My Business On Purpose

Is your business ready for a huge boost in revenue?

Are you drowning in opportunity? Frustrated thinking that if you could just get your head above water, everything would stabilize? Well, that’s a great place to dig in for a bit today. Happy Monday y’all, Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose.

One of my favorite shows to watch with my wife is Shark Tank. Not only do you see some amazing new products, but I love the dialogue between the Sharks and the business owners. It’s a back and forth as they figure out a valuation and then agree upon what to do moving forward.

I bet 1 out of 3 businesses that come on the show is frustrated because they can’t effectively manage inventory. They need cash to fulfill orders and are, as Mark Cuban likes to say, “Drowning in Opportunity.” When the orders are manageable, they can fulfill them and keep customers happy. But, when they make it big and the wal-marts or the Krogers of the world start putting in PO’s for thousands and hundreds of thousands of units, they have no way to finance the order and quite literally go under because they can’t fulfill the order.

It’s something I saw last week...live, in person!

I got a call from a client last week in a panic. We just got offered a $500,000 contract. What do we do!?!? Now, 500k may not seem like a lot to you. Or it may seem like more than you ever imagined from a revenue standpoint. But this would bump his business up about 30% overnight. That’s substantial. As we spoke, it was fascinating to look back on how far his business has come in working together for the past 6 mos.

Had this opportunity come about 6 mos ago, he would have had to say no. He had no clue what the margins were on his jobs, no clue how much cash he had to work with. Hiring? Nope, not right now. 

But with months of hard work, he’s locked in on his margins, he knows to the penny how much cash profit is in his business, because it’s sitting in an account (not on some spreadsheet somewhere), and he’s ready to hire to make this happen.

That is liberation from chaos! Gah, I get so pumped up just talking about him because I’m so proud of him. He’s put in the hard work to get his head above water and be able to make sound decisions from a position of thriving instead of just surviving. That’s what is going to keep his business growing. Continuing to build the foundation and make wise decisions for growth instead of just winging it and risking it all.

So...where are you in your business today? 

If that opportunity presented itself, could you take advantage of it? Seriously, ask yourself what would be a life-changing contract for your business to receive. Name the number right now. Then ask yourself, if I’m honest, could I handle it and would I know what to do?

I hope the answer is yes. I hope your business is in a place of strength and can take advantage of these kinds of opportunities because they don’t happen very often.

If the answer is no, don’t beat yourself up. We work with businesses every day that answered no to that question just a few weeks and months ago. But the difference with them is they made the tough decision to start working ON their businesses and never looked back. They got help from people who know how to get them there.

If you’re curious, here are the 3 things I see holding businesses back from being able to take advantage of opportunity. 

1. They are in a poor cash position in their business. They are either over-leveraged, or just don’t know the margins, so they can’t make an educated decision on how best to grow.
2. Their teams are poorly trained and rarely held accountable. This happens all the time when a business owner can’t delegate and effectively equip their teams to do the work they’re asked to do. It limits the ceiling and holds you back from ever growing to your potential.
3. Not getting perspective. It happens to all of us...we see things the way we see them and when someone else finally gives us some perspective, a new way of seeing things, we can make adjustments and grow. You need perspective.

So...don’t wait to build your business into what it can be. If you want to be able to grab hold of opportunities as they come up, do the work and set your business up for success. You owe it to yourself, your employees, and the people you do business with.

Thanks so much! I hope you have subscribed to our podcast and our youtube channel. Our entire team is putting content out there, so make sure you don’t miss it.

Have a great week!

How To Find And Hire The Right Person For The Right Job

This is a monumental week for us, today our team welcomes a new team member, and tomorrow is the six-year anniversary for our business.

To give you some context, we spend our days liberating business owners from chaos so they can make time for what matters most.  We do that with powerful business coaching that helps business owners and key leaders build systems, processes, and purpose using the Business On Purpose Roadmap and then graduate onto the Business On Purpose Compass.

Business coaching is nuanced and requires a unique skill set that requires intuition and is hard to replicate.  That is why we are a team of four coaches instead of forty at this stage of the game.

How did we find and hire the right person for the right job?

What I am about to share is simply the play that we have called when the game situation calls for bringing a new team member in.  There are many ways to proceed... this is ours.

