There are times to experiment and times where quitting something you are working on is important.

There is a dark side to dabbling and creates bad habits in your leadership if you aren't careful.

This week's podcast explores that dark side and gives you some tips to avoid them.

Check out the episode and let me know what you think.

Let us know what you think about today's episode. What was your biggest insight?

For more information on Ken Lundin, you can check him out here:

www.kenlundin.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kglundin/

https://www.facebook.com/kglundin

https://www.instagram.com/kglundin/

I stepped up to the whiteboard and started writing and creating. As I did this, a pattern emerged for what those components are.

That's the subject of today's podcast. I break down the formula and talk about what each one is and what's the biggest challenge you face with doing them.

I am also curious what you think about the formula. Is there anything that you think is missing or needs to be taken out? Check in and let me know.

At some point in a business, you need to free up time so that you can stay focused on what's most important. Certain things that you could do with your own blood, sweat and tears now need to be addressed in other ways.

Automation expert, Richard Schnitzel has spent years, teaching leaders how to create automation in their business so that they can free up their time and effort.

You will learn what great automation looks like and dive into the concept of authenticious which is Richard's approach to automation.

This is a great interview packed with insights. Listen to the episode and let us know what you thought was most helpful.

To learn more about Richard visit:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardschnitzeljr/
Website: richardschnitzel.com
Free Giveaway: richardschnitzel.com/fivesteps

Once you get traction with the journey how do you shift from being open to being more narrow focused? The transition feels almost cruel when you go through it.

If you are looking for more clarity and/or focus in your business and life, this episode is for you.

Where are you at right now in this process? Let us know what you think!

The first half of the show talks about exit strategies in a business and how to set yourself up for success when it's time to exit your business.

The second half of the show focuses on what to do with your money and how to focus on what truly matters when it comes to wealth management.

This was one of the longest interviews I have done because Aryeh shared so much value in the interview.

Check out the show and let us know what you thought was most helpful. For more information about Aryeh, check him out at: https://resultsdrivenadvisory.com/

In today's episode, I introduce the tool that helps business owners discover where that money is and what they need to do to recapture it. The tool also assesses where your wealth can be created outside of your business in terms of the things in life that are most important to you.

The end result being more growth and freedom for you as a leader.

Get the free tool at myprofitpotential.com

There's no doubt that business growth takes time and it can be a hard journey until you reach it! But the moment you start seeing your revenue move into the green and your business begins to expand makes all of the work more than worth it.

But, that doesn't mean your efforts can stop! In fact, this is just the start. Now you need to look at how you can scale a business, managing your growth effectively to continue driving success.

Find out everything you need to know about business growth in this guide and propel your company into the future.

Managing Business Growth

Maintaining the integrity of your business while simultaneously growing is a delicate balancing act that requires a keen awareness of your essential business functions. You need to be aware of the challenges you may face, the USP of your company, the growth of your competitors – and that's just naming a few! Taking stock of these elements before seeking substantial growth can help you handle growth when it comes.

If you're managing a company, how you manage your business is likely to have a big impact on your business growth. If you aren't taking steps to manage your growth ethically, you're risking the integrity of your business, the reputation of your brand, and the success of your business. Thankfully, there are plenty of steps you can take to grow responsibly.

Setting Up the Foundations

It's important to make sure you've done everything you can to prepare your business for growth. For example, you need to consider your goals as you move forward.

Are you hoping to bring in more revenue? Or is expansion simply an exciting way to diversify your offerings and be part of the next great business opportunity? Whatever you identify as your main goal will become the foundation for your business growth plan.

The changes you want to make will need plans in place to implement them. For example, you may be looking to increase your new clients, which would mean investing more in your marketing, or you may want to increase revenue from existing customers and so need to focus on innovation of add-ons to your products or services.

You also want to make sure you can keep up the growth you have right now without becoming stagnant. That means identifying the areas that are working and trying to keep those processes in place. It's a fine line between driving growth and not sending your business back to the start!

Managing Your Workforce and Delegating Tasks

To successfully manage your business, you'll need to have a good grasp of your workforce and how to manage them as you grow. By developing a solid workforce management strategy, you can streamline your work process and understand how your team members are performing. This shows you what's working and what needs to be tweaked.

Knowing how to manage workloads is one of the most crucial tools for the organic growth of a business. By understanding how to delegate effectively, you can let the right people do the right job without adding to your workload and still get the best results. This is all starts with who you hire, so make sure your hiring process is flawless to secure the top talent and keep your company running like a well-oiled machine. 

Begin to Plan Your Business Expansion

Business expansion is hard work. It will cost time and money, and you'll have to make a lot of significant changes to ensure your company can handle the increases in demand. But, it's worth it!

Before you try to expand, consider a few things. Do you have the resources you need to keep your business up to speed? Are you sure you can handle it? Do you have the necessary infrastructure and right kinds of employees to do all the tasks your expansion requires?

Take inventory of the roles your business needs to fill to grow successfully. Determine which team members will be added to meet your new requirements, whether that's additional workers, or the hiring of contractors or consultants, or the addition of more equipment and/or storage. If there are any areas that raise red flags when you're reviewing internal processes, focus on fixing these before moving forward.

Don't Forget Your Brand Identity

Brand identity is an integral part of business growth, and oftentimes it's an area where many entrepreneurs fail. But if you don't put enough work into your branding then your company is going to be harmed in the long term.

Your brand identity is everything your audience associates with your company. That could be your logo, the colors you use, and even the way you deliver customer service! All of it adds up to create an impression of your brand which, if done well, will keep them loyal to you. 

As you grow it's vital you don't compromise your brand identity. If you've thrived on small business customer service, ensure you hire more people to deal with customer queries to keep providing a personal, hands-on approach to your service. If you've drawn in customers with the fact that you're a small, family-run business, consider how you can keep these values while you grow to avoid losing a segment of your audience.

Your brand identity is crucial to your success, so don't forget it when managing your growing business!

Start Managing Growth and Drive Success

Business growth is a vital part of every company's lifecycle. But, it has to be managed carefully if you want to keep driving your brand forward and not jeopardizing it in the process. 

If you think you could use some help when growing your business, take a look at our services at New Work Revolution. Our expert team help brands increase their profits quickly, helping you become a top competitor in your industry.

The most difficult part of being out of alignment is realizing that it is happening as the shift can be subtle.

In this week's episode, I interview leadership advisor, Mike Horne.

Mike and I go through the five signs that you may be a toxic manager and how to re-orient your leadership to get it back on the right track.

As a recovering “knower”, I share the two types of knowledge you can obtain (one of those being vastly underutilized over the other). In addition to that, I dive into what to do when you don't know and how to handle being stuck in a way that serves your purpose, vision and goals.

Enjoy the show and let me know what you think about the Paradox of Knowing.

Today, I speak with Vikrant Shaurya, CEO of BestSellingBook.com and we chat about the amazing world of book publishing.

In today's interview we talk about:

• The results that thought leaders are getting by writing a book

• Where a great book starts.

• How to structure and market your book successfully.

• How to create an amazing and unique book.

Enjoy the show and tell us what you think!

Was it courageous or cowardly? Tune into this week's episode and let me know your thoughts.

As a leader, you likely would love to have a team that serves the greater good of the organization and it's goals.

In today's episode, I talk with co-founder and managing partner at Navalent, Ron Carucci. Ron's latest book is called To Be Honest: Lead with the Power of Truth, Justice and Purpose.

This episode was full of useful nuggets for leaders who are serious about building great teams who execute well and do so with integrity. Ron and I deep dive into the four foundational elements that allow for a team to operate from a paradigm of service vs. a paradigm of self-interest.

Let me know what you think about today's show and go get a copy of Ron's book.

For leaders, you will never get what you don't give.

Today's podcast breaks down 8 things that I know leaders want and what it means to give these things to your team.

Enjoy the show and let me know what you think!

For most business owners, digital marketing is a bewildering landscape. It's hard to hire good people and you aren't always sure what the results are that you should be getting from the effort.

Today, I interview the CEO and Founder of the digital marketing agency, This is My South Bay, Eric Seropyan. Eric shares his journey on having to learn digital marketing to keep his jewelry business alive and how that led him into successfully pursuing a career in the digital marketing space.

There are tons of great nuggets in this episode so check it out and let me know what was most helpful.

For more information on Eric and his company visit: www.thisismysouthbay.com

As we wrap up the Bullsh*t Excuses Series, I take a look at ego. How it shows up. Where it gets in the way. How you can notice it and make powerful decisions for you and for those around you.

Today I have leadership expert and executive coach, Ben Marcovitz talk about how small glimmers of hope have made a tremendous difference in his professional career as well as in his personal life.

If you are looking for tips and ideas on how to motivate yourself and the people around you, this is a great episode to tune into.

Let us know what you think!

Check out more of what Ben is up to at: https://benmarcovitz.com/

Due to the ongoing pandemic, the previous year was difficult for most businesses, and if you are still trying to rebound in 2021, there are some specific steps that you need to take to ensure that you see growth.

With careful planning and strategizing, you can start growing your business to new heights. Here are some strategies you can implement to ensure that you achieve your business goals throughout this year.

1. Control Your Spending

When you have a business, you will inevitably have to create a budget. If you redrafted your business plan at the beginning of the year, you probably allocated money to different areas of your business. 

If your budget at the beginning of the year is not working, you may need to expand or tighten it based on your current financial situation. 

Do not be afraid to go back to the drawing board and revise your budget when necessary. Cut back on things that are not working and increase your spending in areas where you see business growth. 

2. Revamp Your SEO

Search engine optimization is critical for the growth of your business. Search engine traffic is targeted traffic that comes to your website based on keywords in your content. On-page optimization is essential for SEO. 

When you create any page of content on your website, you need to consider why you want to rank the page in search. You are intent, as well as the searcher's intent, needs to form a perfect union.

Think about what you want to achieve from creating the page and the intention of someone searching on Google for the keyword you are targeting. Understanding searcher intent is something that Google is emphasizing on as the algorithm becomes smarter. 

They not only look at keywords, but they try to look beyond the surface to see why someone would want to search for a keyword in the first place. So make sure that your content checks all the boxes in terms of value. 

When this happens, users will stay longer on your page, and this will signal to Google that your page is providing valuable information. Google will then push your web pages to the top of their search results.

3. Increase Your Social Focus

Is your business being social on social media? The purpose of social media is to form relationships with existing customers and establish new ones. If you are not forming these relationships, you will have a hard time growing your brand.

Even if you have a small business and don't have a lot of room in your budget for advertising, it is worth spending some money on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

These platforms make it easy for you to connect with your audience with paid reach. The great thing about this type of advertising is that you do not have to break the bank to do it. With as little as 1 to 5 dollars a day, you can start reaching a targeted audience on Facebook and Instagram.

Facebook, in particular, is known for its wide reach, and it can help you connect with a targeted audience very quickly. However, if you do not see the organic growth you want, it is time to “pay to play.” 

4. Growing Your Business with Data

Data is one of the key components to help you grow your business. If you haven't taken a look at your data since the beginning of the year, it’s time to dive in and take a look.

If you haven’t put systems in place to monitor your data, then this is the time when you should do it. At least, throughout the rest of the year, you can collect valuable data that will help you grow your business in the coming year.

However, if you have been collecting data but have not analyzed it, you are leaving valuable information on the table. So go in and take a look at your website analytics and your social media campaign analytics.  

Take a look at the web pages on your site that have the most visits and look at your retention rates. This will tell you exactly where you need to focus and show you how well your SEO strategy is working.

5. Focus On Employee Satisfaction

Your employees are one of the most valuable assets that your business possesses. Many studies have shown that when employees are feeling valued and appreciated, productivity increases.

Take a look at your company culture. If it is not fostering a positive and healthy work environment, then you need to make changes. You can send out surveys and questionnaires and ask your employees how they feel about the work environment.

Having one-on-one meetings with different team members can also give you insight into improving your company culture and increasing worker satisfaction.

Time to Grow

Growing your business requires you to have a growth strategy in place. When you have this strategy in place, it will be easy for you to focus and drive leads and conversions to your business.

The key to growth is always to be willing to modify your business strategy when you see that something is not working. Use data to drive these changes. 

While you are focusing on increasing revenue, do not forget to focus on employee satisfaction as well. Doing this will ensure that your employees are on board with helping you to achieve your goals.

If you would like help with growing your business, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Have you considered team building exercises to help strengthen your workplace relationships and increase employee well-being? Here are some team building ideas to get you started.

Campfire Story Circle

A campfire circle is a wonderful way to incentivize employee bonding because it allows employees to share common stories and experiences. Start the game by writing down keywords that many people can relate to that will incentivize conversation.

Try starting with one person to pick a keyword, share his or her experience, and then move it to a different area. You can go around the circle and pick different keywords. That way, everyone will have a chance to share a different story, whether it be in your work or personal life.

Once your group goes through all of the words on the list, have the participants think of other words that remind them of the stories they heard. You can keep connecting them for as long as you want the activity to continue.

Shark Tank Pitches

If your company's productivity stems from innovation or entrepreneurship, then doing a shark tank game is one of the best team building tips. This involves tactics similar to the popular television show Shark Tank, in which entrepreneurs pitch business ideas to a group of potential investors.

Shark Tank can be one of the best team building activities because it involves breaking out into smaller groups and coming up with ideas. This will allow your company members to get to know each other on a more personal level and communicate with each other.

You should also choose some people to be the mock investors. You can either go with management or pick them in a more random way. You can even rotate based on whose ideas make it to the next round.

Trust Fall

Few employee activities help gain trust between employees more than a classic trust fall. This can either be done in a large group, a small group, or just between two people.

One of the main benefits of the trust fall is that it fosters support and dependence between everyone involved. You have to rely on your teammates to catch you as you fall backward, similar to how you might work together on daunting projects at your company.

If you want to get even more crazy, you can have one person stand in the middle of a circle and fall backwards. When someone catches him or her, they push forward, causing the participant to fall into another person. This lets the person know they will have support in the workplace.

Group Trivia

Getting to know people personally is an important aspect of working together as a team to accomplish different goals. Playing a game of group trivia is a fun way to let people discover more about each other and even bring out their competitive side.

This game can be played with either individual participants or teams. One of the best team building tips is that you can switch up teams so that people have the opportunity to work with others and try to guess the answers as quickly as possible.

Write the questions and answers on notecards, pieces of paper, or simply project them using a presentation software. You can use both analog and digital methods to keep score so that you do not lose track of the winner.

Telephone

Since communication is essential to a healthy workplace, try a game of telephone with your employees to test their skills in this category. This can be with information passed verbally from ear to ear, or even used in a pictionary-like way.

Again, you can do this activity with quite a bit of flexibility, either with the whole group or by splitting up into teams. If you divide into teams, try giving each group the same phrase. At the end of the exercise, you can see which team had the most accurate version of the original sentence.

When these team building activities are complete, ask each person in the group what they thought they heard. This is a great way to demonstrate the importance of accurate communication in the workplace.

Two Truths and a Lie

One of the most fun employee activities is Two Truths and a Lie, which involves guessing things about your employees or coworkers. The premise of this game is that each person needs to think of three facts about themselves, two truths and one lie.

As you go around the group, each person says their two truths and a lie. Based on what information the others already know, they can try to guess which one of the statements is actually a lie.

This game usually does not involve a scoring system, but you can ask participants to track how many times they correctly guess the lie. It is a fun way to learn interesting things about your coworkers.

Make a Team Emblem

Designing anything together as a group can be one of the best team building activities to bring your employees closer together. You can assemble them by department, or randomly, to create team emblems that reflect workplace culture and values.

A team emblem can include a flag, a crest, or a group motto. Participants can be as creative as they would like with available materials like markers and colored pencils.

Use the Best Team Building Exercises

When you get to know your workplace employees and coworkers, you should not have to worry about team building exercises. With these tips and tricks, you can bond with each other in no time and lead to a more cohesive workplace.

Would you like to learn more about how to manage your workforce effectively? Take a look around our site, contact us today, or utilize our free content available for better workplace connections.

You may be like one of the many entrepreneurs I have spoken or worked with over the years that does their best to not be tied down to things.

If you want more freedom, it may lie in doing the opposite of what you have been doing. This week's podcast dives into this concept and what it can do for you and your freedom long-term.

One of the better things to come from working at home is the reduction in the “hey, got a minute” interruptions that happen to you several times in a typical day.

Even though you may not be back at the office yet, you still have interruptions from text messages, email and tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams.

In today's podcast, I interview the founder and CEO of Volley. Volley is an asynchronous way to communicate with your team that allows for better clarity, interpretations and relief from interruptions. Josh and I dive into all things workplace communication and how you can do it better.

These things are called limiting beliefs. Limiting beliefs are strongly held and require you to get into the mess of sorting out what you really think about yourself and why.

In this week's show, I tackle limiting beliefs head on and give you five things to think about or practice to overcome them.

I happen to fall in the latter category and early on in my career, it almost got me fired.

