In this episode of Tuesday's Tools on Purpose, we dive into "Trainual" with Maria Walls from Beaufort County Treasurer Office. Maria shares how this powerful platform helps streamline procedures, enhance onboarding, and even save time with AI-powered quizzes and video integrations.

Contact information:
Patrice Miles
Business Coach, Business On Purpose
patrice@mybusinessonpurpose.com
Discovery Call:
https://bit.ly/patricediscovery

Are you working IN your business or ON your business? Do you have all of the foundational elements that will liberate you from the business chaos? Take the assessment to find out which areas you can grow and improve on.
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In this episode of Tuesday's Tools on Purpose, we're diving into the transformative power of Buildertrend with Adam Copenhaven from Cope Grand Homes. Originally geared toward builders, we quickly realized the insights apply to any business still relying on yellow notepads and spreadsheets. Adam shares how Buildertrend enhances both his internal team’s workflow and the client experience, offering practical advice on training, team buy-in, and maximizing software to drive efficiency and growth. Discover how shifting from manual methods to a robust software can truly change the game for your business!

Contact information:
Patrice Miles
Business Coach, Business On Purpose
patrice@mybusinessonpurpose.com
Discovery Call:
https://bit.ly/patricediscovery

Adam Copenhaven
Cope Grand Homes
https://www.copegrandhomes.com/
https://www.instagram.com/copegrand_homes/
https://www.facebook.com/CopeGrand/

Are you working IN your business or ON your business? Do you have all of the foundational elements that will liberate you from the business chaos? Take the assessment to find out which areas you can grow and improve on.
Take our Healthy Owner Business Assessment HERE➡️ http://bit.ly/healthybusiness1

SIGN UP for our Newsletter HERE ➡️ https://www.boproadmap.com/newsletter

For blogs and updates, visit our site HERE ➡️ https://www.mybusinessonpurpose.com/blog/

LISTEN to the Business On Purpose Podcast HERE ➡️ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-business-on-purpose/id969222210

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Join Patrice Miles, BOP Business Coach, and Sam Wheeler from State Farm, as they discuss Navigating Buy-Sell Agreements for Business Success on the latest Tuesday Tools On Purpose podcast!

Learn how to protect your business and ensure a smooth transition with the right agreements in place.

Contact information:
Patrice Miles
Business Coach, Business On Purpose
patrice@mybusinessonpurpose.com
Discovery Call:
https://bit.ly/patricediscovery

Sam Wheeler, State Farm
Office Number: 502 459 9700
Mobile number: 502 753 9833
https://www.planwithsam.com/

Are you working IN your business or ON your business? Do you have all of the foundational elements that will liberate you from the business chaos? Take the assessment to find out which areas you can grow and improve on.
Take our Healthy Owner Business Assessment HERE➡️ http://bit.ly/healthybusiness1

SIGN UP for our Newsletter HERE ➡️ https://www.boproadmap.com/newsletter

For blogs and updates, visit our site HERE ➡️ https://www.mybusinessonpurpose.com/blog/

LISTEN to the Business On Purpose Podcast HERE ➡️ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-business-on-purpose/id969222210

SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube channel HERE ➡️ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbPR8lTHY0ay4c0iqncOztg?sub_confirmation=1

How do your customers and clients feel after they’ve done business with you? Do they feel your gratitude? Well, let’s talk about that today!

Thomas Joyner here with Business on Purpose.

I spent 4 days last week in Mexico with my wife celebrating our 10th anniversary! Gah, what a special time as it was just us for an extended period of time for the first time in 5 years. We’ve done a night or two getaways, but having 3 kids in 4 years meant that we always had a little one at home and so getting any more time than that was challenging.

We walked into the resort and from the moment we were there we were welcomed in a way that we never have been before. Let me paint the picture for you.

The first morning, because it was the west coast of Mexico and 3 hours behind… I woke up wide awake around 4:30 am. I’m used to going 0-60 when I wake up and it was so strange to wake up and NOT be needed by anyone. The tricky part, breakfast wasn’t served until 7 am! I remembered the concierge telling me they had 24/7 room service, so I picked up the phone and dialed it…half expecting it to ring and ring and ring. They picked up on the first ring. Remember, it’s 4:30 in the morning!

Hey is there any way I can get some coffee for two of us? Absolutely, sir! We would love to. I apologize that it will be about 20-30 min to brew a fresh pot for you and your wife, but we will have it there as soon as we can.

Great! 20-30 min later, there’s a knock on our door, at 5 am with a fresh pot of coffee, a tray of fruit, and a basket of chocolate croissants for us to enjoy. It was incredible. 

I just said thanks so much for bringing it so early and they thanked me multiple times and talked about how grateful they were to serve us.

Wow…that leaves an impression. 

Every time we ate dinner, ordered a drink, asked for a towel, needed anything and everything we were met with gratitude and feeling that the employees of the resort were overjoyed to be asked to serve.

So… the question at hand as I was flying home. Is that how our clients and our customers feel when we do work for them? Do they feel the gratitude at being chosen for their work? Do they know that it truly is a joy to get to do the work and serve them?

If I had to wager, I would say not!

I would say more often than not you are at odds with your clients. Left cursing them under your breath as they walk away or as you leave the job site. Maybe even thinking, if we can get through this one nightmare client, maybe we can get back to the good ones!

And some of that’s true. There’s entitlement and a lack of gratitude on the customer side. There’s no doubt about that. But I think it’s more than just that. I think that we’ve forgotten that work is a gift. That we were designed to work and create and problem solve and all of that, in and of itself, is a gift.

Because think about this for a minute. If what you were doing is easy, if it didn’t come with problems, people wouldn’t need you to do it! They would do it themselves and probably not pay someone like you to do it for them. If it didn’t require expertise and planning and calculation and learned skills, you would not be able to make a living doing it!

So maybe there’s a mindset shift that needs to happen. Next time there is an issue, can we train ourselves to be thankful… to feel gratitude for that problem. Because behind the problem itself is the reason we can build a business around solving that unique challenge! That is exciting! That’s something you can retrain your team on.

To feel joy at the challenges because each and every one of them is job security and the opportunity to support your family moving forward. 

I think that’s what the employees of this resort thought. They were grateful to serve because they knew the more people they served in an exceptional manner, the more people would want to come there and a better life for their family! But not just that, I think the gratitude that was present helped them not just, “get through the day,” but helped them enjoy their days working. And there’s a huge difference between the two.

So, how do you need to shift your thinking? What problems in your work need to be seen with gratitude? And do you need to take an inventory of how your customers feel when they are done working with you? I think it’s a great place to start and a great way to enjoy your work more! 

Bring it up around your team and see if it changes your culture and deliverables. Alright! Have a great day…and if I’m practicing what I’m preaching. Thank you for continuing to listen and allow us the opportunity to keep delivering content like this to business owners. It really is a gift to us and a joy to keep doing it. Take care!

If you have ever been interested to see a group of business owners conduct a communal eye roll, bring up the topic of bonus and incentives.

A few years ago we had a client who decided to reward their team from a banner year and forego distributing a substantial six-figure margin to himself and his partner.  There was no expectation created for this one-off distribution.  

It was a $200,000 sum that would be distributed to around 25 employees… you can do the math.  Not bad.  

The response?

Crickets.  

Of the 25 employees, there was a thoughtful “thank you” from three, a casual “thank you” from a few more, and crickets from everyone else.

To add insult to unexpected injury, the next day an employee came in and confessed, “I just got a job offer to go make $10k more per year and I don’t know what to do…”

Candidly, when calculating an employee's compensation, most owners in businesses with less than 50 employees have not considered the additional investment of bonus or incentive outlays.  When the thought finally arrives the plan is usually built from a position of fear rather than a position of joy, celebration, and sharing.  

In other words, “What can I do to make these employees feel more valued so they don’t leave!”

Most owners wish to generously share in some of the margin that has been created over and above what has been budgeted for base compensation and commission.

There is a chasm that exists that almost renders any over-and-above distribution as challenging at best, frustrating, and divisive at worst.

Owners are forced to think of the business finances in terms of the net…what is left over after all responsibilities are payed out.

Employees are often time locked in on the gross… the big numbers that come in at the top or total sales.  

An employee can do math in their head and determine the total sales of either their efforts, or the total sales of the company and think, “Well, look how much I generated for the business, and all I get is my base with a little extra (or sometimes no extra at all).”

The owner looks at the math spelled out on the profit and loss statement, the cash balances in the bank account, and the budget of projected expenses and revenues for the coming year and thinks, “How in the world can we afford to pay out any additional and not be cash-strapped for the future?”

It is a silent stalemate between owners and employees, top line and bottom line, perceptions, and expectations.  

How can employees see additional compensation as motivation and incentive, instead of seeing it as an expectation?

How can owners see additional compensation as a budgeted item to be shared and joyfully extended, instead of seeing it as a fear-motivated mortgage that taxes future growth opportunities (remember, marginal cash is the prime fuel for future growth).  

Most owners desire and have motivation to extend extra-compensation to reward over-and-above effort and to show additional appreciation.

There are however three primary negative motivations for the build-out and deployment of these plans that usually result in a lack of health and longevity. 

Owner guilt is where the owner feels unwarranted guilt for having access to the net income of the business while employees do not.  

What is often missed during boom times is that the owner must use a portion of the net to stack in reserves for when the business has negative net income and wants to continue employing personnel even though the business cannot “afford” it in a particular month of the year.

Another negative motivation for deployment of extra-compensation plans is an owner’s fear that an employee will leave.  It is a crucial principle that all businesses be built to weather a valuable team member leaving the roster.  A business will never be bulletproof from the handicap of losing great talent… but it can be prepared on how to respond.  

Businesses must be cautious about being held hostage by one highly valuable employee; it can damage morale and cash-strap a small business for future opportunities.

A final negative motivation for extra-compensation plans are employee demands in a vacuum of understanding the full scope of the business finances.   

Financial literacy in a business is key to building consensus and understanding around incentive compensation and bonuses.  A two step approach will aid employees in understanding the basics of business finances.

The first of the two steps to financial literacy is communicating with all employees that a dollar is not a dollar because…

• A dollar out is always more than a dollar (think when you pay for a sandwich that costs $9.95…you will pay more than $9.95 with taxes, tip, delivery, time spent, etc.)

• A dollar in is always less than a dollar (think when you receive a payment for $9.95…you will send the majority of that $9.95 to other people before you get to keep what is left over)

The second of the two steps to financial literacy is communicating with all employees that business finances are reviewed in a past, present, and future tense.  

The profit and loss statements and balance sheets reveal what has happened (past).

The subdivided bank accounts and level two dashboards reveal what is happening (present).

Simple budgets and pro formas give insight into what will happen in the future assuming the inputs hold true (future).  

Reminding employees that a significant part of financial literacy is assuming what may happen (future) and so not all hoped-for elements of compensation can be guaranteed.  

Communication of preparation, purpose and payout are the three priorities of creating an incentives program that can yield the hoped for results (notice the use of “can” and not “will”...there will continually be volatility around this issue).

First, in communicating purpose, it is helpful to understand what these programs exist for.

What is a bonus?  Without being punchy or rude, a bonus is simply a bonus, a cherry on top, an unexpected treat, and added benefit that displays generosity.  That’s it.

Bonuses should never be extended for baseline job role responsibilities, for showing up regularly and on time.  

It is not uncommon to overhear someone say, “Well, I’ve been here for 12 years, I should get…”

You have been compensated fairly and regularly for 12 years, that is what you have received.  A bonus is undeserved extra.  No one should ever… ever expect a bonus and should never base any portion of their personal budget on an anticipated bonus.  

A bonus is a bonus.   

The purpose of incentive programs is to incite (same root) an action. 

Most compensation opportunities above base should have the spirit of an incentive compensation in contrast to bonus or “profit sharing” (btw, profit sharing can be a dangerous term, and in some states place the business in a vulnerable legal positon).  What is the business trying to incite, to encourage, to stir up in addition to the baseline job roles and responsibilities?  

Incentive compensation carries an over-and-above idea of performance over-and-above the base job role.  

There are multiple ways to structure incentive compensation plans that all yield various outcomes.  

A few structures of notable mention are…

• A simple lump sum based on a percentage of an employees base salary based on hitting target profit

• Top line percentage of sales based on total volume

• Bottom line percentage of sales based on net income per sale after job costing

• Monthly or quarterly target incentives based on sales, or other measurable activities 

Regardless of the structure you decide, there are a few crucial questions to ask as you prepare for an incentive structure.

1. What will be incentivized?

2. How will it be tracked?

3. What flexibility does the program have to adjust if it is counterproductive either to the team or to the business? 

4. How will the incentive dollars be set aside to ensure profitable payout? (i.e. subdivided bank account?)

5. When and how will it be paid out?

6. How will it be well-communicated when it is paid out to achieve the desired outcome?

Every incentive payout should come with added communication both the celebrate the payout and to add a subtle reminder that this is over-and-above and you should cautiously budget your life based on this pay out. 

One final thought, all incentive structures should be considered to be subject to change at any time, and at least reviewed and updated annually.  You are not required to be held hostage by a bad incentive compensation structure…it will not only ruin the business, but ruin opportunities for each employee.  Don’t allow the benefit of one to backfire and cause the detriment of many.  

Incentive structures can be a value add to a business and to a team IF it is well-communicated, held with open hands to adjust over time, and generously given and received. 

For six years Ashley and I coordinated the meeting of a group of young men who met weekly during the school year.  Some weeks there were four, and others there were sixteen.  All between 15 and 18 years of age and all at different stages of maturity.  

We walked these young men through a variety of discussions, situations, and scenarios and even adapted a five stage growth pyramid for each to understand where they were at in their level of maturity.  

For these young men we relayed the identification of those stages as 

Boy
Adolescent
Man
Mentor
Patriarch

Upon introduction many of the young men in our group presumed that age was the entry point to each stage.  Turn 13 and you become an adolescent.  Turn 18 and you become a man.

One astute young man asked a resonating question around our communal fire pit, “at what age do you become a mentor?”

It was akin to asking, “at what year do you become an expert in your field?”

In 1964 US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart was providing an opinion on the use of obscenity in the public square  in the State of Ohio’s  case vs. Jacobellis who had been reprimanded for showing what was considered by some to be an obscene movie.  

Justice Stewart explains, “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…”

We will certainly do our best to layout helpful marks of maturity within a civil society, and yet maturity can be validated in part under the mantra of “I know it when I see it.”

My response to the young man asking at what age you scale the stages of manhood?  I asked, “have you ever seen a 19 year old boy walking around in a 54 year old body?”

He understood a primary principle of maturity:

Maturity equals maturity.

Age equals age.

You can have age without maturity.

You can have some maturity without age.

You cannot have full maturity without the combination of age and wisdom.

Wisdom is a cocktail of time, understanding, trial, error, learning, teaching, consideration and circumspect, humility, confidence, and curiosity.

Wisdom gone right is shrewd and helpful.

Wisdom corrupted is deception and gaslighting.

The secret to wisdom is this…GO PURSUE WISDOM!