We will do well to remember that hiring and leading a team is not the equivalent to a primary care nurse checking vitals prior to a visit with a physician.  Of course, vitals are a part of it; prior skill set, past employment, complimentary personality, etc.

Hiring should be thoughtfully intrusive and investigative.  Not in a weird CSI television kind of way, but in a thoughtful, well processed, well-intentioned, goal-focused direction.  Hiring an employee is more metaphorically aligned with marriage than it is with dating.  We are not inviting someone to a job, we are inviting them to a mission, a calling, and we need their help to get there.

An in-human way of hiring is how most hiring is achieved; check for a pulse, make sure they are not too bazaar for what you are comfortable with, see when they can start, and send over the paperwork.

An incredible human way of hiring is slowing the process down.  Not starting at the minimum requirements (experience, degrees, certificates, etc.), but instead walking them through the mission and the role with check in along the way.

We have eight steps that we thoughtfully walk a new team member through over an extended period of time in order both to make sure we are aligned with that person and that they are aligned with our mission.

Step one is pre-recruiting.  Before we ever reach out to someone we check off five pre-recruiting items:

• Define the gap: what is the gap in the business for which we need to bring another team member in to fill?
• Define the role: what role do we need that person to play in order to fill the gap?
• Define the budget: what compensation will be appropriate for this role based on the revenue that will be generated or supported because this role exists.
• Ask for internal candidates: larger businesses should look around internally to see if there are any “homegrown” candidates for the role.
• Share the role with key stakeholders: prior to traditional posting of your new role in the job search databases

Step two to finding and hiring the right person for the right role is the initial phone or Zoom interview.  It is intentionally distant and has a goal of simply reading the situation by asking general questions of background, experience, desire, and motivation.

Step three is the first in-person interview (if applicable to location).  In this interview, we do not share anything about role specifics or compensation.  Before you get married your biggest questions are not regarding future financial goals and or roles within the home.  They are important to discuss prior to marriage certainly, but out of the gate, it is important to make sure there is a simple motivational fit.

We want to make sure this new candidate is aligned with our vision, mission, values, and culture.  We spend the entire time reviewing those written cultural and purpose-centered documents along with our Org Chart and case studies so they can get clarity and ask questions.  

We take just a minute to explain the compensation structure (i.e. base plus commission) but do not discuss numbers.  Our desire is they want to be on the team because of purpose first, then we can get to some of the other elements of the agreement down the road.

Step four to finding and hiring the right person for the right role is the due diligence phase where we ask the candidate to take a DISC profile, complete an appropriate homework assignment to determine competency and motivation, and we follow up with three references from three different relational backgrounds to the candidate.

Step five is our second in-person interview (if applicable to location).  This step is where we dive deep into the role, where that role fits within the larger organization, and how that role helps our business to take another step towards liberating business owners from chaos so they can make time for what matters most.

This is time that we roll out the specifics of compensation for discussion and review.

Step six is a live meet up with the candidate and their spouse (is applicable).  We want to spend time with them in a casual environment so we can have unscripted discussions about life, business, and a variety of other things.  It also allows another member of their household to get to know us better and hear our heart.   

Step seven to finding and hiring the right person for the right role is the formal offer where we send a formal employee agreement of expectations within a formal offer email.  We put a time limit on the offer and expect prompt response.

The final step to finding and hiring the right person for the right role is ONBOARDING!  We script out the schedule and calendar of the first four weeks for our new team member.  We also host weekly onboarding calls with our new team member for the first 90 days and ask them pre-set questions.  We want them to focus on learning and growing rather than constantly wondering “what’s next?”

The hiring process is the decision-making process to helping your new team member find out if they really do want to run the marathon of your mission with you, the 90 day onboarding time is the stretch period before the race, and the 90-day mark of their new role is when the marathon gun fires at the starting line.

You owe it to yourself, to your team, your mission, and your new team member to take the time to do this right.

For help in this go join our Business On Purpose Roadmap membership community where you can work through a complete training on hiring and 30 other crucial elements of building a business that liberates you from chaos and makes time for what matters most.

Scott Beebe is the founder of Business On Purpose, author of Let Your Business Burn: Stop Putting Out Fires, Discover Purpose, And Build A Business That Matters.  Scott also hosts The Business On Purpose Podcast and can be found at mybusinessonpurpose.com.