This week, I sat down with employee engagement expert, Dr. Beverly Kaye, and we discussed simple tips and approaches that a busy manager can use to engage their team in a more meaningful way. Not only does this benefit the employee but it pays financial dividends to the company as well.

Check out the show and let us know what you got out of today's show.

Regardless if you are looking to add a new business to your portfolio or not, Al Cameron from Rox Capital stops by the podcast to talk about how to successfully acquire a business.

For those listeners that already have a business and aren't looking to acquire a business, don't skip this episode as we also get into identifying the long hanging growth opportunities in your business as well as other opportunities to improve that someone with a fresh set of eyes looks at.

Check out the show and let us know your biggest insight from Al.

Even leaders who have a level of success sometimes think that it's despite gifts and purpose and not because of it.

This week's episode dives into why not acknowledging your gifts holds you back and how to dive deeper into your own purpose.

Check out the show and check in with your best tip for uncovering your purpose.

When the time comes for leaders to shift their approach, they struggle to make the transition from being a doer to being a planner and behind the scenes strategist. They continue to pour their effort into the day-to-day ground level work of the business to feel like they are making a difference.

Getting things is a good thing but not if it comes at the expense of avoiding the bigger game that you were called to play.

This week's episode tackles the epidemic of busyness and how to shift your work approach in a more focused and deliberate way. Check it out and tell us your big takeaway for tackling busyness.

This comes in handy when you are faced with delivering bad news, giving a boundary, or handling a confrontational situation. In some cases, delivering truth with grace can be a life changing experience for you and for others.

This week's episode continues the bullsh*t excuses series and dives into the realm of feelings and your role in them. Check out the show and let us know what you think.

Yes, it can be a pretty good life, as many satisfied small business owners across the country can attest to. But it also requires overcoming a significant number of challenges as well. While it may be fulfilling work, it doesn't mean you'll always be able to turn a significant profit.

Small business profitability is important to get familiar with if you think you're about to head down that road yourself. What do you need to know about funding and making money off a small business? Read on and we'll walk you through the basics.

1. Not All Businesses Make Money

Many people start their own business because they are sick of existing under the foot of another person or enterprise. They want to go out on their own and make their own mark on the world.

There is a lot to admire about this kind of mindset, but we need to acknowledge the important reality upfront: this is going to put a damper on the rest of your life for some time. Yes, you're creating an opportunity for yourself, but it is going to come at the initial cost of the loss of a lot of stability.

The bottom line is that most small businesses do not turn a profit each year. Only 40% of businesses turn a profit and only about half make it through their first four years of businesses and stick around.

Small business owners face so many challenges to keep their new enterprises up and running.

The odds are not exactly stacked in your favor, we're sorry to say. This is perfectly fine to accept, life is not about making money, but it is important to understand this reality as you come up against it.

If you're about to quit your job and go off on your own, do so with the knowledge that much of your day-to-day life is going to change.

2. Where to Start a Small Business

Where are people flocking to with their ideas to start a small-scale business? Cities remain the go-to place to try and get an idea up and running, though it doesn't take heading to Manhattan or Silicon Valley anymore to make something a success.

In fact, the most popular place to go to try and launch a new company right now is Austin, Texas. Thousands are flooding into the city looking to take advantage of what Texas and the young, hip population in Austin have to offer.

Other cities that are worth looking into if you're up for a move? Denver, D.C., Charlotte, Asheville, and Nashville all have a lot of promise. Of course, depending on your own small business goals, you might not need to move cities at all, you might be able to get set up right where you're at.

However, if you're looking to put your feet down somewhere where the soil is rich and there's a lot of activity, these locations are well worth looking into.

3. Budgeting For a Small Business

How much money you'll need to get your business started is going to depend on the kind of work you're doing in general. It's going to cost a lot more money to open a dine-in movie theater than it is to have a small shop that sells trinkets, for example.

It's important to get familiar with your potential costs as early in the process as possible. List them all out and do your very best not to miss anything.

Separate your startup costs from your operational costs — these are costs that you'll need to be paying each month to keep your business running as it should. Add these numbers together and you'll be looking at how much money you'll need to make in your first month to get into profitability.

Too high a number? That's to be expected, very few small businesses come into profitability in their very first month. However, look at those monthly overhead costs, does it feel realistic to be able to make a significant amount more than that in profit per month? 

If the answer is no, you might have a long road ahead of you. It will take implementing some key business strategies and practices to get over the hump of debt. 

4. Finding Funds

Small businesses get initial funding in many different ways. If you're very lucky, you'll have an investor who wants to help you out based on the strength of your idea and your business plan. They'll put up some of the money and you'll be well on your way.

However, this isn't the case for a lot of business owners, especially those without past success. The majority of small business owners will need to take out a loan from the bank in order to get up and running.

That means on top of all the other costs, you'll need to worry about interest and your ability to pay the bank back on time. This will impact your overall path to profitability as well, so don't overlook this detail.

Understanding Small Business Profitability

If you're looking to start your own company, there's a lot you'll want to get familiar with as it pertains to small business profitability. There are many obstacles to overcome in this kind of work, but on the other side of that work awaits a great sense of pride of fulfillment. You just need to know how to get there.

Need help in making your business a success? Contact us anytime for assistance and advice.  

The problem with worrying too much about judgement is that you don't have any control over whether this will happen or not. Judgement lives outside of you and is something that you learn to accept in order to play your game.

Society loves them some judgement and no one is immune to it. This week's podcast talks about how to embrace judgement and do you.

Check out the show and check in with your story on how this has shown up for you.

When your relationship to time is complicated, it creates a divide between the things you are doing now and the future you envisioned for yourself.

This week's episode is a journey out of a bad relationship with time and into a space where you play your game by getting clear about the best use of time for you.

Check out the episode and let us know what resonates with you most.

In my interview with Michelle, we talk about:

• Why you should plan your exit on day 1. If you didn't do that, it's not too late. Michelle breaks down how to do it.
• We talk about Michelle's 6 Ps to making a business sustainable, scalable and sellable.
• The 10 most common profit mistakes business owners make.

To pre-order your copy of Exit Rich and get the digital copy of the book as well as other goodies now at: https://exitrichbook.com/

Let us know what you think about the interview.

There was a time respected leaders thought that the biggest threat to society was going to be…..leisure time? For real. In this day of hustle culture, you may feel like you are a ways off of that reality.

As a successful person, it's easy to adopt the mindset of more is more. The reality is that the more you do, the less return on that effort you receive.

This week's episode dives into effort and when to recognize you are doing too much and what to do instead.

If you are really looking to maximize your effort in an efficient way, check out our Profit Potential Index at myprofitpotential.com

Thank you for listening and let us know what you think.

Lizabeth has spent years working with companies on process and policy and has worked on some significant projects in her career.

In today's episode we talk:

• Using Lean methodology in your business.
• Creating winning communication processes
• Leadership and how looking at process and policy will make you a better leader as well as make your life easier as a leader.

Check out the show and let us know what you think.

Here's how to connect with Lizabeth:

LinkedIn – Lizabeth: www.linkedin.com/in/lizabeth-wesely-casella
LinkedIn – L-12 Services: https://www.linkedin.com/company/l12services/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/L12Services
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/l12services/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/L12services

Some leaders address resistance by throwing a band aid on the problem, the problem never truly gets better and comes back again. The best leaders, look at the resistance and get to the root of the issue to keep it from coming back.

Today's podcast is about how to get to the root cause of your resistance so that you can play your game free of shame and condemnation.

I know this makes perfect sense to you.  It's easy to assume that this makes perfect sense to all leaders. 

Andreas Flaten quit his job with Walker Luxury Autoworks and didn't get his final paycheck for four months!

The owner was annoyed with his persistence in getting paid so he decided to finally pay the man his final paycheck of $915 by dumping it on his driveway in pennies.  You can read more about the story here.

Maybe Andreas was a bad employee.  Maybe the way he quit was unprofessional.  I have no idea.

When you are a leader, you are looked at with a higher standard and this sort of behavior is beneath a high level leader.

You may never do, at least I hope you don't, something as extreme as this to one of your employees. There are, however, subtle ways that you can neglect your team members by not training them, getting mad when they have a personal life outside of your business, etc.

You and I aren't perfect leaders and we never will be.  What you can do is create a standard that you want to hold yourself to that honors the position of leadership as well as the people you lead.

TXD Action for This week: What is your leadership standard?

Links that I am Following and Found Helpful this Week:

• If you don't already know, I love basketball in all forms.  Shaquille O'Neal recently suggested that women lower the rim so they can dunk more in games.  Legendary baller Cynthia Cooper had an amusing suggestion for Shaq.  Check it the short clip here.
• Keeping with the spirit of business habits this month, here are some thoughts from philosopher and smart guy, Bertrand Russell on happiness.

As you probably already know, this began when you first created a business plan to pitch to your bank or investors. You had to analyze the market, define your business, come up with a sales strategy, determine your costs, and more. 

Being able to react and think on your feet are also good qualities, but if you want your business to thrive, you must always stay a step ahead. This comes down to successful planning. 

We want to help. Keep reading for our top tips on how to optimize your strategic planning outcomes. 

1. Identify Your Niche and Target Market

You must know your market to create a profitable business in any industry. Just as importantly, you need to understand your target audience.

These are the people whom your marketing efforts are geared towards. They are the consumers for whom your products and/or services were designed. 

Start by establishing your niche:

• What does your business excel at amongst your competitors?
• What separates you from the competition?
• What is your specialty?

This niche will help you better determine your ideal customer. 

2. Define Your Goals

Successful strategic planning demands direction. Think about it like planning a road trip. You can't figure out how to get anywhere unless you determine where you want to go. 

What are your goals for your business? We recommend using the SMART goal method to establish practical, timely objectives.

SMART goals are:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

SMART goals are designed to keep you motivated and accountable. They also help you define how you're going to reach your goals, rather than simply highlighting what they are.

3. Keep Everyone on the Same Page

Strategic planning in business requires a team effort. Your staff must be on the same page. This comes down to your leadership skills. 

Once you've defined your goals, conduct a staff meeting to outline your objectives to everyone on your team. Be clear about what you expect from each member and what their specific role is. 

Additionally, host weekly meetings to check in with your team, ask questions, provide solutions to problems, etc. This is ideal for keeping people on-track and making sure things are running smoothly. Encourage open communication amongst everyone at the meeting.

4. Establish a Marketing Plan 

Based on your goals and your budget, you need to devise a marketing plan. To scale any business, you must maximize your brand awareness. How are you going to get the word out to more consumers about your products or services?

There are several methods you can use. Here are what we consider to be the most important marketing avenues:

• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Social media marketing (paid and organic)
• Email marketing 
• Paid advertising (SEM, PPC)
• Content marketing 

The stronger your online presence is, the more leads your business will generate. Once you have those leads, it's up to you and your sales team to convert interested consumers into paying customers. 

5. Consider Business Coaching Services

One of the most important tips for successful strategic planning is learning when to reach out for help. Whether you've been in business for several years or a handful of weeks, you can always learn more from other people. We recommend looking into business coaching services.

For example, at New Work Revolution, we offer everything from business fast-track workshops and strategic planning facilitation to one-on-one coaching. 

6. Create a Board of Advisors

To optimize your outcomes and strategic planning, we also recommend creating a board of advisors for your business. Typically, these are made up of business owners, managers, and other trusted affiliates and friends. 

A board of advisors is designed to provide insight from various perspectives, which can be vital for thinking outside the box. Your board members can be other business owners, lawyers, financial advisors, etc. 

7. Invest in Team-Building Activities

Your business is only as strong as each and every member of your team. As such, you must invest in your training for your staff. This means productivity training, sales training, and more. 

However, your team must also learn how to work together effectively and efficiently. For this, we recommend team-building activities. 

These can be work-related team-building activities or activities that are completely irrelevant to your business, like taking your staff to an escape room. Find a way to bring your team closer together and increase their communication skills and ability to work as a unit.

8. Take Advantage of All Your Resources

Being a business owner in the modern world has several perks. One of which is the infinite wealth of information you can find online. Aside from doing research, however, you also have access to free online tools designed for entrepreneurs like you.

You can find free business assessments to help you perfect your strategic planning, employee training programs, blueprints for better businesses, and more. Take advantage of all of these resources.

9. Be Adaptable

Finally, even the most well-researched strategic planning can have speed bumps, detours, and worse. One of the most valuable skills you can learn as a business owner is how to be adaptable. 

This attribute will help you adjust to unplanned events, budget shortages, lost team members, and any other problems that might arise. You must be flexible. However, you also need to learn how to remain positive while adjusting to different setbacks. 

You won't be any good to your team if you give up hope or lose your motivation every time something doesn't go your way. 

Do You Need Help with the Strategic Planning for Your Business?

As you can see, there's a lot that goes into successful strategic planning for your business. Fortunately, as noted above there are infinite online resources to help your company thrive. 

Allow us to be one of your resources. Follow the links above to gain access to our free online tools or our coaching services.

And if you have any questions or want to know more about what we have to offer, contact us today. We would love to work with you to develop a strategic planning process to scale your business. 

We hit some major business owner hot spots:

• Product and Service pricing and how to do it well.
• How to manage your numbers so that you can make the best decisions in your business.
• Owning tax day instead of tax day owning you.

Learn more about Tatiana and her upcoming book at talktotatiana.com

If you enjoyed the show, let us know. Drop some stars or a review.

The governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo has been accused of sexual harassment as well as other misgivings.  His response, “I am the victim of cancel culture.” Yes sexual harassment is a way that you get fired at jobs Andrew.

Matt Rowan is a basketball announcer in Oklahoma who called a team the N- word because he didn't like that they were kneeling.  He thought his mic was turned off.  It wasn't.  His response? First it was, it wasn't me then when he realized that wouldn't work.  He blamed it on his diabetes.  Yes Matt, diabetes and racism have gone hand in hand for yours.

Leaders. Don't be Andrew and don't be Matt. 

We all make mistakes and bad choices.  We all screw up.  Some mistakes become more public than others.  If you want to invite people to take accountability for things that happen then you need to be willing to go first.  By doing this, you create an authentic culture where problems that are created by the choices we make can be addressed in healthy way.

TXD Action for This week: Where are you avoiding accountability?

In today's show, we break down

• The A/P/E Model for enhancing leadership decisions.
• Leaderships skills and behaviors that matter.
• Using vulnerability in a powerful way in your leadership.

Check out this week's episode and drop us a like or a rating if you enjoyed the show. Also, check out what Catherine is up to as well at: http://www.theleadershipdecision.com/

I like to start my day with a power hour where I focus on disciplines that are important to my mental, physical and spiritual health. 

From there, I like to commit my daily plan to paper.

I noticed last week that I missed doing this a couple of days and was not nearly as efficient and effective as I could have been.

I didn't beat myself up over it, I just recommitted to my success formula for the coming week.

TXD Action for This week: What's your formula for success? 

In this podcast snack episode, I interview the host of the popular Entrepreneur on Fire podcast and author, John Lee Dumas as he shares with us some of the key nuggets from his new book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success.

The book releases on March 24th so check out this link to order in advance and take advantage of the bonuses that JLD is offering for those that pre-order: https://uncommonsuccessbook.com/

Enjoy the podcast and let me know what you think!

The answer might not be what you expect.

The truth is everyone's dream matters. You and your company must form a cohesive unit where everyone feels empowered to do their part to work towards a common goal.

This is why team building is so important. Implementing team building strategies will eliminate any chance of needless friction between employees if done right and with a good conscience.

Read on to discover 9 reasons why team building is essential to the vitality of your business.

1. Team Building Fosters Trust

Employees care deeply about having autonomy, and if you micromanage them, they'll quickly realize you don't trust them to get the work done properly.

Watching over your employees like a hawk doesn't just hurt them. It hurts you too. Productivity in the workplace will suffer and your business will either stagnate or fail.

Creating a culture of autonomy is as simple as giving employees the space to be self-starters and problem solvers. Let them breathe.

This is why it's important to implement team building strategies from the start. Many team building activities can help create a sense of community between employees and their colleagues.

Having a strong sense of comradery and transparency in the workplace makes it easier to figure out each individual's strengths and weaknesses without hurting them in the process.

2. Team Building Yields Good Communication

Oftentimes, team building involves splitting people into groups. Consider designating team leaders to specific subsets of your business.

Team leaders are essential because they serve as a command of control.

If each team leader has a clear idea of what you expect from them, then they can provide their team with a clear set of goals, procedures, and expectations.

Just make sure that your expectations are:

• Concise
• Realistic
• Consistent
• Fair
• Centered around diversity
• Respectful
• Timely
• Etc.

The apple never falls too far from the tree. If your employees are rising against the unfair expectations of their higher-ups/team leads, make sure it's not your rules they're protesting against.

If it is, it's time to partake in another team building activity called, “Listening to the needs and wants of the people who make your business possible, your employees.”

3. Team Building Is Great for Productivity

if everyone feels like the only person they can count on to get work done is themselves, you'll have a scattered and unproductive floor of employees.