How do we know what to pursue, or what a wise person, a mature person even looks like?

Here are NINE marks of maturation that we can pursue ourselves and begin looking for in others.  These marks do not prove full maturity, but simply a pursuit of maturity at some particular mile marker on the highway.  

First, a maturing person is someone who has written and defined principles (mission, values) for their life.

We all like to think that writing things down and defining “purpose” in our lives is good for the self-help section at Barnes and Noble, but in real life we can never find time for that.

The maturing person makes time to articulate the things that drive them and the things they value. 

Our family has a drive to create space and be a light through adventure, wisdom, and time around the table.

One of the more sacred spots in our day to day is any table we find ourselves at together whether it be our dinner table in Bluffton, a bleacher seat in Winston-Salem, a tray table in row 31 seat C, D, and E somewhere over the Atlantic, or a restaurant table in Cinque Terre.  The table is an indicator for us to limit distractions, share peaks and pits, discuss a wide range of recent events and future plans, and to play 3 rounds of a twitchy card game.

It’s written, we talk about it, and it has become a habit at this point.

If you don’t write them down, they do not exist. 

Second, the maturing person invests a bulk of time into a recurring “thing” (Reps): 

Distraction has become chaos’ tool of choice in our modern battle to fight.  Desire is rarely the enemy that keeps us from progressing to expert status.  We have a desire to fly planes, learn a language, love yoga, travel to Siberia, or hike the Cascades.  

Distraction then hijacks desire in mid-flight rendering us aloof and frustrated not being able to achieve that thing we know would satisfy and re-energize.  

While at the Chick Fil A mothership in Peachtree City, GA we heard a recurring idiom that for a while felt like classic corporate goofiness and then over time was sobered up to a well trained conviction; “Full Time…Best Effort”.  

It’s one thing to “be at work” all day vs. “working all day”.  

While we are at work all day, distraction begins hovering like sand gnats on a warm May afternoon at a southern coastal ball field.  It nips, bites, frustrates, until we either leave, or take measures to battle against.  

Three hours at work is not the same as working for three straight hours. 

One gives the allusion of maturity.  The other implements boundaries which lead to maturity and exponential value to you and the people you impact.

When you mature to give your full time…best effort, choosing not to work in a short series of fits and starts, you are setting the stage for a mass accrual of reps in a given task or skillset providing you a valuable path to expertise and value.

Immaturity always welcomes distraction.  

The third mark of a maturing person reveals a sober judgment and intuition spending time looking at a “thing” from multiple angles.  

For most of my life I didn’t “get” art.  People would sit and look, observe, think, contemplate, review, change angles and keep looking.

“What are they looking at?”, I would think with disdain and arrogance.

Perspective is a hallmark in appreciating great art.  Today I would accept an invitation into just about any display of artistic creation.  One of my favorite art displays is the small, dark Museo Leonardo Da Vinci.  A two minute walk from the infamous Duomo in Florence is a unique museum displaying recreations of da Vinci’s drawings.  

Da Vinci was a prolific illustrator drawing fine details of human anatomy, mechanical machinery, and novel tools.  Many of these drawings were never manufactured into tangible instruments.  The da Vinci museum displays actual (in some cases life size) creations of da Vinci’s drawings like a tank, a flying machine and others. 

These tools in essence jump off the page into real life and the museum gives you a unique opportunity to look at aa Vinci’s mind and work from multiple angles and perspectives.  What might have seemed hideous or impractical on paper is now meaningful and unique when built in real life.  

Maturity is making the time to walk around and see the various angles of a thing not in hopes of proving your opinion, but instead to reformulate your convictions with great understanding.  

The fourth mark of a maturing person is situational awareness; the ability to “read the room” knowing who is in the room, when to act and how to act.

Walk down a terminal in most major airports and he will be nearby, the guy with the bluetooth headset talking as if Nine Inch Nails are playing a live set at the next gate down and he’s got to make sure the person on the other end can hear everything he has to say.

Your response, “READ THE ROOM”.

Solitude is helpful, isolation less so.  We (yes, even introverts) live in a communal society with shared spaces.  It serves us well to read the room and respond in kind to the dynamics of that room.  

If people are tired, frustrated, jet lagged, in a hurry, delayed, short-fused and in need of space and peace, probably best not to add volume to that chaos.  Read the room.

If people are energized, fired up, ready to storm the hill and score the winning touchdown, probably best not to reveal your inner Eeyore.  Read the room.

There is a time and place for everything and the maturing person is willing to reveal their “true self” in moments where their true self will be invited and welcomed.  

Read the room.

A hallmark of situational awareness is the ALL important SELF-awareness.  Spending time discovering the inner workings of yourself will open up a world of insight and aha’s as to why you are the way you are, do the things you do, and act the way you act.

Maturity in self-awareness never uses what you have discovered as a crutch to excuse preference.  “Well, I’m an ‘S’ on the DISC so you shouldn’t ask me to do that.”  Or, “I have no Tenacity on the Working Genius so you can’t expect me to have that done so quickly.”

Profiles and enneagram numbers are helpful; these are third party tools that give us objective insight into the intangible parts of our personality.  As you learn, the mature person asks, “what are the things that I naturally love to contribute, and what are the things that I need to be aware that I am not as prone to so I can push through those areas when needed?”

Maturing people realize that Jim Rohn was right, “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” 

In fact, you are likely the average of the five books you read, the five foods you eat, the five songs you listen to, and the five things you spend your money on.

A new rhetorical question that we are going to begin adding to our hiring process is this, “if I asked you to setup a dinner with the five people you spend the most time with, would you be excited for me to meet with them?”

Life and business necessarily intersect.  Who you are out there, is who you will be in here.  

Run with chaos out there, and you will want to burn the building down here.  Run with wisdom out there, and you will want to build up the culture in here.  

Who are the five people you spend the most time with?  Would I enjoy dinner with them?

The sixth element of a maturing person is they feel compelled by gratitude to reinvest the wisdom they have received into others. 

This reinvestment is less about waiting until you have hit a threshold of wisdom to start giving that wisdom away, and more about immediately teaching the wisdom you have to the people you interact with immediately.

Did you learn something today?  Use it today and teach it today.

Seneca, the Roman Philosopher said, “while we teach, we learn”.  

Benjamin Franklin said, “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.”

In just a few minutes, I will involve you in an exercise that will help teach the things I’m learning so that we can all grow and perpetuate the wisdom to our co-workers, partners, families, and friends.  

The maturing person is always teaching out of the gratitude they have for being taught. 

The seventh mark of a maturing person are the stress-tests they’ve endured.  

Our family loves to hike, to walk along trails in the woods with no distractions and to simply look around and take it all in…to see what is out there and allow our minds to voyage into peaceful places.  

My son has a bazaar tradition when we are hiking in the woods, if he sees a tree he thinks is dead or dying he will work to “truck the tree”.  He’ll give it a few pushes casually to see if the tree is vulnerable and off balance; to see if it has some “give”.

After a few pushes he then makes a highly scientific judgment call to determine that tree’s “truckability”.  Can he make that tree fall if he were to deliver a linebacker like form tackle to its trunk? 

Mis-judge the tree and the tree wins whilst you get an Uber ride to the Orthopaedics office.  Judge correctly and you feel like a dominant predator of the woods knocking down trees with your bare shoulders.  

The maturing person has been pushed, pressed, and had tested through a variety of trials and tests both personally and professionally.  It is unreasonable and naive to think that you will live life on Lake Placid, where your waters will always be smooth and your skies will always be blue.

That testing is a gift because it breeds and develops endurance.  Endurance then works itself into hope, into a light at the end of a tunnel that is opportunity, life, conviction, belief, and satisfaction.  It is said that having hope will never disappoint.  

The maturing person will be aware of their response when they are rejected, or when they win.

Notice the maturing person may or may not respond perfectly to rejection or to winning, but they are aware of their response and the impact that response has on themselves and on others around them.

Rejection is fertile ground for shame.  Brene Brown has been studying shame for decades and describes shame as an “intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.”

Each of us has unique shame triggers, events that happen that open the door for that intensely painful feeling because our flaws have been revealed.

You could have just received a stern response, a cross glance, a critique on your work, a roll of the eyes in response to your contribution, or a harsh pushback from a client.  

Maybe your Dad only calls when he needs something or your Mom still treats you like you were 8 years old.

Maturity is not never feeling rejection.  Maturity is being aware of how you feel when you are rejected and then intentionally using emotional tools to grow from that rejection instead of self-medicating with rage, anger, return shame, substances, or loneliness. 

Victory and winning are equally as important.  When you win, how do you win?  Maturity will always lead with humility, joy, satisfaction, and gratitude.  Maturity will never thrive in an environment of arrogance, stand alone pride, gaslighting, and trash talking.

Humility is the currency of the wise.  On par with self-awareness, Shakespeare “A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.”

We are told it is the “foolish things of the world that are used to shame the wise, and the weak things of the world to shame the strong.”

A ninth mark of a maturing person is how they respond to authority, to coaching, and to the less fortunate.

The coaches you remember are the coaches that were hard, the ones who demanded more, and who were convinced that you had more to give.

Dr. David Crutchley was a professor of mine in graduate school.  I studied more for his classes than I did anyone else’s in the history of my education.  I never scored above a B minus on any exam or paper I turned into him.

Frustrated I tried to reason with him as to why I earned higher grades.  His response echoed, “I would rather you get a C in my class and walk away having truly learned, than for you to ace my class and to learn nothing.”

A life of 5.0’s and 10 out of 10’s on everything is a life that is ultimately not helpful towards resilience.  

Karen Arnold, a researcher who followed 81 High School Valedictorians came to an eye-opening conclusion:

“Even though most (valedictorians) are strong occupational achievers, the great majority of former high school valedictorians do not appear headed for the very top of adult achievement arenas….Valedictorians aren’t likely to be the future’s visionaries . . . they typically settle into the system instead of shaking it up.”

This is not license to not work hard, to not grow in diligence, and to not give great effort.  This is motivation to seek and appreciate hard coaching, serious feedback, and honest insight.  

Remember, the launching point into a life of wisdom is to simply GO LOOKING FOR IT.  If you find someone willing to do the hard, emotionally taxing work of giving you honest feedback, GO SIT WITH THEM and go get wisdom.  

Wisdom will be the road sign to maturity.  

Before English was widely spoken in the far corners of the globe, Latin was the lingua franca for much of the European world from the days of the Roman Empire into the middle centuries.

Latin stands at the root of many of our English words and offers us contextual insight into the flavor of our language.

Some Latin words proved so powerful in the fullness of their meaning that we simply adopted them without alteration into our common language.

Such it is with the financially laced Latin phrase pro forma.

With past-centric financial statements like profit and loss and balance sheets, it is helpful to see what-was in the lifecycle of our business.  

With the power of subdivided bank accounts and the Level Two Dashboard merging the perspectives of real-time cash, real-time receivables, and real-time payables, it is helpful to see what-is in the current state of our business in real cash.

We need the what-could-be picture to help us with a complete past, present, and future snapshot of our business.  

The pro forma is a common financial statement with powerful insights.

Pro forma literally means “as a matter of form(ality)”.  In other words, if you want to know the hypothetical future of an element of your business, especially a financial element, then create a form or a formality and run hypothetical scenarios.

The pro forma allows for such scenarios and provides powerful insight.  The downside is that it takes time and focus.  It feels unproductive because it is a future that is not promised.

It is the perfect work and effort given by an executive leader looking to have proximity to the business. 

The good news for a pro forma is that when you have the initial foundation of calculation built on a simple spreadsheet, you can continue running scenarios with often nothing more than a few tweaks to the calculator each time.

Here are some of the key areas you would implement and utilize a pro forma:

• Determining the compensation of a new hire

• Discovering impact to the bottom line through any role (new or existing)

• Uncovering future revenue and or expenses projections based on anticipated sales

• Future plan your product inventory (or billable hour inventory in a service business) and availability based on seasonality

• To simulate a variety of “what if” scenarios with business finances, personnel, and production

A simple pro forma is often the first step to answering the question, “what would happen if…”  If we hire that person?  If generated that revenue?  If we stocked up on that inventory?  If we saw a 10% reduction or a 20% increase in sales?

There are a few basic elements needed to build a simple pro forma calculator for your business.

First, you will need to define the purpose of the particular pro forma calculation.  An example purpose may be to answer, “What is the financial impact to the business of hiring a new person?”

Next, define what categorical outcomes the pro forma will provide… what is the ultimate result or number you are looking for?  In our example, the “financial impact” means looking at the net income of the business if we hire the person and they receive a compensation of X and produce a work-product of Y.

Once you have your ultimate result defined then begin to work backwards to fill in the gaps of values (inputs) you will need to know in order to calculate a final result.

Typical foundational cells or values to include in a compensation pro forma are:

• Base compensation values

• Incentive compensation (bonus) values

• Any other expenses (overhead, etc.) values

• Type(s) of product or service(s)

• Average ticket price of product(s) or service(s)

• A spread of months and years to run your scenarios (Year One/Month One, Year One/Month Two, etc.)

Pro formas can actually be quite addictive as you become equipped with greater objective information to make decisions in a constantly moving subjective climate.  

A pro forma is best situated within a business that runs the RPMs of great leadership.

A culture of repetition ensures that the necessary communication feedback loops are in place to regularly run pro formas for decision-making.

A culture of predictability ensures that the results of the pro formas find a home in the decision-making process.  

A culture of meaning ensures that the decisions made based in part on pro forma generated data is properly and appropriately integrated into the day to day aligned with the vision, the mission, and the values of the business. 

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!

Are you working IN your business or ON your business? Do you have all of the foundational elements that will liberate you from the business chaos?  Take the assessment to find out which areas you can grow and improve on. 
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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.  

Join Patrice Miles, BOP Business Coach, and Jessica Van Brunt from Van Brunt & Company, as they discuss Mastering Profit First for Financial Freedom on the latest Tuesday Tools On Purpose podcast!

Learn how to manage cash flow effectively, boost your profits, and create long-term financial stability for your business.

Contact information:
Patrice Miles
Business Coach, Business On Purpose
patrice@mybusinessonpurpose.com
Discovery Call:
https://bit.ly/patricediscovery

Are you working IN your business or ON your business? Do you have all of the foundational elements that will liberate you from the business chaos? Take the assessment to find out which areas you can grow and improve on.
Take our Healthy Owner Business Assessment HERE➡️ http://bit.ly/healthybusiness1

SIGN UP for our Newsletter HERE ➡️ https://www.boproadmap.com/newsletter

For blogs and updates, visit our site HERE ➡️ https://www.mybusinessonpurpose.com/blog/

LISTEN to the Business On Purpose Podcast HERE ➡️ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-business-on-purpose/id969222210

SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube channel HERE ➡️ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbPR8lTHY0ay4c0iqncOztg?sub_confirmation=1

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.

Ick... that’s what most Owners AND team members think when they hear the dreaded phrase, “Performance Review”.

To the Owner, you might as well have said, “Hey, you want to spend loads of hours preparing for an uncomfortable discussion that will be totally worthless?”

