Listen to Jessica VanBrunt, owner of Van Brunt & Company, as she talks about how she implemented processes, a strong company culture, 12-week plans, and effective meetings to achieve business success. 

“It’s just easier if I do it myself.”

“No one does it as good as I do it”

“They just don’t care as much as I do.”

These are all statements that I have heard you make, and they are all statements that will sabotage your Executive Leadership.

The leader could drive the tractor, could fulfill the order, could supervise the build, could execute the transaction, could meet with the client, and could negotiate the material pricing.

But the Executive Leader reminds herself that she has “Proximity to motivate a team to pursue the named future you see”

The Executive Leader creates proximity.  They receive a phone call from the client and elect not to respond, or to immediately pass it to the trained and capable team member who can respond within the core values.

The Executive Leader intentionally withholds their response…even when it is helpful, knowing that their discipline will create an opportunity for their team to get more reps in a crucial part of their business.

When an Executive Leader willfully withholds a natural response in a display of self-discipline, it will be misunderstood and will be questioned… and it will create the value of another rep for the leader to whom that response has been delegated.

John Maxwell famously stated, “If someone else can do a task at least 80% as well as I can, I give it to them.” 

The math of that reasoning tells us that 20% of their work may not hold up to your personal standard… and yet, the 80% that they take from you allows you to be freed up to pursue the highest and best use of your time.

Money can always be regenerated… time and attention cannot.

An Executive Leader must guard her time because nothing she has dominion over is of more value than how she spends her time.  Yet, we waste it on task management and decisions that others could easily make (even if they don’t perfectly align with our decision).  You might have selected a circle while your leader selected an oval, but either way the decision is done and allows the organization to hit on the mission within the guideline of the values.  That’s a WIN!

Starting and building your business required a relentless, red-eyed, sacrificial devotion to doing and seeing it all.

Be free from that.  What you have built is good, valuable, helpful, beneficial, and powerful… but not if you are going to insert yourself in every little task and decision thereby sabotaging growth and therefore opportunity.

When the growth of a business is stunted so too are the growth opportunities for each team member.  As a business grows, so too the roles required of which existing team members have opportunity for promotion.  

Executive Leaders are more like pilots; build the initial systems to operate the plane, and then set the GPS coordinates and allow the people and systems to get you there. 

What are the indicators that you are moving in the right direction of Executive Leadership?

First, You will spend far more time on vision and people, than you will on process and task.

The executive leader will have multiple calendared times throughout each year they gather the entire company together in person or virtual and read back through their written vision story, mission, and values followed by a self-evaluation of “Green/Yellow/Red” flags in the business.  These vision days with the added addition of flag-reflections offers the executive leader and the team a sobering, in-the-moment consideration of where they think they stand in a number of business and personnel areas.

The executive leader will be in a continual state of learning and understanding the art and science of human psychology and personality.  They will take seriously the objective insights of profiles and assessments while pursuing acumen into generational diversity, trends, and norms while training their leaders on what they see and hear..  

Second, you will have a defined and published group of tapped leaders in place, and those leaders will begin showing evidence of building and refining the team to carry the heavy loads of business.  

In this case, published means a visual org chart, formally communicated to the team, while you make space in team meetings and check ins for investing time and attention through line item training and with the culture calendar review.

Published is public and the Latin root “pub” means a collection of people.  If the people have confusion about who is leading, then your leadership is not published.   

The third indicator of executive leadership is revealed when you begin having greater proximity to your leaders; both close and far away.

Proximity towards your leaders comes by way of the RPMs of great leadership that we talk about frequently.

Repetitious proximity is an engagement that happens over and over realizing that once is never enough.

Predictable proximity is an engagement that happens without surprise allowing for clarity and sobriety in thoughtful and timely conversation.  The micro-manager asks the wrong question at the wrong time, whereas the executive leader asks the right question at the right time.

You will also need to prioritize meaningful proximity which will welcome the skill of intentionality…a deliberateness the way a skilled surgeon navigates a robotic arm into a space unseen by the naked eye.  Not hurried but targeted, slow, seeing and hearing what is in front of you, not allowing your mind to be pulled apart to the worthless things screaming for your limited attention.  

When you have well-communicated time away from the “office”, defined meetings structure, and a more closely aligned weekly schedule they offer an unrestrained path to the bull’s eye of what is most valuable in that moment.  

A fourth indicator of executive leadership is when you are making time to pursue the wisdom of 3rd party voices OUTSIDE of your business.  Your internal leaders cannot serve this function in full, they are overseeing the management of the business…they will soon be in desperate need for new inspiration and updated motives to lead.

