been a coordinator, won the job and the hearts of the South Carolina Gamecock fans.
How?
Beamer's strategy for leadership can thoughtfully be described in four words that you see and hear around the program and the fan base: love, joy, family, and home.
For years, college football was dominated by gruff, macho, bull-headed tough guys who were famous for intentionally making things tougher than they needed to be in order to mentally fire up their players to perform over their skis and bring home a win.
During my tenure at South Carolina, we played the Bulldogs of Mississippi State University each year. Jackie Sherrell was their head coach who in 1992, in an effort to “educate and motivate” his team before playing the Texas Longhorns, had a bull castrated live in front of his team.
That ship of that leadership style has sailed and a new form, and dare I say a more humane method, of leadership is emerging.
The old guard might think this new leadership is “soft” or “weak”. Instead, this counter-intuitive leadership is thoughtful, intentional, human, and engaging.
Beamer has displayed three themes and manifestations of this leadership style that connects with generation Z and motivates them to play on the biggest stages.
Intentionality
After each game coach Shane Beamer is ushered to a press conference where, like every other coach in college football, he is questioned and pushed.
If you listen carefully, you will hear coach Beamer call many of the reporters by their first name, and share some inside bit of information that clearly communicates, “I have a relationship with you beyond your general questioning here.”
It is subtle, it is intentional, and it breaks down tension.
The most powerful word on the planet to each person is the sound of their own name; not a soundbite, not a zinging one-liner…just Steve, or Hannah, or Clare.
Emotional Communication
Attend a South Carolina football game at night and you will be treated to a four-hour spectacle of intentionality, targeted communication, and repetition.
It is a four-hour sandstorm that is part dance party, community-involved recruiting video, campaign messaging, and football.
The communication is emotionally charged, but not unbelievable. It is messaged in a way where “welcome home” means “I see you, I am grateful for you, you matter, and you can be anywhere else, but you came here…so we’re going to make you feel special, win or lose.”
You will not have to look deep in the archives of Gamecock Football media to find a clip of Coach Beamer choking up words in reference to his family, players, fans, or any topic that he is able to find meaning in.
Beamer allows himself to show frustration (especially to poorly called penalties), and to display breakdown emotion. When they play poorly he does not hide it. When they play well, even in the midst of playing poorly, he does not hide it.
He displays joy and pain, in full measure. Hiding emotion is no longer a sign of strength to a younger generation and instead leads to confusion and higher levels of anxiety.
Human vulnerability is a powerful relationship currency.
We have mastered the art of hiding wounds, pains, and cuts leading us to massive storage reserves of unreleased anxiety and mental health challenges. College football players and coaches standing on a brightly lit stage are no different. Stardom and money rank among the worst prescriptions for an anxious mind.
Repetition
For much of the 2022 season, the offensive staff and players have been forced to listen to an off-tuned chorus of frustrated fans regarding their sporadic play.
Beamer is unmoved, at least publicly. It is clear that he is holding to a mission of positivity and joy, love, family, and home. Rinse and repeat.
Of course, there is work to be done…leadership always be refinement.
For many coaches (and leaders) crotchety frustration was the curriculum of their leadership youth.
After a game Beamers’ staff and his players are allowed to go back to work in preparation for the next game, not having to take the initial stings of a short-sighted and emotional blows. Of course they hear and see the venom or the adulation, but they have a cup-bearer willing to take the first sip of any feedback, look them back in the eye and say, “in love, I’ll take the heat, you go back to work and do what we believe you are capable of doing.”
Beamer is not perfect, and that is the point.
He has embraced imperfection and allowed himself the freedom of a different boundary of intentionality, emotional communication, and repetition…all motivated by love.
A far cry from castrated bulls, angry grimaces, and childish vulgarities.
The emerging generation is longing to be recruited, to be invited into an ethos of love, family, and joy, especially when things are hard.
Welcome home to a new kind of leadership.
I spent some time last week with a local business that had just finished redoing their core values. They spent a ton of time getting them right and a question came up. How do Core Values start to trickle down and truly affect your business? Well, let’s talk about that today! Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here.
What does taking the next step with those look like?
I want to talk for a few minutes about why all of this matters. Like why can’t I just come in and work hard and that be good enough. And yet I would argue that following these core values leads 100% of the time to being a great at whatever you do. Can you do it without your values, yes, maybe… but if we lean into a healthy culture, excellence in design, and healthy relationships both internally and externally, it leads to a quality product every time! And…a quality experience, which is just as important.
Not sure if you have ever heard of Pal’s Sudden Service? Pal’s is a local fast food restaurant to Johnson City, TN. 30 locations all across Eastern Tennessee. They keep it as simple as it needs to be. Burgers, hot dogs, fries and milkshakes.
And here are their core values:
-Delight customers in a way that creates loyalty
-Daily excellence in products and service
-Exceptional value
-Training for ALL employees
Here’s where that shows itself. They time each customer as they come into the drive-thru and on average a customer spends 18 seconds at the order window and 12 seconds at the pickup window!!! No wonder customers are loyal.
You would think they make a lot of mistakes going that fast, nope! With their core value of daily excellence in products and service they just finished a study that they make a mistake on an order 1 out of 3600 orders!!! Unreal
So they are fast, they are accurate…nailing the first two core values and it leads to exceptional value for their customers.
Lastly,, training for ALL employees.