To the team member, you might as well have said, “Hey, would you like for me to stick a hot poker in your ear?’

Truth is that Performance Reviews are very rarely an actual review of performance and are more often than not a mis-matched reflection of previous work with no clear outcomes nor forward-facing objectives.

Are they even necessary?

We would like to propose a different type of review... an actual PERFORMANCE REVIEW!!!

It’s the same words with a completely different method and purpose.

Ultimately, the Owner wants the team member to do what the business needs, to accurately assess the team member and how they are doing relative to what the customer and the business needs them to do in their role and beyond.

The team members will want the question answered, “am I doing what is needed and beyond, and what can I get even better at?” 

We’re going to make this quick because we want it to be intentionally simple.

You need FIVE tools for a great culture of performance, and for reviewing the performance.  In fact, these tools will not only be used on Performance Review Day but EVERY DAY!

The very first tool you need for great evaluation of performance are the unique core values of your business.  The values are those filters for great decision-making, and the curbs along the side of the road keeping you in bounds towards the vision.

It is possible to have great performance and effort misaligned with the values which will lead the team away from the vision.

Your unique core values serve as an anchor for each team member to ensure that all performance is progress-based performance that ultimately leads towards the vision.

Next, each team member needs a written Job Role.  

If you have not already been through our module on Job Roles, please refer to that module and make sure that EVERY SINGLE team member in your business has a role, is clear on the role, is relentlessly trained on the role, and is reminded of the role.  

YES, all of those things I just mentioned.

“But I showed them the role when they started!”  Yes, and assuming that you are hiring humans, we all need to be reminded regularly...even you.

The third tool needed to review great performance is a simple 12-week plan or whatever consistent goal-setting tool you use in your business.  

The goals you set throughout the year should be tracked for their implementation and effectiveness towards the vision.  

Again, refer back to our module on goal setting with the 12-week plan and IMPLEMENT!

Finally, you need a repetitive series of one-to-one check-ins to reflect back on.  

These one-to-one check-ins should occur no less than once monthly and should include core questions such as…

1. Where have you seen a true story this week that lives out our mission or values?

2. What are you seeing/thinking?

3. What blind spots do you see?

4. What do you need from me?

5. Here is what I see/need from you…

Ask those questions sincerely and repetitively, document the responses, and that will give you excellent content when it is time to conduct your performance reviews.

One more tool that will ensure that your performance reviews actually happen at a time that is valuable to you and your team members…your calendar.  

Go ahead and set the dates on your calendar in November of the previous year for the following year's performance review dates so there is no surprise.  

Here is how these tools will play out to create a Performance Review that actually works and doesn’t suck the life out of your days!

At least once per year, the you (or the immediate manager) will sit down with the team member during Performance Review day and walk through the performance review template; reflecting on how the team member has lived out the core values, how they have met (or not) their top 3 job role tasks, how they completed their priority goals throughout the year, and listening back in on the general themes from your no-less-than-monthly one-to-one check-ins.  

There is a final section in the template for you as leader to provide feedback on how the team member can grow in their role over the next 6 to 12 months.    

The values ensure each person is in-bounds with their performance aligned to the vision.

The role ensures each person is owning the tasks needed to help the team move forward.

The goals ensure that each person has a hyper-focus on any adjustments that are required throughout the year. 

The check-ins ensure that each person has a platform for feedback and coaching.

The calendar ensures that we make the time for each of these items.  

By the way, any gaps in performance require YOU as the leader to take ownership of the disparity first.  How will you ever coach the mindset of ownership if you are unwilling to own it yourself?

There is one more tool... the missing piece to the power of pushing towards great performance reviews for you and your team... it’s 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 proper processes, you will have greater clarity in the WHO of your business.

Now go live out your business on purpose!

Multiple Bank Accounts are a nonnegotiable for a growing, thriving business. We've received a lot of pushback on this one, so let's talk about it.

Business On Purpose is here to talk financials! Scott Beebe and Thomas Joyner are giving us an overview on subdividing bank accounts, whether or not the "it's so much work for my bookkeeper!" is a good enough excuse, and why P&Ls may not tell you everything you need to know. 

If you're wanting peace of mind around your businesses' financials: profitability, "do we have enough for taxes?" and growth planning, you need to listen to this episode! 

Are you working IN your business or ON your business? Do you have all of the foundational elements that will liberate you from the business chaos?  Take the assessment to find out which areas you can grow and improve on. 
Take our Healthy Owner Business Assessment HERE ➡️ https://www.boproadmap.com/healthy

SIGN UP for our Newsletter HERE ➡️ https://www.boproadmap.com/newsletter

For blogs and updates, visit our site HERE ➡️ https://www.mybusinessonpurpose.com/blog/

LISTEN to the Business On Purpose Podcast HERE ➡️ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-business-on-purpose/id969222210

SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube channel HERE ➡️ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbPR8lTHY0ay4c0iqncOztg?sub_confirmation=1

The irony of this training is the fact that I am writing the script while flying on a private plane from a secluded island in the Bahamas after spending 3 days spearfishing, eating, and hanging out with friends and clients.

That was a moment of privilege.

Spending your days with continual electricity is a privilege.  

If you are listening to this talk, you have privilege.

Privilege is “a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group”. 

A more direct definition is to be “exempt from an obligation from which others are subject.”  

How do you know if you are in a class of privilege?  Others shoulder a burden you don’t have to shoulder.  

It wastes our time to try and determine if we are privileged, and instead to ask “because we have privilege, what does that mean?” 

In the barren desert of the middle east, a man hears a message.  “I will bless (privilege) you so that you can be a blessing (offer privilege to others).”  

This training is about the so that.  

When you have privilege that goal is not to consume the privilege you have, but instead to inventory the privilege, proximity yourself among those who do and don’t have your privilege, and then offer privilege to others in a way that allows them to follow the same reinvestment strategies.

The problem with privilege is that we tend to see it as terminal; either it stops with us (because we consume but don’t re-invest, OR it stops with the direct person we share it with because they consume but don’t re-invest).

Brian Fikkert co-authored an aptly named and important book “When Helping Hurts” that opens our eyes to understand that when we have privilege, we want to share that privilege, and too often the privilege we share ends up doing more harm than if we would have just kept the privilege ourselves.

It would help to redirect the privilege discussion back into the context of Executive Leadership and tie privilege back to our definition: proximity to motivate a team to pursue the named future you see.

Let’s look at consuming and deploying privilege through three lenses of our definition.

First, privilege can bring proximity.

There is a template for leveraging the privilege of money to influence friendships.  Of course, we are not condoning nor suggesting bribes or payoffs.  Instead, you can choose to deploy your money in places that provide you proximity for connection.

We were at a resort with our family, clearly a place of privilege…it was a once in a lifetime type of trip.  This resort puts us in immediate proximity to people who had the same or more privilege than we had.  

We get to talking with some of the other vacationers and over time get the direct email of a very well-known and influential music industry executive who has put some of the greatest acts in the world on the stage.  We sat and watched a World Cup match with he and his young son and developed a relationship.  The inanimate tool of our money provided us with “a special right…granted or available only to a particular person or group.”  

It is good to consistently ask, “how can the privilege I have provide proximity to bring that privilege to others, or to provide new relationships that breed new privilege.”

Secondly, privilege can breed motivation.

When you have access to privilege you often have something someone else would like to have but is unable to attain.

Think about the privilege of a well-known athlete who is willing to step down from his throne of notoriety and sincerely show up to read a book to a Kindergarten class, or visit patients at a hospital and offer encouragement.

The athlete has the privilege of notoriety, influence, and voice…they offer that to those who do not and thus bring a unique motivation that might help that Kindergartner grow up to have a unique impact, or provide the motivation for the mental fight that a patient will need to conquer their disease.

Privilege reinvested breeds new and novel privileges that can be perpetuated.

Privilege consumed breeds bitterness, expectation, and myopic arrogance that pushes the privileged to think they are the ones responsible for their own privilege ignoring all of the investment of privilege that has been planted into their own lives.  

This training exists in part because we don’t want you to slowly become that.

You are too generous, and you are too intentional for your life to slowly devolve into arrogance and self-importance.

Thirdly, privilege helps to jump the various hurdles on the way to the named future that you see.  

I enjoy Guy Raz’ How I Built This Podcast…it is a fascinating look at the emotional inside of some of the world's most interesting businesses.

Towards the end of each podcast, he asked a staple question, “Does your success have more to do with luck, or with skill?”

I love the podcast, and I hate that question.

Remember the old adage, “the harder I work, the luckier I get.” 

When we have moments of momentum and success that we cannot explain we tend to call it luck.  Pausing to reflect we can actually align our “lucky moments” to moments of privilege; privilege that you had that connection, or were in that specific location.  

There are things we coordinate or manipulate for our benefit, and there are things that “just happen”.  Pay close attention, ask yourself, “would this have happened if I did not have access to a certain privilege that others don’t.”

One day I might meet Carrie Underwood… it would feel like “luck”, but a short audit of my relationships and privileges reveals that I had the privilege of being a paying member of a mastermind group, that mastermind group offered me the privilege of meeting and getting to know a very talented guitarist and Dobro player, and that very talented guitarist had the privilege of being the Dobro player for Carrie Underwood.

What looks like “luck” to most is actually privilege dressed in a lack of awareness and context.  

History’s wealthiest and wisest person whose privilege was well documented once declared, “all is vanity and chasing after wind.”  

When we make privilege the end game, we become the walking dead.

When we look at privilege as an investment to enjoy and reinvest… we make time for what matters most.  

Finally, privilege can and will be a load to bear.  Share that load with people who have wisdom.  The word “team” has its roots in the concept of a team of pack horses…a unified group pulling heavy loads in a specific direction.

Privilege requires building a team to help advise, direct, and hold account your privilege so that it remains a value to all, and not just you.  

A business owner had accrued a significant sum of money in a profit account that he had setup to build up as his business grew.

As we were reviewing progress I told him, “Congratulations on how you have grown that account.”

He looked at me with a blank stare and responded, “just one more problem I’ve got to handle.”

When you have resources, it is your responsibility to manage those resources.  Of course, most people are bent to desire more instead of less, and the more you have, the more you are required to distribute.

The ultimate question you must answer is “what will you do with what you have” knowing that your response to that question will reveal the desire and state of your ultimate motivation.

Be mindful, slow, and wise with the privilege that you have.

On the outskirts of Atlanta, we drove past the waterfall, walked through the front doors, and stepped into a world of positivity and smiles.  Each delivered through a well-rehearsed cocktail of sincere stories that provided a peek into why this “chicken business” is a homebase of hope and life-change for so many. 

One small business is a powerful, accessible opportunity for so many teenagers and adults to engage in their community, develop relationships, solve problems, earn income, and develop powerful and usable skills. 

A collection of aligned small businesses, if well led and obsessively focused on vision, mission, and values, has the opportunity to scale the hope and life-change beyond one or two locations.  

This is the opportunity for Chick-Fil-A.  

Indeed, their chicken sandwich is remarkable, use of “my pleasure” noticeable, and waffle fries laced with a special serum of deliciousness - and their support of local small business is a Master’s class of intentional scale.  

It is not lost on the Support Center staff that their primary purpose is the support of the almost 500,000 team members among the chicken-diaspora across North America (and soon to be other International markets).  

You cannot walk a meaningful distance in their appropriately named Support Center without confronting a well-broadcast corporate purpose, mission, unique set of values, and foundational principles.  

Purpose is as pervasive as a number one combo meal on a Saturday after the little league game or dance competition.  Purpose is intentionally over-communicated with three distinctives that were tangible and delivered in a kind, sometimes goofy package of care as defined by competence and warmth. 

Truett Cathy took one restaurant and built the systems and the team to scale that one restaurant to nearly three thousand.  That is good news for business owners with one location or three…with two employees or thirty.  

What scales up, can also scale down.

There are three simple elements on display at Chick-Fil-A central for the exponential spread of culture that require the grit of an entrepreneur and the roll-your-eye goofiness most entrepreneurs struggle to hurdle. 

The first of these three simple elements is consistency.

One task completed with consistency over a long period of time makes a mark.

One task completed without consistency is a fad with little impact.

Inherent within consistency is the concept of a fanatical and firm footing, a concrete base with very little movement that can be trafficked relentlessly.  Faith is placed in solid things because reliability, albeit goofy, beats the in-the-moment hipster vibe of trendy unsteadiness.   

How can Chick-Fil-A ensure the now famed “my pleasure” is repeated millions of times daily?  

Relentless consistency…even when it is goofy.

The second element that leads to the exponential spread of culture is amplification.

Pandemics spread through amplification; genetic copies spread from carrier to carrier at high speeds with consistency. 

Your local municipal water system might be distributed through amplification.  A series of pump stations systematically placed throughout the distribution channels of the pipes that run throughout your city or town.  Each pump offers a boost to the system so that the home furthest from the source has the same pressure as the home closest to the source.

Messages too spread through amplification.  A small group of message carriers spread their consistent message to other carriers over and over again.

That message requires the third element that leads to the exponential spread of culture…repetition.

“Repetition is the mother of all learning”; a refrain my first manager would share with me…repetitively.

I’ve heard it said, “if you are not annoying someone with your message, then you know your message is not landing.”

We tend to look down on repetition as non-innovative.  Truthfully, our real struggle is with repetition void of meaning, warmth, sincerity, care, empathy, and intentionality.

Business owners look around and wonder why the big companies are “lucky” to have great culture.  At the Chick-Fil-A Support Center, consistent, amplified, and repetitive messaging is…well, consistent, amplified, and repetitive.

Not requiring a degree, or the “right conditions”, business owners big and small have an opportunity to rinse and repeat. 

 Business On Purpose Founder Scott Beebe and Director of Coaching Thomas Joyner talked about the importance of Vision. 

Know the answers to the following questions:
➡️ What is vision?
➡️ How does it differ from your mission and values?
➡️ Why is knowing where you're headed important and what does that do for your team?
➡️ Lack of vision from business owners, why does it matter?
➡️ Why do you think it's become cliche or stale and really lack the punch it needs to have?
➡️ Why does having accountability from a source outside of your business important? 
➡️How does it get you where you need to go?

WATCH THE VIDEO to learn more!

Are you working IN your business or ON your business? Do you have all of the foundational elements that will liberate you from the business chaos?  Take the assessment to find out which areas you can grow and improve on. 
Take our Healthy Owner Business Assessment HERE ➡️ https://www.boproadmap.com/healthy

SIGN UP for our Newsletter HERE ➡️ https://www.boproadmap.com/newsletter

For blogs and updates, visit our site HERE ➡️ https://www.mybusinessonpurpose.com/blog/

LISTEN to the Business On Purpose Podcast HERE ➡️ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-business-on-purpose/id969222210

SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube channel HERE ➡️ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbPR8lTHY0ay4c0iqncOztg?sub_confirmation=1

An influential teacher was slowly traveling towards his intended destination and along the way would make time to connect in a variety of towns.  

As is the case for most teachers, politicians, musicians, and artists of influence, this teacher had supporters… followers.