For some, this 3rd party wisdom will reveal themselves in nature walking, hiking, biking, swimming, or jogging alone outside.

For others, it may be in silent and unruffled stillness; a quiet room with a small chair and a window, or the edge of a wooded park in the middle of a workday when no one is around.

Books are a magical merging of the rustling of words without a sound.  Books are the perpetually evergreen wisdom of the years encapsulated in the products of our earth; the pages, the glue, the string, the binding, the ink all creating a quiet symphony upending our norms and reclassifying our most closely held beliefs. 

As Thomas Jefferson was sending books as a gift to the US Library of Congress, he wrote in a note to John Adams saying “I cannot live without books”, neither should the executive leader.

Many times those books are penned by the hand of a sage, which draws its root from the sophists; a Greek term that doubles for wisdom.

Wisdom from a sage, a wisdom-dispenser brings nuance, clarity, brilliance, and sturdiness.  Like a battered book in an antique shop, a sage presents its attractiveness precisely by their brokenness and scars.  The executive leader has sages, plural, multiple.

The uncoordinated team of sages offers a teaspoon of fresh strategy in favor of a full cup of tested perspective.  The sage is rarely interested in solving a problem that will last a week…they wish to help transform the soul of a person or a business for a lifetime.

At least four elements revealing the growth of an executive leader:

Investing more time and attention on vision, mission, and values…purpose.

A published group of defined leaders in place.

A proximity to those leaders both close and far.

A symphony of sages.

None of these will be purchased in the pre-packaging of modern products, allowing you to “hack” the system.  The elements of executive leadership are only obtained through adventure and pioneering…creating ruts of repetition, predictability, and meaning.

Listen to Thomas Joyner, Director of Coaching, and Brent Whitaker, Business Coach, as they discuss the importance of having a clear mission statement. They talk about the difference between passion and purpose, and how purpose is what drives us forward even when our passions change. They also discuss how a mission statement can guide a business and why it's important to define your own mission instead of letting others define it for you. Ultimately, a well-defined mission statement helps us understand the "why" behind our work and keeps us motivated to push through difficult times.

LISTEN HERE to learn more!

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Partnerships are hard.  I’ve heard it said, “the only ship that doesn’t sail is a partnership.”

Partnerships sound great in theory, almost a no-brainer structure for a small business.  You get two (or more) minds, two skill sets, and twice the available time that in many cases can lead to an exponential outcome.  

You also typically get two visions, two opinions, and divergent expectations.

Many partnerships function just enough but don’t thrive.

In the hundreds of partnerships that we’ve been exposed to we’ve only seen two that can seriously claim that the business is in far better shape due to the partnership than without.  

I met with a startup excavating contractor who laid out his plan for his young business, including the threshold levels that would be achieved in order for a second person to be given 49% of his youthful company.  

My first question to this eager and excited business owner was, “is this formally agreed upon and in writing?”

“Yes.”

He assured me that the friend-soon-to-be-owner would be bringing skill sets that the founder does not have.  While I’m sure that is true, often it will also force the owner to miss out on lessons that will be crucial for him to learn up front that will be buffered and absorbed by someone else.  

Nonetheless, the deal is inked, so the next question becomes, “how do I work with a partner in a synergistic, agreeable, valuable, and productive way?”

There are three non-negotiables of working in a co-owner environment that must be committed proactively.

First,  you must co-write a multi-page vision story that defines the future snapshot of the business.  Where there is a vacuum of vision a business and its people become chaff subject to the various swirls of the wind and will (not might… but will) be blown in a variety of non-congruent directions.  

You will scatter.

Once written the partners will be well served to review the written vision no less than every-other-month and make appropriate adjustments based on new information.  

The partnership is akin to a boat floating out on an ocean in need of an immovable lighthouse reminding each of the unified direction of the business as life evolves and emotions manipulate.  

This regular review of the vision offers each owner a reminder of the agreed upon direction along with an opportunity to clarify.

Second, the partnership must prioritize a dedicated, face to face check in no less than once monthly.  This check-in should incorporate pre-determined questions that will uncover desires, blind spots, encouragement, frustrations, and a platform to have the conversation that each may wish to avoid.  

This meeting will be easy to bypass due to “busy-ness” or an apathetic “we’re ok”.  This meeting should be non-negotiable no matter how good or bad the relationship is going; preset on each calendar and no excuses to allow retreat.  

The third element to help maintain the communication channel of a partnership; each partner needs a written non-owner role that supports the organizational day to day of the business.  