New employees get 120 hours of training…120 hours…before being allowed to work on their own. Grilling burgers, mixing shakes, taking orders…everything. Then, every day, every shift…their computer generates the names of 2-4 employees who take a quick quiz…if they pass, they go right back to work, if they fail…it’s back to training and retraining to improve their knowledge.
YOu may look at that and say…gah that’s overkill. I mean it’s fast food, does anyone even notice that? Couldn’t you say the same about the technical side of your job…fill in the blank. Will anyone notice if we do that well? Well, they did a study…again and their average customer comes to Pals 4x more than the average McDonalds customer. That’s a loyal following. That’s the culture and the impact you should hope to create.
The CEO was interviewed about all of this training and the way they do things and they asked him…120 hours of training, aren’t you nervous that you’re going to spend all of that time training and your employee is going to just leave? And his response was as good as gold.
He looked back at them and said, “No, not really. I guess the way we look at it is, what if we don’t train them and they stay?”
That’s where Core Values have sunk in so far that they touch every part of the organization. Because they know they must Delight their customers and create loyalty, they must have excellent products and service, they must create exceptional value and they must accomplish all of that through exhaustive training.
That ensures that the main thing stays the main thing!
So…if you wrote down your Core Values, could you point to practical ways that they are implemented, and do you spend an adequate amount of time on each to make sure they show up with your team every day?
I’d wager no.
Do…it matters…people notice. Alright y’all, that’s all I have today! Take a few moments today to write down each of your values, ask the team if they know them and be honest about whether they are priorities for you or just cute little billboard quotes that have zero impact.
The priority of our work is to liberate business owners from chaos, and most of those business owners have between 2 and 50 employees.
We get the question often, “are we in a recession?”
Our response is usually the same, “does it matter?”
Seriously, in your day to day life does it matter?
Over the last two years, I have watched some moments of real irony. We obsess over downturns in the market, a decline in business, and recessions or depressions.
Just last week, anyone who had money invested in the crypto-currency exchange FTX (some reports put that figure around $1.8 Bn) lost it all.
$1.8 billion…poof.
Was that a product of a recession, or recession like market movements?
No. It was a problem of poor management and leadership.
Throughout 2020 and 2021 the market was red-lining at high RPMs and many businesses had converted their business development and outbound sales departments into order takers trying to handle the inbound demand from a flood of cash pumped into the market now being spent on new homes, background kitchens, boats, and cars.
Business owners were pulling their hair out as they tried to manage customer expectations, a volatile supply chain, and prices that had the discipline and direction of a squirrel.
Now the outcry is, “what if we lose all of this work?” We have switched one cry to another rather than quietly leading through a boom and quietly leading through a bust.
We do not individually influence macroeconomics, but we can certainly lead well within the economic climate we’ve been given, whether cloudy or sunny.
Here are 9 elements you can implement to lead well during the boom or the bust so you will stop asking the question, “is a recession coming?”
First, write your vision down so those who read it may run. A written vision story compels, clarifies, guides, and motivates.
A business without a vision is like a ship without a compass and that is somewhere no one wishes to be.
Second, write an annual letter to your business team. Reflect back on the year that has passed, and project on the year to come. What have you seen and what do you see? Write it down to share, and write it down to keep a history of how you and your business handled like-situations in the past.
Third, build a calendar exclusive to the culture you wish to create. Culture is not accidental, and good culture does not follow those with luck. Solid culture is built through intentionality, repetition, and predetermined meaning.
What do you want your culture to be? The ingredients of that culture will need to be planted intentionally and thoughtfully throughout the year.
Fourth, subdivide your cash. Every dollar that comes into your business is not your dollar. Some of that dollar is for your business, or for you, and some of that dollar is intended for other destinations (i.e. taxes, vendors, fixed expenses, etc.).
Open up multiple bank accounts that will house the major payouts from your business so you can subdivide every dollar as it comes in right away.
The fifth element to help you lead predictably through boom or bust is a simple cash tracking spreadsheet. Every week, go review your actual cash balance and record it sequentially on the same spreadsheet so you can watch your cash.
A winning strategy in any market is to always have a bucket of cash to pull from. You won’t have cash if you don’t watch your cash. This does not give us license to obsess over cash and hoard it. Our financial warehouse should have a receiving department and a shipping department, an in and an out.
Sixth, a well-led business has a simple budget. Thoughtfully review the prior year’s profit and loss statements with its chart of accounts, and think through where future income should be spent to best align with the mission and vision of the business.
Seventh, a well-led business should have basic estate planning to provide clarity to heirs in the event of a surprise. Do you have written operating agreements, employee agreements, wills, powers of attorney, or trusts if needed?
Sitting down with a qualified estate planning attorney is a gift to the business and to your family.
Eighth, insurance should be reviewed and mapped out as well to insure sound coverage.
Finally, a well-run business is being led by an owner who has thoughtfully walked through their own personal finances. What income is needed? What desires and goals do we have? What income is needed for those desires and goals?
An owner who has little discipline over her personal finances, is likely to have little discipline over the finances of the business. Booming economies in many ways can actually exacerbate bad financial discipline allowing a business to grow habitually accustomed to overspending and underpaying.
Let’s stop living within the anxiety of an emerging recession, or not, and instead commit to solid leadership, and build a better boat that can handle both a placid lake, or a raging sea.