There was one controversial stop along the campaign route where the local population was more hostile to the teachers message. 

Argumentative conflict ensued.

The supporters immediately asked the teacher's permission to antagonize and put the locals in their place. 

The teacher said “no”.  In effect, he censured his supporters.

His supporters desperately wanted to control the narrative…to make the locals either like the teacher and the message that they themselves liked, or else they wanted to burn the place down.

Instead, the teacher provided a model of having self-control and realizing that it is impossible to mandate conversion to any sort of message.  

Labor to control others and you will either get blind subjects or chaotic revolt.

Live under control guided by a defined vision, mission, and values of your leadership, and you will create well-equipped and well-intentioned supporters who have self-elected into your sphere of influence, or you will get people who self-elect out of your sphere.

Leading by controlling mandates that the leader be in a constant, exhaustive grind of devising new tactics of adherence.  

Manipulative strategy. 

The mission of a controlling leader morphs into a focus to find and retain a growing list of followers.  

The mission of an under-control leader is to equip the right willing supporter to go out and perpetuate the message.  

The leader who is controlling mandates and micro-manages the mandate and the method asking the right questions at the wrong times, or asking the wrong questions at the right times.

The leader who is under control sets a clear and repetitive vision (what the future destination looks like), constantly reminds the supporters of the ultimate mission (why they are doing what they are doing), and guides each supporter to think independently within the agreed upon values (the guardrails) to ensure alignment on mission…even though the method may vary.  

In full disclosure, I tend to lean towards controlling.  

Controlling the narrative, the method, and the outcome.

I am having to learn to set an overly clear picture of the destination (the vision), provide examples of how to get there, the guidelines for what the field of play looks like, and then extend trust to provide the freedom and latitude to allow each team member to run the plays they best think will get us to the endzone within the sidelines of the field we are playing on.

There is not one play that has been run that I (the controlling leader) don’t think can be run differently.  

A leader who is under control realizes the mechanics of the play are not important, but that the play is in bounds and moves us closer to the endzone. 

The controlling leader will never experience the freedom and joy of watching a team perform based on autonomy and proper equipment, but will be in a constant state of frustration because it will never be completed in the replicated method of the leader.

Just because it worked “back then” doesn’t mean it still works the same today.  

The leader who controls will be stuck in the small town trying to handle the uprising they have created through force and manipulation, and be deprived of the joy of their final destination.

The leader who is under control will share their offering, identify the supporters, and keep moving towards their ultimate destination.  

We recently hosted an online Masterclass on how to build your entire business on one sheet of paper.

Near the end of the Masterclass, a business owner lobbed this question into the chat window, “How do you ensure, your processes aren't stolen and replicated by employees who leave?”

The short answer is, “you don’t.”

Owning a business is risky, leading people is risky, serving customers and clients is risky, and bringing your product and service into an open market is risky.

What are some things you can do to ensure that others don’t “steal” your proprietary process?

First, legally it is always good to have each employee sign an employee agreement that has been drafted by a legal professional.

Within that agreement, there can be language and clause that reflects the desire to maintain “trade secrets" and proprietary process.  

Some would say that the agreement is as valuable as the paper it’s written on.  Maybe, however, you would rather have that signed in the rare case it would need to be referenced.  

Second, this is all the more reason to work diligently to create a culture where each contractor and employee has bought into the mission and has a desire to add value instead of extracting value to take elsewhere.  

Owners cannot take for granted that a job and a paycheck are good enough reasons to be engaged, and remain engaged.

The fruit of culture is a direct result of the ingredients that you put into the culture.  While the vision that culture is leading towards is largely at the determination of the owner, the methods towards that vision can be a powerful way to engage the team and to build longevity with each person.  

We all have a desire to leave our fingerprints of value-add to anything we do.

The best way to ensure that no one takes your process is to create a place they never wish to leave.

Finally, although the fear is real that someone could steal your process, the likelihood of their implementation is typically low.

YouTube hosts completely free content on how to do just about anything in the world.  Want to build a sprinter van?  It’s there.  Want to start a bookkeeping company?  The answers are there.

Truth is, our processes are actually not very proprietary.  Remember, “there is nothing new under the sun.”  Instead, there is implementation.  As Joe Calloway says, “vision without implementation is hallucination.”

Someone may take your process, and yet it will be hard to implement.

There is no competition to a well-run business in a needy and growing marketplace.  

Build an unleavable culture, and you will be even more incentivized to share your process. 

“Nobody wants to work anymore”...the problem is that has been said for well over 100 years now!

I saw a headline all the way back to 1894 declaring that “nobody wants to work anymore”.  This is not a new problem. 

If we’re not careful, our negativity will breed a culture where work is seen as…

• Cursed

• A means to an end 

• As a lifeless 9 to 5, tryin’ to make a livin’ 

• Hallucinating that it’s 5 o’clock somewhere

• Something to “take and shove it”

• Just another Manic Monday 

Work is deeper than that, more powerful than that

Work is an opportunity…

• Proverbs 12:11 - “A hard worker has plenty of food, but a person who chases fantasies has no sense.”

We say, “nobody wants to work anymore!”...when in reality they just don’t want to work for you because you are grumpy!

Instead, we need to build  A CULTURE WHERE PEOPLE DO WISH TO DO HARD THINGS!

There will always be a mountain to climb in building a culture of intentionality within your business.  

Business is hard…running a business is even harder.  

Let’s stop pretending that our circumstance is unique…because business is hard, business can also be good.

So what is the mountain of our time?  

Dr. Tim Elmore would argue that one primary element is the unprecedented generational diversity, we are experiencing because it is the number one topic that he is asked to speak on as a researcher of youth culture.  

How do you mix the soil of culture so that it is rich enough to handle the diversity of generational seeds being planted?  How do we mix that culture so that it makes the next generation…ALL generations, excited to work?

FIRST, WHAT IS CULTURE? 

Culture is not a business term…it is a biology term

Culture is a Petri Dish: what goes in the dish is what grows out of the dish

• Good in…good out (give examples)

• Bad in…bad out (give examples)

The culture of your business is a DIRECT RESULT of the ingredients that you allow to enter the mash bill.

Here are 4 ingredients to mix in the cocktail of a healthy business culture that the next generation will be excited to work in…

1. FAM Time: Team Meeting

2. 1. Must have a means of communication (Imagine if the underwater cables were cut between the US and Europe?)

   2. 1. STORY: Story written by Capt. George O. Squier in an article for The National Geographic Magazine in Jan, 1901 said, “the submarine (cable) is a powerful instrument of war, more powerful, indeed, than battleships and cruisers, since by its wonderful and instantaneous, communications of thought, it brings distant countries (team members) and colonies (teams) together in sympathy, which is the only true and permanent tie.”

         1. A culture that is missing the nutrient of human connection

      2. When communication is choppy, infrequent, unpredictable, or limited …you have missed opportunities and Low Morale

         1. Thought, ideas, implementation, updating process, engagement 

         2. Clarity, input, teamwork 

         3. The opportunity for sympathy and empathy…which is the “only true and permanent tie”
            
            

      3. When communication is repetitious, predictable, and meaningful…you have → 

The second thing that the next generation needs in order to work and lead? 

1. GET “LIT”: Line-Item Training

2. 1. Every sports team, every military command has one thing in common…if they aren’t playing a game or fighting  battle…they are practicing and preparing for one

      1. Your vacation policy?

      2. How to properly perform an electrical walk?

      3. How to post a bid schedule?

      4. How to job cost?

      5. How to identify an ideal client?

      6. How to properly dress?  

   2. When was the last time you trained your team on…

1. Admit the “L”

2. 1. The hallmark leadership trait of the older generation is defined by…

   2. 1. Stuffy

      2. Know it all 

      3. A “Chotch” - someone who is unpleasant to be around

      1. Find the Spotify playlist of someone younger than you and commit to listen 

      2. 1. Eminem - lose yourself in the moment, you own it you never ever let it go

         2. Post Malone - I was patient, aye, oh, Now I can scream that we made it, Now everyone, everywhere I go, they say 'gratulations…I pick up the rock and I ball baby, I’m looking for someone to call baby, but right now I’ve got a situation…

   3. Start learning new things

   4. Self-deprecation goes a LOOOOOONG way among a younger culture 

   5. ACTION → ask someone younger than you for their playlist, listen, and share what you heard

1. STAN the culture calendar

2. 1. “Stan” - be obsessed but not in a creepy way

The culture calendar is a business playsheet with scripted plays.

It is simple to build and will require you to think through a few different categories.

First, layout the months and dates by weeks at the top of your culture calendar.

Then, on the vertical column on the left hand side you will break this down into different categories.  We recommend starting with weekly, monthly, quarterly, twice-annually, and annually.  

In other words, what are the “business ingredients” you wish to make part of your culture each week, month, quarter, etc.

You don’t need to waste time and energy grumbling about how “nobody wants to work anymore”.  They just don’t want to work for grumps…they want to give all they’ve got to a great culture by…

1. FAM Time: Team Meeting

2. GET “LIT”: Line-Item Training

3. Admit the “L”

4. STAN the culture calendar

It was five days since I had called to check in on a contractor owner with no response.  

Finally, hoping everything was ok, I texted another check in, to his simple reply, “Honestly, when I said I work all the time I wasn't embellishing the truth. I just wrapped up another long day and headed home now.”  

That was on a Sunday night for a business that shouldn’t have much to do on the weekend.

For too many business owners, the harsh reality is that the business is owning them and it may be time to sell.  

There are three helpful filters to flush a decision through when timing a potential sale of your business.

First, do you have a desire?

Desire cedes ground to opportunity that has lured many business owners down the path of “profitable distractions” - where the potential of profit distracts from what the owner desires.  

Ownership is hard, and owners must have a continued desire to own and lead the business in a way that others desire to follow.  

Second, are you at a relational impasse?

Many owners are leading their business based on the expectation of generations before that this would “always be a family-run business”.  

There is no badge awarded to the longest-running family-owned enterprise; the odds are often stacked strongly against.  Each person has their own unique skill set and we should not assume that our children or kin either have the desire or the capability to run the business.  

It should be their dream and not yours.

The third filter to use when thinking about selling is to ask, “would others lead the business better than you?”

Life runs in seasons.  

The Byrd’s (quoting the Jewish Proverbs) remind us that there is “a time to plant and a time to pluck up.”

Just because you have owned your business for 10 years does not mean you need to own it for 40 years.  What season of life are you in?  What season of life is your business in?  

Merge those questions with desire and relationship and you will start to focus on the value and timing of selling your business.  

Builder Bookkeep: Construction Accounting Made Simple

Join Patrice Miles, BOP Business Coach, and Miller Bradford from Builder Bookkeep, as they discuss Construction Accounting for Builders and Remodelers on the latest Tuesday Tools On Purpose podcast!

Learn how to simplify bookkeeping, manage job costing, and keep your projects profitable.

Contact information:
Patrice Miles
Business Coach, Business On Purpose
patrice@mybusinessonpurpose.com
Discovery Call:
https://bit.ly/patricediscovery

Miller Bradford
Builder Bookkeep
https://builderbookkeep.com
miller@builderbookkeep.com

Are you working IN your business or ON your business? Do you have all of the foundational elements that will liberate you from the business chaos? Take the assessment to find out which areas you can grow and improve on.
Take our Healthy Owner Business Assessment HERE➡️ http://bit.ly/healthybusiness1

SIGN UP for our Newsletter HERE ➡️ https://www.boproadmap.com/newsletter

For blogs and updates, visit our site HERE ➡️ https://www.mybusinessonpurpose.com/blog/

LISTEN to the Business On Purpose Podcast HERE ➡️ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-business-on-purpose/id969222210

SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube channel HERE ➡️ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbPR8lTHY0ay4c0iqncOztg?sub_confirmation=1

"Recruiting And Hiring: The 4 Systems Every Homebuilder And Remodeler Owner Needs To Build The Right People That Builds The Right Business"
Thursday, February 2, 2023
Austin Build Expo
by Thomas Joyner
Director of Coaching
Business on Purpose

People, people, people! How do we find the right people to hire? How do we find ANY people to hire?

The Boomers retired early, and the emerging generations are much more selective in the work they choose. How can you find the right people, recruit them the right way, share the right vision, and then onboard them the right way that aligns with the right mission?

This life-changing and engaging 45-minute talk pulls from our work with hundreds of contractor owners that led to our proprietary and proven roadmap.

This roadmap will equip you to beat chaos with predictability and to build the team that will build the business to make time for what matters most.

"How Homebuilding and Remodeling Owners Attract The RIGHT People Like a Division 1 College Football Powerhouse"
National Association of Home Builders- International Builders' Show 2023- Las Vegas, NV
Wednesday, February 1, 2023
by Scott Beebe
Founder | Headcoach
Business On Purpose

As a Division 1 Football player in the powerful Southeastern Conference (SEC), Scott has seen firsthand the behind-the-scenes system that is being constantly updated and refined to ensure that athletically talented 16 and 17 adolescents choose the right team.

Remodeler and home builder owners are in a season of work where they have a choice: see the next generation as a hindrance with excuses like “they won’t work” or see this new generation as an opportunity to pivot with a renewed mindset like “I’m excited to see how they own the mission!”

There is a shortage of workers for the old-school methodologies, but there is no shortage of people willing to work… toward the right mission.

However, chaos creeps in, and owners feel they spend their days constantly putting out fires and cleaning up messes left by other people and resigning themselves to exhale in frustration, “It’s just easier if I do this myself.”

This life-changing and engaging 30-minute workshop pulls from our work with hundreds of owners and gets you on the path to building a powerhouse team.

You will be equipped to beat chaos with predictability and to build a business that brings stability, life, and time for what matters most.

"The Secret To Getting the Next Generation Excited To Work And Lead"
National Association of Home Builders- International Builders' Show 2023- Las Vegas, NV
Wednesday, February 1, 2023
by Scott Beebe
Founder | Headcoach
Business On Purpose

We’ve been led to believe the myth that a good custom home-building company culture is more “luck of the draw” and less “intentional sowing and fertilizing”. This eye-opening program will help to uncover what the next generation really wants and what elements lead to business health. Get clarity on the difference within the generations, how to listen and speak to your team with a compelling language, and what elements are needed for each team member to thrive day-to-day. Leave empowered with a tool that you can implement immediately, providing a clear roadmap to multi-generational engagement in the custom home-building workplace.

What does generational diversity mean? What challenges exist when multiple generations work closely together?

Learn about the solutions that you can implement to build a culture that attracts the right multi-generational team.

"Navigating Gen Z & Building a Company That Attracts the Right People"
National Association of Home Builders- International Builders' Show
Las Vegas, NV
Tuesday, January 31, 2023

Presented by:
Patrice Miles
Business Coach
Business On Purpose

 Over the course of meeting with hundreds of business owners about their coaching needs, we will be asked this question from time to time — What’s the difference between a business coach vs. a business consultant? And do I need to hire one of each?

Coaching and consulting are different, and there is value in both.

What’s the difference between a business coach vs. a business consultant

While these phrases are sometimes used interchangeably in everyday conversation, this is actually a misnomer.

