My Business On Purpose

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!

What do 18 mo old swimming lessons have to do with your business?

It's almost spring and all of our friends are having their kids get refresher swim lessons... so what does that have to do with you and your business... well let's jump on in. Good afternoon friends, Thomas Joyner here with Business on Purpose.

I was on the phone the other day with a good friend and client, Stephen Page with Guild Mortgage here in Bluffton and we were just catching up on life. We went through the normal routine of wives, work, and kids and he started telling me about his 18 mo old daughter taking swim lessons.

He was obviously a proud dad as he said he sat there and watched his daughter, who started walking a few months ago and who was now jumping into the pool, spinning around and getting back to the side.

At 18 months old!

And he said something that struck me... He said, "It's amazing all the things she's capable of at such a young age. I guess she just needed the opportunity to do it!"

We hung up, but that thought went round and round in my head. "I guess she just needed the opportunity to do it."

How often can that be said in our own businesses? How often are we holding back the people we're responsible for from growth, from succeeding, or from accomplishing new things?

One of the questions Scott has started asking me in our weekly onboarding time is this. "What do I need to let go of so you can continue to grow in your role?"

He seriously asks me that every week. What does he need to let go of, what is he holding onto too tightly, that is keeping me from growing in my role. Because his desire is to have team members that are owning their roles, growing daily and weekly, and never staying stagnant.

You see he realizes an important thing when it comes to managing us... our team can only ever maximize its potential if he's willing to let go of things and allow me to fail, then learn, then grow, then accomplish. And maybe along the way we realize that I and the rest of our team are way more capable than we ever realized!

The second thing I wanted to point out is how this mindset of limiting our capabilities is actually crippling our businesses performance as a whole.

Think about this... how often do we dream about what might be in our business? How often do we say, "I wonder if we could grow to that?" Or, "What if we could do this in addition to what we're already doing?"

So often, our lack of dreaming and courage is the only thing holding us back from growth! That's why in our 12 week planning, we always have a future section. We want to keep track of ideas that will challenge us and not limit our possibilities. We want to push ourselves to a place of knowing our limits. Maybe it doesn't work out, but at least it won't be for lack of vision.

It's what is so powerful about the 12 week plan. Let's figure out 3 important things that need to be done, or 3 areas of growth over the next 12 weeks, and then put action steps, a real plan in place, in order to accomplish it.

That's what being a business owner is all about. Empowering your employees, pushing them to grow and realize their potential...and then putting a plan in place for your business to continue growing for years to come.

Don't wait on this! You can accomplish so much more than you realize you're capable of. If we can help you put a plan in place or help you equip your employees, reach out to us. We'd love to run alongside you.

Make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel and our podcast for more amazing content we release every few days. Have a great weekend!

How Do You Build A System For Marketing, Not Just A Strategy?

So many folks we talk to want to talk about Marketing strategies, but not build a marketing system. So how do you do that? Well, let's talk about it. Happy Monday friends, Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose.

I spent countless hours at Clemson University studying marketing. It was my major and something that actually made sense to me. Accounting, not for me, but Marketing... I loved it!

I had a professor that spent months every semester drilling into the 4 P's of marketing. Product, Price, Placement, and Promotion. He drilled that marketing mix into our heads every minute we were listening to him... and it worked. For years!

However, I was shocked the other day, when a local business owner puts words to something that we have felt for a while.

"The 4 P's are out... it's the 4 E's now!" he said. Now this man has started and built more businesses than I can shake a stick at, so when he speaks, I listen.

But everything he said, made sense as he put words to things we at BOP had been feeling for a while now.

In this new model of marketing, the consumer has grabbed hold of the power. They are more informed, less patient, and more demanding than ever. Gone are the days of being able to maintain your advantage over a competitor for months or years.

No, sometimes now your advantage can be only for a few minutes before someone knocks you off and offers a similar product at a similar price.

So, where does that leave us? Well, with the 4 E's of marketing.

The first E goes from the product to the "Experience."

The challenge becomes not just focusing on the product's deliverables, as your advantage may only last a short while, but focuses more on the customer experience and workflow you provide. How can you deliver the best product, WITH THE BEST EXPERIENCE, in a way that creates long term customers?