Does your business rely on you... or your system?

Employee-dependent businesses, lack of trust for employees, and never taking the time to systematize... so many things to get to this morning. Happy Friday friends I hope it’s been a great week. Thomas Joyner here with Business on Purpose.

We do a business owner lunch about once a quarter or so with businesses we have zero connection to. It’s so much fun as there’s really no expectation other than to invest back into some new businesses and make some new connections.

Yesterday I sat down with about 8 business owners and we began to talk all about Delegation... the goods, the bads, and the uglies associated with it. It was powerful and they left with some practical ways to own delegation in their businesses and left with multiple tasks to systematize and train on after they choose to delegate.

We were moving until we hit a roadblock. One of the business owners brought up the frustration of feeling like there were several things that he couldn’t delegate. “What do you mean by that?” I kind of asked him to go a little further in-depth.

“Well, estimating is probably 80% of my job. There are so many variables. So many things you have to know and things I can’t really train on to get this off my plate.”

I agreed with him for a minute but then asked this question.

“So what happens if something happens to you?”

You see, that’s what we have to think about. When we are the business, we’re severely limiting the ceiling we can achieve. Severely holding our business back from reaching its potential. But, what happens if something happens to us and we can’t estimate for two weeks, a month, 6 most? Does this business just stop estimating? Especially in times of COVID... we have to think these things through.

“The challenge,” I said, “is to get people to buy into your system, not buy into you.” Salespeople want to sell themselves first and foremost. Because oftentimes they view sales as someone’s not buying what I’m selling, they’re buying me.

While that sells a ton at first... you’re basically selling your time at that and becoming incredibly vulnerable as a business. But... when you can create a system that people are buying into, a customer experience that is a competitive advantage, then people aren’t coming to you for you, they’re coming to you for your system. Which, in turn, sets others up to help carry the load of estimating, bidding, coaching, and whatever complicated operations you may have.

It’s no different from when I started here at BOP. Scott was the face of this business for 7 years. When you called for business coaching you wanted Scott. And he is AMAZING at it. But think about this…

Think there aren’t a ton of different variables in our business? We coach businesses all across the country and world, in every different industry (in a time of pandemic I might add) and there’s problem-solving that goes into every coaching session. It’s a training nightmare getting me up to speed.

But here’s the thing Scott saw a while back. He doesn’t have to train me on 5,000 different variables, he just has to train me on our system. He put the time in to create a system that works industry-wide and then pushed me to focus on learning and implementing our system. 

And the verbiage changes right. No longer is it…” Hey, come to me for coaching and we’ll get you straightened out.” It’s, “Hey, we have to get you in our roadmap to get you moving the right direction.”

You see the beauty and the power and the secret sauce, if you will, should be your system. That’s what unlocks almost unlimited growth. So now, it almost doesn’t matter who the coach is, the system is intact and the coach walks you through our system.

So, here’s the challenge for you. How do you build that system where you currently are? It doesn’t just happen. But...if you want your business to be able to thrive if something happens to you, for your employees to be able to run without wondering if they’re doing the right things if you want to rip the lid off your potential and allow for huge amounts of growth... PERFECT YOUR SYSTEM!

Or at least get started. Yesterday we talked a ton about just getting started. Because the perfectionist in us wants to say that if we don’t get it perfected quickly then it’s not worth doing. No, Scott took 6-7 years building this system, and it’s still changing today as we learn and re-implement. But we wouldn’t be where we are today had he not written it down and started creating it.

Don’t let it scare you... but also don’t believe the lie that you can’t get things off of your plate. It’s just not true.

Hey, if you haven’t already subscribed to our podcast or YouTube channel... check out my business on purpose on both platforms. So much great content coming out weekly!

Have a great weekend y’all and let me know if you ever want to connect.

Cameron Herold Interview

Hosted by:
Scott Beebe
Founder | Head Coach
Business On Purpose

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https://www.mybusinessonpurpose.com/

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Is your success in spite of you?

So often there are so many variables linked to success, so how do we know which ones were the real reason behind it all? Well, that’s what we’re going to talk about this morning. Happy Monday y’all, Thomas Joyner with business on Purpose here.