A business coach's role (much like an athletic coach’s role) is to constantly research and study the “game” of business, work to develop playbooks, roadmaps, and techniques that each business owner and key leader (players) can follow, and then show up enthusiastically and repetitiously on a predetermined schedule to create the necessary push and conditioning through accountability and implementation.  

A coach will push the stagnate, temper the overenthusiastic, motivate the exhausted, learn from defeat, and celebrate growth.

A business coach works with the business owner and key leaders, both in season and out of season, and their outcomes are tied directly to the goals set out through long-term vision casting.

For a business coach, it is more important that they study and coach the foundation of business than it is that they have specific industry knowledge.

Business coaching by definition will be ingrained across all systems of the business.  Of course, there are situations where a business coach may drill down into specific niches of the business, for instance, a marketing coach, or a sales coach.

Business coaching tends to focus more on the accountability and implementation of long-term systems and processes, and less on short-term strategies that could change quickly.

Coaching is a long-term relationship that runs through the broad scope of emotional seasons of a business.  

The business consultant is typically a current or retired industry-professional with decades of experience within their given field.  If you own an ice cream shop, then you would hire an ice cream shop consultant.  If you own a steel rigging and erecting business, then you would hire a steel rigging and erecting consultant.  

The business consultant tends to bring a portfolio of best practices from their industry into a specific area of your business (i.e. accounting, or operational efficiency) and then advises on how to integrate those best practices into your day to day process. 

Both coaches and consultants analyze existing performance and trends, the consultant compiles findings with suggested solutions, the coach creates a game plan from studying the analytics and then creates a repetitious accountability schedule to push the owner towards results.  

Business consulting tends to focus more on mapping out a strategy of ideas and advising on those strategies, and less on the accountability of execution.  

Business consultants tend to work more on a “fly-in, fly-out” contractual agreement where they come in for a defined period of time, say 6 months or 12 months for example, and then their contract is fulfilled.

Business coach and a business consultant can work closely together, and both are invaluable to the growth and maturity of a business owner and their key leader(s).

We’ve found consultants to be more prevalent in larger companies (100 employees and above), and coaches to be more prevalent in small businesses (under 100 employees).

A third-party voice in your business is an irreplaceable resource that can provide you with clarity, lend you courage, and re-motivate you and your team back to the mission and vision that you once had.  

Macroeconomics are complicated.  Highly complex minds maneuver highly complex algorithms and data points to determine economic sea changes and tidal flows, the currents of which move entire societal habits.  

When the news channels report a sweeping new change or movement about this or that in the market, we are immediately programmed to assume the news piece directly affects us.  

At the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, John Elderidge released an unknowingly timely book entitled Get Your Life Back.  A key concept of his writing was the practice of “benevolent detachment”.  

Elderidge describes it this way on his blog, “Everybody has a junk drawer, that black hole for car keys, pens, paper clips, gum, all the small flotsam and jetsam that accumulates over time. Our souls accumulate stuff, too, pulling it in like a magnet. And so Augustine said we must empty ourselves of all that fills us, so that we may be filled with what we are empty of.  Over time I’ve found no better practice to help clear out my cluttered soul than the practice of benevolent detachment. The ability to let it go, walk away—not so much physically, but emotionally, soulfully.”

We are presuming that a recession for the global economy, or at least your national economy, means a recession for you.

You are wrong to assume that.

Some of our greatest small and large businesses were launched in the midst of recession.  And because much of a business's exponential growth comes during its first years, it would be silly to blindly buy into the broad narrative that recession equals bad.

A recession does not mean no business by and large…instead, a recession equals less business - but not for everyone.  

We have clients standing on the front step of a new year with realistic projections of already-contracted business for this year that yield growth - in a recession.  

Following the wisdom of Augustine, “let us empty ourselves of all that fills us so we may be filled with all that we are empty of.”

The pandemic years lulled many to sleep and turned many salespeople into order-takers (not all of course…but many) bellied up at the bar of new business deciding what they wanted and when they wanted it.

We have been emptied of hope and opportunity.  We have been emptied of hustle and proactive, forward-leading customer engagement.  

Instead, we have filled ourselves with the infinite scroll of reactionary firefighting responding to the latest, loudest fear-screamer believing that the end of business is near.  

Value-added commerce, trade, and transactions have been operating for centuries throughout the litany of cultures and societies.  We are microscopic players on a macroscopic world stage and it would do us well to walk outside and pay attention to the even more microscopic bird, Jesus the teacher reminded us it does not plant seeds, it does not harvest its food, it does not store its food and has all it needs.  

A recession provides the needed jolt to sharpen our focus, to not take for granted the work we have been invited into and built for.

A recession is often the push we need to lean forward, take our mission to the right people (marketing), make a mutual commitment to serve those people (sales), and fulfill that service within the values that we have laid out (operations). 

A recession is also a reminder that home runs are not a winning strategy.  Base hits work and base hits require repetition, predictability, and meaning - all products of thoughtful action.

Recessions do not favor those bellied up at the bar taking orders at will all the while watching the breaking news merry-go-rounds fretting the what-ifs.

Recessions do favor those who are sober, proactive, and willing to hit the streets – those who realize that while the weather in some locations might look cloudy and rainy, the local weather is what really matters.  

There might be less business overall, that might just mean more opportunity for you.

Their news is not your news unless you allow it to be. 

If we could boil this entire morning down to one phrase, I think it would be captured in the phrase “intentionally engaging”.

Intentional - done with purpose… deliberate.

Engaging - charming and attractive.

Patrice talked about the time, effort, and money spent in recruiting, hiring, and onboarding a new team member.  

I had the opportunity to work with Pfizer and was told that the onboarding of a new team member cost the company around $200k.  

Certainly compelling, but that is not the real reason that you don’t want to lose team members.

The real reason we want a cohesive team that values longevity is for the same reason that we go back to the same restaurants, revisit the same destination, pull for the same sports team, and drive the same route to work.

We really do value stability, community, and “being known”.

Every Tuesday at our house we are humbled and honored to host a group of young men that over time has become known as “Man Up”

Back in 2016, I began meeting a group of HS Freshman guys at Wendy’s in Pritchardville.

We would compete in silly challenges like spitball competitions, squat relays, and light matches in the restaurant.  

We would have some serious conversations about things they were dealing with and write some thoughts down.

Over the last six years, that small group of five has grown into a group of about 10 to 20 each week, and already a group of about 15 or so who graduated a couple of years ago.

That group is marked by intentional conversation, prom-dance-floor-destruction, their own vernacular and language, a plunger that serves as a sort of armour, and a flag that is made up of torn underwear from the years of wedgie initiations underneath the Lemon Island bridge in the dark.  It’s a group that discussed money, relationships, sex, music, career, college, parents, confusions, and life principles that are now a part of their toolbelt. 

They have their own language, their own grunts, their own body sounds, and their own nuances.  They have a culture that is not based on money, status, or how-can-I get-more.

That is what we all REALLY want.  Stability, community, and “being known”.

And yet, what are small businesses known for?

We can answer that by listening to what those same man-up guys think big businesses are known for = stability.

But is that true?  Have you looked around to see all of the big business laying off thousands of people at a time?  Does that feel stable?

Small businesses are known for instability and chaotic community.

How do we build a culture that is unleavable?  

Pal’s Sudden Service vs. Taco Bell 

Elements of a powerful culture…

• Vision
• Mission
• Values
• Team Meetings (Agenda-Driven, Leader Led)
• Team Member Check Ins
• Every-other-monthly Vision Days
• Annual Team Days
• Clear Org Chart and Job Roles
• Clear Process (MPR)
• Remembering important days
• Repetition, sincerity
• All the little you-isms (unique to your biz), so long as they are consistent and thoughtful

I want you to use your Culture Calendar as the HUB of this next workshop time.

Think of your existing team, AND your new team members.  

For the first 10 minutes, I want you to create as many intentional, thoughtful, whimsical, and creative ideas as you can about ways to build culture that will require more time than money.

For the second 10 minutes, I want you as a team to rank order those ideas from most impactful to least… and then bake them into your culture calendar with dates and frequencies, and the process by which who/how they will be done.

The last 50 years in world history have led to influential inventions, and yet still the top four inventions are the wheel, the nail, the compass, and Gutenberg’s printing press.

Dutch Philosopher Erasmus of Rotterdam lived in chronological proximity to the printing press and was able to expand the influence of his writing.  Books were a non-negotiable for Erasmus, saying, “When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.”

Indeed Erasmus was reported to have little money and so fought through hunger pains for the pleasure of reading. 

Attributed to Mark Twain is a saying that should serve as an accountability nudge to leaders, “The (person) who does not read good books has no advantage over the (person) who can't read them.”

Here are three books I have read that I would challenge you to consider reading in 2023 in order to grow in fortitude.  

Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect, Will Guidara

A friend and client Chris Kornman (Entablature Construction and Entablature Realty, New Orleans, La) recommended this book.  Reading during a trip with my family I left a trail of dog-eared and underlined pages of thoughts and ideas.  

Guidara walks through how he and a team took the famed Eleven Madison Park restaurant from a nice New York City establishment and transformed it into the number one restaurant in the world according to The World’s 50 Best Restaurants, along with four stars from the New York Times, and a coveted three Michelin stars.  

Guidara caps a simple thesis of the book with this statement, “whatever you choose to do, be in the hospitality business.”

The ultimate quote for busy business owners jumps off of page 116, “you don’t want to have 100 keys; you win when you end up with only one - the key to the front door.”

From Strength To Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose In The Second Half of Life, Arthur C. Brooks

If you are in your mid to late thirties or above it is time to begin reading this book.  In 1995, Bob Buford published a book entitled Halftime: Moving From Success To Significance.  It was good and helpful.  Arthur Brooks’ manifesto is deep and meaningful.  

Brooks confronts what he describes as the “striver’s curse…a hidden source of anguish that wasn’t just widespread but nearly universal among people who have done well in their careers.” 

Many successful business owners and key leaders build up capabilities and then feverishly work to avoid a decline in their capabilities.  

Brooks delivers a needed blow, a thoughtful alarm, in order to wake up the leader who is heading off into their second half of life, “Here is the reality: in practically every high-skill profession, decline sets in sometime between one’s late thirties and early fifties.  Sorry, I know that stings.”

This book invites you to prepare for a “second curve” and a reminder that “what got you to this point won’t work to get you into the future - that you need to build some new strengths and skills.”  

Brooks then devotes the rest of the book to uncovering those strengths and their rootedness in wisdom, and how those strengths will be diminished in the face of workaholism that keep you tied to the fleetingness of worldly rewards (that rust and evaporate), and your fear of decline.  

From Strength to Strength is an important shot of interpersonal cold water with the complimentary encouragement of a loving grandfather.

A New Kind Of Diversity: Making the Different Generations on Your Team a Competitive Advantage, Dr. Tim Elmore

We have culturally assumed diversity as a cross-section of race and skin color and less about the generational differences that illuminate the modern workplace.

Elmore writes, “Millennials and Generation Z will make up 70 percent of the workforce by 2025.  We’d better get to know them.”

The older generations say things like, “nobody wants to work anymore” and “the younger generation has a bad work ethic.”  Elmore brings a teaspoon of humility reminding us “we’re the ones who gave birth to them and raised them.  If they (truly) were unready for the workforce, we must look in the mirror.”

Owners and leaders can moan, complain, and gripe about the new workforce, or we can embrace A New Kind of Diversity.   

Elmore’s books are loaded with heaps of helpful and digestible research that he skillfully then summarizes into implementable takeaways.

A couple of weeks ago I heard of a new 23-year-old Director of Marketing at a large company.  That same company has a 64-year-old Director of Estimating.  That is an unprecedented span of four generations working together on one team.

It will be imperative that we all put in the work to understand generational tendencies, realities, nuances, and grow multi-lingual in speaking to others the way they wish to be spoken to as we all push towards a unified end.

Elmore recommends not just diversity training…but unity training.

Of the books mentioned above, Business On Purpose receives no compensation or recommendation.

Books are always a worthy investment of your time, attention, and leadership.

Test Prep Insight reported that 48.5% of adults did not read a book in 2022…let’s change that and all become book nerds in 2023!

Part of our work at Business On Purpose is working with business owners and key leaders to hold them accountable to the things that will help liberate you from chaos so you can make time for the things that matter…like reading.

Go to mybusinessonpurpose.com/healthy to get a free assessment on the health of your business to get started.  

“If one wanted to crush and destroy a man entirely, to mete out to him the most terrible punishment,” wrote Fyodor Dostoevsky, “all one would have to do would be to make him do work that was completely and utterly devoid of usefulness and meaning.”

Peter Segars wrote the sequence to one of the great wisdom lyrics in the history of folk rock in the late 1950s that would be recorded by The Byrds in 1965 and popularized as the theme music in Forest Gump, The Simpsons, and The Wonder Years.

Some have called Turn, Turn, Turn a number one hit with the oldest lyrics.  Segars adapted the majority of the lyrics from the wisdom literature of the Jewish King Solomon’s writings in the Old Testament book Ecclesiastes.

The Segars rendition ends just shy of Solomon’s powerful sequence that helps us understand the motive and the value of work.

John Mark Comer in his well-reflected book Garden City says of our modern (primarily Western culture), “The American dream - which started out as this brilliant idea that everybody should have a shot at a happy life - has devolved over the years into a narcissistic desire to make as much money as possible, in as little time as possible, with as little effort as possible, so that we can get off work and go do something else.”

Kenny Chesney popularized a culturally Brazilian story about the fisherman and the businessman in his song The Life showing the contrast between a simple, humble fisherman’s idea of success - catch enough to live that day - and the scale-at-all-costs ambition of a savvy businessman who has the roadmap to create a world-dominating fishing empire, all so we can entice his humble fisherman friend to… do exactly what he is doing today, except with far more effort and stress.

We have twisted work as something equivalent to a modern curse on our humanity, something that we can widdle down to maybe 4 hours per week so that we can get on with the true desire of our hearts…leisure.  

Solomon, regarded as the wisest person to ever live, said this of work, “There is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in his labor - this is God’s gift to man.” (Ecclesiastes 3:13) 

Have we walked astray from the original design for work?  Is work really a gift?

Work is a gift.  A gift is “a thing given willingly without payment”, and also something to be enjoyed.  

Imagine waking up in a position where you are simply unable to work, to move, to think, to respond, to react.  We have some in our society who have not been given the capability to enjoy the gift of work.  

Their days are spent in a relentless cycle of managing indifference, wondering why they have been stripped of the gift of working, and only dreaming of the contribution they could make through the gift of work.  

We were created to work.  Of the world’s major monotheistic religions, there is a collective alignment that points back to an original woman and a man standing in their primitive office - a garden - tending, trimming, sowing, and harvesting…working.

The Jewish have a cultural phrase Tikkun Olam, “the repair of the world”.  Work is an active, productive, skill-leveraging way to be in a constant state of repairing our broken world.  

Work builds relationships and brings value to ourselves and others.