The second E goes from place, to "Everyplace." Typical marketing was an on/off switch that interrupted people during their normal day. Think billboard advertising that grabbed a customer's attention away from their morning commute or a commercial in the middle of a football game that interrupts your experience.

When we shift the mindset to "Everyplace," we're trying to intercept the customer in a way that is convenient for them, and at the time they are most receptive to our marketing efforts. Think about apps that walk you through the sales the moment you step in a grocery store or an interactive video series that helps give you the pros and cons of a specific decision. We must begin to, as Brian Fetherstonaugh said, "Today we have to intersect consumers on their turf and on their terms. And that could be anyplace or every place.

The third E goes from Price to "Exchange." Everything we do has a value attached to it and it's not always monetarily. Think about Toms Shoes for example. They weren't amazing shoes, but they were attached to a cause that made people want to jump in and engage. There was value passed along that wasn't just about the money but was about the fulfillment to the customer.

So do you even know what is being exchanged to a customer when they buy your product? You must master explaining that in a meaningful way, especially in a climate where the price is no longer the only means of decision making.

Lastly, the final E goes from promotion to "Evangelism." Marketers used to find one benefit add of their particular product and stick to that time and time again to sell. Today, that's simply not enough.

Today, customers want to be tied into a mission and customer experience that makes them raving fans and more likely to rave about you to their peers. That's the ideal sell, right? Create customers that sell for you. This may be a new term for many of you, but it's creating a replicating marketing program that, like the energizer bunny, keeps going and going and going.

It's social marketing because it appeals to all of our sense and need for belonging.

So take those 4 E's. Don't just think through a strategy, but build a system to engage all of them in the marketing of your business. When it comes to the experience, build out your ideal customer experience, write down the processes that need to happen and then build out holes in your workflow to accomplish it.

For everyplace, find creative ways to intersect your ideal customer and build repeatable actions that come alongside them. Don't just waste money throwing it out the window, but build a marketing system you can track and analyze to make sure it's worth it.

For exchange and Evangelism, build a powerful mission to go with your business that is the thread that ties it all together. Make sure your widget is not just a widget, but something that truly changes the client's life for the better.

When you do all of these things, you bring marketing to a place that it will radically transform your business and the lives of those you sell to.

Thanks so much for listening, make sure you check us out on YouTube and subscribe to our podcast!

Have a great week!

How Do You Actually Get Things Done?

How do you filter through the noise, the constant barrage of images and content thrown at you on a daily basis? Well, let's jump in and talk about it. Thomas Joyner here with Business on Purpose!

I read a statistic this week that blew my mind recently!

"On average, over 500 hours of content is added to YouTube... EVERY MINUTE!!!" That's outrageous, over 500 hours of content is uploaded to YouTube every minute. That means you can never catch up.

Another statistic for you... Netflix currently has 200 shows and movies under production to be added to their streaming platform to be added during 2021. That means you could binge-watch a new series (not individual show) or movie every day for almost 7 mos and still not watch the same thing twice. That is mind-blowing!

In fact, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings recently was quoted as saying that their "biggest competitor moving forward will be an individuals sleep!"

Think about that for a second, your attention is being fought for day in and day out...every second of the day. But your attention is being attacked not just to keep you from sleep, but to keep you from working hard, spending time with your family, being productive, getting healthy, every aspect of your life is being fought for by outside influences.

So how do you fight back? How do you filter through all of the noise and begin to implement things in your business or organization that truly can change it!

Well, it starts with putting down the distractions for a bit and making time for what truly matters most.

I was sitting in a coaching call with several of our clients last week and several of them all sat there and said, Thomas, it's so hard to just find time to get started! I have great intentions of doing the Roadmap, but I just get caught up and stuck and I look up and the day or week is gone!

So, we pointed them back to the Weekly Schedule. It's why we implement this with every business owner we work with. Until you can dictate what your schedule is, you don't stand a chance to move past the chaos. You have to set a time, EVERY WEEK, to work on your business. We call it dental chair time…

Think about the last time you were at the dentist with that hygienist all up in your mouth cleaning...you don't ask them to stop so you can answer an email or take a call or put out a fire. NO! You're in a dentist appointment. And here's the funny thing, we believe that a dentist appt is a better excuse for being off the radar than taking time to work on and build our business.