I love meeting with new businesses and asking them what they attribute their success to. A couple of weeks ago I was meeting with a friend who ran a mortgage office and he said something that struck me. 

We were talking about the Mortgage business and how on fire it has been recently. Clearly, he had a great year and originated a record number of loans for his branch. I started asking him what was behind that. He said a few things I expected like, “Well the rates were so low, people’s buying power jumped this year,” or, “so many people moved south due to the pandemic and needed a lender”, or even, “everyone and their brother decided to refinance their homes this year to lower their rate.” 

All that stuff was predictable. But, what I appreciated was what he said next. He said, “Thomas, if you didn’t succeed in the mortgage industry this year, you probably can’t make it. It was almost too easy. This year we succeeded IN SPITE of ourselves, but the true measure is going to be next year where we have to succeed BECAUSE of ourselves.”

Now that’s a heck of an observation. You see, he realized that this year’s performance had very little to do with the effectiveness of his business. It didn’t have to do with the processes or workflow or even the customer service. Sure, that stuff helped, but the waterfall of business was flowing so strongly, that they didn’t have to be great at what they did in order to succeed.

But next year, when the pipeline is a little less strong, when the refinance market slows down and everyone has the rate they are after, the competition really kicks in. The playing field is narrowed so to succeed, it has to be ON PURPOSE!

I thought about that in the context of this pandemic. Are you ready for the year after the pandemic? Have you been living in chaos mode so long that you’ve lost your advantage? So when the pipeline starts to slow down a bit, your processes aren’t ready to keep the sales moving forward?

You see this is why we’re so passionate about systems and processes. They are tested in the midst of the fire, but they are perfected in the calm. Their worth is truly realized when there is nothing else to fall back on.

So, before it’s too late, where are the holes in your processes? Where do you need to take some time to work ON your business, so that your business is ready to handle what this year will inevitably throw at you? 

You have to have a plan! 

I loved what my friend said. They weren’t just expecting this year to go off without at hitch but were going back to customers and asking how they can improve by sending surveys. They were poking holes in the customer experience to make sure that, this year, they succeeded because of their systems and processes.

One thing we say around here all the time is, “There’s no competition for a well-run business.” And we truly believe that. The day you commit to that is the day you stop succeeding in spite of yourself and truly build a competitive advantage that keeps you in front for the long haul. 

If that doesn’t make sense, reach out... let’s have a conversation. We want you to succeed because of yourself. To build a business free of the chaos! One that you can be proud of and not have to worry as much about the external factors blowing your business around.

Hope you guys have a great week! Make sure to follow my business on purpose on YouTube and subscribe to our podcast. Man, there’s so much good stuff on there.

Take Care guys.

Four Tools To Help Resolve Conflict At Work

It was silly; grown adults yelling and screaming at an umpire for a bad call... at a tee-ball game.

Why?  Why do we lose our minds and create conflict?

Conflict is literally to strike together.

Think about metal grinding together... conflict... parks... explosion.

We are people with emotions.  We are people with opinions.  We are people with varying perspectives, worldviews, tendencies, and biases.

It is only logical then if you put two people together in an emotional situation where opinions can be expressed, or biases can surface; explosion may not be far behind.

My first manager at Pfizer Skip Clarkson used to say, “speak to people the way they wish to be spoken to.”

That mindset is our foundational rally cry when discussing the importance and power of the DISC profile.  Understanding where a person is on the DISC graph gives you incredible empathy and intelligence when having the right conversations with the right people.

It is not our nature to think about another person when responding or reacting to a situation.  We are bent to be me-first thinkers.  What is in it for me?  What does this mean for me?

It is not surprising that when two, me-first people connect, an explosion is imminent.

But what happens when explosion is the outcome?  What happens when the tension of conflict gets red hot.  How do we cool that tension, and repair any fractures or brokenness that comes?

We always say, life and business necessarily intersect.  You can’t have something happen at work and then successfully “leave it at work” in the same way that home-things follow you straight to work.

John Ussery, who oversees business development at Shoreline Construction in South Carolina, said this recently in one of our coaching meetings, “You can’t change someone’s mind.  But you can build rapport, offer empathy, and give them new information so they can change their own mind.”

In other words, the goal is not to try harder, yell louder, talk faster, cry harder, withdraw sooner, or demand more for less.