If your employees feel like they have teammates to count on when the going gets tough, productivity will rise.

Work should be shared between teammates. Individuals who are more knowledgeable in one area can help others to be more competent in that area.

When everyone is learning new skills and competencies, workloads can be distributed more fairly. This creates a culture of efficiency and growth.

More work is completed in a fraction of the time and individuals feel empowered to challenge themselves.

4. Team Building Fosters Creativity and Learning

Oddly enough, when individuals are empowered to learn from the skillsets of others, it doesn't just increase productivity. It increases company morale.

But the benefits go even further than that. When your company encourages its employees to learn different skill sets, it lends room for innovation and keeps things fresh.

This opens the door for potential ingenuity. That one idea that came from that ONE employee who felt empowered could change the course of your business in ways that wouldn't be possible without team building.

5. Team Building Encourages Healthy Competition

When you foster a team-oriented culture that is transparent and forward-thinking, you might be surprised to see just how competitive your employees get.

But don't be fooled. It's not as if they hate each other's guts. Rather, employees with a strong sense of team spirit typically love to compete with one another in a friendly and fun way.

Implementing competitive team building games can help further incentivize individuals to bring out their competitive side.

Some fun team-building games include:

• Minefield
• Egg drop
• Dog, rice, chicken
• Talking in circles
• Escape room
• Two sides of a coin
• And more

The list of possible competitive games is endless. The trick is to learn as much as you can about what your employees' value and who they are.

Consider asking them questions or holding polls so that your employees can decide which game they'd prefer to play the most.

6. Team Building Fosters Diversity

As we move forward into 2021, workplaces are becoming more forward-thinking. To build a successful business, these particular forms of diversity must be respected and understood:

• Gender diversity
• Racial diversity
• Cultural/religious diversity
• Age diversity
• Equal opportunity employment

When building teams, all employees must be made aware of how important it is to be accepting of one another and our differences.

But when team building is done right, members don't merely accept others and their differences.

They embrace them!

7. Team Building Creates Inclusivity

People are more empathetic and forgiving to others with whom they feel they have things in common.

When you create a team-oriented culture, employees will naturally see one another as friends who are deserving of respect and kindness.

It's one thing to have a diverse company. But if employees reserve themselves to cliques, this indicates they aren't comfortable or accepting of each other's differences.

Proper team building prevents this from happening from the start by challenging one another to see things from different perspectives.

Many team building exercises incentivize members not to be too picky about who they collaborate with to achieve a common goal.

8. Team Building Resolves Conflicts

The goal of team building isn't to eliminate conflict. In fact, conflict is a necessary component of innovation.

The trick is to foster a culture that understands disagreements will happen. Team building exercises help employees to better resolve conflicts so that productivity and efficiency in the workplace are maintained.

When you have a diverse team, there is bound to be conflict. All healthy conflicts between a diverse group of people can lead to new and interesting ideas that might have otherwise been dismissed.

9. Team Building Can Foster Happiness

The wonderful thing about creating a sense of comradery between employees is the sense of fulfillment and belonging that comes with it.

They say that smiles are contagious. When everyone in your business is smiling, always looking up, and they have a pep in their step, you know you're doing things right.

A happy team means low turnover rates, higher company reviews, and increased productivity.

Did You Find This Information Useful?

We're hoping it did! Team building is a vital part of growing your business, but there are many more tips and tricks to learn.

If you're a small business owner and you'd like to learn more about how to make your business succeed, be sure to check out more articles like this one on our blog page.

You probably were aware of this already. 

If you want to learn more about yourself, relationships matter.

If you are like me and are more process oriented than you are relational, you have to work a little harder to glean insights from the people around you.  This entails making more of a conscious effort to be in a  relationship.

If you already are relational, what are your current relationships telling you about yourself right now?

TXD Action for This week: How you can you gain more insight about yourself this week from those around you?

Let us know if this is helpful.

If you aren't careful, it can lead to you taking on too much responsibility and then feeling the negative affect in your life.

Part one of this two part series looks at leader burnout and how leaders get there.

Our hope is to inspire you to take care of yourself. Let us know what you think.

Since high school, Brian has studied some of the biggest names in self development. One thing that he noticed in his studies was that most self help didn't equate to results.

Brian set out to change that and created five keys to help you go from information to transformation.

Brian has a free summit coming up so make sure to check that out as well. He shares a promo code for the event in today's interview. Text builder to 77948.

Check it out.

If you are going to do video like a pro, you need to learn from a pro. That's why we brought Karin Reed to the show. Karin went from being an award winning journalist to teaching leaders how to present their best selves on camera as the CEO of Speaker Dynamics.

In this interview you will learn:

• How to use the camera to your advantage in a world that has gone remote (and isn't changing anytime soon).
• What are the best ways to maximize the messages you deliver on screen.
• How to overcome the most common barriers to being behind the camera.

There is a lot of great stuff in today's episode. Let us know what you think.

Get more information about Karin at www.speakerdynamics.com

This week, Brandon shares six things to help you reduce busyness and live the life you want to live for you and the people around you that you care about.

Becoming a good entrepreneur is no small feat. As a person, you need consistency to grow and improve to ensure that your business thrives with you. Otherwise, you might make bad decisions that can cripple your business.

Over 30 million small businesses exist in the United States. However, only a small percentage of new businesses survive their first year. If it's your first time running a business, you may feel overwhelmed by the responsibility.

Don’t feel discouraged yet.

With this guide, you’ll learn about business coaching and how it makes you grow. That way, you’ll know all the good things a business coach can do for you. Read on and find out more:

1. Take Better and Smarter Actions

No matter what happens, humans gravitate toward doing whatever they want. As a businessperson, your first task is to define what you want for yourself and your enterprise. Establishing your most desirable goals is the first step toward smarter decisions.

Your business coach will help you define the things you want and things you could want. It’s all about discovering yourself since this will determine your direction. With an ideal goal, you become more natural and consistent in taking actions to work toward it.

This allows you to ask yourself thought-provoking questions to avoid becoming stagnant. That way, you can assess your business practices like an outsider. This gives you a fresher perspective that drives your business to get better.

2. Learn Accountability and Responsibility

As an enterprise owner, you’ll always have a large checklist of to-do items. This is constant, so it could get easy for you to feel scattered and distracted amidst the chaos. This is why you need to track productivity levels and take account of tasks.

It’s normal to run short on goals, but slacking isn’t good for your business and reputation. If you feel stagnant or prone to procrastination, get some coaching and mentoring. A coach can help a lot in keeping you responsible by keeping you focused on achieving your goals.

If you strategize plans with another person, the ideas within your head become real. This makes you more motivated and takes accountability for your progress and success.

3. Get More Objective Opinions

The people who work with or for you have their reasons to be compliant. It can be worrying for them to express disagreement. They may want to avoid causing friction and remain in your good graces.

However, an executive coach has a fixed-term contract. Their purpose is to challenge you in various useful ways. They will assess your business leadership practices and value honesty the most.

This means coaches will offer objective assessments, regardless of their harshness. Once they do, they can start giving you advice. It’s especially when they see some counterintuitive practices for your business.

4. Grow Your Self-Confidence

A lot of high-profile business figures have one thing in common: confidence. They’re the people who believe in their abilities and got the results they wanted. However, some leaders won’t have this natural characteristic.

Confidence isn’t innate, meaning you can learn it if you’re willing to spend time and effort. One of the benefits of hiring a business coach is learning your skillset. You may even cultivate your strengths and weaknesses and other strategies.

Once you learn the skills necessary for navigating tough situations, you develop self-confidence. This makes your business flourish since confident leaders get people better than themselves.

5. Boost Your Networking Opportunities

A revitalizing coaching session can help you feel motivated to look for opportunities. However, your business coach can do so much more to help you network. Through them, you can meet other like-minded senior executives and learn from them.

Every top leader knows that networking is a major tool to develop leadership skills. The caveat is that good networking will require skills. If you’re not interactive in events or avoid them like the plague, your coach can help.

Without the right connections, you could miss great business opportunities. This often leads to the premature closing of a business. You can also learn some other reasons for business failure by reading our guide.

6. Nurture Your Top Employees

Your cream of the crop will also benefit from business coaching. They’re unlikely to leave your company if they feel challenged and rewarded. This also boosts their productivity, especially when they feel your recognition.

Your business success hinges on employee retention and productivity. That’s why lots of major businesses spend millions each year to keep their employees happy. Without these in place, your business will only have junior employees who will soon leave.

The biggest driving forces for loyal employees are personal development and growth opportunities. You can do this by offering these top workers the business coaching they deserve. It’s a huge incentive, and it shows that you care for them a lot.

7. Learn When to Take Risks

Having an expert coach by your side will motivate you to challenge your business acumen. In time, you’ll learn how to differentiate between reckless and informed decisions. After all, the latter relies on evidence and other statistics.

Take note; coaches aren’t oracles that see into the future. However, they have enough business experience to know whether you’re being reckless. Learn to examine decisions from different angles and make a better-informed decision.

Never take for granted the insight these experts can give. It’s because most of them are likely to be senior entrepreneurs with years of experience. With this, you need not fail a lot before succeeding.

Start with Business Coaching Today!

Want to become the leader of a strong business team? Business coaching can be the driving force to seize business opportunities. Consider these factors and start looking for a business coach today.

Do you need a reputable business coach? If so, contact us today and let us help you grow.

This week's episode walks you through common ways that leaders disrespect their team and four things that demonstrate respect for your team.

To get respect, you have to give it. Check it out.

As you work on your goals and resolutions, take a look at some of the ghosts (limiting beliefs and thought patterns) that you spend time running from that may hold you back from achieving the things that you want to achieve.

This week, Brandon breaks down the most common ghosts that we run from in our life and some things to create to help us overcome so that we can live life with joy.

David comes to us from the UK and we talk about the myth of the heroic leader and talk about why collective leadership is a strategy that moves businesses to greatness.

We break down how you can implement this into your own business and what some of the key building blocks are to getting this right.

Check out this show and look for the original episode that we did when the book first came out.

According to the Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy, nearly 80% of businesses survive their first year in business. However, only about half of those businesses will make it to the five-year mark.

Often, the difference between those who succeed and those who fail comes down to knowing how to scale a business.

Keep reading this guide to learn more about scaling a business the right way and how it can help take your company to the next level. 

1. Develop a Plan

Coming up with a plan on how you will scale your business can help you fully think through the process and determine what exactly will be needed to move forward. 

It's important to keep a few things in mind while developing your plan. First things first, you will have to ask yourself, “Is your company ready to scale?”

Taking a look at your business from an outside perspective can help determine if your business is in a position to support the growth you're looking for. You can begin this process by completing a SWOT analysis, which consists of jotting down your company's:

• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• Opportunities
• And Threats

By doing so, you will gain a better understanding of how your business fits into the competitive landscape, giving you an idea of how to proceed going forward.

2. Evaluate Your Needs

After deciding that scaling a business is the right move for you, it's time to crunch the numbers and figure out exactly what it's going to take. Imagine if your business were to sustain a massive increase in sales overnight – how would you handle it?

Would you need to hire more people? Use a different technology system? 

These are questions you will need to ask yourself to develop a strategic plan for the future. The more specific you can get with certain benchmarks, the easier time you will have going forward. These metrics can include:

• Revenue
• New customers
• Cost per lead
• Monthly recurring revenue
• Sales growth
• Website traffic

Growing a business will also take time and resources. You will have to consider what it's going to cost to increase these metrics. 

3. Generate the Funding

Typically, it will require some capital to support the expansion of scaling a small business. The costs may be associated with having to hire extra employees or even through purchasing automated processes.

Unless your company has the capital upfront, you'll have to look for outside sources of funding. Depending on the financial situation your business is in, will most likely determine the best source of financing. 

You can consider obtaining a business loan to get started or even start a business line of credit to secure the finances. If you plan on taking a business loan, you will need a business plan, five-year financial projections, and an expense sheet. Having this information available will give banks a better idea of your financial situation and improve your loan chances. 

Luckily, there are other ways of generating the funding needed without having to take out a loan. Companies are beginning to utilize alternative sources of funding to help support their growth, including:

• Crowdfunding
• Grants
• Bootstrapping
• Joint ventures

Crowdfunding can be an excellent source of funding for small businesses as contributors don't expect a return from the company. Crowdfunding involves raising money from a large number of individuals. It's completely different from finding investors, as investors have partial ownership and crowd funders don't.

Businesses may prefer raising money with crowdfunding over looking for investors because first, they maintain full ownership, and second, they aren't obliged to produce returns.

4. Utilize Business Technology

Technology is improving business processes all around us – automating tasks, and making life easier for business owners.

Technology plays an important role in scaling a business as it improves efficiency and can also save companies money over time. Several software innovations on the market can make life easier when thinking about growing a business.

A few software products that are gaining popularity include:

• Customer Relationship Management
• Sales & Marketing
• Accounting
• HR
• Inventory

Making use of this technology can give companies the leverage needed to scale their businesses. The more automation you can implement, the more money can be saved and used to grow your business at scale. 

If you try to do it without using technology, you're neglecting a significant factor in growing your business – saving money. With the right technology, companies can save on average 40 to 75 percent over time.

5. Build the Right Team

Technology alone isn't going to get the job done – you'll need the right team of people to properly scale a business. 

A great example of how building the right team can help in scaling a business can be observed with Steve Jobs and Apple. Jobs was famously quoted for hiring people smarter than him and letting them do what they do best, and sometimes that's what's needed to grow a business. 

Many times all it takes is hiring the right person for the job. That could include a top-notch marketing professional, a consultant who has been through it before, or even the right customer service staff. 

Big corporations sometimes forget or become out of touch with what is going on at the lower levels. Leadership comes from the top down but needs to be implemented properly throughout all levels of the organization for it to be effective, making hiring the right management critical.

If you can't find the right people to hire, you can consider outsourcing to find people capable of getting the job done.

Looking for Help on How to Scale a Business Properly?

If you're wondering how to scale a business the proper way, you're not alone. Scaling a business can help businesses take control of their market and gain an edge on the competition. Keep in mind, every company was once a startup, and at some point, they decided they wanted more out of their business.

If you're considering scaling your business and need help, contact us today, and we can help you get started!

In a leadership setting, there are things that leaders hear on a regular basis from their teams that sound innocent. However, if they were to dig deeper, they would recognize that there is more to these statements than meet the eye.

This week's podcast dives into six common statements that employees will make to a leader that deserve a deep listen.

Check out this week's show and ask yourself if you are giving these statements your full attention.

Managing employees is an incredibly important job. It's about more than making sure the work gets done. To be an excellent manager, you'll need to understand your employees, look out for them, and build a strong foundation of trust.

Feeling nervous? Don't worry—we'll walk you through how it all works. Here are our top 9 tips for managing employees and keeping everything running smoothly.

1. Encourage Input From Your Employees

One way to make your employees feel heard and keep them motivated is to ask for their input whenever appropriate. Even if the question goes beyond what they usually do, you might be surprised by their ability to rise to the occasion.

When you ask for input, make sure to do it in a non-pressuring way—it's not a test or a new responsibility they have to take on. It's just a way of showing that you value their opinion. And if you decide to implement their idea in your plans, this can remind them how important they are to the team.

2. Support Your Employees' Careers

What are your employees interested in doing in the long run?

By asking about this and keeping the answers in mind, you can get to know your employees better. And if you come across opportunities to support their goals (for example, inviting them to a meeting they would be interested in), this can help keep your employees engaged in the work.

3. Practice Transparency

People like to be in the know about what's going on. Before any big changes take place, give your employees plenty of time to get used to the knowledge of what will happen.

You might think that keeping things from your team will allow you to move more efficiently. But it can also give off the impression that you don't care about their involvement. If you keep people informed at every step, you're giving them more reason to feel stable in their jobs—big changes won't happen without plenty of advance notice.

4. Be Empathetic

Has an employee of yours been falling behind on work assignments? Showing up late to work?

Your first instinct might be to figure out how to “nip this in the bud” and show the employee that this isn't acceptable. But that isn't always the best approach. It won't hurt to try to be empathetic about it, at least at first.

You might find that you can gain valuable information about your employees by noticing when they are falling behind and genuinely asking what's wrong. If it's a personal reason, they might not feel comfortable telling you, and that's okay. But it might be something about the demands of the workplace or a feeling that they're unsure about the quality of the work they can produce.

If this is the case, you can work on changing this together. And even if it is a personal reason, you can demonstrate empathy by being flexible about workload for a period of time. The trust this builds is often worth it.

5. Managing Employees is a Skill You Can Build

Have you ever felt unsure about your natural talents as a manager?

Well, the good news is that being a manager doesn't have to be something you're just born with. As long as you're committed to learning and improving as time goes on, you'll be able to manage employees with the best of them.

At the end of every year, reflect on your own progress as a manager. What have you accomplished? How have you made others feel?

6. Acknowledge Progress

Some managers rely on critique rather than praise. But even if this is your usual style, it's important to acknowledge progress and great work from time to time.