The Anglican theologian John Stott says that work is  “the expenditure of energy in the service of others, which brings fulfillment to the worker, benefit to the community, and glory to God.”

New York City pastor Tim Keller describes work as “rearranging the raw materials of God’s creation in such a way that it helps the world in general, and people in particular thrive and flourish.”

There is a storied tale that was shared in middle eastern Jewish history of a shrewd manager who had just been sacked by his owner.  The manager has one final task of employment; to go settle up any outstanding accounts on behalf of the owner. 

The shrewd manager begins slashing payments as a way to win favor with the customers, and shoring up relationships…building bridges using discounts and favors.

At the end of the story, we are instructed, “use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends.”

It is a wild story and one I thought would end with a rebuff of the manager.  

Put more subtly, author Dan Miller says of the benefits of business and money, “I love having the opportunities that business provides, but I want to be a vehicle for being, for deep meaningful relationships, not just doing.”

For many, the reason we don’t feel a sense of success in our work is because our definition of success is elusive.  

Solomon, a man who had far more than you or I will ever have, said this of confusing money with success, “Don’t wear yourself out trying to get rich; restrain yourself!  Riches disappear in the blink of an eye; wealth sprouts wings and flies off into the wild blue yonder.”

We have a success problem because we have allowed the eyes of accumulation to define the success of our life.  Metrics have become our barometer while our relationships and connections starve.

You know what the fisherman does everyday after he fishes throughout the morning?  The tale continues like this, “(I) play with my kids. In the afternoon, I take a nap with my wife, and evening comes, I join my buddies in the village for a drink — we play guitar, sing and dance throughout the night.”

Even the fisherman had a schedule.  

Annie Dillard, the American writer saw the value of a schedule in relation to a valuable life, “A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being;”

A schedule, then elevates work allowing it to exist more for relationships than for things.  When things and money are prioritized over relationships, then our definition of success is upside down.  

We have redefined the terms of success prioritizing the aimlessness of more; specifically more money and more things.

How should we define success in our work?  We can start by asking this question, “who have I been created to be?”  Each of us has been designed, created, and offered to the society around us as a creator.  What have you been created to create?

Think through the filters of skill, temperament, personality, what gives you energy, and what depletes you of energy.

Dillard, a religious none (as detailed on her website) says wisely, “how we spend our days is how we spend our lives.”

Work is a valuable way to spend our lives when that work positions us to do what New York Times columnist Arthur C. Brooks lays out with thoughtful simplicity…

Use things,

Love People, 

Worship The Divine.

Start reordering the verbs and work becomes misery.

As you listen to this, how can you shift your mindset, and your success definition to create meaning in a work worth doing? 

Will you work till you die?  Or will you intentionally shift your mindset to begin working towards an end filled with usefulness and meaning that creates the “cabinet of fortitude” (Arthur Brooks) needed adding value to our collective society?

Thomas just talked about some amazing recruiting practices and you had time to put ideas on paper of how to recruit great talent.

Now What? 

You have some resumes that look promising and you're excited that all your prayers might be answered with one of these resumes. 

Now it's time to start interviewing.

This is the recruit's first impression of you and your organization. This sets the tone for everything from this point forward.

Are you professional?

Are you organized?

Are you intentional?

Are you mission-driven or chaos-driven?

If you are professional, well organized, and intentional, then the recruit knows you mean business. They will either get scared and run or they will show up and show off for you because they want the job.

Wouldn’t you want to scare them off now, instead of 3 months from now when they have cost you over $10,000 to $25,000 in your time and resources, and then you have to do this recruiting, hiring and onboarding all over again?

So, How are you giving the first impression to recruits of your business?

You should be doing this with your 6-Step Hiring Process.

Step 1 Phone Interview

Do you have this mapped out with the specific questions you ask at your phone interview? Is this replicable so anyone in your organization can get on the phone and do a phone interview?

Step 2 1st Live Sit Down Interview

This is the time where you share vision/mission/values/culture to allow the candidate to determine if this is even the type of business they want to be a part of? Do you have this spelled out so you don’t have to think when the candidate comes in for the interview. 

Step 3 Due Diligence  (My favorite) 

This is where we are calling the candidate to tell them we want to move forward and we want to do personality profiling, call their references, and assign homework.

Have you decided on a Personality profiling tool to use?

How about calling on references? Do you have your questions written down on what questions you will ask when calling references?

What homework do you have for the candidate?

For a bookkeeper maybe reconcile a mock bank account, for an estimator, estimate an old job, for a marketing specialist design a logo.  

Step 4 2nd Live Interview preferable with other team members 

Here you are deep diving into the role and seeing how they act with the other team members. 

Again, do you have this written out and documented so you cover everything from their ideal weekly schedule to going over your MPR?

Step 5 Spousal/Friend Dinner/Lunch, social 

In his 2011 book “EntreLeadership,” Dave Ramsey recommends that companies vet spouses to make sure their hire is not “married to crazy.”

Dave says, “When hiring someone, you are employing more than just the person. You’re taking on the whole family. And when they are married to someone who is domineering, unstable or simply full of drama, you’ll end up with a team member who can’t be creative, productive or excellent.”

Go to lunch or dinner with your candidate and their spouse to find out if crazy lives at home. 

Step 6 Phone call and email with Offer.

Some of you are saying “Patrice we got this, we have been interviewing & hiring for years” Great then how can you systemize it and  make it better so anyone can take your hiring process and run with it.

Alright, your Hiring process is complete and the candidate accepted your offer

Yeah!! They start on Monday and all your problems are going to be solved.

Let me tell you a story, Becky. Becky sent her resume to XYZ realty as a marketing specialist. She had all the qualifications for the role and was hired. Her first day she was shown her desk, given her laptop, set up on email, and then voila! She started marketing and it was the best marketing ever done for XYZ realty.

I wish!! Becky isn’t her real name because honestly, I don’t remember it. XYC Realtry was the Miles and Smith Real Estate Group which I owned. Becky was my new recruit. She was going to change everything for our real estate group. We would start getting more leads now then ever with a part-time marketing specialist, right!

Within two weeks I was wondering what in the world she was doing. I saw a post or two on social media, but besides that….I had no clue what she was doing. I sat down with her to ask and she showed me a couple of things but nothing substantial. I asked where her marketing calendar was, where her content creator checklist was, how was she keeping track of analytics so we knew what was working and what wasn’t, what about a newsletter or updating the website, I mean she is a marketing specialist she should know all these things. 

How many times as business owners have we said “They should know this, they did bookkeeping before, they did project management before….They should know what to do, why do I have to tell them everything?

Because what is common to you is not common to them. What is common to you is not common to me. What is common to you is not ever common to your spouse or your best friend who knows you inside and out. You have to train, set expectations and hold people accountable so what is common to you can become common to them. 

To do this you need an Onboarding Process, Checklist and Training Schedule

Your Onboarding Process will set the tone for the future accountability and performance of your new employee. 

Is your Onboarding Process clearly defined? 

Your onboarding checklist allows you to list everything you want to go over during the training and who in your organization is going to do the training. Do you have an onboarding checklist with all the Admin/Tech/Projects/Software/Processes and General Company policy and procedures that you want to go over with your new employee during their training time.  

Your onboarding weekly training schedule will map out in timeblocks what they are going to be trained on from your checklist. Do you have a weekly training schedule spelled out for at least the 1st week.

So what part of Onboarding do you need to create or perfect?

Breakout.

1. First 10 minutes spend on your Hiring Process.
   • Every step of the hiring process is crucial. If you don’t have a hiring process, then start creating one. If you already have a hiring process….What are you short cutting on in your hiring process?

      2. Second 10 minutes spend on your Onboarding.

• What do you need to create or perfect? Your Onboarding Process, Checklist, and or Training Schedule.

      3. Talk to your team and collaborate on best practices and be prepared to share a few ideas to the group when we come back. 

Unlocking the Power of Perplexity: Say Goodbye to Google with the New AI Chat Revolution

Join BOP Business Coach Patrice Miles as she talks about Perplexity on the latest episode of Tuesday Tools On Purpose on the Business On Purpose podcast!

Find out how Perplexity can transform your business research, saving you time and effort.

Contact information:
Patrice Miles
Business Coach, Business On Purpose
patrice@mybusinessonpurpose.com
Discovery Call:
https://bit.ly/patricediscovery

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It’s an interesting time to hire right now, right? It’s changed in so many ways because the people we are trying to hire have changed!

So let’s throw out a few fun facts about Gen Z, the group of people entering the workforce. Were born between the late ’90s and about 2008

1. They are shrewd consumers that value their identity and how that is shown to the world. Whether that is through their purchases, social media, or their lifestyle choices (IE, where they work), they are carefully curated in how they present themselves
   
   
2. Pragmatic and financially minded
   
   
   • This is a generation that has watched their families be affected by the recessions of 08/09 and watched them take those hits. Truly driven by financial pragmatism and security. They are shaped by the financial stresses their families and communities faced during those recessions

      3. Value Spectacle over substance

• They want a show. They want to be entertained and feel the excitement

This past year, the university of Louisville got more 4 and 5-star recruits on campus than ever before because of this…

They asked their high-income donors to bring sports cars, drive them onto the field and let recruits come take pictures in them and sit in them. They flew in on private jets and let the recruits climb all over them taking pictures. And it worked. They got talent on campus and were able to pitch to them on their football program.

But here was the problem, they had the spectacle, but not a ton of substance. It was a flash in a pan with no championship culture to back it up.

The University of Georgia spent 3.6 Million dollars on recruiting in 2021. And that’s not even including the Name, Image, and Likeness money that was promised. That’s just on attracting, recruiting, entertaining, and marketing to high school student-athletes and convincing them to come to play football at Georgia. 

Let’s break that down a bit further, the average recruiting class is around 25 ppl, so you do the math…that comes out to spending $144,000 per student-athlete that signs to play at UGA. That is OUTRAGEOUS.

It is an insane spectacle…but for them and schools like Alabama, there’s also substance behind it. You walk the halls of their recruiting centers and there are massive pictures of their athletes that have gone on to play in the pros, there are trophy cases full of conference championships and national championships. There are detailed meetings with recruits of how they would be used on offense or defense and the plan for them when they come.

Here’s what they don’t say. Just sign on and we got it. Just trust us, here’s what we think we’ll have you doing. 

And yet isn’t that what we do? Most of our hiring and prospecting looks like this. We put out a half-hearted ad on Facebook or indeed, that’s vague at best. And we cross our fingers and hope!

Maybe we have an interview process, but not a recruiting process. There’s very little spectacle and if that’s what Gen Z is looking for, we are simply missing the boat. And if we’re missing the boat, then we’re missing the talent that could be added to our teams.

Here’s where I’ve seen that recently. With Ward Edwards engineering. They dared to ask, “What is something we could add to a new engineering grad, that no one else is doing?”

We sat down and talked it through, even went to some of their staff and asked them what some of their frustrations were upon graduation and they came up with this. There’s no plan for an engineer that’s hired. It’s just come on board and do engineering and we’ll eventually get you where you need to be.

And here’s where Allen and Greg and their team took this. They built out a plan to go from Designer, kind of the entry-level position to Professional engineer in 4 years. To actually getting your certification and being ready to be a project manager in 4 years. Now to some of you that sound like eternity, but to an engineer that is unheard of. To look a grad in the eyes and show them the plan and how you’re going to get there, puts substance behind the spectacle.

For us, it was knowing that we want to hire 8 new coaches in the next 3 years. So we have to have a training plan in place. SO it was recording almost 50 videos of how to coach and our mindset and practical tips on working through our roadmap and coaching clients and prospecting and selling. All of it! And then beyond that scheduling out a mentor coach to work with them and putting times on the calendar to get them going and offer support.

It’s not all fluff! There’s substance and intentionality every step of the way.

So here’s what I want you to hear. People no longer show up just to receive a paycheck. The game has changed. How can we start thinking about recruiting like a D1 College football team as they chase after new talent?

So here’s what we’re going to do. 

We’re going to workshop some stuff with your team. If you’re one of the younger ones on the team, here’s where we will lean on your wisdom…YES your wisdom.  Dr. Tim Elmore calls it “reverse-mentoring”. 

We are going to let you build out a recruiting system in two parts, ideation, and process. The first 10 min will be throwing ideas out there. How do you attract the right people? How can you add some spectacle to how you recruit people? And then process, what does that look like year round?

Because here’s the thing, it’s not an IF you are going to hire it’s a WHEN are you going to hire. And the economic impact for waiting on the need is staggering. Thousands in lost revenue and wasted time being behind the 8 ball.

You know the ABCs of selling? Always be closing? Right? Well, what if we changed that to ABI, Always be interviewing. Recruiting is a year-round job that someone needs to have in your business. So, let’s figure out what that needs to look like for you!

You have 10 min to throw out ideas and then we will build out the process for the second 10 min.

Workshop Action: Custom-build the elements of a SPECTACULAR recruiting system.  Two sections: Ideate (set timer), then document process (set timer)

WORKSHOP:
“ONE Thing” Around The Room: What was your one big idea whether you implement or not

Remember the days where windows showed up like clockwork in 3 days?  Chemical arrived the next day?  Subcontractors called you back?  Schedules held true?  Material budgeting was straightforward?  Clients had empathy, patience, and treated you as the expert?  

Remember the days when  your biggest headache was, “how do we find new business?”

The British playwright Michael McMillan said, “You can't start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one.”

As you come into this final 12-Week Plan LIVE event of 2022…this final opportunity to think deeply through the new challenges you will confront, the new mountains you will climb, the new opportunities you will pursue… you have a choice.

Let me rephrase, you have to make a choice.

Will you gripe, moan and mope about those mean clients, those non-committal subs or vendors, those irritating shipping delays, or those increased prices?  

Or will you cut the strings of excuses, limitations, and barriers, and be free from the sludge and the mud of what Zig Ziglar calls “stinkin’ thinkin’”.

We are in a cesspool of negativity right now.  I hate my job, I hate my town, I hate the people I work with, I hate the government, this head coach, that team, this policy, that country and on and on.   It reminds me of George Strait’s song “I hate everything”. 

We are not called to falter and we are not called to fade…we have been called and built to FLOURISH!  To flourish, we must intentionally control our mindset.  

And in order to flourish in 2023 we are going to have to rid ourselves of stinkin’ thinkin’ and embrace a new attitude of Fortitude: the ability to display courage in pain, to go into new opportunities with a mindset of strength, believing we CAN do something rather than swimming in the cesspool of “can’t”.

Mrs. Jones is being an email bully?  We CAN learn to speak to her with truth and thoughtfulness.

Your partner, sub, or vendor is not pulling their weight?  We CAN influence and bring value to their operation in a way that serves everyone around.

Tough conversation needs to be had with team members?  We CAN plan conversation in an appropriate way that brings value to everyone…a Win/Win mindset.

Hard-pressed to find new team members?  We CAN build a thoughtful, powerful, spectacular recruiting, hiring, and onboarding process that WOW’s recruits and supplies them with a substantive opportunity.  

We CAN do those things…but not with our current attitudes.  