It's no different! Set time in your schedule every week to implement. Imagine the clarity you would have if you took 2 hours a week as time to get perspective on what is going on? Imagine how freeing if you just cut your phone off or put it on do not disturb and closed that email tab at the top of your browser to give yourself enough time to filter through some of the noise and make game-changing decisions about what you want to implement.

Chaos is fighting for your attention! There's no doubt about it. The question is can you push the pause button on the distractions long enough to do something about that. To cut through all of the awesome content that's being thrown at you, to process it, and figure out what you're going to implement in your business.

As Scott loves to say and Joe Calloway made famous, "Vision, without implementation, is hallucination."

Don't fall into the trap of getting distracted, but build your week up the way you want it to look, and then DO NOT WAVER from it. Implement, implement, implement. It's the only way to take your business where you want it to go.

Welcome to this online tutorial for How to own your fitness...and not get discouraged! Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here, so this year at BoP we're spending a good chunk of time on you, the business owner or key leader, as a person and not just in a business role. We want to touch on every area of life...and that has to start with your health...and your fitness.

The first thing I will say is if you knew me in the past you would laugh that I might be teaching a tutorial on this. I led an active lifestyle, I loved all things outdoors and loved to move as long as it was attached to an activity.

But...going for a run? Nope, not unless I'm being chased. Working out? Couldn't have thought of a worse way to spend an hour of my day. I wanted it to be fun and exciting and to see results instantly.

Friends of mine used to actually make fun of me as I would work out for about 6 weeks a year, get bored and decide it's just not worth it. Rinse and repeat for the next 8-10 years until...I was married and had a kid...or had two kids.

All of a sudden, I realized I want to be around for years. I realized that my future health affects people around me. But here's the thing. It doesn't just affect me 25-30 years from now, no it affects me today. Of course, I want to be around for a long time. I want to know my grandkids and teach them to hunt and fish, but I can't just stay motivated by something 25 years in the future. No, I need some positive reinforcement today.

Here's what I've realized through this process of beginning to own my fitness...it's lowered the stress levels I have running throughout the day. I get a good workout in the morning and I respond to life differently. The way I can play with my kids and chase them around with more energy. The clarity with which I move through the day and the sleep I get at night is all improved. I'm a better husband, dad, friend and employee because I'm getting moving and getting in really good shape.

I've heard it said that, "When you are healthy, you have 1,000 dreams, when you're not healthy, you only have one...GET HEALTHY!"

And it's so true!

So, what holds us back from taking ownership of our fitness?

The first thing I think we struggle to do is find the right motivation. For me, it was making sure I'm around for a long time for my wife and my kids. So, everytime I'm trying to decide if I'm going to wake up, I picture their life without me in the future, but it's the motivation I need to get my tail out of bed and get in there at 6 am.

One of my favorite things Dave Ramsey asks his call in guests is, "Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired."

Obviously he's talking about finances, but is it any different with your fitness? Are you sick and tired of being overweight, stressed, having a lack of energy, or concerns about future health? Until that statement is true and you find the right motivation, you'll never get into the gym or out on a run.

So what's it for you? Is it your family? Is it being a better version of yourself today? Is it an improved day to day life with more energy and a healthier lifestyle? Find your motivation and hold onto it in a way that propels you to success.

The second thing we struggle to do is make an investment that actually costs us something. Part of my problem is I wanted to get in shape until it cost me something. And I would always stop short of that moment.

Think about it...why do you think 9 out of 10 machines in a Planet fitness are empty? It's because 10 bucks a month isn't enough cost to get you off your butt and into the gym! It's just not. If you have the option of binging another show on Netflix or sleeping in or get to the gym, you never made a significant enough investment to force you to go.

Now, please, do not use this as a reason to buy a $2,000 Peloton if you don't have the money, or hire a personal training. If you have the money for that great!

But I know, for me, I chose a gym that was not the cheapest, but the one that was a big enough investment that I force myself to take advantage of the investment and actually get something out of it. I'm too cheap to pay good money for a CrossFit membership and NOT use it!

So what's the investment for you? I had a buddy one time who wanted to get in better shape and he couldn't find the motivation. Finally, I looked at him and said if you really want to get in shape here's what you do. Put $250 bucks in a checking account. Every time you skip a workout you pay me 20 bucks. He looked at me like I was crazy.