Most partnerships play the excuse card of “we’re too busy to have roles, we just need to do what needs to get done.”

This is an endless cycle of chaos and inefficient busy-work which leads to bitterness because inevitably one partner will perceive themselves to be working far harder in the business than the other.  

Each partner needs a written job role and that role carries a salary.  All partners should be compensated in two channels; salary and owner draws.

The partner salary may include incentive compensation based on the role, and is the salary that the partner budgets her life around.  The owner draws should be scheduled throughout the year with a pre-determined draw schedule or agreement.

For instance, Mike Michalowicz, the author of Profit First recommends setting up a bank account entitled “Profit”, a set percentage of receivables gets swept into the profit account twice monthly and then the first of each quarter (April 1, July 1, etc.) the owner's draw 50% of whatever is in the profit account.  

You can coordinate whatever draw schedule you would like but it should be predetermined, written, and followed with no exceptions.  Money disagreements will implode a good partnership with swift expediency; most never see it coming till it is indeed too late.  

When a partnership has a collective vision, a means of regular communication, and clarity of day to day role, then the partnership has the necessary channels for partner communication setting the stage for a thoughtful flow of your ideas, thoughts, concerns, desires, and dreams to be heard, vetted, and decided-upon.  

Partnerships of any kind are hard because they involve the moveable and oft unpredictable variable of emotion and subjectivity.   Not all is black and white, but there are foundations of understanding that can be poured well in advance of an emotional hurricane.  

When you enter a partnership you willfully give up certain levels of predictability and controls.  You can fight to maintain 100% autonomy, which will end in 100% meltdown, or you can set a course of pre-planning, clarity, and frequency of communication.  

In a partnership, that is a voice you do have.  

For 21 years, Ashley and I raised, led, and parented our daughter.  On a beautiful Friday afternoon in April, I had 56 seconds to walk her down a sweepingly curved walkway of gray pavers under an aged live oak tree into the hands of another man who within a few minutes would become her husband.  

My time as her dad did not end in the 5 o’clock hour of that Friday afternoon, but my time as the primary male influence in her life did.  

In the months and years leading up to this moment, I felt calm and intentional thinking through where we were trying best to lead our children.  In the hours and days after those 56 seconds, my emotions began stirring in realization of a new reality, and one that can bring a man either to joy or regret.

I will relish those 56 seconds.  I remember them.  Those few paver-stabilized steps were clear, and I even remember telling my daughter that we should slow down because I had waited 21 years for this short walk together.  

The song being sung in the background was entitled Gratitude.

The wind swayed lightly.

The sun peeked through the canopy of the oaks to catch an overhead glimpse of a Dad soaking it all up.  

Remembering the meaningful steps that you will take in the future begins with taking intentional steps today, and those hard, often unseen steps set the moments to experience gratitude when we are invited into the brief, 56-second steps.  

The question you will answer on the backside of the 56-second moment is this, “was I present?”

Too many Mom and Dad business owners are too busy in the weeds of their business that they don’t make time for the intentional steps that are required before the 56-second moments.  

The presence of the 56 seconds is earned in the minutes, hours, weeks, months, and years leading up to it.  Then, poof, life moves on.

Were you present? Were you in this moment while you were in this moment?

A banner that you can begin to fly over the hope of your life is the word intentional.

You own the years and the 56 seconds when you create a life of intentionality; of being deliberate.

A deliberate business owner is one who has carefully thought through the weight of life, the relationships that matter, and actively builds a business that will support the desired life.

Too many owners are growing just to grow and the growth leads to increased burden (more time at work, more people to lead, more money to steward) that they have little desire for. 

Being deliberate carries with it the idea of carefully balancing weight on scales, slowly and carefully adding an ounce here, and removing an ounce there to get the scales balanced.  

Balance will rarely be achieved of course because we are human, fragmented, broken.  

A third-century Rabbi Shemuel ben Nachmani said that: “We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.”

If you are chaotic, frantic, distracted, and unintentional, then life will remain that way for you, even in the 56-second walk.

If you are boundaried, scheduled, coordinated and thoughtful, then life will shape itself in that way for you, even in the 56-second walk.  

Intentional owners hold to a mission and values and repeat it over and over again.  This does not lead to the misnomer perfection of The Truman Show or Disney-like perfection.  Life is hard and business is hard, but it is made all the more meaningful when we have a mission to pursue and values to guide our decision-making; both in life and in our business.

Intentional owners decide now what they wish for their future presence to look like.  I did not want to be distracted in the months, weeks, and hours leading up to our daughter’s wedding.

