Applied Leadership Podcast

When you're a small business owner, choosing to bring on a business partner is one of the most significant decisions you can make. Our view is that in this decision, like a marriage or life partnership, you have to think long term. Finding another individual or small team that aligns with your life values is key, with the amount of time you all will be spending with each other, toiling, celebrating wins and bouncing back from losses together. Listen in to more gems of advice from Blayne and Brandon about how they continue to build the ALPs team.

Establishing and documenting the expectations of a specific partnership from the very beginning is key to managing that relationship. How do you respond and address any concerns up front to keep the relationship going? What do you do when it's time to cut ties and walk away?

There are so many events happening in the world that are difficult to understand and even more difficult to try and manage our feelings and not feel overwhelmed. Instead of having complete apathy or enmeshing ourselves in everything, our focus should be on doing what we can, where we can. Chipping away at making our families, our homes, and our communities better, doing it together with people we love and keeping hope alive.

How you decide to push yourself depends on what your goal is and what you're aiming for. There's also a cost around how much you push yourself, and how it affects those closest to you.

Everyone can relate to being the new person on a team, and it is hard. Whether you're being onboarded, or onboarding someone new to your team, support and willingness to help go both ways. In this episode, we'll discuss how to welcome and support a new employee, and how to conduct yourself if you're the new leader joining a team of people who have been around awhile.

Grinding and operating at the red line all the time is a recipe for disaster - for you, your team and the business. Creating intentional space in our calendars for our relationships, physical health and downtime is imperative for overall wellness and resilience over the long haul. Doing this along the way will ensure you're at your best when it's time to surge and hit those opportunities when they come.

As leaders, how do we ensure that we are properly supporting those doing the day-to-day, front facing work, when we may have different perspectives? By acknowledging that people approach problems, strategies and decisions through our own unique lens, we also need to ensure that we create a culture that builds an understanding of these perspectives to work together.

As leaders, your culture is going to be what you allow. Enabling an environment where disunity and disruption are allowed by a few, sacrifices team culture and sets consequences for the long term. Brandon and Blayne discuss how to address disruptions early on to keep your team cohesion solid and goals on track.