Every person reacts to critique differently. Some might be motivated by it, while others can internalize it and become more anxious in response. Keep an eye out for the latter and consider changing your approach if you see this starting to happen.

If you celebrate the progress your employees have made, this can help them ruminate less on any mistakes or failures. It can put them in a better position to hear criticisms without taking them as a permanent judgement on who they are.

7. Make Space to Debrief Safely

When your employees come across a problem with the workplace dynamic, what options do they have to speak up about it?

If you've been working under the assumption that “if anything's wrong, people should just say it,” you might be missing more than you realize. Lots of employees stay quiet out of fear of losing their jobs.

You can counteract this in many ways, including a robust HR department, an anti-discrimination team, and anonymous feedback forms. But in the meantime, a simple action to take is to debrief after meetings and schedule one-on-one time to talk about issues. Emphasize that you won't use employees' complaints against them—and make sure you follow through on that promise!

8. Distribute Power

As a manager, you might feel like you have to do all the major things yourself. But you might find some relief for yourself (and excitement from others) if you distribute some power to your employees.

For example, when making hiring decisions, consider including employee representatives from all levels in the hiring process. Or at your next team meeting, you can ask one of your star employees to take the lead for the day. As always, keep the pressure off and make these as “opt-in” as possible.

9. Manage Your Own Stress

How have you been doing lately? Have you been stressed out? And if so, have you transferred any of this stress onto your workers?

Sometimes when managers feel deadlines creeping up on them, they dial up the pressure on their team. If this sounds like you, it's very important to make sure you time-manage well and seek out creative solutions. Otherwise, your problems will soon become everyone's problems.

Build an Amazing Team!

Managing employees can seem like a lot of work, but you just might find that the greatest rewards are in the work community you create. As a manager, you have a lot of say in what kind of workplace you show up to every day. So make sure it's a great one.

And for help with your specific management questions, just ask! We'd love to help you grow.

This week, I break six key habits for you to adopt and utilize to ensure that you are intentional with your habits around the area of money.

Enjoy the show and let us know what habit stuck out to you the most?

For a leader, planning builds your credibility and connects your team to your business.

This weeks podcast gives you three simple questions to ask yourself and your team to plan your year. 

As an entrepreneur, you must stay productive to succeed, but there are thousands of tasks vying for your attention each day. The struggle to balance immediate to-dos with important, big picture thinking isn't unusual. 

One of the best ways to improve your output is to take productivity tips from experienced leaders. Learn from other's mistakes and triumphs and you won't have to reinvent the wheel. 

Read on for our list of 11 ways to boost your productivity as a small business owner. You'll be amazed to find out how a few simple adjustments can transform your workday. 

1. Commit to a Routine

If you haven't established a daily routine yet, now is the time to start. Understanding the flow of your day is the key to making other business productivity adjustments. 

If you always begin and end work at the same time, your brain and body will adapt to the different segments of your day. You will become more effective at your job during work hours, and better able to relax when you're finished. 

Your work routine should also include checking emails, taking breaks, and anything else you need to do regularly. Most people prefer to focus on challenging tasks early in the day, when they feel energetic and refreshed after a restful night of sleep. 

2. Practice Smart Scheduling

Schedule everything, not just meetings and phone calls. Break your day down into half-hour or hour-long blocks, then fill each one with a single task. 

No task is too large or too small for scheduling. Scrolling through social media, checking in with team members, and setting goals for the coming year should all have a spot on your calendar. Decide how much time you should devote to each task and stick to the plan.

Our culture often celebrates multitasking, but the truth is it doesn't work. Studies have shown that trying to do more than one thing at a time actually slows us down. Scheduling improves focus and prevents individual to-dos from absorbing more of our time and energy than they should. 

You can use tools like Google Calendar, Calendly, or a good old-fashioned planner to manage your time. 

3. Prioritize Relentlessly

Learning how to prioritize is like productivity gold for entrepreneurs. Even with careful planning, things change constantly in a small business environment. Leaders need to make quick decisions about how to allocate resources. 

It can be helpful to prioritize on multiple levels – annually, monthly, weekly, and daily. Set aside time to decide what should happen now, soon, and much later. Get comfortable with saying no to opportunities that don't make the cut. 

Protect your own time and energy by only taking on what you can't delegate to someone else. Lower priority tasks can be handled by your team. Reflect on your choices every day and adjust accordingly. 

4. Divide Large Projects Into Small Steps

It's easy to put off what you can't accomplish today. To avoid procrastinating over large projects for months or even years, break them down into a series of smaller steps. 

Maybe you want to launch a new brand partnership, but you're feeling overwhelmed. Start by sending an email, sketching your idea, or putting together a rough budget. If you take a few small steps forward every week, you'll end up being more productive. 

5. Take Advantage of Technology

Productivity tools have revolutionized the way small businesses function. You should definitely be using them to support and coordinate with your team. Apps like Slack and Asana make task management and communication easy to handle from anywhere.

Technology also offers endless opportunities to automate and outsource tasks. External solutions are great for online transactions, website design, and SEO services.  

As a leader, make sure you have access to the best equipment possible. You shouldn't have to spend time worrying about your laptop, smartphone, or Wi-Fi connection. 

6. Jot Down Ideas in a Journal

If you run a business, you're probably an idea person. Being a visionary means you have so much potential to change the world, but getting lost in your own head can tank productivity. 

Designate a place to jot down your thoughts so you don't waste precious energy trying to remember them. Schedule time to review your notes and prioritize new ideas. 

7. Eliminate Time Wasters

Time wasters are everywhere, and some of them are even enjoyable. For example, maybe you love posting on your company's Instagram account. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's probably not the best use of your time. 

Office chatter, unimportant emails, and unnecessary meetings are all-time wasters disguised as productivity. 

Do your best to get rid of distractions and hand off administrative tasks. Some CEOs swear by going offline for stretches of time to strategize and think about the big picture. 

8. Hire a Flexible Team

Your team exists to support you, so notice what's impeding your productivity and assign it to someone else. Hiring an assistant can be well worth the cost if it creates more space for you to think and lead. Delegate to your team first thing, so they're not left waiting for you. 

When you hire staff members, look for flexible individuals. It's a pleasure to work with people who are humble enough to get the printer fixed or pick up lunch for a client if it's for the good of the company. 

9. Put Processes in Place

Streamlining processes within your business will do wonders for your productivity. If employees understand what needs to happen and how they won't need to interrupt you with questions. Make sure your instructions are precise. 

Staff members are happy and efficient when they know what is expected of them. 

10. Practice Self-Care

Burnout is a common complaint among founders. Taking care of yourself mentally, physically, and emotionally will help prepare you for workplace productivity. 

Do your best to find a work-life balance that includes healthy eating, sleep, exercise, and time with friends and family. Simple stretching can relieve stress and improve mental clarity. 

When you succeed, celebrate independently and with your team. Giving accomplishments the attention they deserve keeps people motivated to keep going. 

11. Consult With an Expert

Sometimes it can be hard to notice and acknowledge your own shortcomings. If you are still struggling with how to be more productive, consider seeking outside support. 

Business coaching experts will notice things you don't. They can provide business productivity tips to simplify your routine. They will also help you incorporate time-saving techniques into your day.

Follow These Productivity Tips for Success 

There are so many obstacles to productivity for business owners, and every day presents new challenges. Hopefully, these productivity tips will make your time at work more balanced and fruitful. 

If you are looking for expert advice, contact us today to learn about our business coaching services. 

We talk about 

*how to hire a great bookkeeper

*how your numbers help you make and save money

*3 things you can do right now to improve your businesses financial processes right now.

Check out the show and check out Parker’s company Evolved Finance at https://evolvedfinance.com

Leaders who are uncommitted to their team’s growth, cut corners and spend as little time with their team as possible.

Great leaders overcome the three training myths that I discuss on today’s podcast to build a thriving team.

Enjoy the show!

This weeks episode gives you some insight into the three things you can do with interruptions when they come and how to minimize these distractions so that you can play your game.

Ineffective leaders use control when things don’t go their way at work and end up making the problem worse.

Great leaders solve work problems at the root with the five step process Brandon takes you through in this weeks episode.

Having a healthy flow of communication in your organization is important. It helps people to understand what is going on and furthers the experience that you are trying to create for your team.

This week I share some simple yet powerful tips to ensuring that you run your next meeting like a boss.

This week, Brandon breaks down 5 personal life questions and 6 business questions to help you put together a vision that gives you a clearer picture for where you are headed in business and in life.

Ready? Let's dive in! 

We brought in growth expert Tony Guarnaccio to share his steps and approach to growing with limited resources and amid uncertainty.

Tony grew up in entrepreneurship his whole life and has learned from the ups and downs of that experience to help business owners unlock the growth they need to sustain their business.

Check out the show notes at growthandfreedom.media to learn more about Tony. 

The true power of purpose is in understanding your purpose and developing an understanding around how that purpose can be utilized to solve problems and benefit the world around you.

This weeks podcast gives you three insights into developing your purpose in a practical and productive way.  

Even when leaders do try, they haven’t done the necessary ground work to have a productive conversation.

This week’s podcast lays down the prerequisites for motivation to occur and what things you can do as a leader to keep the motivational fire burning. Apply this and watch your team and it's productive grow!

This process starts with you and your understanding of your purpose and how you show up for the people around you.

This week's podcast has a little bit of everything: client stories, a look inside my work in banking and finance as well as my short lived, successful hopscotch career.

Enjoy the show!

This week, Brandon reviews the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership.  This book is loaded with content that will get you thinking about your leadership differently and ultimately improve your leadership as well.

What's your big take away? Let us know!

Rather than thinking of feelings as a sign of weakness to be avoided how can you use feelings to guide you and your team in a productive way? Let's discuss. 

Let me know if it was helpful.

In this episode, Brandon talks with the CEO of Strategy Sprints, Simon Severino. He walks through his process of assisting businesses grow in a short period of time. They talk metrics, freedom and strategy to create focus towards growth in a ruthlessly committed way. 

Enjoy the show and give us a like and a share if you enjoyed it!

It can also come from a blind spot. Something I didn’t know I need to learn but now is brought to the surface for me to examine.

How are you working through your own growth?

Are you staying open to what’s possible?

This weeks podcast guides you through some specific, actionable tips to help you in your own growth process.

No matter how big your company is, this concept of “and” thinking is a powerful tool to keep in your leadership toolbox.

Barry Johnson is the creator of the Polarity Map® and a founding partner of Polarity Partnerships. For more information about And-thinking in a variety of situations, Barry Johnson has a new book: And, Making a Difference by Leveraging Polarity, Paradox or Dilemma – Volume One: Foundations HRD Press (2020).

 Polarity Partnerships:
https://www.polaritypartnerships.com/

And: Making a Difference by Leveraging Polarity, Paradox, or Dilemma on Amazon:https://amzn.to/3lFhrF7

Either you don’t do it at all. Perhaps you set the bar ridiculously high. Or you are somewhere in between.

This week’s podcast shares the story of what happens when you  achieve everything you ever wanted as well as gives you five questions to build out your own vision for your business or career.

The world needs what you have to offer.

Great management creates the best environment to accomplish the work. 

For better or worse, kore teams are working remotely. 

This weeks podcast dives into creating a winning remote environment for great work to happen.

This week’s podcast brings to you talent optimizer, Amber Hurdle. 

Amber and Brandon break down why great companies are built from the inside out and how to use data and branding to build great teams.

Team building is always a big need for our listeners and this episode is filled with actionable tips to make you a better team builder.

The best thing about this tip is that you have absolute control of it and it makes confrontation and problem solving much easier for you.

Check out this weeks show for the tip.

Brandon recently “sat down” with the CEO of Triggers, Leslie Zane to talk all things branding.

Leslie has done brand work for some of the most recognizable brands in the world and she shares practical tools and tips that connect your brand message to their ideal customer.

Let us know what you thought was the most useful piece of advice from today’s episode.

This weeks podcast looks at what the culture of your team looks like with the different leadership approaches and how to uncover where you fall in the conversation.

In this episode, Brandon reviews the impactful book by Dan Heath; Upsteam. 

Upstream tackles how to solve root cause problems. Today’s podcast breaks down some of the highlights of the book that create an environment for root cause issues to be solved.

Let us know if this helped.

In this episode, Brandon sits down with JT to discuss how and why writing and publishing a book could be the missing piece to your success. 

So many great take-a-ways! Listen in. 

To get your story out in book format with the best or to connect with JT, Check out the links below:

https://scribemedia.com/

https://jtmccormick.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jtmccormick/

Free from the day to day work. Free to take a vacation while your business still achieves high level results?

This is the entrepreneurial dream. 

To make that dream a reality, there are a few things you want to have in place to support you. 

This weeks podcast goes over those things to help you achieve true freedom.

However, most business owners are reluctant to have a critical eye after failure. In this episode, Brandon deconstructs this process of learning from failure and offers insights you can use today. 

Let's dive in.

People use manager and leader interchangeably.  Not all managers are leaders and not all leaders know how to manage.

This weeks podcast draws the distinction between the two and breaks down why you should care about both.

Let's dive in. 

He had two choices in this moment, live in fear of someone’s opinion or live the way he wanted to live based on the clarity of his own vision and values. 

You have the same choice. 

Let's dive in. 

Growth and freedom are outcomes that are possible for leaders who are willing to make a ruthless commitment to trusting and utilizing their teams to their fullest capacity and ability.

Brandon Allen – Forbes article

He dives into the obstacles face by leaders and some keys to delegating properly. Definitely worth a read – check it out here.

There is a better way and Mike Michalowicz lays this out simply and plainly in his new book, Fix This Next.

Check out the interview as Mike and I do a deep dive into the Fix This Next methodology and how you can figure out what you can work on next in your business.

We like what Mike is up to so much that we partnered with him to help business owners identify and deliver their next fix. Check out more here and take the Fix This Next assessment.

This process has it's limitation.

Perhaps there is a bigger issue with why you didn't follow through on a project and get it done. Maybe there's a bigger issue at play.

Regardless of what kind of leader you are, this one tip in today's podcast will help you identify and address your lack of follow through in a productive way.

There are a lot of parts of your business that factor into your growth that need varying levels of attention at varying times in the process. It can be daunting but it's vital to understand this to be able to set yourself of to grow.

Today's podcast focuses on the elements that must be present for your business to scale and create sustained growth. 

Let's discuss!

It's easy as a business owner to hold onto old norms in your business and create a strategy of trying harder. But, harder isn't always best. We discuss that today. 

Take note of this episode and previous episodes to look for ways you can change your business for the better; for you and for your customers.

To create the environment that you want your team to operate in, it requires you to create an environment for yourself where you go first.

One of the biggest mistakes that will keep you from being influential is assuming that there isn’t a cost for being a leader.  Pat Lencioni, the author of 5 Dysfunctions of Team, said recently that the personal economics of leadership aren’t good.  You are always going to give way more than you get. Selfish leaders are always looking for what they can get from their team vs. what they can give to their team.  

Here are five keys to creating a framework that allows you to show up as your best self in leadership:

1. Do What You Say You Will Do.  It’s important to be mindful of what you are saying and putting out to your team. If you say you are doing something, then do it, or have a really good reason for why you didn’t (there are certainly times where this is OK).  This includes the things you tell yourself that you will do.  Especially, the things you tell yourself you will do.
2. Examine Your Being.  If you find yourself failing to follow through on your doing.  Start examining who you are being in your doing.  BeàDoàHave.  If your doing is off, it has a lot to do with who you are being, or believe yourself to be in your work.
3. Be Mindful.  If you want to examine who you are being. Mindfulness will help you get there. It’s easy to get so wrapped up in activity to a point where you don’t acknowledge your inner state of being and completely cut yourself off from this part of who you are.
4. Create Time and Space.  Create time and space for important work.  This includes morning routines, mindfulness, working on the business, team training, team check ins, etc.  Anything that is important to you would benefit from having dedicated and consistent time to work in it.
5. Participate in Your Personal Growth.  Teams who grow have leaders that are growing. Take time and space to ensure that you continue to expand your consciousness and knowledge of your world to continue to open new possibilities.

Being a leader is challenging.  As Pat Lencioni said above, the personal economics aren’t favorable. You got into leadership, hopefully, because you want to serve others. Taking care of yourself ensures that you make yourself available to create impact on the world around you. 

Ineffective leaders focus on what they are doing and then create a lot of shame and guilt around their behavior when they don’t execute. Powerful leaders who are expanding take the time to examine who they are in their leadership and lean into the process of growing through their limiting beliefs and unproductive conclusions to come out on the other side even more powerful and influential than before.  These five keys provide the framework for making that possible.

During a market disruption, it's time to question everything; your business model, your future.

Everything is open for discussion. The benefit being that you have the potential to position your business to be in even better shape than when you went into all of this craziness.

Let's dive in.

Some people would argue that they are the same. Author and Musician Dave Dunseath argues that they aren’t the same and lays out why in his hilarious book, “No, You Can’t”.