Instead, your goal is to be a stage-builder.

Stage-builders set a stage for which others have the opportunity to perform.  

Stage-builders get very specific instructions from the performers quietly and behind the scenes so they can create the right atmosphere for the show to wow the crowd.

It is impossible for the stage-builder to win if the performer does not win.  But if the performer wins, the stage-builder automatically wins every time.

The entire goal of a stage-builder is to, again as Ussery put it, “de-escalate a combustible scenario.”  In other words, set the stage so the performer is in position to wow the crowd... then we all win.

In conflict resolution, being right is not the goal, instead, setting the right stage is the aim.

There are four tools to discover that we will equip you with to stock your emotional and relational toolbelt that will allow you to minimize the pain and discomfort of conflict, and instead build relationships that bring mutual joy and value.

The first of these four tools is listening. 

Chris Voss in his book Never Split The Difference says, “it all starts with the universally applicable premise that people want to be understood and accepted.  Listening is the cheapest, yet most effective concession we can make to get there.”

Listening is discovering, finding out new bits of insight, information, and perspective.

Listening is not thinking while the other person is talking and missing everything they are saying or having your arms crossed and eyes down like a six-year-old.  Listening is not, showing apathy, having an attitude of “it’s fine”, or being selective in what you hear.

Active listening requires you to use your EARS...

1. Eye contact & Nonverbal Responses
2. Ask GENUINE questions 
3. Repeat & Drill Down (Tell me more about that…)
4. Summarize With Notes

The second tool of resolving conflict is mirroring; simply repeating the last 3 to 5 words of what the other person just said.

For instance: “you really frustrated me when you cut me off in that meeting”.  You respond, “I cut you off in that meeting?”  They correct, “well, I felt like my point wasn’t made yet.”

Mirroring forces more details.  The goal of mirroring is to allow the other person to keep talking... and talking... and talking.  Many times, they don’t want to be right... they just want to know that you are listening with your EARS!!!

Voss quotes Psychologist Richard Wiseman who studied restaurant servers and found the average tip of waiters increased by 70% using mirroring versus those just using the positive reinforcement of “great”, “awesome”.

The third tool of conflict resolution is labeling allowing you to verify the emotions of another person.  Voss says, “give someone’s emotion a name and you show you identify with how that person feels.”  

Labeling connects you to a person much faster than traditional “get to know you” methods

Voss gives us three phrases to use in your toolbox for labeling…

• It seems like…

1. It sounds like…
2. It looks like…

The final helpful tool to resolve conflict is simply your voice.  Your voice can speed things up, or slow things down.

Remember again, rarely is a person defending the emotion they feel on the outside... but instead are instead trying to deal with the turmoil that is happening on the inside.  Your goal is to dig that up.  We’re not looking to put out the smoke... we want to blanket the fire.

When you are intentional about using these four tools, then you can reasonably hope for two outcomes; empathy and rapport. 

Empathy is the capability of sharing someone else’s feelings, and rapport is a close harmonious relationship.

In using these four tools to resolve conflict, our goal is not to be right... but instead to speak to others the way they wish to be spoken to.

Do you let yourself dream about your business?

The same old thing... day after day. Nothing exciting on the horizon. Nothing new to speak of. Sound familiar? Great, let’s talk about how to change that. Happy Friday friends, Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here.

I had a mentor in Young Life that told me something 5-6 years ago that changed my life. Now I like change, by nature. I go looking for it. I like something new and different every day, so systems and routine and schedules taste bitter in my mouth, even though I know how beneficial they are to me and my productivity. 

I went to a meeting for all of our regional Area Directors and the guy speaking to us was asking us if we dream. And not just practical dreams, but big, elaborate dreams. Dreams that kind of take your breath away and make you go… ”Man, if that really happened, it would change everything! For the better.”

You see, I think we get so stuck dealing with the fires going on around us, that we forget to dream of a different way of doing things.  Or, we get so stuck with one part of our business, that it robs us of the ability to dream about what else we could offer as a product or service. We lose our ability to just wonder...what if?

As I sat there in the meeting I realized that I was in that boat. I hadn’t dreamed anything really BIG in a while. The speaker went on to talk about a meeting he sets with himself at 2 pm every single Friday. He calls it his “New/Next/Nap” meeting.