No, seriously, you value your money enough to not just want to give it away. Plus, every time you workout it will feel like you're saving 20 bucks. So, we did it and the first time he missed, he was ticked! But, I held him to it and he venmo'd me 20 bucks.

Again, two weeks later, he missed. 20 more bucks! And he was hot about it! For the next month he never missed a workout and by that time had built the habit necessary to make it work and he was past the initial misery of starting.

So don't do it alone and find someone to hold you accountable if that's what it takes.

The last mistake most people make is focusing on the end instead of the process. Instead of improvement! Most people sit here and say...gah I need to lose 10 lbs. That's the end goal, right? But what we need to do is build a process to accomplish that goal. The question we need to ask is, how can I make small changes in my life to accomplish the goal. Then, when the goal is accomplished there is a process in place to keep us on track, not some fad diet or workout plan meant to get results fast.

According to a US News Report, "95% of people fail to get the results they wanted when they started the diet."

They go on further in the article to say that often times people don't fail at diets, diets fail people. That's a powerful thought. These fads have very little ability to deliver what you want. They're too extreme and oftentimes not realistic for the long term. They're for triage, not for preventative care and health. So build a system targeting the results you want and then trust the process.

Celebrate the wins along the way. Make it fun! Build habits that are life changing!

So what's the system for you? Do you like reading? Buy a book that will help you get where you want to go or get off on the right foot. Do you like Podcasts? Find a highly recommended one that can help motivate and hold you accountable. Take the first step, don't get concerned with finishing the race day 1!

For me, I didn't want to go in and hit the weights 6-7 days a week, knowing I'd burn out and be miserable. No, my goal, and the system I built for myself, was to exercise more days in 2021 than I didn't exercise. So, that means Monday and Tuesday I work out before my kids get up. I take Wednesday off. Thursdays I workout after work and Fridays during my lunch break. Then I enjoy the weekend, rest and have fun with my family and I'm back to it on Monday. It's a system that can work for a long period! Not just to accomplish a quick goal.

So my last thing I'll say is this. Don't wait to make a resolution. Build a system that works NOW! It's worth it. Find your motivation, make the investment needed to get you moving, and focus on the PROGRESS along the way

Your health and fitness cannot be ignored, so take ownership of it today!

How To Determine A Return On Marketing Investment

"Ugh."

That was a direct quote from a client when I asked a simple question, "how is your marketing going?"

This post is as much an encouragement to marketing support service businesses as it is a call to action for business owners who are frustrated with trying to determine their return on marketing investment.

The barrier to entry is about the same for palm readers, business coaches (ahem), and marketing service providers...not very high.

Just about anybody can hang a shingle and call themselves a marketing agency. That loose availability does not mean there is no significant value to be found in a well-run service.

So how much should you spend as a marketing investment, and for goodness sake, how do you realize a return on your marketing investment?

First, let's discuss how much to invest in the first place. Your planning and delivery of marketing in your business should be as intentional and well thought out as product development, product delivery, accounting, sales, and all other systems of the business.

Resources must be spent on marketing (the definition of marketing is not limited to advertising and promotion) with the same intentionality as resources spent on things like employee compensation, product and service delivery, and insurance coverage.

In conversation with a marketing agency owner, I asked, "how much should a small business invest into their marketing?" His response was, "it depends."

He went to provide a range that I thought was very helpful.

Three percent of gross revenue (total income minus cost of goods sold) would be a low marketing spend, whereas twelve to thirteen percent of gross revenue would be an aggressive marketing spend.

The question then becomes, "what do we invest are marketing resources into?"

This is an important mind shift in understanding that marketing is not a cross-your-fingers, hope-for-the-best, haphazard shot in the dark.

Marketing is a system.

Just like the conglomeration of all of the bones in your body combine to form the skeletal system, and that system works in calculation and coordination, so all the conglomeration of promotional elements in your business work to form the marketing system.

I like to think of marketing in terms of channels or canals. You have the channel of social media, the channel of your website, the channel of live events, the channel of advertising, or the channel of say a podcast or YouTube.

Each channel provides a connection point for you to connect with your potential or actual client or customer.

The most overlooked, and yet perennially most effective form of marketing for just about every business on earth is quite old fashioned.

Word of mouth. Yes, word of mouth marketing is a channel, and is probably the most trafficked channel your business has.

There are three things you can do with your marketing system and the channels that combine to collectively share your mission with a targeted world.