Never in the history of the American workforce have four separate generations worked so closely and communicated so seamlessly than what is happening right now.

You have Boomers who are remaining in the workforce longer, and Gen Z’ers who are entering into higher-level roles earlier.  The Boomers, X’ers, Millennials, and Z’ers are interacting everyday.

It’s like a cocktail of Dockers pleats, meets peglegs, meets skinny pants, and now everyone is confused.  

You can throw your hands up and protect your generational brand…OR you can make a decision to ignore the stinkin’ thinkin’ and embrace the generational diversity, and the value that comes with. 

The values of new generations are in the questions they ask of our institutions, our methods, our systems, our policies, our norms and nuances.  

The value of older generations are in the standards they hold for their work product.  

There is exponential value in merging those two schools of thought. 

Stinkin’ Thinkin’ creeps in and will corrupt all of it so that very little of the cross-generational value is pulled out and instead we spend our days griping, moaning, and moping.  

We grumble about the Karen’s, and take pot shots at the bro’s. 

There is a better way!  A more HUMAN way. 

We live in a world where some, seemingly opposite things can be true at the same time

1. Acknowledging Mental Health realities AND Leading with Perseverance
2. Flexibility AND Budget LImitations
3. Owners can Listen AND Steward the business
4. Key Leaders can Listen AND Steward the role
5. Grace AND Truth AND Past AND Present AND Future
6. Now AND Later

Each of us comes into this room with convictions, norms, and beliefs.

I challenge you to question your convictions.  If your convictions are too weak to withstand questioning…then your convictions are not foundations by which you have confidence to stand. 

Let’s build and reinforce a new belief, a new conviction…a belief that hard things CAN be done, rocky decisions CAN be navigated, and they will lead to powerful outcomes that will bring the satisfaction we desire.  

The generational realities in our modern workplace will challenge us and will be a massive growth opportunity for all of us to retire our stinkin’ thinkin’.

What are some of the ingredients for this needed mindset?

1. Generational Nuance is real…your language must shift
2. The new world wants a show, embrace it…we are no longer analogue and text…we are iconic (Workshop 1)
3. The substance of Process Clarity and Repetition will be the winning currency…write it down and plan for it (Workshop 2) 
4. Consume a steady diet of “Implement, Evolve, Rinse, Repeat” (Workshop 3)
5. Life and Business are merging…don’t gripe about it, embrace it.  We’ve been living in a world in the 2000’s that have tried to force our hand into choosing Right OR Left, Loud or Quiet, Clemson OR Carolina…could the answer be both, neither, or a healthy mix of the two?

Allow yourself the freedom to have your mind challenged.  Some of my greatest learning as a man, living in the south, who identifies as an apprentice and student of Jesus…some of my greatest learning has come from friends outside of that tribe.  

As soon as we wrapped up the September Live Event, our team sat down to a delicious taco lunch at the La Poblanita food truck and we knew exactly what our agenda was going to be for this entire morning.

The feedback was overwhelmingly positive for the workshops we had, and yet still some wanted more deep dive time for workshops.  We are moving from 4 workshops down to three, and you as a business team are going to walk out of here with a map…a plan on how to recruit, hire, and onboard new team members that takes into account the generational realities, and also the process you are inviting them into.  

Thomas will lead our first workshop: Creating The Spectacle: Employees Want To SEE Something Special

Patrice will lead our second workshop: Stirring In The Substance: Backing Up The Spectacle With Your Process

I will lead our third workshop: Bellied Up For The Long Haul: Building an “Unleavable” Experience

During each workshop, we will have some opening thoughts, and then we will guide you through a two-part discussion with your own team.

Part One will be devoted to generating as many ideas as possible.

Part Two will be to the mapping and implementation of the best of those ideas.

Some of you already have existing elements of one or all three of the pieces: recruiting, hiring, and/or onboarding.  

This is to go back to the garage and take time to refresh your process, and ask yourself, “what if we changed this up to meet new demands?”

Also, allow your minds to go places that are uncomfortable and a bit squirrely.  This is a safe place to dream, to wonder, to invent, and to create.  Some of you will be uncomfortable there…get over it…come into the dreams world if only for a few minutes.  

Let’s get started.

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.

1. Your team needs to hear from you

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?

• How do we incorporate those into everything we do?
• They should inform every decision we make and every task we complete
• Does it push us towards Healthy Culture, Excellence in Design, or Healthy relationships?

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.    

Believe it or not, every time a customer does business with you they come in with expectations both spoken and unspoken. So, how do we manage those and shape those to match what we have to offer? Well, let’s talk about that today!

Happy Monday friends, Thomas Joyner here with Business on Purpose.

Last week, my wife found a deal online. $79 bucks for your first visit. Introductory offer, book here. She ended up calling the office to make an appointment and was so excited to go. She sat down, went through the full experience, and absolutely loved it! About halfway through, the receptionist came over and brought her bill. $240!!!

She immediately texted me and was pretty bummed. I told her to just show them the intro web page and ask about it.

“Oh, that’s an old promotion. Sorry about that.” And that was it. No one told her as she was running up a bill more than 3 times what she expected. Nope, just added to it and didn’t even flinch.

After her having a short conversation with the receptionist, they lowered it to $200 and she left. 

But here’s the frustrating part. The service was amazing. Probably worth every bit of the 200 bucks she paid. The place was clean, the service amazing, the staff friendly…and yet because she walked in with an incredibly different expectation for price, she left with a bad taste in her mouth and unable to recommend the place or really want to go back. It felt like a bait and switch. 

And to this day, the promotion is still up online… further adding to the belief that it’s a bait and switch.

Let me flip over to the other side of the equation. The Savannah Bananas minor league baseball team. The first time I went I was a little shocked at how much tickets cost. I’m used to paying 10 bucks or so for minor league night with the Charleston River dogs.

I noticed that the price was a good bit higher, starting around 25 bucks, so I was curious if it would be worth it. 

From the moment we stepped foot at the stadium, we were entertained. High-fived, laughed, high energy, all the food and drink you could want all included, not wanting to miss a minute of the action. 

We left feeling like we would have paid double the price for what we got and the actual product far exceeded what we knew we were going to pay.

See the difference?

So, if you were to look at your marketing and sales…where do you fail to live up to the expectations? Maybe you need to start by simply writing down the expectations your customers arrive with. And then one by one walking through them and addressing them. If it’s timely service, how can you meet or exceed that? If it’s value pricing (if that’s your goal), how can you be upfront about that to exceed the customers expectations?

Maybe it’s being innovative and providing new solutions… how do you stack up? Maybe it’s having a team that is friendly and joyful? Send some surveys out to customers to find out how you stack up or call up someone you do business with, take them to lunch, and just ask. They will tell you!

Because here’s the thing… this goes for relationships, dating, business, everything! Discontentment is a direct result of unmet expectations!

But if you learn to manage and understand and exceed expectations, or set them appropriately ahead of time…you will create raving fans in your business with long-term relationships where customers come back time and time again.

The opposite, of not knowing what expectations are out there or maybe even manipulating them to get people in the door is shortsighted at best and a horrible business model.

There’s a word that one of my mentors walked me through years ago. Congruence…it’s this thought that what’s on the outside matches what’s on the inside. I think we spend too much time trying to hide one or the other instead of matching the two up and being who we say we are and showing who we say we are.

Once we learn to set appropriate expectations and deliver or exceed those expectations, we can finally be a business that will get referred by everyone we do business with.

So sit down today, create a list of expectations our clients have, and see where we stack up! Do it! Put in the time and see where you land.

Thanks!

Bob Roberts is a larger-than-life Baptist Preacher turned global engagement pioneer and independent global diplomat whose best friends are with people far outside of his own East Texas tribe.

Bob began mentoring me two decades ago with his words, his actions, and his time.  I’ll never forget the day he drove me to Barnes and Noble in the mid-cities of the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex and loaded me up with what today are foundational books in my personal library.

Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy, and Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat were two of the books that he bought for me (still two of my top 5 all-time reads).  There were a couple of nuanced books that threw me off; a book from Henri Nouwen and another about the now renowned Impressionist Vincent Van Gogh.

Perplexed, I dove into the books on global engagement as they spoke to my inner desire for circumnavigate-able adventure.  Nouwen and van Gogh would wait.  

Twenty years later I picked up a book entitled Learning from Henri Nouwen and Vincent Van Gogh, that then led me to another Nouwen title The Way Of The Heart.

We are asked frequently by business owners, “why do I feel like I work day and night and yet get nothing done?”

Nouwen makes reference to a “wordy world” that we inhabit and then lobs this thought, “we move through life in such a distracted way that we do not even take the time and rest to wonder if any of the things we think, say, or do are worth thinking, saying, or doing.”

Van Gogh is said to have been largely unrecognized while alive except among those who knew him and his tight circle of outcasts.  

Although, van Gogh had long sense passed when Nouwen was alive, Nouwen wanted to understand van Gogh’s relentless pursuit of a compassionate life… a life that compelled him to shed ministerial garb for the poverty-stained garments and conditions of Dutch peasants.  

Nouwen built a relationship with Dr. Vincent Van Gogh, the artist’s nephew who was key in the realization of the museum that bears his last name in Amsterdam.  

Carol Berry writes in Learning, “Henri asked (Dr. Van Gogh) why so many people flocked daily by the thousands to look at his uncle’s paintings.  What was it about Vincent that touched a chord that resonated deeply within us?  Henri related Dr. Van Gogh’s answer: ‘Because people feel comforted and consoled.  Vincent was able to crawl under the skin of nature and people and find there something truthful, something beautiful, something joyful, and something worth seeing.  He was able to draw out the inner secret of what he saw.’”

Here is the question for us as business owners.  

How was Bob able to make the time to take me to a bookstore two decades ago and plant powerful seeds of books that would circle back to make influence twenty years later?

How was Carol Berry able to share wisdom and insight from two major influencers of human compassion from the academic world and the art world?  

How was van Gogh able to “crawl under the skin of nature and people and find there something truthful?”

Each one made a singular decision; ignore the other things they could have done and commit to the important things that require their uniqueness and imagination.

Skye Jethani writes in his book The Divine Commodity that van Gogh, “warned other artists, ‘Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.’”

Put another way, do not become a slave to monotonous distraction.  

Jethani goes on to say, “we’ve been conditioned to avoid silence at all costs lest we be confronted with our own inner chaos…and where there is no exterior noise we feverishly work to produce it.” 

When we submit ourselves to constant distraction, to the latest, loudest voice, or worse, when we manufacture our own distraction, we are selling our soul, our creativity, our narrow brilliance for the empty currency of non-caloric entertainment that will need to be refreshed and even more outrageous in an hour.  

How do we limit distractions?  Begin practicing solitude.

Isolation is not solitude.  Nouwen describes solitude as “the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self…solitude is not a private therapeutic place.  Rather, it is the place of conversion, the place where the old self dies and the new self is born.”

You will not find solitude, you must make…make time, make place, make opportunity to sit and be confronted with imagination, with thought, with anger, frustration, joy, and excitement.  Without seeing those things, we cannot experience those things.

For some of you business has become a tired, repetitive cycle moving from frustration to frustration.  You have become the slave to your model and the freshness of your dreams and imagination have died.

Distraction is not just robbing productivity…it is robbing your soul.

Might I suggest you make time to walk into a bookstore and find a book on Van Gogh and just stare at the pictures for a while, and may that help rekindle your imagination and inspiration for the mission of your business.

Or, you go back to scrolling your feed.

If you are comparing your 2022 to 2020 and 2021 you may want to pause.

Standing here at the early sunset hours of 2022 we are feeling a very real metaphor.

It goes like this.

During 2020 and 2021 many of our businesses were barreling down the business highway at 90 mph winding hot at 10,000 RPMs.

Today, it already feels like a massive slowdown, and it has been.  Let’s not lose perspective, though… instead of going from 90 mph to 0…we are now riding down the highway at a more sustainable, more comfortable pace of 70 mph, and the good news is that we are only running at 5,000 RPMs.

In other words, it is taking far less effort to go just a little bit slower and start to get some breathing room. 

The problem is that our human minds have grown accustomed to the speed, breathlessness, chaos, and cash flow of the past two years and we don’t know how to mentally or emotionally throttle our expectations, let alone our spending habits.

New norms have emerged over the past two years; pricing volatility, material, and logistics inconsistencies, marketing and sales simplicities, and probably the most noticeable internally is that your employees want more money for the same roles and while demanding more flexibility and meaning.  Employees want their business life to fuel their personal lives, and not the other way around.  

Historically, business owners have tried to solve headaches by shooting one particular shiny bullet…sales, sales, sales.

If we could just get more work then we would have more cash to pay higher fees, higher premiums, higher wages, higher demands, and higher expectations.  

That is an infinite and empty treadmill leading to the same destination over and over.  

I am going to walk you through the four steps you need to take to navigate your business in 2023 in a powerful way.  

The first step in building your business plan for 2023 is making time to fill out your Vision Story.

In 2023, where vision is not written down, people will indeed scatter, and that scattering of people will further scatter your mind and thoughts into a web of frustration.

Instead, follow the ancient Jewish wisdom that says, “write the vision down so that those who read it may run.”

Vision is clarifying and vision is separating.  When you cast vision you know who is bought in and who is not.  Some will run towards your vision and some away from your vision.

You will be tempted to scoot on past writing your vision down and instead make up some silly excuse in your head that either, “I don’t need this” or “oh yeah, we’ve got something like that”.  

We’ve made crafting your vision simple.  

Seven categories to begin working through, and you will likely need to make about an hour or so of time for this powerful and important exercise.  Notice I said the word exercise… it’s work and it’s healthy.

1. Term/Time
2. Family/Freedom
3. Financial
4. Product/Service
5. Team
6. Client
7. Culture

The second necessary tool in your 2023 business planning toolkit is the sobering Delegation Roadmap.

Andrew Carnegie said, "No person will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit."

John Maxwell said, “If you want to do a few small things right, do them yourself. If you want to do great things and make a big impact, learn to delegate.”

Discovering delegation will make time for what matters most in three ways: 

• It Empowers others to put out the fires
• It transfers your authority to them
• It multiplies your effort

The moment that you stop delegating, or choose to not delegate and empower is the moment that you have chosen to have a job instead of owning a business.

The third necessary tool in your 2023 business planning toolkit is the non-negotiable Weekly Schedule.

You feel busy but not productive because you have little to no boundaries.

I recently heard Lance Golinghorst articulate that we all have access to three major scarce resources: time, energy, and attention.

Attention is indivisible.  It is well-researched that multitasking doesn’t work.  As I am writing and reading this, I should not be brushing my teeth or checking my bank balance.

Energy is renewable (I can generate more energy), and transferable (I can give you energy and you can give me energy).

The real wake-up call is in regard to our time.  Time is non-renewable (we cannot make more of it), and it is not transferable (you cannot give yours to me).

You go into each week with a defined, finite allotment of time.  Either you put boundaries throughout your day roping off all of the tasks and responsibilities, or we will do it for you.  

If you do it, it allows you to maximize your scarce resources of time, energy, and attention.  If we do it for you, then we will devour your time, energy, and attention.