I began maneuvering my schedule months prior to the 56-second walk so that I would think of nothing but this stunning bride and leading her to her husband.  Nothing else had my attention except that walk in that moment or in the moments leading up to it; no personnel thoughts, client thoughts, billing thoughts, service-delivery thoughts…nothing.  

Just walking with smile-induced tears. 

Intentional owners necessarily empower others to do the work day to day leaving space and margin in the schedule and in their heads to do the hard, uncertain, un-kept work of pioneering, visioneering, and direction setting.  

We have three primary meetings in our business.  Two of those meetings are weekly, and one is twice monthly.  I lead none of those meetings.

Our team has been and is being equipped to lead in a powerful and agenda-driven way so they have autonomy and freedom to lead within a clear set of boundaries and outcome expectations.  

You will only have 56 seconds for one action that you will have waited her whole life for.

Will you be present?

She sent us a voice memo saying, “I don’t see my husband or my kids anymore… money is not the issue, I just don’t have the time…I feel trapped by my business.”

This Mom is trying to wear the superhero cape in life and at work and feels she is doing neither very well brewing a mental cocktail of disillusionment about the value and gift of business, while also fueling 100-proof guilt straight from the still of societal expectations.

Life and business necessarily intersect and can be of mutual value to each other.  

Humans were created as a gift to one another, so to work was created as a means of mimicking small little moments of creation each and every day.  This treatise that I am penning now is a small act of creating something new… a small contribution of work.  

This morning I was able to sit with my daughter for a short breakfast a mere five days before she is to marry her fiance.  I cannot hide my family emotion from my work creation, or vice versa.  The space for breakfast was set and crafted long before this morning.

Without a predetermined understanding of what our business was intended in the first place, I could have easily slotted some urgent-felt task into that slot that was unmoveable.  Years ago I made the determination that I would not do my core work of coaching on Mondays or Fridays. 

Why?

I needed space… margin.  

Foregoing Monday and Friday coaching options was also a confession that we would also be limiting our possible income due to the restriction of available revenue-generating hours in any given week.  

This does not mean I do no work on Monday and Fridays.  On the contrary, some of my deepest creation work is done on Monday and Friday as I create a series of one-on-one appointments with myself to create and implement that work that will ultimately benefit hundreds and thousands beyond me for years to come…including this humble article I write now.  

Those are hours that I have cashed in for the margin of availability.  Availability for my daughter to have a final breakfast before she assumes a last name and role that I no longer have a primary say in.  Availability to hop on a call with a frustrated client, to chat with a wisdom-seeking team member,  to stare out the window and contemplate next steps.

The burden of being trapped is usually at the fault of providing ourselves no boundaries, and therefore no margin.

Watching a basketball game on television, you will quickly see that the boundary of the court offers the margin for spectators, journalists, team trainers, coaches, and a variety of other support that allows freedom for the players to do what they are best at.

Could the leagues cram more games into a season and theoretically earn more money?  Yes, to what damage?

Exhaustion.  Fatigue.  Bitterness.  Frustration.  Isolation.

All are planted in the soil of a boundaryless life; a day to day without proper forethought, scheduling, and perspective.

Five days out from walking my daughter into a new life, sending her off into a new narrative with a new teammate it is hard to run from the cliches of time chasing you down reminding you that your parents and grandparents were right when they pinched your cheek, pitifully cocked their head and softly spilled the truth that time really does move fast.  

Success is not a metric, but instead health, presence, eyes to see and ears to hear.  

In the popular book In Praise of Slowness Carl Honore writes, “studies show that people who feel in control of their time are more relaxed, creative and productive.”

Apps have turned much of life into a competitive league of perpetual window shopping through the grams, reels, and snaps of our incessant posting.  In her well-written book Saving Time Jenny Odell laments that “you can shop for life itself in a virtual mall where posts about self-care and retreat come across as ads for self-care and retreat.  Tap to add this to your life.”

No corner of our attention is spared from the incandescent glow of the best of everyone else in contrast to the dark world of my own limitations.  

We work harder like desperate gamblers trading in another bank of minutes from our limited supply out to the open market in hopes we will strike it big in the form of achievement knowing that it too will soon be gone.

Ironically, I was at a funeral yesterday, six days prior to my daughter's wedding.  A powerful paradox.  A juxtaposed emotion from what soon will come.  In two hours of funeraling, there was not one mention of the 89-year-olds net worth nor one accolade of the overtime that he put in.

The one theme throughout the two-hour reflection was…presence. 

“He was there.”

“He was silly.”

“He was faithful.”

It used to be thought that she who dies with the most toys wins.  