If you want inspiration, this is your show.

The #1 challenge we hear from leaders and managers is nearly ALWAYS related to struggles within their team, employee issues, etc.

In this short video – we kick off the 9 part series with the key tips to create empowered teams. These points are critical for any leader and manager.

Where do you start? Start with yourself – get some understanding around how you look at your team and your limiting beliefs. Get these cleared up and the next points will really make more sense.

We dive deeper into this within our “Discovering You As A Manager” Course designed to help managers get a firm grasp on the REAL roles of a manager – not just the academic-blah they tell you in school – or whatever you can learn from other bad managers. If you'd like, you can check that course out here.

How quickly things change? One minute you are reviewing your progress towards your first quarter goals and the next you are scrambling to make sure that your business stays afloat. One thing is for certain is that the future isn’t as predictable as you would like it to be. In times of uncertainty, it’s important to look at the future and assess where your business fits into that future. It is also important to not spend so much time there that you forget about what’s happening right in front of you in the hear and now. I put together a list of nine things that you can do right now to supercharge your business to make it better today and prepare it for a bright future.

A common hang up you, and many business owners, have is what to do with your time as you transition from being hands on in your business to being more of the behind the scenes force.

Chess grandmaster, Savielly Tartakower said “Tactics is knowing what to do when there is something to do; strategy is knowing what to do when there is nothing to do.”

As you evolve your business, and your leadership, you become more and more of a strategist.  Leaders who embrace strategic work start to identify the difference between high leverage work vs. low leverage work. Low leverage work is the hands-on day-to-day work of the business, which includes serving customers. High leverage work includes four key areas:

1. Marketing
2. Systems and Processes
3. Team Building
4. Idea Generation and Implementation

A great resource to dive deep into the concept of high leverage work is the book High Output Management by Andrew Grove. It’s the best resource I have read on the subject and will expand your mind to what’s possible when you engage in high leverage work as a leader.  

The nine areas to supercharge your business are all high leverage activities. For the effort you put into them, you will create a positive, multiplier effect for you and your business. 

1. Structure

In uncertain times, or even in times when you don’t know what to do, it’s easy to shut down and do nothing. Having your world disrupted in abrupt fashion is a disorienting experience. Creating a new set of routines and rituals is vital to surviving and even thriving. Some of these routines may be new and some of them may be old routines done in a different way.

A key ritual to look at is your morning ritual or what I call a “power hour”. This is time spent in the morning focusing on mind, body, and spirit.  This includes things like exercise, meditation, learning, journaling, planning etc. When you get your day off to a good start, it sets the rest of the day up for success.  My goal each day is to live with intention and then to execute that intention with integrity. A morning routine helps me show up that way each day.

Having a routine keeps you in a place of purpose and, I believe, is better for your mental health in times of difficulty. If you feel like you are in a rut, see what adjusting your schedule does for you

2. Clarity

One of my favorite TV shows of all time is Friday Night Lights. In that show, Coach Taylor had a phrase that he made his football teams recite.

“Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.”

Clarity breeds confidence and helps give you direction as a leader. Here are some things that you can work on, in addition to a morning ritual, to gain deeper clarity of your business.

Mission– Why does your business exist? Anyone can slap a random definition on their business. My challenge for you is to assess if your mission is meaningful to you and it showcases the unique ability of your business to deliver value in the market.

At New Work Revolution, we had a boring mission for years. The lack of uniqueness never moved the needle for me as a leader. I sat and pondered this one day and it hit me. I get the most compliments from clients when I created environments for that client to have a breakthrough and I did that by asking great questions. Our mission evolved into creating environments for rich, meaningful discovery that built the confidence of leaders. That was a mission that was unique to me and that I was excited to deliver.

Vision– Where is your business going? What would you like to see your business do and become at some point in the future? Who are your clients? How will your product/service offerings change? Has your business model evolved? How many people work for you? What does a future organization chart look like? What will be the key behaviors that get you there?

You will spend time painting this picture and, just to speak to your fears right away in this exercise, you will probably be wrong about what’s possible.  The point is not to be “right”. This exercise gives your business a road map the next steps which is vital to getting closer to the answer of what is truly possible in your business.

Value– What are the most important traits that you want the collective team to possess? This illustrates the DNA of the team by answering the question, “how do we behave?”. Values shape your team, your processes, your products, and your marketing. Just like mission, the more unique you make these the more congruent it will be to who your company is and how it serves.

Your Customer– Take this time to reach out to customers and learn more about them. What else do they do when aren’t buying from you? What do they care about? Why do they buy from you? What is their favorite part of buying from you? When I started doing this in my own business what I noticed is that people valued things differently and they cared about things that I didn’t think my clients cared about.  It allowed me, and my team, to see our uniqueness more clearly and to craft a better marketing message to other people who were just like the clients I enjoyed working with.

Your Experience– Our methodology at New Work Revolution is called Total Experience Design (TXD). TXD aims to create more intention with the delivery of your service to help you stand out.  What I notice about most of the businesses that we work with initially is that they don’t have any intention around their service delivery from a big picture, holistic standpoint.  Certain pieces of their processes are intentional, but they aren’t always unified towards a specific end.  The question for you to ask yourself is, what is your perfect customer experience and what needs to change to deliver that consistently to your end user?

3. Hiring and Onboarding

Small business owners do a terrible job with hiring and onboarding team members. It’s not that small business owners don’t hire good people ever, it’s in spite of the process instead of because of the process when this happens.  In TXD, we say that the “Internal culture is the caretaker of the external experience.” With culture being so important, having a great process for hiring and onboarding your team is critical.

For hiring, start with your employment ads. These are ads and they are supposed to sound interesting. Most ads that I see small businesses write are boring. An example of an ad that captures the culture is from Murder Burger:

You may criticize some of the words in this ad but one thing you can’t say is that it’s boring. Your business has a personality, don’t be afraid to show it.

Once you revamp your ads, look at your interview questions. If you are like a lot of business owners I talk to, these questions aren’t even written down.  Business owners are just winging it. This process is too important, don’t wing it.  Have a system for interviewing with each position that you hire for.  The higher the skill level of the position, the more in depth your interview process will be. Utilizing your values as part of the interview process can help to ensure that you hire people who are good cultural fits for your team.

With the hiring process, make sure that have defined outcomes in mind for the type of person you are trying to hire in each role. What boxes does this person need to check and how do you create a process that gets you there?

In the onboarding process, this is where you set the tone for the team member’s experience with your company. What agreements do you want to create with a new team member with regards to how they show up at work? What are the good and bad things about working for your company? Be honest. Create a roadmap for the first 90 days of your new team members experience. Just like you define customer experiences, you also want to define employee experiences as well. Again, the internal culture is the caretaker of the external experience.

4. Product, Programs and Business Models

Society is currently in the midst of significant change.  Some of this change may prove to be permanent. This is an opportunity to look at your products and services, and how you deliver them, to see what new changes can be made to the way you do business.

As you look at this, consider not only the mission of the business but also your role in the business today and in the future. Look at this from the lens of “anything is possible”. You can change pricing structure, the way a program is delivered, the type of client that you work with, you can add a new product vertical, etc.

For example, I work with a lot of medical providers in different fields. One of the things that medical providers will tell you they don’t enjoy dealing with insurance companies. The way necessary care is assessed, and paid for, by insurance companies isn’t always what’s best for a patient.  For that reason, as well as cutting down on administrative expenses, this could be a great time for a medical provider to go to a cash-based model.

5. Reviewing Efficiency

Efficiency is difficult to fix when work is busy. Who wants to introduce a new technology or software when things are crazy busy? No one. So, you won’t.  There are likely several efficiencies that exist in your business that will streamline customer and team member experiences as well as position your business for scale. Take this time to look at your current bottlenecks and redundancies and create different ways of handling them that are more efficient. These changes don’t have to be monumental. A series of small changes can have a big impact on a business.

6. Expand Your Knowledge

Is there an area of your business that you wish you knew more about but don’t? This is the time to dig in and learn.

I have a counter-intuitive approach to delegation that some may not agree with.  To delegate effectively, you must have a functional understanding of the area that you are trying to delegate. From accounting and finance to marketing, business owners complain about the contractors they hire to support their business and buy into the belief that good people are hard to come by.

If you don’t know how something works, how are you going to delegate that effectively?  Most of the time you are just guessing. Oh, so and so said he is a great marketer and he can help you generate leads? Ok but what else should you know about this marketer to assess if they are a great fit for your business?

This is a great time to be a student of your business. Be a student of marketing. Accounting. Leadership. Systems. Your ability to build teams around these areas will grow as a result. Your confidence will grow as well.

7. Embrace Mindfulness

Doers have no patience for mindfulness bullshit. Except when you realize how important that process is to identify and recognize growth opportunities inside yourself. Pay attention to your thoughts and feelings about the world around you. When you are busy, it’s easy to ignore your thoughts and feeling and push them aside until something dramatic happens that force you to take notice. You are being given the gift of increasing and improving your mindfulness of the world around you. This can be a tremendous opportunity for improving your stress levels, your relationships,  and your business as a whole.

8. Deepen Your Experience

In the clarity section, I talked about our TXD process. This is a great time to identify your experience and it’s also a great time to look at where you can deepen the experience that you have with your customers.  There’s two ways that you can grow your business. More volume. Or more value. I am not advocating one over the other but this is a great time to use some of the clarifying areas around your mission, your customers and your experience and look at where you can serve your customers beyond what you have currently been doing.  You will be surprised at what you may discover by going through this process.

9. Build Your Platform

Most people are likely ignorant about your industry and what it’s really about and how it works. Your customers don’t know how to discern between good and bad product/services until after the fact and then it’s too late. If you have ever wanted to get more active in delivering content to your audience and to be a part of the conversation they are having, now is the time.

In the book Linchpin, Seth Godin said that the world just gave you control over the means of production, not to master them is a sin.

You can start filming videos, recording podcasts and writing articles without spending a lot of money to produce these things.  Building your platform provides you the opportunity to educate your customers so that they are smarter buyers. It also gives you the opportunity to showcase your expertise. Both outcomes can create business growth opportunities for you now and in the future.

If you are like a lot of business owners throughout the country, you have some additional time on your hands that you weren’t planning for. What are you going to do with that time? You can waste it on nothing or you can use it to create meaningful change. The nine areas above will supercharge your business and they cost very little to do but time which you now have more of.  If you have ever complained about having time to do important things in your business, now’s your opportunity to change that and potentially change the course of your business for the positive for years to come.

For most business owners, the last few weeks came at them unexpectedly like an uppercut from Mike Tyson.

As you pick yourself up off the canvas, it’s time to assess what’s next. I know a lot of business owners are struggling with this question right now so here’s the first of a three part series to help guide you on what to work on next.

Your business can thrive right now. Let's discuss.

It's an unprecedented time and the decisions you make now will have powerful effects over the longevity of your company. 

Let's discuss.

The inaugural livecast we are currently calling “My Business World Live.” Join us every Friday at 2pm MST on both our Facebook and Youtube pages.

In this episode, we discuss the top 3 activities most business owners should explore and focus on right now.

Join us for future shows and participate in the chat.

I thought twice before I wrote the above headline. Calling coaching the greatest accountability tool there is may be a bold statement.  I think it’s right on the money.

Coaching is a tool that lazy leaders look at and decide that it’s not worth the effort.  It feels easier to bark orders, micro-manage and control.  In the short term, lazy leaders are right.

But.

Short term results are not where missions come to prosper. 

Short term results can be a step in the right direction, but short-term results don’t create lasting success.   

If you want to be a leader of influence, it’s important to look at how you can create an environment where people act in a self-directed empowered way. 

I’m sure this sounds great, but you may be getting tripped up in the implementation piece of this process.

First, let’s start with what coaching is.

Coaching is the process of unlocking another person’s potential and helping people to come to an independent understanding of what to do in a way that suits their skill and ability.  

Now that you have a definition in mind, here’s how to develop yourself as a coach and some tools to help you show up as a coach for your team.

1. Develop a Heart for People.  If you don’t have a heart for serving other people, it’s difficult to be a coach for them.  Great coaching removes your ego from a conversation so that you can listen. It’s difficult to do this when you don’t care.
2. Stop Judging.  Judgment is where understanding goes to die.  When you judge others, no new learning about this person can occur.  Why would it if you already know the answer?
3. Ask Questions.  There’s a Biblical Proverb (20:5) that says the “purposes of a person’s heart are deep waters, one who has insight draws them out”.  Every employee has walls that they put up to keep themselves from being known.  Your job as a leader, and a coach, is to ask questions to allow you to understand people at a deeper level.
4. Stop Being a Fixer.  How is your team supposed to learn and understand things when you always tell them what to do, give them answers and clean up their messes?  They won’t.  Your team can’t learn problem solving skills if you don’t put them in a position to do the work.
5. Let Your Team be the Expert.  No one knows what your team needs in their life more than the individual.  It’s true that you can provide insight and guidance, but the bulk of the work should be on your team’s shoulders to come up with ways to fix problems that they encounter. 
6. Follow Up.  Stay engaged in the process. One conversation isn’t always enough to fix issues that come up.  Pay attention to what happens after the conversation and give feedback as to what you observe after the fact.  This will help to create accountability in the process.  It also shows that you care.

If you haven’t been trained on coaching skills and tools, look at where you can acquire and develop the training that you need to be a great coach for your team.  There are a lot of great resources out there, including at New Work Revolution.

By developing your skill in coaching, you will create a team that knows you care, comes up with solutions to problems and moves forward with those solutions in a powerful way.  The more you and your team go through this process the more empowered and confident they will be.  This is where accountability happens in a big way. 

This is a great time to create your 90 day plan. 

If you are a business owner who typically doesn’t like to plan too far ahead. This weeks podcast creates space for you to think about how you want to plan for the uncertainty that lies ahead. 

You ready?

If you are leading teams and your style is more of a “do as I say not as I do” approach, accountability will be tough to come by. 

Perhaps you are thinking this isn’t me. Perhaps you have already fessed up.  All of us are guilty of this.  Here are some things to look at for yourself.

You may lack accountability as a leader if you…:

• Don’t have a role written down for yourself.  You lack clarity on what your most important functions are to lead their team.
• Lack understanding of your strengths and/or you don’t design your work around what you do best in the form of scheduling.
• Constantly respond to “crisis” events.
• Leave projects half-finished.
• Change your mind frequently as to what the next move for your company is.
• Say things and then don’t follow through.
• Get angry at your team members for behaviors that you are also guilty of while justifying your behavior because “you are the boss”.
• Avoid planning and goal setting.

Does any of this sound familiar?  If any of us are being honest, we all exhibit some of these qualities as leaders at times.  Some do this more than others.

Rather than beat yourself up over what you aren’t doing as a leader, here are some things to work on to help you stay accountable.

1. Get Some Accountability in Your Life.   It’s not uncommon for me to run into leaders who don’t work with a coach, have a mentor, meet with a therapist or operate in a mastermind.  It doesn’t matter what form that accountability comes in as long as it helps you to see your blind spots.
2. Create a set of Core Values for Your Company.  There are a lot of successful companies out there that have issues with team culture and follow through.  Many of these companies lack core values.  Creating core values makes it clear to you and the team what the most important behavior is in your organization.  This is a great team exercise as well if you don’t have this in place.
3. Utilize Agreements.  Agreements create a container that your organization operates within.  Think of them like boundaries (although not always the same).  Agreements create an opportunity for you and your team members to discuss and agree upon (thus the name agreements) for how you will operate at work.  When things break down at work it’s typically because of one of two things, either your team doesn’t understand the request or there are no agreements.  Unaccountable leaders operate from a world of unspoken expectations.  They say things like, “that person should just know that”.  You are responsible, as a leader, to ensure that communication is understood as well as agreed upon.
4. Be a Stand for the Things that You Hold Dear.  Agreements, goals, and values don’t mean anything if you are unwilling to be a stand for these things in your daily work environment.  Human beings are rebellious.  We love to toe the line and see what we can get away with. A leader will stand for the standards that have been created to give those standards real meaning.
5. Embrace Confrontation.  Confrontation is a gift but only if we use it to help people and solve problems.  It’s not a gift if we use it for control, guilt, and shame.  Confronting difficult situations can be a powerful way to create accountability when you are able to show your team where they are off track and help them get back into integrity with their work.
6. Create Measurable Goals.  Your team wants to know what the standard is and how they can achieve the standard.  Without measurable outcomes, this becomes more difficult for team members to assess and they will likely feel confused by what you expect of them.  If you are assuming that people just “know”, well, they don’t.
7. Be Disciplined.  If you don’t have the discipline to embrace the things above, why would your team embrace them?  The quick answer they won’t and for the ones that do, they likely won’t respect you enough to stick around.  Jordan Peterson had this to say about this topic:

“Can you imagine yourself in 10 years if, instead of avoiding the things you know you should do, you actually did them every single day? That’s powerful.”