It’s exactly what it sounds like. He blocks out an hour at the end of every week on Friday afternoon at 2 pm. If someone tries to meet with him, hey I’m booked at 2 that day. It’s non-negotiable. And he does one of three things. He dreams about something “New”, something that could come “Next,” or some days he’s so beat, he just takes a quick power nap to recover from a crazy week. 

This was a man who was responsible for 100’s of people, that made a meeting every single week to dream or take a nap. There was very little on the agenda. Some days he would dream about starting Young Life in a new town, so he would get in his car and drive over there to pray at a local high school. He might walk in the principal’s office just to meet them and see what happened. 

Other days he would just make a phone call or two to see if anyone had any connections or just start writing down thoughts on what’s next. But here’s the cool thing. The growth and things that were brought about from one hour every Friday was game-changing. New ministries were started, new teams built, new plans were hatched to reach new communities. And some days he just realized his limitations and took a nap. Because he realized to be his best he couldn’t burn out.

You think... well that works in a ministry setting, but we have stuff to get done. I can’t just daydream and actually run a profitable business.

Oh really???

Google has recently started something called the 20% Project. They allow (and in some cases mandate) their employees to use up to 20% of their paid hours at work, working on personal projects. Working on things that may go nowhere. On innovating, developing...and DREAMING.

So, if it works for Google... one of the largest companies in the world, why can’t it work for you?

Don’t get so locked into the day to day that you can’t dream about a new product or service or a new business idea. It’s why we build it into our Vision story. We want you always innovating and always poking holes in your workflow so you can continue to get better at what you do. 

So get into your Weekly Schedule. Start making time for it. I’d be surprised if it wasn’t life giving to you. You see, we don’t start a business so we can do the same thing day after day until we die. No, we get into business because we see that we can do things a better way from the get go. 

And yet, somewhere along the way, we lose that. 

So here’s my challenge today. Next week, go ahead and schedule your “New/Next/Nap” meeting with yourself. Fight to keep it on there and not push it aside. Be consistent with it over the next month or two. I guarantee your business will benefit from it... even if it’s just having a more rested, more productive owner.

Have a great weekend everyone and if you haven’t subscribed to our YouTube channel or our podcast, search my business purpose and join the family. We’re releasing new content there just about every day!

Take care!

What To Know Before Entering A Business Partnership... And Why Many Don’t Work

I’ve heard it said many times that “the only ship that doesn’t sail is a partnership”.

Why?

People.

We’re emotional creatures.  We have shifting thoughts, ideals, perspectives, and interests.

What excites us today may not excite us tomorrow.  For those business owners who are married, you already realize that marriage is a lifetime process to work at and build.  Partnerships are not much different from the perspective of setting expectations.

The emotions of a partnership can range from relief to appreciation to frustration and even so far as paranoia.

Partnerships are mysterious.  If a partnership is 50/50 then what happens when there is no consensus on an issue?

Typically, partners will push the can down the road until... BOOM, explosion.

Partnerships can work when great care is taken to make them work.

Here are a few things that need to take place before a partnership is ever entered into.

First, both partners must share a vision.  If two partners have two visions, then they are likely to compete for resource and energy pushing the vision they most align with.  A partnership with two visions has no vision at all.

Second, both partners must preemptively have hard discussions.  How will ownership be divided?  What day to day role will each partner play in the business and what is the fair market compensation for that role?  Do you agree on the debt tolerance of the business?  What about time commitments, non-competes, intellectual property, and entity endgame (sale, cash flow)?

These conversations are better discussed prior to the launch of the partnership instead of post-startup, or even worse, not at all.

Third, partnerships need to be mutually aligned and very aware of each personality within the partnership.  Is one partner passive and the other active?  Is one partner a driver and the other more compliant?  Is one partner more loose to laws and regulations where the other partner is a stickler for compliance?

A partnership must function at the same speed... together.

Fourth, partnerships must discuss and agree on the financial details like reinvestment, debt, compensation, and draw percentages.  

Running pro formas and budgets beforehand can save a lot of time, headache, and frustration on the back end.  

Finally, partnerships must have a set weekly time they meet to discuss the business part of the business.  Even better if these meetings have a set list of questions that the partners ask each other.