Instead, she who boundaries her time to be available both on the court and in the margins… wins. 

She who makes time for breakfast with her daughter and the planned team meeting.

She who makes time for exercise and budget reports.

She who makes time for kids activities and sales appointments.

The bad news is you are only allowed 168 hours in a week.  

The good news is you have access to a full bank of 168 hours in a week.  

For the most part, you decide how those hours are used and who those hours are used for.  It will cost you either way, and you alone will determine the value of that cost either for the short term, or the long.  

You can window shop the infinite screens of the other, or you can content yourself with the value of who you have been built and designed to be; which is finite and unique.  

Balance is a myth, rhythm is a reality.  Boundaries allow for rhythm, both on the court and in the margin.  

For many, work has become an unavoidable and sustained pot hole along the chaotic highway of our day to day that knocks the alignment from the goal of peace each of us has in life.

Beckoning a variety of responses from the menu of emotions available to us throughout the day, we respond to life's potholes with entitlement and exasperation feeling betrayed when we get thrown off track.  

We want happiness, when truthfully, we expect a nonlinear annoyance to be the theme of our Monday through Friday.

It would serve us well to contemplate a novel concept; happiness is spasmodic, temporary; joy is manufactured and intentional.

Canadian psychologist Philip Brickman and American psychologist Donald Campbell coined the aptly named phrase “hedonic treadmill” in the 1980s.  It is the thought that happiness is fleeting, always seeing it in the short jolts by which it comes, and yet always looking for more.  The elation or misery that comes typically returns to a baseline emotion quickly.

The happiness we seek in our work will under-satisfy because the treadmill of life marches on at a steady pace forcing us to continue moving on rarely allowing us to sit in those happy moments for long.  

Each moment ceases quickly to become embraced with gratitude in favor of being installed as a new level of expectation.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau warns that “these conveniences (think happy moments) by becoming habitual had almost entirely ceased to be enjoyable… men were unhappy to lose them without being happy to possess them.”

In our work at Business On Purpose with heroic business owners, we’ve achieved a notable level of chaos-busting tools and coaching, and yet a failure that we have had since we started in 2015 is building an incentive compensation structure and coaching module that works for everyone.  We have never seen more than 10-15% of employees offer a sincere and non-expectant thank you for additional compensation received (bonuses, etc.)

Why?

Maybe the joy of possessing them was immediately rooted out by the numbness of expecting them.

Employees are hoping for a “hit” when they get the next pay bump or are lauded with the next award.  It wears quickly and returns to baseline leaving us in need of more.  More hits.  More substance.  More of something to numb the reality I feel that you cannot see… the reality that I live with internally but rarely share with you.  

Recently, we began asking a new question during our every-other-weekly individual check-in with team members: 

Can you describe a hard moment that you experienced these past two weeks, and how you found joy in that moment?

We focus on joy rather than happiness because it seems that joy is a choice, where happiness is a feeling.

Feelings will not sustain because we rarely control them, choices will sustain precisely because we have the option to opt-in or out.

James was the son of an Israeli Construction worker who lived in a village town between Haifa on the Mediterranean and the modern Sea of Galilee.

When they were older, his brother was falsely accused of a crime, and murdered in public.  James himself was later beheaded because of his teaching and his body buried in Spain.

What sort of teaching could be so vile that it results in a man’s beheading?

This is a paraphrased excerpt of a key element of James’ message, “(In all things) joy… make it your in-front-of (first before any) thought”.

That’s it.  

A message of actively choosing joy in front of any other response is a core part of the message that ended a notable man’s life.  

Joy is the “willful acceptance that a situation has brought you favor” and it brings long-term value.  Hard things bring testing, testing provides conditioning and endurance, that endurance reinvests into growth and fullness, and fullness counteracts the isolation of emptiness.

Joy says, “I accept hard things to endure because the outcome is fullness.”

Our modern work environment shuns and works endlessly to mitigate difficulty. 

Conditioning, endurance, growth, and fullness cannot divorce themselves from quandary and perplexity.  To garner the refreshment of fullness, we must walk through the pluff mud of decomposed problems. 

If problems did not exist, then there would be no need for your labor to solve those problems.  

Problems are a fundamental reason for work.  Problems provide opportunity both to solve the problem and to build endurance.

How do we choose joy while staring down the barrel of problems?  

Joy willfully accepts the problem realizing the outcome and the long-tail value that outcome of endurance and fullness.

How do you rediscover joy at work?  Begin by reframing problems as endurance-developing opportunities knowing that fullness is on its way leaving you spent and satisfied instead of exhausted and vexed.