Your team is an investment and we make deposits into our team every day whether those deposits are intentional (how we interact) or unintentional (what they see).  If accountability is important, look at this list.  The things listed are easy to do but hard to live.  They require your desire and your discipline to make it happen.  When you actively work towards this end, you start to create influence in a way that invites your team to a higher standard, and they work in an empowered way.

The thing not to miss here is that you have all the power to influence healthy accountability.

You may be avoiding something difficult right now. Perhaps a conversation with someone in your life?

The benefits of this in the short term is that you fool yourself into believing your relationships are better than they are. In the long term, you don’t move toward your vision as efficiently as you could be.

Your leadership growth is depending on it.

You can't lead people through uncertainty if you are not clear on your path.

You can't lead people through uncertainty if you don't have a plan.

You can't lead people through uncertainty if you don't have financial margin to do.

The entire world is playing in a place of scarcity right now. When everyone goes right, this is when you go left.

We are counting on you.

The stock investment world is one of the most misunderstood and misleading industries in the marketplace.

This week's episode touches on who should invest in the stock market and what you should understand if you do decide to invest.

You need to hear this.

Let's dive in.

Dr. Nima Rahmany started his career as a chiropractic physician.  His career took a shift when he got some news of a patient of his that had died of a heart attack. This situation created a shift in how Dr. Nima wanted to address the health and wellbeing of his patients as well as the world.

Dr. Nima breaks down the process that he has used to heal people all over the world and, in this healing, stand in their true power.

To learn more about Dr. Nima and his healing process go to https://drnima.com/

Money is also one of the quickest ways to completely miss the boat on what really makes your team tick.

Brandon Allen spent a decade engaging teams in high pressure situations and learned a lot about what motivates people beyond throwing money at them.

Check it out.

Your marriage.

Your work. 

Your president.

Leaders who create influence are leaders who take responsibility for their outcomes. And this responsibly stretches past points most are willing to embrace.

Today’s podcast takes you the through three things to help you be mindful of your role in this process.

Three things that when applied will absolutely change your effectiveness as a leader and and your profitability as an organization

How they work. How they raise kids. How they take care of their health. 

If all you do is hope things work out, you are likely to be disappointed.

The most powerful work you do is centered around being present to who you are being.

To be present, you must create the space to allow for it.

Let's discuss this, how your intentions matter and play a role in the quality your work.

The question is, “How are you doing?”

Are you achieving the growth as a leader that you wanted to achieve

Is your team achieving the goals you set?

This is a great time to assess where you are at and make the necessary course correction. 

Pay specific attention to my 3-level assessment tool I share in this episode!

Unfortunately, this approach typically misses the mark and leaves a leader less free. It also kills growth.

This week, you get five things to do instead and two questions to ask yourself this week to create a better approach for you and your team.

Listen in! 

• High functioning teams allow you to produce bigger and better results for your customers.
• High functioning teams create freedom for you as a leader because you know your business is in capable hands.
• High functioning teams are created through high functioning environments that allow and support team member growth.  Creating this kind of environment feels rewarding as a leader.

Not only is building high functioning teams most rewarding, but it can also be the most challenging.  As a leader, you may find that it’s easier just to move in from an employee who is a below-average performer rather than take the time to figure out what is getting in the employee’s way and creating a plan to address those issues. While there is always a time to move on from an employee, it pays to retain your team for as long as you possibly can.

When to Move On

Before we get into all the benefits and how-tos of employee retention, I will say this, you can keep an employee too long.  There are a few areas where moving on from an employee immediately is necessary.  Instances of theft, harassment, etc. should never be tolerated in a work environment.

Beyond egregious issues, I look for two things to assess whether an employee is worth working with.

1. Does the employee own their mistakes?  If you have employees that don’t own their mistakes, it’s tough to move forward with that employee because, in their mind, there is nothing that needs to be worked on.
2. Are they Growing and Improving? Even if the employee’s growth and improvement are slight, there is a benefit to continue working with that employee for as long as that employee demonstrates commitment and progress to getting better.  If they start to flatten out or regress for a period of time, then it may be time to move on.

The Benefits of Employees

As difficult as it is to work with people, there is a lot of value to team building for you. Employees create leverage for your business.  As your business grows, you start to realize how limited you are in terms of time and effort.  You only have so much of either and it becomes clear that help is needed if you are going to continue to grow and progress.  Your time is valuable. At each stage of your business that value increases.

At every stage of your business, it’s time for you, as a leader, to assess what your top value activities are to your business.  As you identify those top value-producing activities, you look at the other activities on your list of things that you are currently doing and start creating a plan to delegate those to other team members. 

What’s difficult about an activity like this is that it requires you to get outside of your comfort zone and embrace new things.  This process also requires you to let go of activities that were previously high-value activities.  When faced with this, it’s easy for you to reject growth and stay in your comfort zone.  Plenty of stagnant leaders do this every year.

In addition to leverage, employees create freedom.  When I first started leading people, my goal was to be important (this wasn’t a conscious goal but was driven by a limiting belief of where my value was).  The problem with being important is that I had my hands in everything my team did.  All decisions and actions ran through me.  There is a level of success that comes from this behavior which makes it so hard to let go of.

 I finally got a clue when my wife asked me on vacation if I worked with a team of babies since they called so much.  That really pissed me off, primarily because it was spot on.  I had not given my team the authority to make decisions on their own and I was the bottleneck to success.  This inhibited my ability to have freedom as a leader.  If you can’t step away from your work environment occasionally and not have it run at a high level, what you are doing is broken.

Lao Tzu said that “a team is best where their aim is finished and their goal fulfilled, the team will say ‘we did it ourselves” This thought created an epiphany for me in how I lead, trained and delegated to my team.  The result was more freedom and less worry about what was going on in the day-to-day work.

Turnover Costs Money

Employee turnover is expensive.  Here’s an employee turnover calculator to assess how much your own turnover costs. Most calculators factor in things like the cost to hire and onboard a new team member as well as what a company potentially loses when a position in the company isn’t filled.  Besides the hard costs of turnover, this impacts the culture and productivity of the entire team.   

Think about this in terms of client/customer retention, it’s more profitable to retain an existing customer than it is to go out and find a new one. The same is true for your employees.

How do You Address Retention Issues as the Leader?

Intentional Hiring

The more intentional you are with your hiring process, the more likely you are going to bring in the kind of people who will thrive in your business.  One of the recurring issues that I see in small business is the complete lack of process that exists in most companies’ hiring.  You know that employees are a necessary driver to growth, yet you handle the process of bringing on new team members casually.  Hiring is one of the most important processes in your business.

One of the first places to start with creating intention is in making sure that you have your Core Values identified.  What are the principles that exist in your business that you never want to compromise on?  One of our Core Values is to “Be Uncomfortable”.  We want team members who are always learning and developing their skills.  We also want them to take ownership of their mistakes and see mistakes as a learning opportunity versus something that needs to be covered up or hidden.  In our hiring process, we ask questions that allow a person to demonstrate that they are willing to operate outside of their comfort zone.  

Having an intentional set of questions that you ask is also important to get the hiring process right.  I see many leaders wing it in an interview.  It’s painful to watch because they never get any real meat from the interview.  Identify how many interviews that you want to do for each position that you are hiring for.  Figure out who will be involved at each step of the way and what do you want to learn about a prospective employee at each step of that process.  Then craft your questions accordingly.

Powerful Cultures

Once you have a candidate identified, the process of assimilating them into the culture of the organization begins. 

Onboarding

The first step in this process is your onboarding process.  How you set the tone for a new team member as a leader will likely predict that trajectory of that team member’s career.  Sit down with an employee and give them a high level of what it’s like to work for your company before they agree to start working there.

This part is so important.  Where you can go wrong with this is in being too much of a cheerleader and making the job sound better than it really is.  Being realistic about the culture and the job is a great way to demonstrate authenticity as well as to paint a clear picture of what’s to come.  This means you talk about what’s good about the culture as well as some things that an employee may find challenging in the work they do for you.

If you do this well, you build trust and manage expectations.  When this is done poorly, it sets the new employee up for disappointment and erodes trust.

Performance Management

Performance management gets overlooked when leaders feel pressed for time.  Investing in your employees is one of the best things that you can do to build a strong culture that creates growth for your business.  It’s one of the high leverage activities that bring the most value to your business. When you make a team member better, that improvement impacts every area of the business that the employee touches.

Simply put, working on improving your employees shows them that you care.

Here are some simple ways to improve your team’s performance:

1. Regular feedback:  How did your team do today? Good? Not so good?  Did you tell them? Employees want to do a good job and they want to be recognized when they do a good job.  They want to know when they aren’t hitting the mark.
2. Annual Reviews: Done right, this is a great way to do a state of the union on someone’s career and allow an employee to share with you where they want to go in the coming year to further their career. 
3. Opportunities for Advancement:  If your job is a dead-end, the retention of employees becomes more difficult. Even if you can’t give them a different title, you can always give an employee more responsibility.
4. Training: Everyone needs training.  How much training depends on the team member.  Creating space for training demonstrates that you are actively invested in the people on your team.
5. Growth and Development Opportunities:  Are you providing opportunities for your team to get training and development outside of the four walls of your organization? Putting together a growth plan is another way to expand the capacity of a team member and demonstrates a commitment to your team.
6. Accountability: This goes hand in hand with feedback.  To create great accountability, first, demonstrate the ability to be accountable.  This means that you are true to your core value and live the things that you talk about as a leader.  Once you create credibility as a leader, creating accountability for others becomes easier.  Don’t be the leader that assumes your team doesn’t want to be accountable. They do.

One of the limiting beliefs that could get in your way of performance management is born out of scarcity.  This quote I see sums it up:

“CFO: What if we train and develop these people and they leave?

CEO: What if we don’t and they stay?”

Setting the right context and creating an environment for nurturing and developing careers is a great way to demonstrate your commitment to your team.

Your Team as an Investment

I spend a lot of time with business owners talking about how to invest their money wisely.  One of the best investments that you can make as a business owner is an investment into the careful selection, development, and growth of your team.  According to the CEO of the container store, it takes 3 good employees to replace a great employee.  Your employee can’t be great for your organization if they don’t stick around.

What would an investment in your team yield for you in terms of growth for the business, the satisfaction of your customers and freedom for you as a business owner outside of your business?

The short answer is you can’t.

You are a mirror; projects that are late, using phones at inappropriate times, being late for work, unkind words to another employee, etc.

You may have checked in on this for yourself and then come to the conclusion that you have the right story that excludes you from what I am talking about.

Listen in for a series a questions to assist you.

Today we share with you Three Free Tools that New Work Revolution offers to you as a 'thank you' for listening to this podcast.

Point blank, GREAT Leaders figure out how to overcome this for themselves and those around them so that, as an organization and team, you get what you want. In today's episode, Brandon breaks this down and gives you clarity with action steps on how to change this paradigm for good. 

It's been a game changer for his company. 

Listen in to learn how you can use his same strategies in your company. 

There are a lot of things that go into building a great culture to work in. As a leader, you may wonder what's in it for you? When you build trust, you create opportunity for team members to work in an empowered manner.

When you build trust, you have team members who work together and are supportive of each other and the leadership.

The main thing that you get as a leader when you build trust is team members who will listen and follow your lead because they have confidence in what you say and what you do.

That is true power.

Check out this week's podcast by clicking the player above and please rate the show and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.

Some of the highlights from this week's podcast:

• Why pushing for A teamers is so important
• How to build a culture that drives this
• How to interview to get the right people on your team

Among other things.

Enjoy the interview and don't hesitate to reach out with questions.  Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts here.

PS… Rate the show and share it as well!  Don't keep it a secret.

Creating a growth environment for your team starts with a basic understanding of who your team is and where they are currently at. Some of your team members are growth oriented and some of them are more concerned with safety and security.  Your job as a leader is to work between these to types of people to provide what they need to help bring them along. This is a big job for sure.

This week's podcast is about how to create a safe environment in your business that sets the table for growth to happen. Listen to this week's show by clicking the player above or subscribing in Apple Podcasts.

PS…If you like the show, give me a rating as well!

Most business owners that I know are big time value creators that are driven to make a difference.  That drive that pushes them to unbelievable heights doesn't always come from a great place.  Being an entrepreneur can be a lonely endeavor.  Most people don't understand you and that starts with your own family and friends. This is why it's so important to take care of your mental health and why I am talking this week about the book The Body Keeps the Score.

After spending the last two years working through my own trauma, as well as witnessing far too many past friends take their own life, I wanted to offer you a small piece of hope that you are not alone and that there are people that care about you.

This is a new format that I am bringing to the podcast where I go back and share books that I have recently read.  Let me know what you think.

To subscribe and review the show, visit Apple Podcasts and make it happen.

“The problem with self-identity is not just a problem for the young. It is a problem all the time. Perhaps the problem. It should haunt old age, and when it no longer does it should tell you that you are dead.” ~ Norman Maclean

Is there a more difficult thing for human beings than the process of discovering who you are?  The only thing more difficult than that is embracing who you are and being it once you figure out who you are.  Now take that same process and apply it to your business.  This process is not for the faint of heart.  Today's question is, what is your identity?

My own coaching process with my coach has forced me to do some further introspection. I had to call people and ask them about how I show up.  The process evoked some fear but what came out of that was a list of five traits that come into a room when I do.  Those traits are: Connection, Brilliance, Wit, Integrity and Stand.  I am not sure I would have guessed all of those so I found the exercise to be incredibly helpful.

Getting clearer on my personal identity has helped me to shape my businesses' identity.  The most unique thing about my business is the guy who owns it.  I would suspect that this is true about you as well.

Check out this week's episode by clicking the player above.  Subscribe in iTunes and make sure you rate the show!

The first principle that we discussed with Total Experience Design, TXD, is that “Everyone Delivers an Experience Whether They Know it or Not.”  When somebody lets you down, it's easy to make assumptions about people and their intentions.  What if people want to do a good job, why don't they?

Hanlon's Razor states: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity or simple oversight.”

You screw up. I screw up.  We all do.  The key is to create awareness for team members on how their behavior impacts other people.  This may seem really simple to you but society has created a buffer that separates human beings from consequences.  Because of that, leadership is required to create awareness of the big picture. Communicating the experience and how everyone plays a role in that can be a powerful experience for a team's understanding around how they all fit together.

I dive a little deeper in this week's podcast and give you three ways to lead this concept for your teams.  You can listen to the episode by clicking the player above or you can boost my street cred with Apple by subscribing in iTunes. Also, if you like the show, rate it and share it.  Thank you.  You're the best.

100% committed.

When it comes to success, this week's podcast addresses three things that business owners engage in that are good things but get taken too far and get in the way of success.  In addition to that, I give you a few questions to ask yourself if you feel like you are stuck and not making the progress that you would like to be making.

Check out this week's episode by clicking the player above or subscribe in iTunes.  If you enjoyed the episode, rate the show and share it with friends.

Total Experience Design done right is about position leadership with intention because leadership drives, or derails, the experience.  Great leadership happens when supreme clarity is present.

This week's podcast outlines six steps to getting positioning right in your business.  These are all simple things that you can do immediately.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the player above or by subscribing in iTunes.  If you enjoy the show, please rate it on iTunes and share it on social media.

Until next time!

Want to read the episode? Here's the Transcript:

Employee reviews are a tough sell for employees and leaders alike.  No one likes to do them or be on the receiving end of a review gone wrong.  With as many leaders that don't like to do reviews, it begs the question, are employee reviews a waste of time.

Total Experience design is about creating a business by design vs a business by default.  How you prepare your review matters.  What kind of feedback you give to your team throughout the year matters.  Gutless leaders wait until reviews to talk about issues.

Powerful leaders do reviews right, this week's podcast lays out the process and keys to creating an experience for your team members that they enjoy in the employee review process.

Check out the podcast by clicking the player above or you can go to iTunes and subscribe to the show and even rate it there as well.

PS.. I mentioned the training and the tool that we put together in the Business Accelerator Membership.  If you are a coaching client, you should already have access.  If you aren't a coaching client, and you want access, go here.

Here is the Transcript of the show:

It's easy to dismiss thinking and the process of discovering your purpose.  In the moment, it probably doesn't feel valuable to you. The more you step back and assess the things you are doing, the more you will move forward with efficiency and effectiveness because you are working on, and in, purpose.

Clear thinking makes you a better communicator and a better director and participant in action.  For this week, ask yourself “what am I doing?” and “why am I doing these things?”

Check out the podcast by clicking the player above, you can also listen and subscribe in iTunes.

You and I both know that the magical turning of a calendar year does not unlock some hidden super power that didn't exist for you before.  A new year can be a time for hope and optimism and a time to create space to assess where you are at and where you want to go.  Maybe you have made some New Years resolutions to create this change.  We are now a month into the year and I have one question, is the new year creating a new you?

Creating resolutions will fail when you value what you are doing over who you are being.  If you don't address the inner self game, the outside rules and checklists that you create for yourself likely aren't going to create the sort of lasting change you are looking for.