Questions like, what blind spots do you see?  What opportunities are we missing?  What support do we need to be extending to our team and customers?

These are hard things.  Partnerships should only exist where the skill of one partner fills the gap for the lack of that skill in the other partner.  If not, it is likely best that you stay away.

Ships are meant to sail.  Partnerships often sink, but it doesn’t mean they all do.

A business coach is well placed to help mediate the regular communication of partners.  Every partnership needs a dedicated, long term coach.

Who is a step ahead of you as an owner?

Do you have a business mentor? Why do you even need one? Let’s talk about that today... Good afternoon y’all! Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here.

When I started in Young Life, who I worked for almost a decade. I’ll never forget it. The first meeting we had with our Regional staff, they asked us to fill out this form and send it back to them. They asked for two names. One name of someone who’s a peer. Someone who’s praying for you, who knows you well, and who is walking alongside you as a friend. 

Now, that one was easy for me. I had some great friends and had no problem thinking through 4 or 5 names to write down.

The second thing it asked for is a mentor’s name. And they wanted their phone number and e-mail so they could check-in with your mentor from time to time. I kind of broke out into a cold sweat as I realized I didn’t have one. I went and asked my boss about it and he said, “Hey, that’s fine for today, but you need to have one by the end of the month.”

So, I came home from the meeting and immediately started thinking about who might be willing to mentor me. I had to humbly go up to that person, tell them why I was asking them this, and then ask them to start meeting with me once or twice a month.

Here’s what I quickly came to realize about this relationship. It started off a little awkward, but as we met every other week for lunch, I soon began to feel so comfortable that everything topic-wise was on the table. Relationships, work, faith, masculinity, family, fitness... ANYTHING.

And I had someone that was pushing me to be the man that I wanted to be. 

Now, if that worked in my personal life, why shouldn’t it work in the business world? I think sometimes we believe a bunch of lies about business owners. We believe that they’re too busy. I couldn’t disagree more. We make time for what we value. 

I also think that sometimes we’re not humble enough to ask for help. If you’re a business owner it means that you have drive and can take initiative and are probably incredibly talented. But can you be humble enough to ask for help? Can you be humble enough to let someone in and actually take the advice they are giving? That can be a huge challenge.

The last thing I’ll say is I think we believe the lie that we’re the only business that has these issues. Here’s a trade secret...you’re not the only one struggling with employees, or cash flow or training, or vision... OTHERS JUST LEARN TO HIDE IT BETTER!!!

Trust me, there is not a problem that your business is experiencing, that someone else hasn’t already walked through and dealt with. And probably learned both the WRONG way to deal with it and the RIGHT way to deal with it. Don’t get stuck feeling alone in your problems. 

So, how do you go about finding a mentor or a coach for your business? Well, find someone who’s business looks like what you want yours to look like. When I needed a mentor, I looked for someone who’s marriage I respected and who was a step ahead of me in life. 

That process was simple, I went up to them and just said hey, I respect who you are as a person, as a man, and as a leader. I’ve been wanting to have someone speaking into my life and just someone I can bounce things off of a couple of times a month. Would you be willing to do that?

Maybe in the business world, it goes something like this…” Hey, I’ve always respected your business and your leadership. Could I take you out to lunch once a month and just pick your brain on some of the stuff going on in my business? I need some help.

People are encouraged to see they’re respected. People want a platform to give back and to encourage others a step behind. And here’s the thing... if they say no, ask someone else! They aren’t rejecting YOU, it may just not be the right time.

Everyone needs a mentor or a coach. Can you be humble enough to ask for one? 

Think about great athletes, great writers, great leaders... they’re almost always directly linked to a great coach, mentor, or group of individuals surrounding them and offering feedback. 

You don’t have to do it alone.

We tell people all the time, whether you hire us, or not, hire a coach or find someone to speak into your life. It’s the only way to get where you want to go as a business owner... and a person. 

Here’s the last thing I’ll say. When you have a mentor or business coach, turn around and do the same for someone else. There’s always someone a step ahead of you and always someone a step behind. Be for someone what you want someone else to be for you.

Have a great weekend y’all! Don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube and podcast for some incredible content every week.

Take care.

Are you putting in the work?

What separates the good businesses from the great ones? The ones that get by from the ones that excel. Well, let’s talk about that this morning... Happy Monday friends Thomas Joyner here with Business on Purpose.