First, map out the exact channels that should exist in your marketing system and turn a blind eye to the channels that are distractions.

All of your friends may be seeing great success with a certain social media platform. You might even hear a podcaster say, "you've got to be on Mashblot (a fictitious social media channel I just made up)!"

No, you don't. You should invest in channels where your target client or customer is paying attention. If they are not looking at Mashblot, may be best to bypass and go to a channel that fits.

For some, you may not need to be on social media at all. We coach many contractors who are far better served to set up two lunches per week with vendors, general contractors, Architects, and Developers instead of trying to generate leads on Facebook, YouTube, or the platform du juor.

What channels are your clients paying attention to? Map it out.

Second, create a process to nurture and educate that channel. You can ask a simple question, "what is the end game?"

For your social media...what is the end game?

For your in person lunches...what is the end game?

For your website...what is the end game?

Our coaches spend a significant amount of time face to face with business owners. Over lunch or coffee, our end game is to coach! When a non-client reaches out to us to "learn more", we try to spend less time talking about the features and benefits of our deliverables, and instead we actually coach them during that time.

It allows our client to get a feel for actual coaching and to evaluate their need for transformation.

That is our end game, coach well and allow the business owner to experience freedom directly.

For us, our website, social media channels, the My Business On Purpose podcast, and Live Events all exist to facilitate an in person or virtual meeting where we can coach in real life and understand the reality of a particular business owner.

Once you have your specific and finite channels, each channel must have a process all aimed towards an end game.

Thirdly, do the work and track.

Marketing is often characterized by a flowing group of artistic free-thinkers, and instead is both art and science. Certainly marketing requires ongoing creativity, that then gets packaged into a system for repetition.

Free thinking by design is not repetitious, and yet marketing demands consistency and repetition.

Business owners must know that in order to market well you must harness the ideation of free thinking, and then do the work.

For example, each one of our coaches writes one article per week between 500 and 800 words...every week.

Our coaches are not journalists, they are not career writers, they are business coaches. Yet the repetitious work of marketing requires content, and content requires writing.

Writing for our coaches is a time for each to reflect back on the questions and challenges their clients have faced the week prior and to simply answer those challenges. Just like I am doing in this post.

Once written we then turn that content into blog posts, LinkedIn articles, a podcast episode, a YouTube episode, and sometimes as a keynote at a live event. All that from one article.

When the channels are mapped, the processes are spelled out and the work is being produced, you can then do the important work of tracking your progress.

Each week we record metrics on a simple client spreadsheet where we track downloads, visitors, purchases, members, book sales, views, and other metrics that give us a picture of the progress within our marketing system.

Marketing has been billed of late more as the Vegas-style luck of inserting one dollar into a machine and getting two dollars out of the machine instead of the blending of art and science, free-thinking and repetition.

Marketing is a whole lot more than hoping to hit the jackpot on the simple pull of a lever, and it is worth you doing the work to uncover it.

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.

Why I Can't Focus And Get Clarity

My wife and I were at a gala recently...it was a socially distant, sparse crowd celebrating the culture-changing work of Martin Luther King Jr.

A business owner came up to me and said, "I'm reading your book and want you to know that I feel like you are writing directly to me."

Curious, I asked, "what's in the book made you feel that way?"

Her response, "I'm in constant chaos."

We regularly poll our clients and those who attend our in-person live events and online workshops and the number one piece of feedback we receive from business owners and key leaders is, "I cannot focus."

Focus is an interesting word that carries with it the ideas of clarity, center, core, or bull's eye.

We blame the current culture of screens, screams, and scram. The truth is we don't have to scroll the devices (screens). We don't have to turn on the news and noise (screams). We don't have to do everything we have been invited to do (scram).

Hundreds of years ago the word focus was synonymous w/ a fireplace in a home... a hearth that was the center of the room where people gather.

I love a (controlled) fire. Honestly, one of my favorite places on earth may be wherever there is an outdoor fire that we can stare at. I've heard it called "nature's tv".

It's true. I cannot stop staring, constantly stoking this dancing stage of contorted and vivid flames; never the same shape or rhythm and yet in constant motion.

Business owners tell us they feel like they are constantly trying to put out little fires that always exist. But what if those "little fires" are not threats to the business, but instead are lights along the path towards the vision that has been laid out.