You can make excuses as to why it won’t work in the specific role you are in.  We love you, but your role is not a special unicorn or snowflake.  Own your role by owning the boundaries for your role and then share those boundaries with us so we can support you.

Finally, for a robust 2023 business plan, you will benefit from building and implementing a Culture Calendar.  

The culture of your business is not happenstance...it is not an accident, and no luck is required.

The culture of your business is a DIRECT RESULT of the ingredients that you allow to enter the mash bill.

If you allow the ingredients of unpredictability, inconsistency, minimal communication, lack of process, lack of mission, gossip, and no values in decision-making, then the result will be a business that has notes of unpredictability, lack of process, and the like.

If, however, you allow only the ingredients of consistent communication, accountability, humor, reinforced process, and clarity in vision, mission, and values, then the result will be a business that has notes of the same.

Again, the four tools that will change the game for you and your team in 2023.

1. Vision Story
2. Delegation Roadmap
3. Weekly Schedule
4. Culture Calendar

Our mission is to help liberate business owners, like you, from chaos to make time for the things that matter most.  Working 70 hours a week is NOT what matters most…empowering others to live into their narrow brilliance IS what matters most.

Remember, when you choose to implement, you are choosing to cut the chaos and make time for what matters most.

Joe Calloway said it, “vision without implementation is hallucination.”

Amidst the chaos of a recession, there are many who see opportunity and possibility tucked away in a larger population that submits blindly to doom and gloom.

We have always had a few business owners in the past with a desire to expand into new markets, and yet the drumbeat of expansion is ironically higher now in a tough, recession-bent market.

These are trade contractors who are realizing that the purpose, people, process, and profit they have built has positioned their business in a place of strength while other like-businesses are suffering under the weight of volatile cash flow. 

Growing markets need to have the same care and attention as growing new agricultural fields.  When left to grow without curation, a business can look like a garden that has grown past its boundaries.

Our town right now is a bazaar example of this.  Its population has grown at race car speeds and yet the town services divisions are struggling to keep up.  Much of our physical landscape was designed to be beautiful and boundaries.  Due to the struggle of keeping up, the vegetation has started spilling out over the borders onto the streets and looking a bit more haggard; it is unkept.

That’s how a business feels when uncontrolled and undisciplined growth occurs.  It is growth, but not all growth is healthy.  

I once cut back a shrub that had grown far too large and was left with nothing but a brown stem because the growth required larger and larger support until the fruit of that support was gone.  What was left was the support structure (management), with no fruit (revenue). 

Good growth requires thoughtful planning.

Thoughtful planning required clarity and boundaries.

Here are five steps all business owners can take to filter growth to determine expansion into new markets.

First, you must have a sincere desire to grow.  

Skill or demand without desire is like a vehicle with no fuel…the vehicle is capable, the road is inviting, but there is no gas in the tank to make it move.

Growth demands time, effort, energy, and forward motion.  Ideas are fun but low on action.  Action is long-term and sustained.  

The good news is that you now have an idea of the effort required to expand due to the time and effort put into the initial growth of the business.

As you grow, you will likely require more people.  Do you have that desire?

Second, you will want to have demonstrated and tracked measurables of your existing business so you have objective numbers to run pro formas and forecasts.

Again, since you have already started and grown your existing business, take the numbers that business has already provided and apply those numbers to a new potential market, and then run scenarios from those numbers that are higher and lower.

Do not waste the knowledge that you have worked so hard to gain and settle for, “well, we’ll just figure it out.”  That mindset will drain desire quickly.

The third step in expansion is to create a replicable roadmap for expansion.  Looking in the mirror on the business that you have already launched, what were the non-negotiable steps that you have learned to take that will apply to expansion?

What is the ideal location?  Who is the ideal client or customer?  What makes an ideal team member and how have we trained them successfully?  What is the culture we are birthing this new expansion out of, and how will that culture fall in line with what currently exists?

Many of the businesses that we have coached through expansion have resulted in a simple spreadsheet checklist of items that each new expansion would need. 

Next, to expand you must identify persons-of-peace.  Who are those connections within the community you wish to expand to who identify with your mission and are connected to your ideal clients?

Every location has a minority of the population who will turn out to be raving supporters of your mission.  In order to buy in and herald your mission though, you must have abundant clarity of that mission and be ready to share the mission in a succinct way along with a simple value proposition answering who you help, what you do to help, how that help is delivered, and what the result of your help will be.

A fifth element to evaluate when expanding into new markets is to find out if there is already someone there that you could acquire that would love to come in line with your mission and your culture.

There are thousands in the business owner community who have the technical skill, the demand, and the desire, but they have always struggled to run a business focused on purpose, people, process, and profit.  Your expansion could be the very opportunity they are looking for to do their work in a meaningful and fulfilling way, but not have the burden of business ownership.

Your running a business on purpose is an attractive hope for many who run a business void of purpose.

Expansion is a natural, exciting prospect when methodically and thoughtfully worked through with an open hand and mind, and an eye on the ultimate vision of your business. 

Join BOP Business Coaches Patrice Miles and Brandon Gray as they discuss Video Ask on the latest episode of Tuesday Tools On Purpose on the Business On Purpose podcast!

Learn how to enhance client communication with interactive video responses.

Contact information:
Patrice Miles
Business Coach, Business On Purpose
patrice@mybusinessonpurpose.com
Discovery Call:
https://bit.ly/patricediscovery

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It’s October! As crazy as that sounds. And I’m curious…when was the last time you looked at the goals you set at the beginning of the year? Have you looked at them yet? Or are they collecting dust somewhere, or worse…did you even write them down?

Let’s talk a bit about that today. Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here. Thanks so much for joining today.

I was sitting in a coaching meeting with some clients the other day and they were a bit dejected. Felt like they were stuck.

“We’re not making any progress!” they said. “We’ve been trying to move forward on just keep fighting the same battles.”

“Well, let’s look at that.”

Here’s the best part. At BoP we do 12 week goals…small bite sized 12 week plans to keep the business moving forward. Instead of spinning your wheels for a year or more, you can stay on course and refocus every 12 weeks.

So, we pulled up their 12 week plan. We had 3 goals written down with a minimum of 10 action steps to accomplish each. As we walked down their list of goals, they realized they had made tons of progress! They were over 50% there for each of their goals!

They just had to refocus, realize that they were not, in fact, stuck, and recommit to the action items they had written down.

They left the office the other day realizing that they were doing the things that mattered. They were held accountable to a plan and were able to continue checking things off as they moved towards 3 goals that would transform their business by the end of the year.

So, back to you. What goals did you write down? Where are they? How do you track them? Have you tracked them this year? If not, why not?

Recent research suggests that most goals are abandoned less than 25 days into being set. 25 days!!! I think we have to ask ourselves why.

The first reason is we give ourselves too much time to accomplish the goals. I don’t know if you remember being in school and being assigned a semester paper. Are you starting that thing week one? Heck no! It’s so far off I have plenty of time to get to that. So you put it on the shelf until it’s pressing. It collects dust until you realize it becomes urgent! Don’t lie and act like you were one of the gold medal students that finished your stuff months ahead, we know the truth!

But how about when you were given a big assignment that was due by the end of the week. You get going on it now! It’s urgent. To get it finished it can’t sit on the shelf, but has to move forward step by step until it’s done on time.

Goals are no different. We give ourselves too much time to get the work done and either forget about it or put it off until it becomes urgent. That’s why we use 12 week plans. It keeps goals constantly in front of us so we never cease to move the ball down the field.

The second reason is that some goals need to be broken down into smaller goals. Doubling sales is difficult! And can feel overwhelming, so why not figure out some intermediate goals and metrics to incrementally push towards that. Instead of making one giant leap. Set goals that help you move towards the one big goal.

Lastly, I think we don’t look at them practically enough. We write these big goals down and don’t write out the action steps. We don’t give ourselves some easy wins to get momentum. As a result we fail or cease to get moving. Give yourself some action items that can contribute to your goals. Just make a list. What helps me accomplish this. A minimum of ten steps or action items. Set up time to critically think about it and strategize. Then just set some work time to make it happen. Then, set up a time to audit the work. For my clients, we do this every two weeks at our coaching meetings. Intentional time set aside to make sure we’re making progress.

And here’s the secret. It works! It’s not a magic wand, but intentional time set aside to work on goals works! Who knew?

So, if you’re in the group that hasn’t checked out your goals since January…no shame! Pull them off the shelf, break them up into bite sized chunks, and make a plan move forward. And if you need help with accountability, reach out! We’d love to help you stay focused and accomplish your mission as a business.

Thanks so much! Have a great day.

Greedy Boomers are feeling frustrated and overrun by entitled Millennials, while skeptical Gen Xers are interviewing unaware Gen Zers who are scrolling TikTok in a job interview; and for the first time we are all working together in the same businesses.

College sports is awash in generational misunderstanding. The newly minted Name, Image, and Likeness rules are in place and for the first time in our lifetime you are seeing college athletes representing the hometown HVAC company, or in some cases, an international brand like Alabama’s Quarterback Bryce Young who is already being featured in Nissan commercials.

En masse the younger generations are all for this loosening of regulations, the older generations are on the spectrum between skeptical and opposed.

In his new book A New Kind Of Diversity, Author Dr. Tim Elmore highlights these generational challenges saying, “the generation gap is more distinct because new technology creates subcultures. Hence, generations often don’t have to connect to survive.”

When you look around your business you are beginning to see a Boomer (55 and older) working side by side with a Gen Xer, a Millennial, and a Gen Zer, all staring cross-eyed at the other trying to figure out why they are so peculiar and strange…and wrong.

Generational diversity in the workplace is an unavoidable reality and a massive opportunity. Our response to this reality makes waves; waves of optimism and hope, or waves of pessimism and doubt.

First, to provide the greatest amount of optimism for working within the healthy diversity of the generations we must be aware that rightness and wrongness is being replaced with angle and perspective.

The commonly agreed upon straight edges of society are becoming less and less agreed upon and in their place are the self-published perceptions of the generations.

We used to believe that only a few key players had their fingers on the submit buttons of our societal publishing houses, and now everyone can and does publish something.

The voices of angle and perspective are rising and it is leaving little space for a declaration of rightness or wrongness.

You have a couple of different responses to this reality; we can either dig in our heels and fight for limited options, or we can open your ears and our minds to listen.

Listening is not agreeing.

Listening is not acquiescing.

Listening is not giving permission.

Listening is simply listening.

To be generationally aware is to make time to listen to the different angles, and then to make further time to digest and process what you have sincerely heard.

We will do well to inform our own current angles and perspectives with the angles and perspectives of others as we make time to listen.

The second action we can take to bring hope to the generations is to believe that each person and each generation brings a value layer that was otherwise missing.

Recently we did some renovation work at our home. The project was 99% complete barring a few pieces of artwork. The rooms looked fantastic! The new floors, paint, trim, and tile were all a pop of design that we had been missing.

There was 1% missing though…the artwork.

Most of us went through school moaning about art class. The addition of that 1% that was missing completely brought wholeness to the room.

In a Wikipedia entry, resolve is what the music world refers to as “the move of a note or chord from dissonance (an unstable sound) to a consonance (a more final or stable sounding one)”.

In our renovation, something was missing.

The 1% of artwork brought resolve; brought a more final visual to the renovations we had completed.

Multiple generations working in concert help to bring resolve to a workplace; a more final or stable sounding environment by which all roles can contribute to the overall mission of the organization.

By collectively and repetitively pressing towards that agreed-upon mission, culture is built, and the flavor of that culture is enhanced by the diversity of its generational ingredients.

Generational awareness is to learn the intentionality of great listening, and to set the stage for each generational player to bring the ingredients and notes that provide a full resolve and satisfaction for the culture that is headed towards its mission.

Our family feels like it's been stuck inside for so much of the last month. Some sick kids, tons and tons of rain, brutally hot weather that we thought was finally behind us, you name it!

And yet with the cooler temps yesterday we took advantage of it and took a long family walk. Something we used to do nightly that just had been pushed aside as life got in the way. The simple, little things! We were reminded of how much life this gives us as we played "I spy" the entire walk and had some sweet moments racing each other to the next mailbox. 

I came home and immediately thought, why do we forget to do the little things? Because we know, deep down, the little things make the biggest difference for small businesses.

Good morning everyone! Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here.

I was sitting in with a client a few weeks ago who had not been coaching with me for very long and I was asking them about what separates them from some of the bigger companies doing what they do? 

“Well, not that much anymore!” As I leaned in a bit and asked them to elaborate, they proved my point. 

“Well, when we first opened it was this thought of superior customer service meets the highest quality. We returned every phone call. We wrote handwritten thank yous to clients after big jobs. We spent extra time on the details. We spent time as a team making sure everything was lined up. And as we’ve grown, it feels like there is less and less time for all of that! We’ve kind of lost our way a bit.”

Does any of this sound familiar? Well, it should. That’s the secret sauce of most small businesses. It’s the knowing the name of a client. Or remembering a team members birthday and that they are gluten-free! It’s the random handwritten note that shows up in your mailbox instead of some whitewashed thank you email with your name inserted. 

It’s someone actually answering your call and getting a human on the line instead of a “press 0 to talk to a customer representative.” Or having a weekly check-in with your team to hear their thoughts and get feedback from the boots on the ground.

But what happens? Business picks up. The fires grow bigger. The team grows. The daily and weekly checklists get thrown out for the almighty sales funnel, because sales solves all. And yet you look up 5, 8, 10 years from your start and barely recognize who you’ve become as a business!

So, this is my simple reminder to you to ask you…what little things used to set you a part that have now kind of fallen by the wayside. This is a simple reminder to dive back in on those things that may have been neglected because of "insert excuse here!” I know I'm guilty of it. 

Dive back in on BIG Wins and team check-ins. Dive back in on an effective team meeting and reestablishing your core values. Pull up a Job role and refresh it. Look back at your weekly schedule and time block your week out. Delegate one thing today. Build out a new process to make something more efficient. Shoot maybe it’s just calling a customer to thank them for their business out of the blue! Whatever you've set aside in favor of more important things, bring it up and set aside the time for a bit. I'd imagine that you, like me, would find it refreshing and completely worthwhile!

So, here’s what I’m going to ask you to do. Write down 10 things that you did when you started out your business that truly set you apart. Now, take one step further. How many of those things do you still do? Have you lost your secret sauce? And be honest, if you’ve only done it once this year and you used to do it weekly, that does NOT count.

Now pick 2 that are seriously important. How can you reimplement these into your routine? How can you recapture a bit of that magic that you had? Maybe remember a bit of why you got into this in the first place. Maybe it’s getting your team together and showing them the list and delegating one to each of them.

We can’t lose the soul of our business as sales increase. It’s what got us the sales in the first place!

So gather your team up this week. Put an appointment on the calendar to think this stuff through. Recapture the things that truly separate you from everyone else and watch the joy come back into what you do! 

It takes intentionality and leadership, but you’ve got that! Now you just have to do it.

Thanks so much y’all get after it!