This week's podcast lays out three specific areas to focus on with your inner game to ensure that your resolutions are long lasting and permanent.

If you haven't subscribed yet in iTunes, do so now for regular updates.  Also, rate the show if you like it.

The most practical way to change who you are is to change what you do.  ~ James Clear from Atomic Habits

How you start your day can make a big difference in how you show up in that day.  The Power Hour routine serves to create space for you to participate in the expansion of your mind, body and spirit.  This doesn't mean that if you don't do a morning routine you will be a failure or that of you do a morning routine you will be a wild success.  In my years of performance coaching, I have seldom seen people try a Power Hour and regret it or feel like it didn't create power for them.

If you don't have a morning routine, now's your time to give it a shot.

Check out my tips and ideas on how to get started by checking out the podcast in iTunes or clicking the player above to listen.

Total Experience Design (TXD) is about creating a business by design and not one by default. Planning is one of the primary ways that you create a business by design.  Goals are one of the outcomes of the planning process. Planning and goal setting are simple concepts.  Most people know of them and understand the concept of doing.  The challenge with goal setting and planning is that they are really easy to ignore and not pay attention to on a regular basis.  Great experiences happen through the commitment to consistent, time tested fundamentals. Fundamentals aren't sexy but they create aggregate success that looks and feels amazing when you look at the finished product.

Here's the link to run your objectives through to assess: Quarterly Goal Tool.

When the authors of the book Beyond Default dropped by the show a few months ago, they talked about trajectory and changing your default trajectory.  Take a look at where your business is headed and ask yourself how goal setting can change and improve the trajectory of your own business.

This week's podcast explores the power of goal setting and staying plugged into the goal setting process. You can listen by clicking the player above or you can subscribe in iTunes.  Ratings and sharing are always appreciated as well.

Talk with you again soon.

Creating influence with your team is simpler than you think.  There is a lot of information out there on how to lead and manage better.  Your primary key to influence already exists and is easy to do. The problem is it's also easy not to do.

At the heart of Total Experience Design is intention.  A while back I talked to you about how I try and run my day, with intention and integrity. If you get this right then you can be the kind of leader who follows through. This is the kind of leader your team wants to work for.  Someone they can trust and someone who is moving things forward.

In today's podcast, I will cover:

1. The power of doing what you say you are going to do.
2. How to avoid creating a habit of failure.
3. What to do to ensure that you will execute at a high level.

Enjoy this week's show.  If you aren't subscribed in iTunes yet, you can do so here.  If you enjoy the podcast, rate and share the podcast as well.

Doing growth well is about creating that beautiful tension between exposing weakness and then using your purpose to work through that weakness in a powerful, creative way.

Growth is one of those areas that you either learn to embrace or you learn to avoid.  To keep yourself in a growth space means that you acknowledge that you don't have all the answers and being ok with that.  It also means that your growth is likely going to change you in unfamiliar and uncomfortable ways even though that growth has created positive outcomes in your life.

Our process of Total Experience Design is about continuous improvement that leads to creating deeper experiences and connections with the people that you do business with.

Today's podcast is about how to grow well and continue moving yourself and your business forward.

We talk about:

• Embracing failure
• Growing in your self awareness
• Creating space to reflect on where you are currently at
• Getting the outside support you need to make growth happen

Enjoy this week's episode and if you haven't subscribed in iTunes, you can check it out here.  If you like the show, please rate it and share it as well.

I had the opportunity to sit down with BlueIQ founder, Dr. Cory Frogley as we talk about the Total Experience Design Methodology that we use to help business owners create freedom and growth in their business.  Check out the video above or if you prefer to check it out on Facebook, you can do that here.

Here's our e-book on Total Experience Design as well in case you don't have that.

I have had the priviledge of knowing Charles Van Kessler for almost a year now.  He has attended some workshops that I have done in the past and always been a gracious participant and a true value creator.  Charles has a story that I felt the world needs to hear around bringing your personal passion to life.  Today we talk about and share his story.

What would you do if:

• You narrowly eluded Nazi encampment during World War II.
• After that, you are dropped off at an orphanage by your own mother.
• You move from Europe to the USA and start a family and a new life there and try to make your way.
• Take eight years to launch a liquid vitamin product
• and then….

….By the grace of God, you have an amazing life.

Listen to this week's podcast on how Charles overcame these obstacles to create a great product and do amazing things to give back to kids in need.  Check out the podcast by clicking the player above or subscribe in iTunes.

I take the Passion 4 Life liquid vitamin every day and it's amazing.  Check out their product and story here.

In the Total Experience Design methodology, we talk about leadership being a key component to creating a high level experience.  Experience starts inside the organization.  Communication is the tool that leaders use to organize, inspire and move the people in the organization. If you miss setting context, you are missing your ability to communicate powerfully.

Click the player above to listen to this week's podcast.  If you haven't subscribed and rated the show in iTunes, go do it now.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

~ Teddy Roosevelt Man in the Arena

No one enjoys failure and/or criticism.  In today's podcast, I don't suggest that you like these things but we can learn from them.  We can also protect ourselves from the impact that failure and criticism has on our ability to create value for others.

In this week's show, I talk about:

• How failure and criticism reveal where your heart is
• Where to focus yourself to stay above fear
• Why relationship capital is essential
• Who to listen to

Enjoy this week's show and make sure you subscribe and rate the show in iTunes.

Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. ~ Albert Einstein (credited to Einstein although there is insufficient evidence that he actual said it)

This week's podcast goes over what gets in your way from developing your own success formula and four areas to focus on to create your own formula as well as a sidebar to my last point.  I also said I would share this Matthew McConaughey clip of the Oscar speech that I reference in this week's podcast.

If you aren't subscribed to the podcast check it out in iTunes.  Oh and rate the show as well!

Bondage to a schedule.

Bondage to people.

Bondage to systems.

Bondage to your limiting beliefs.

What would it look like to create an experience for yourself?  We spend a lot of time at New Work Revolution talking about creating experiences for customers and team members and then the business owner gets lost in the shuffle.

If you aren't intentional, it's easy to create a life that serves money vs. having money that serves your life.

There are five tracks of wealth and business is only one of those tracks.

This week's podcast is about how to create the freedom you want through structure and why that is so vital to business owners.

Does your day tend to get away from you?

Do you work a lot of nights and weekends, retail hours but you don't work retail?

Do you tend to not get important things done due to overwhelm?

This is not an uncommon productivity issue in the entrepreneur lifestyle.

If you found yourself saying yes to some of the above questions, don't worry.  There is hope.

This week's podcast talks about what it means for you to walk through each and every day with intention and integrity to ensure that you are committed to your purpose, your family and to value creation for your market.

Check out the show by clicking the player above or check us out and subscribe in iTunes.

PS.  I mentioned the High Level Execution Blueprint tool.  You can get access by clicking this link.

You often hear that the vast majority of small businesses fail – something like 9 out of 10 won't last 5 years (or whatever the current buzz statistic is).  Regardless of accuracy, there is no question that entrepreneurship and small business are difficult endeavors.  There are many pitfalls that you should watch out for – but what is the #1 reason? The big nasty pitfall that is most common?

According to some pretty smart folks (like Nathan Furr, Eric Reis, Steve Blank, and others), that honor falls to… drum roll…

Failure to get to know your customer at a deep level –

Yessir, you heard it here first folks, your business, just like your marriage (or other loving relationship),  will be stronger and more successful if you build deep, understanding relationships. Understanding your customer's real needs and wants. Okay, that may sound oversimplified – so let's unpack this monster…

Not easy – at least, don't assume

“Yeah yeah, but I know my customer! I've been in this industry for 20 years!”

Well my friend, unfortunately, you probably have been standing on the wrong side of this coin for that time.  As the industry expert practitioner, not the end-user, you bring a different perspective to the table. It's still very valuable but not the only perspective we need here.

So don't start by assuming you know your customer. Don't simply draw from your own well of experience as it is all tainted by your own perspective. Just like you shouldn't assume you know how to fix your spouse! (good luck with that one).

Far-reaching impact

So how does this qualify as #1? Well, largely due to how far-reaching its effects are felt.  There is a ripple effect that may cause all sorts of other issues and this is getting at the root cause where other issues are actually a symptom of this cause! Ultimately, a deeper understanding of your customers, their challenges and wants, and their context could shift everything – not always by a lot – but sometimes a few millimeters can make all the difference.

It changes marketing

Your marketing message may change – the tone you use, what you offer as a free bonus, the problem you talk about, the nature of the outcomes to be expected, etc.

it changes sales

Offering to solve real, felt problems and challenges in a way that fits will be a much easier sell with much stronger lifetime value (even if the initial sales pricing shrinks) as they become repeat, long term customers.

It changes branding

How you position your product or service and to whom may shift. You might focus on becoming the known expert in a niche instead of an industry generalist.

It changes product development

The use case of your products and services may shift – how they are used and by whom. The process to roll out and deliver the product/service can change to better accommodate your customer and deliver a more “referable” experience, improving repeat buyers as well as organic growth.

It all adds up

As you can guess by this point, all those little adjustments can add up to a lot and completely shift the tide from failure to success! Sometimes the shifts might be significant changes but they don't have to be to change the course of your business.

Now, Let me introduce my Plumber

I have a small bathroom at the top level of my home that we rarely used and the shower didn't function properly. We decided a few months ago that we would remodel the top level to include our master bedroom. This would be a big project and happen in phases over the course of a few years likely.  The bathroom was to be expanded and completely redone but would be the last “phase” of the project.  First, we needed to simply make it usable by fixing the shower.

I called a couple of plumbers to come look at it and give me a quote to replace the shower (valve, fixture, etc.).

The first plumber was very professional and polite, put booties on his shoes to walk in, explained everything on how it worked, told me to replace the valve and get a new fixture would be X and they could do it in a day or two. He gave me a full written breakdown of options and was excellent to work with.

The second plumber didn't put booties on his feet. He didn't have a nice uniform, didn't give me the full rundown on how it worked and didn't give me a written quote.  In fact, he kept saying that it would be difficult and a lot of work to do it due to the position in the wall, etc.  He was still very nice but not nearly as buttoned up and professional.

Which did I choose?

Well, I chose the 2nd plumber! (and not due to price though I'll discuss further) Surprised?

Well, I left out a key detail here so unfair contest.  The 2nd plumber after looking it over and hearing me out began asking some simple questions.  He asked me what my plan was for the bathroom and upstairs long term. I explained the full long-term remodel plan. He then looked at everything closer and instead of offering what I initially asked, he proposed an alternative!

Due to our plans, we would eventually be ripping out the shower and redoing it anyway so instead of replacing it, he suggested to simply repair the valve and replace shower head with one I already had (just an extra lying around from previous things) which would make it fully usable while we prepared for the larger renovation when we could roll the time and money saved into the bigger project and get what we really want.  His price to fix ended up being 1/5th the cost of a full replacement and met our needs much better!

Was it cheaper? Yes, it was but that isn't the point. When we redo the whole bathroom which will be thousands more than either bid, guess who is getting the work!?

I now consider him “my” plumber. Is the professional polish not needed? Well, It is definitely a big win to have a professional, clean experience and I would highly recommend it (even to my plumber) BUT it's not the most important part.   The key is understanding – a real relationship.

So what do we do about it? Some solutions…

So how do we get to know our customers and not simply assume all the time?

It's actually pretty simple and not even necessarily difficult. The biggest challenge (which can be a pain in the @$$) is we get in our own way.  It's just too darn easy to default to our own assumptions (I mean, they are experience-based educated assumptions after all).  In the end, the goal is really to develop our understanding on an ongoing basis so when we do need to make some decisions, those assumptions may have some accuracy to them. And, over time, become more and more accurate.

Also, this ritual of customer conversations as a key secondary benefit of keeping you close to shifts and changes in your market.  You have the opportunity to be more agile, to adjust to changing market conditions and take advantage of opportunities.

Weekly “market-of-one” interviews

A powerful solution we use is called “Market-of-one” interviews as it is simply a customer interview with the idea that they represent a market you serve. It is an alternative to methods like focus groups which tend to be expensive, have group think issues, and introduce unintentional fabricated responses (people want to help even if they don't know so they make stuff up). Here is how it works.

Have real conversations with your customers! Set a goal to call 2 customers a week and ask them simple questions like:

• ​​how things are going?
• Why did you buy?
• Why did you choose our service over others?
• Did you look at other alternatives?
• Did it take you a while to make a decision? if so, what was the hold-up?
• Any issues with the process? confusion? concerns?
• What did you expect from working with us? Any missed expectations?​

The key here is to probe a bit. Ask “why” up to 5 times to get at root causes. Generally, the interview should be fairly free-form. Rundown a rabbit hole or two, allow the feedback to guide the questioning to gain deeper insights.

Explore the 4 forces

Look specifically for insights around the 4 forces that are at play in decision making (2 positive, 2 negative) –

• Negative Force – pushing away from your business
  • The resistance to change a habit – easier to do what we've always done
  • The axiety of learning something new
• Positive Forces – pulling toward your business
  • The current problem and pain causing them to look for solutions
  • the draw and attraction of your solution

Also, these interviews really should be performed by the owner/CEO, or as close to the top as possible. This allows better leadership-driven decision making as well as a much stronger market awareness.  It is a great antidote to “ivory tower” syndrome that can occur as organizations grow.

Surveys

As an addition to Market-of-One interviews, broader reaching surveys should be used throughout the customer experience.  During signup and on-boarding, ask a few common questions to note trends and market needs. Throughout the delivery or use of your product/service, ask for feedback.  And following completion, ask again.  The medium isn't important, whether email, written, verbal, etc. just make sure you can record and note the response and collect them for analysis and review.

Keep them short generally – just a few questions.  Use similar questions to the interviews but feel free to seed in others that may be more honestly answered without being awkward. Net Promoter Score may be a good one to include here.

Get Contextual Clarity

Gaining a clear contextual view of your customer is a key point that cannot be over-emphasized. What does this mean? Essentially, if we don't understand the context of the situation, we can grossly misunderstand the feedback and insights we get!

example: If you see someone give a dollar to child on the street, you could derive several drastically different conclusions. Is this an altruistic stranger just helping out a homeless child? Does he owe the child a dollar previously borrowed for some reason? Is he buying something? Is this a parent giving their own child a dollar? We need to know more about the situation to make the right call.

Context around your customer's problems and their use of your solution make drastically shift how you offer it, how you discuss it, and how you even deliver it.  Questions like these should be understood:

• When/where does my customer experience the problem?
  • are they home, on the go? traveling?
• Is the situation positive or negative? falling on hard times or happy life events?
• When/where does my customer use my offering?
• When/Where does my customer interact with me? with others like me? with alternatives?
• Who is my customer? Is the buyer/user different?
• Are there multiple decision-makers involved?

Let's wrap this up quick!

At the end of the day, your business' success largely rides on how well you understand your customer – their pains, aspirations, desires, and the context around it all of that.

Don't fall prey to the number 1 business killer – make it a ritual to know your customer.

At New Work Revolution, we utilize a process called “Total Experience Design” to help businesses build better relationships with their customers and teams alike.  As part of our own efforts to learn about our clients and their needs, we offer a limited number of free reviews each month. These not only help us learn from you but allows us to give our perspective on how you can implement better Customer Learning strategies. This may include developing solutions, discussing survey and interview questions, and more.  If you'd like to apply for a free review, click here.

Scarcity is an unforgiving master.  Scarcity wants you to believe:

• Relationships don't work
• You aren't enough
• You don't know enough
• Safety is the only way.  Stay in your lane.

An uncommitted mind will accept these for the reasonable sounding excuses that they are and leave you sitting in the same place that you've always been as life passes you by.

I'm a man that's crazy enough to believe that you are more than you think you are.  I have had the good fortune of making a career out of supporting other people's dreams and helping them push through limits to places they didn't think possible. It's a pretty damn good calling.

Walk with me today as I ask you the question about what you really want in life. Check out the episode by clicking the player above or subscribe and listen in iTunes.

The seven components are:

• Self Awareness
• Authenticity/vulnerability
• Connection
• Integrity
• Communication
• Appreciation
• Respect

When you move the people inside of your organization, they will get behind the mission of the business and create impact for the customer base that you work with.

Check out this week's podcast by clicking the player above and make sure you are subscribed to and rate the show in iTunes.

Its… Quiz time! This is really, really important folks.  Take our new, short (3-5 question) quiz and find out who your CEO Kindred Spirit is! This is deeply scientific stuff here folks… whoever you get will have an eternal spiritual connection with you that you can never break, no… matter… what.  So cross your fingers its someone you like!!

And just so you know, there actually is some backing behind this little thing… based on the Briggs/ Jung assessment concepts… (granted, this one is only a couple questions long so we make no promises to its full accuracy ;)…

After you get your result, we will share a little tidbit regarding your leadership style but either way Enjoy!!

oh… and don't forget to share your results!

What is your mission? Do you have one? For every time you are faced with a challenge there is a mission that drives you to working through the problem.  You know that there is a bigger purpose to the work that you do.