What if those are fires not meant to be extinguished, but instead meant to light the path to the real destination.

We cannot focus because we do not want to put in the effort to focus. Please don't be offended, but for most of us (save our first responders whose job is to intentionally respond to chaos), we react to chaos because it makes us feel needed; harrowed.

Robert Cardinal Sarah in his book The Power Of Silence says, "Without noise (chaos), man is feverish, lost. Noise gives him security, like a drug on which he has become dependent…noise is a whirlwind that avoids facing itself."

We get to tell people when they ask how we're doing, "I've just been so busy."

Busy is not envied. Busy is not the goal.

Helpful, meaningful, transformational, impactful, useful….those are worthy goals.

Busy is... busy.

How do we stop succumbing to busy, loosen our addiction with the "feeling needed" that chaos brings and instead be content in who we have been made to be?

We need to introduce more silence into our day-to-day.

Sarah goes on to say, "Without the capacity for silence, man is incapable of hearing, loving, and understanding the people around him. Clarity is born of silence."

Clarity is born of silence.

Do you want clarity? You will need to make more time for silence that Sarah contends leads to a heart "that is able to hear, to listen, and to welcome."

One you go silent, all the sudden you will begin to hear the things that truly matter instead of just the things that are busy.

Silence used to be a societal value, now noise has assumed the podium. You can take it back... and gain the clarity you are looking for.

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.

What does it mean to "Turn the Corner" as a business?

What are we aiming for when you come on as a BOP client? What's the goal and how do we get there?

Happy Friday friends, I'm excited to talk through that today it's Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose.

A few months ago I had a couple come in to talk about potentially taking them on as clients. They had great numbers. Great sales and revenue, a solid team, a thriving business, and satisfied clients. But they were exhausted from wearing all of the hats in their business and feeling like they could never take a break because 100 different balls would drop if they did.

So, I looked at the husband and asked, "So what happens if you keep going like this." He looked at me with full sincerity and said. "I'll die, no literally I'll probably have a heart attack."

And I don't think that feeling is foreign to you if you're a business owner. The constant pressure to keep things moving, to not let a single ball drop, and the pressure you feel to help provide for your employees and their families... it's a HUGE burden.

But it doesn't have to feel like you're going to die. In fact, we prefer that it didn't.

Fast forward almost 5 mos. That same couple is sitting in a coaching meeting with me last week and were absolutely beaming about a new hire. But not just any new hire. A new hire that they had prepared for and were able to offload so much extra work to. We've spent the past almost 5 mos developing a system for their new admin to thrive in, so that now that they made a great hire, this person is fully able to do the job she's hired to do, EXACTLY the way they want it done!

They looked at me in our coaching time and said, "Thomas, we feel like we've turned the corner." Obviously, I'm smiling as it's just fun to be in the room and watching them so excited about where their business is headed, but it was more than that. Because they are above the chaos right now and could dream about where they want their business to go for the first time in years!

We got to talk about new neighborhoods they wanted to serve and new services they could offer. They can pour back into their team as they finally have the time to offer them. They can even focus on the little details that always slip through the cracks as they had the margin and the capacity to handle the little things again.

And THAT, is what we want for businesses. That's "Turning the Corner" as a business owner. Being free to work ON your business and not simply in your business.

We went on to talk about a lot of things last week, but as I gave them a heavy load of things to jump on, he looked at me and laughed. He said, "I'm going back to the office to jump on this right now," because his business was in a place where he was freed up to be the owner and work ON his business.

That's freedom folks! That's being liberated from chaos! And the fun thing for me to watch is now he's a better husband, a better father, a better employer, and has 10x the life satisfaction he had because he's not running around 24/7 in panic mode. He put in the hard work, and trust me it's hard work, to build systems that work whether he's the one doing them or not.

And HE WILL NEVER GO BACK!!!

Stories like this are why we do what we do. We want to be a part of your businesses story...your businesses liberation from chaos! To partner with you and provide perspective from thousands of hours of business coaching across an incredibly broad collection of industries to help you, as a business, turn the corner.

If we can help in any way or you just want to hear a bit more, please feel free to reach out on here, or check us at out mybusinessonpurpose.com. Subscribe to our podcast and youtube channel and begin the journey.

And know that we hope to do it alongside you!

Have a great weekend!