Two Old Guys Talking Business

You can’t motivate your employees.

Motivation is intrinsic — all you can do is build the environment where people motivate themselves.

In episode 2, Tim and Eugene get into the skill most business owners never learn: reading people. Your customers are people, your team are people, your suppliers are people — and people are where most of the stress, and most of the opportunity, lives.

They cover:

• Why a customer is anyone you supply anything to, including your own team
• Employee engagement strategies
• The iceberg: the behaviour you see versus the personality underneath
• A working guide to the four DISC styles — D, I, S and C — and the question each one is really asking
• How to change the way you communicate for each style, with examples
• The client who stopped making small talk with his estimator and kept him when a competitor offered $30,000 more
• Why managers rank money as the top motivator and employees rank recognition
• What a request for a pay rise is usually telling you
• Why aiming for perfection makes you miss the 98% that’s already excellent

Tim shares how he realised he had no ability to read people at all, and what he did about it. Eugene explains why understanding DISC saved his marriage.

Try it this week: do a free DISC assessment online, then look at your team through it.

Two Old Guys Talking Business. Between us, 100 years running businesses — most of it learned the hard way.

What would your business look like if working in it became optional?

In Episode 1 of Two Old Guys Talking Business, we discuss four of the biggest challenges facing business owners: employees (managing & recruiting), time, cash flow and losing sight of the goals that made you start the business in the first place.

We also explore what business success actually means, why a business can own you, instead of you owning it, and the way out of the pressure of always having to be at work every hour it operates.

Along the way, we discuss:

• Building a business that can eventually run under management
• Hiring people for more than just skills and experience
• Why attitude and people skills matter
• Learning from other successful business owners
• Personal development and business growth
• Time priorities, not just time management
• Why trying to make everything perfect can slow growth
• Fear, uncertainty and making better business decisions

Two Old Guys Talking Business is built around more than a century of combined business experience — practical conversations about what works, what doesn’t, and what business owners can do differently to improve their business and their lives.

Leave a comment or ask your toughest business question to let us know what you’d like us to discuss in future episodes.

Tim can be contacted via his Profit Transformations company website.