My wife and I tested positive for Covid this week, so I’ve been ripping through some books. I’ve loved it as I’ve read a book for fun, one for education, one for growth in my faith and I can just kind of bounce back and forth between them.

Now, I married a girl from Kentucky, a state known for its bourbon and, naturally, I’ve grown to truly love tasting new bourbons and hearing the story behind them. This may sound overly introspective, but the families that produce bourbon spend their entire lives perfecting their bourbons and I can appreciate the work that goes into it.

A few weeks back a friend handed me this. Pappyland, a story of family, fine bourbon, and the things that last, by Wright Thompson. It’s masterfully written and incredible storytelling as the author walks through his own family’s history and weaves it in with the story of the most famous and hard to come by Bourbong in the world, Van Winkle Family Reserve, or Pappy. 

It didn’t take long for me to start taking notes as the story truly affected me. In 1972, the bourbon business was in a nosedive. Profits were meager and the distillery that the Great Pappy Van Winkle built was sold by his son and cheap imitations were made under the same label. They began to use a new yeast to produce the bourbon and, while it technically worked, it lost some of its uniqueness and intricacies that made it truly the best. 

The author said something that I initially passed by and then came back for a second read. He said, “More and more today, we don’t want to do the work or take the chances required for greatness, and we try to fix all those shortcuts on the back end with marketing and branding- modern, fancy words that mean lie.”

Whoa! Let’s unpack that a bit. What’s he really saying?

He’s saying that too often we won’t do the work it takes to truly be great, to truly solve the problems our world needs, or we settle for something that’s good enough. 

But greatness requires something else entirely. Greatness requires hard work and taking chances. Now, most people equate taking chances to foolishness. But I don’t think the two go hand in hand. 

It’s not foolishness to innovate and try new things. It’s not foolishness to invest time into training our teams or making sure our client experience is the best it possibly can be. But, so often we stop short of that. We settle because IT’S. HARD. WORK!

That’s something we tell each client we work with. There’s no magic wand to wave that can magically fix your business. And if there was, we would probably charge a lot more for it!

It takes hard work. Day after day, week after week, month after month to build a great business. But here’s the amazing thing... what’s leftover after the hard work is the thing that lasts. Think about it with home building. When we use quality supplies and a creative approach, we build a house that lasts, not one that falls apart within 15-20 years.

So, the question stands. Where are you taking shortcuts? Where are you using marketing and branding to try to maybe in a roundabout way, lie to the customer? It’s one of the things I love talking through with business owners when we write out their unique core values. When they say things like excellence or extra-mile customer service or we want to be the best... I make sure it’s not just lip service.

Because you can’t take a shortcut and accomplish things like that. There is no shortcut to get there! 

Have you ever put out an ad and thought, “I don’t even believe that about our company, but maybe it will drive sales?” We can do better than that. 

I’ll finish with this... during my quarantine, I’ll admit that I got sucked down some rabbit holes on YouTube. I found myself watching an interview with Jeff Bezos the CEO of Amazon (and I know he stirs up mixed emotions, but hang with me here), but it was an interview with Jeff Bezos from 1999. The interviewer was asking him about the viability of a company based solely on the internet. Which sounds crazy to me 22 years later, that this was even a question!

But Bezos had some incredible answers. The one thing that struck me, was in 1999, in the midst of something that was a risk, something that had never been done before, Bezos said this about his company. “That’s what we’re about, if there’s one thing Amazon.com is about, it’s obsessive attention to the customer experience end to end.”

That’s not taking a shortcut. That’s innovation...  obsessive attention to his work in a direction that invokes change. 

So I’ll send you off with a question today. Where are you tempted to take a shortcut or where are you tempted to not put in the work in your business, that’s robbing you of being able to be authentic with who you are to your customers.

Let me say that again...Where are you tempted to take a shortcut or not put in the work in your business, that’s robbing you of being able to be authentic with who you are to your customers.

That’s a heavy question, I know, but doing the hard work will be what separates you over the long haul and builds lasting relationships with all who do business with you.

Thanks so much for listening, take a few minutes while you’re here to follow us on YouTube and subscribe to our podcast. I promise it’s worth your time.

Have a great week!