Stewardship and mission go hand in hand.  When I am being a leader, I am being a steward and caretaker for the mission of the business. In Total Experience Design we teach business owners that the experience they develop creates meaning for all the stakeholders of the business.  For some of our clients that reach is in the millions of people.  That is a huge responsibility.

The question is, are you ready for it? Every day business owners fail to answer the call to stewardship and believe me when I say that it is a calling.

Perhaps you are unknowingly, neglecting your stewardship.  You will know it if:

• Your books are behind.
• You are an established business with no emergency fund.
• You don't have a management system and have no process for maintaining your culture.
• You piss away time and waste it with no intention for how you will use it.

If that convicts you at all then check out this week's podcast episode on being a steward of your mission. Enjoy the show and make sure you subscribe to and rate and the show in iTunes.

Great leadership can't authentically occur when darkness is present.

Your purpose can't be expressed to the fullest with darkness.

Darkness can make scarcity and scarcity thinking look like abundance and that you are operating in the producer paradigm.

Relationships can't flourish and grow amidst darkness.

If you need help, as many of us do, don't hold onto that burden by yourself.

You can run to other things to try and satisfy you (drugs, alcohol, porn, success, etc.) but these things will never truly hit the mark.  In fact, most of them, when left unchecked will be your undoing in life.

Check out this week's episode and let me know your thoughts.  Where have you seen this show up in your life?

Subscribe and rate the show in iTunes.

Great strategy is essential to sustainable business.  Unfortunately, strategy isn't something that come naturally to many people, business owners included. Don't despair.  I have brought in experts who live, eat and breath strategy to talk about how to change the trajectory of your business to the outcome that you want versus the outcome that you are currently headed towards.

David Trafford and Peter Boggis wrote the book Beyond Default to assist leaders in creating the thought process and the implementation of their strategic direction.

The topic resonated with me from the standpoint of intentionality.  In our concept and model, Total Experience Design (TXD), we teach business owners to create a business by design versus one by default.  Beyond Default does much of the same with respect to strategy.  Whether you are aware or not, your business is headed towards a specific direction and outcome.

The question is, is it the outcome you want?

Beyond poking at Blockbuster video a bit we also touch on:

• Leading new strategic direction in your business
• How to keep employees from burning out in the change process.
• What companies get wrong and why when it come to setting their direction.

Check out the book and other things that the authors have to offer at Beyond Default.  The book is smart, insightful and will make you a better strategist for having read it.

In addition to the book, make sure you subscribe to the podcast and rate the show in iTunes.

I am not going to dive too far into today's topic except to say that this podcast is deeply personal and I give some shout outs of gratitude to some (but not all) impactful people over the years.  Enjoy the show and check in with your thoughts and make sure you are subscribed in iTunes.

How do you know how much you—or anyone else in your office—get done during the workday?

                  Unless you’re producing a specific good, such as working on a line that makes cakes for example, you probably have a harder time answering that questions. It isn’t as simple as counting units, and especially for administrative people or creative personnel, it gets even more complicated. Sales people can at least point to calls made and customer service individuals can start with problems resolved. But everyone else may be puzzled about what is considered productive.

                  It may entail figuring out general baselines related to project type; that’s one way to assess time, effort, and output. You will have comparisons in your own office as well as to the industry as a whole. And you’ll have to remember that not all tasks can or should be counted; they may be significant to helping your industry without having a quantifiable return. This graphic helps you understand this complicated issue.

Please include attribution to https://zerocater.com with this graphic.

The problem with always subordinating your needs in the service of something or someone else is that if you aren't good for yourself, it's difficult to be worthwhile for others. You may be nodding your head and thinking, yes this makes sense.  When real life hits, you typically fold your plans in favor of someone else's.

This week's podcast is about the dangers of letting your self care go in favor of busyness and activity.  I hope you enjoy this week's perspective. If this show was useful, please share it.  If you enjoy the show, rate it and subscribe in iTunes.   Also you can see the new cover art for the show as well.

Blueprint to Business give business owners the real deal on what it takes to start and grow a winning business.  I appreciate the honest and no nonsense approach that Michael brings to the topic.

I love to have people on the podcast that you can learn from.  Michael has the experience and know how that a business owner can learn from and implement in their own business.

Click here to get your copy of Blueprint to Business. 

You can listen to this week's podcast by clicking the player above or you can subscribe in iTunes.

You can't eliminate scarcity thinking from your life completely but you can choose how long you sit in that scarcity and how far you let it take you.  To give yourself the support you need for 2018, ask yourself the following questions:

• Who do I need in my life to support my dreams?
• What do I need to let go of to move forward more powerfully in my purpose?
• Do you have a plan that entails creating the outcomes that you are looking for in your life?

I talk about this and what my key to overcoming scarcity is in this week's podcast.  Click on the podcast player to listen to the episode or you can catch the episode on Itunes.

I believe we are wired for work and value creation.  I don't think God placed us on the Earth to do work that we hate for thirty years until we can retire.  That's assuming you can retire.

This week I tackle a couple of fallacies and issues that I have seen around work.  Particularly in how people complain about work or in how they treat work.

Check out the podcast and subscribe and rate the show in iTunes.

Anytime that word gets used in a sentence I can throw out the statement that was made prior to this as the team member is revealing what they really think about the situation in the words that follow but.

If we want to be leaders who exhibit and uphold total accountability in our business or organization there are a couple of things that we can improve on.

1. Minimize our ego.  Issues that team members experience aren't about us.
2. Listen. Remove your agenda from the situation so that you can ask good questions.  Waynes World 2 gives a great example of how not to listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aXqgoiVb8E

Creating total accountability isn't easy.  It requires commitment and the ability to listen to subtle queues around when someone isn't taking full accountability.

Check out this week's episode and make sure you subscribe a rate the show in iTunes.

Scalability in your business comes in part by your ability to build and develop great relationships in your business.

This week's podcast is about how to interact in relationships in a powerful way and what to look for in a destructive relationship.  Click the player above to listen to the show and subscribe in iTunes here.

PS….Ready to learn more and dive into ongoing support and training for your business.  Check out our low cost trial to Business Accelerator Membership (BAM) here.

Off the cuff decisions start to get replaced with budgeting and planning.  I don't want this to sound too depressing but it's a reality of the needs that a growing business has.

Quarterly planning is a simple, effective way to boost business profits through focused direction, better communication and tying the what to the why of your business for every person that is involved.

It's time to ditch the excuses of time, that's not the way I work, etc. and embrace a powerful next step in your business.

This week's podcast is about how to do quarterly planning right. Here's the tool that I promised you to assess your goals each quarter as well, click here to get it.  Show the podcast some love and rate and subscribe in iTunes as well.

If you want to learn more about what we are doing with the Business Accelerator Membership (BAM) and get access to this Thursday's training, click here for more info.

“Definite speech means clarity of mind” Quote from Cecil and the Shark by Mark Twain

The above quote is just one of the many powerful principles shared in the book Hard Truths by author and trainer Michael Tomlin.  I was fortunate enough to get an advance screening of the book and loved it.  I reached out to the PR firm for Michael to see if he would be willing to join me on the podcast and he graciously accepted.

In our 25 minutes we cover:

• Balance and when to let distractions get in your way and when to have firmer boundaries. 
• The power of intentionality as a leader.
• Power and how to use it correctly.
• The importance of a belief system in your leadership journey.
• Handling conflict.

Leaders.  These are the topics that keep us up at night as we lead teams.  Check out the interview by clicking the player above.  If you haven't subscribed in iTunes, you can do so here.

This challenge exists for every business owner but it's especially true of service based, professional business owners.  If this is you, then you know that you are not only the business owner but you are also the product.  To embrace the business owner role is to commit to the big picture vision of your business.

As you try and work on high leverage activities, clients, employees and others will try and suck you into low level work. It's time to resist this temptation and know that on the other side of low leverage work is freedom and growth.

This week's podcast is on embracing four, specific high leverage activities in your business.  Check out the podcast by clicking the player above and make sure you subscribe in iTunes for regular updates.

Ever heard these:

• The market sucks
• I'm too old or too young
• Nobody listens to me
• Nobody cares
• Millenials are ruining my business.
• I don't know how to do X.
• I only went to school for Y.

You get the idea. If you aren't careful you will always have a reason for falling short in your efforts.  You end up like this and you don't learn this.

Check out this week's podcast on overcoming reasons to get results.  If you haven't subscribed yet in iTunes, you can do so here.

The abilty to handle and deal with issues in a productive way is what separates leaders from the other people in the organization.  If you can't handle issues, you have no business being a leader.

This week's podcast is about how to productively interact with the different issues that are bound to come up in your leadership journey.

Listen to the podcast by clicking the player above and subscribe in iTunes to get regular show updates.

For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Galatians 5:14 NIV

I wasn't planning on recording this week's episode but, in light of recent events, I feel called to lay this message of personal responsbility and value creation out there on today's podcast.

Last week I shared my thoughts on where great accountability starts.  I don't want to completely spoil it for you but it starts with you.  If you don't accept personal responsibility, then everyone around you will show up the same way.

Recent events in Charlottesville demonstrated how far people will go to feel victimized and disenfranchised even if the reasons don't make any sense.

This is a little more vulnerable than I typically am on a podcast as I share some thoughts and feelings on a deeply personal level.

I hope you enjoy this week's departure from my normal format and my hope is that it inspires and encourages you to be a value creator for those around you as you work to change the world through entrepreneurship.

Listen to the episode by clicking the player above and don't forget to spread some love in iTunes with a shout out as well.

Maybe you’ve invested the last 30 years of your life to your practice and community. Maybe you’re looking at bringing in your first associate or dare I say, parting with a partner.

All of these are reasons to know where you stand financially with your practice.

Before you look into getting an appraisal for your chiropractic practice, you want to ensure you are doing everything in your power to maximize the value.

So what are the top factors that will move the needle that you can implement immediately?

At Full Circle Coaching and Consulting, we have helped hundreds of chiropractors sell their practice or appraise it for the next step of the journey.

We have found a common trend among most of these practices and have collated the top 5 factors you can implement in your practice.

#1 – TEAM TRAINING

Somehow, you’ve found the time to read this article. The reason you have this time is likely because you have a team behind you that can handle the front desk activities, support on financials, and keeping the practice running efficiently.

The team that you have hired to help you run the practice is also the team that can help you get more out of the valuation.

Ask yourself the following:

Do you have a written system and protocol for how to train your team?

Do you train regularly or just wing it?

How often do you do evaluations against a standard protocol for practice?

To have a clean transition, an incoming doc will want a team that runs the show for the doctor and has the systems beautifully articulated on a day to day basis.

Start to build an operations manual, training module, team evaluation module and create team systems.

No, this won’t happen overnight, but start with a step in the right direction. Make these actions a daily practice and it will become second nature.

Having this all in place means you can slip out the back and someone can easily walk into the practice without interrupting your client’s experience.

#2 – PATIENT EDUCATION

You know those big golden arches? Pretty famous, right?

How has McDonald’s been able to carry on so successfully without their founder since 1984?

I’m talkin’ goodwill here!

The odds of duplicating the profitability of your practice are directly correlated with goodwill.

The higher the goodwill percentage, the greater chance a doc can walk off the streets and create the same or higher profitability as you.

So how can we ensure your practice maximizes goodwill?

Two words: Patient Education.

Patient education is one of the most crucial aspects to creating a life long practice member, a high PVA, and therefore predictable income month over month, year over year.

When your patients are educated and have “buy in”, they not only keep coming back but they tell other people too! This is going to be in high demand for people looking to buy a practice, and they’ll be willing to pay for the predictability.

Here are a few things to consider:

1. Invest the time to repeatedly educate the members of your practice.
2. Document and implement these systems. Anything you are doing to educate your patients should be documented.
3. Could any Dr. Tom, Dick or Harry come into your practice and effectively execute? If the answer is no, create templates or written scripts so they can.

Having your educational system structured and documented will add HUGE value to your practice’s valuation. And as a bonus, it makes it easy to transition new staff when necessary.

#3 – SYSTEMS

Alright, what’s next? More about systems.

Systems are the glue that hold your practice together. They are what allows your practice to run smoothly while you’re on some beach, some where.

A quality team is key, but a practice built on systems removes the risk of human error and you can be less dependent on the quality of your team.

Do you have the systems in place that creates the same profitability whether you are the practicing doc or a hired locum?

The most successful practices seem to have one thing in common – they are team driven rather than doctor driven.

Remember earlier when you slipped out the back door? Ya, you can do this when your team works as a unit to keep things running smoothly.

Now you can do what you do best, be a chiropractor! Find out whether you are a doc driven or team driven practice by asking yourself these 3 questions:

1. Do you “run the show”?
2. Do you have a written manual that documents every last detail of running your practice?
3. Do you have “rules” for the practice? (who you do or do not work with, for example).

The easiest way to guarantee reproducibility of income to prospective buyers is by showing them exactly how you operate so they can kick you aside and take the helm all while maintaining similar profits.

#4 – MARKETING

The second biggest hole in chiropractic practices across the profession…MARKETING.

We get it, marketing can be a daunting and overwhelming task.

The fact is that marketing in its simplest form is just the ability to share your gifts and talents with those who will benefit from it most.

We aren’t going to spill all the beans on HOW to market your practice, but we will tell you it could get you an extra $10,000 when you are selling your practice.

Not to mention the increased revenue by pulling in more patients! WOAH.

What marketing systems can maximize this area of the valuation? Let me tell you about two of them.

1. A well documented marketing planner. Plan, document, reflect, etc. Think of all the ways you can market your practice (promos, newsletters, community events, and the like) and plan for them so you’re ready to go!
2. A tracker for return on investment (ROI).  You must know where your patients are coming from. Track what efforts are producing new patients and what those efforts cost. This is how to make marketing predictable and manageable.

With these in place, you can confidently show prospective buyers that your marketing systems are producing results that are repeatable!

#5 – CONTROL THAT OVERHEAD!

Last but, stereotypically, not least – controlling overhead.

We’ve completed hundreds of appraisals in the past and the biggest difference maker in the selling price of a chiropractic practice is percentage of overhead!

It is unfortunate, but we see docs with expenses that are consuming 60-80% of revenues! Talk about insane.

You’ve got to hone in on what is causing your practice to bleed that much money in overhead.

Take the time to sit down and really understand what your overhead is and if there is any opportunity to reduce it in areas where it’s not required. Even if you have a million dollar/year practice, but spend $900K in overhead, your practice’s valuation is going to be inline with the person down the road bringing in an easy $150,000/year with low and controlled overhead, and much more time with their family.

Every 1% you can bring down your overhead equals thousands in your pocket in the long run when you sell it, but also in yearly profitability leading up to the sale.

So, sit down with your favorite bean counter to look at the books, create a monthly rhythm to look for opportunities to reduce overhead and get creative with ways to maximize your money by minimizing your expenses.

All of these are manageable steps you can take today to start to create a more systemized, repeatable practice. This helps the eventual sale, but watch as your team becomes more efficient, more effective and more profitable in the process.

Author: Mike Tielemans, Appraisal Director at Full Circle Coaching and Consulting. Having 100’s of appraisals over the past 2 decades.

Every leader wants to see their team take ownership.  The hard part is figuring out how to make this transition happen.  Do we intimidate? Threaten? Yell? (Sorry kids) The answers resides within you.  How much of your current situation in business and life are you willing to take responsibility for?

Your answer to this question will determine the level of accountability of those around you.

This week's podcast is about accountability.  Where it starts and how to create a culture of accountability.  The good news is that it's easier than you think. Listen to the podcast by clicking the player above and make sure you subscribe in iTunes!

I didn't own my day, my day owned me.  I set myself up in a way that things had to go perfectly for me to have success in any given day.  My results were spotty and my process was stressful.

Today's podcast is about my morning routine called a power hour and how I have used it to create powerful intentions and outcomes in my business and personal life.  Listen to the podcast by clicking the player above and subscribe and rate the show in iTunes.

A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury. ~ John Stuart Mill

Difficult conversations with difficult people are one of the most emotionally taxing areas of a business.  No one wants to deal with people who have a crappy attitude and a lack of ownership for their behavior.  If you are a leader, then embracing these conversations are a must.  If you are unwilling to have these conversations, you aren't ready to lead people.  You have a moral obligation to the stakeholders of the business to have difficult conversations.

In today's podcast I talk about why having difficult conversations builds and maintains the culture and values of a business. I walk through my four part process from my book, The Management Playbook, on how to have this difficult conversation as well.

Check out the podcast by clicking on the player above and if you haven't subscribed to the show and rated it in iTunes, you can do that here. 

Are you looking for a breakthrough in your own ability to lead and manage your business?  Do you have a manager that you would like to develop?  Check out our assessment and let's talk about what's possible for your business moving forward.

If you are a coach, consultant or any other program provider, you know one of the most challenging things to getting your business off the ground is in generating qualified leads, consistently to your business.  I know coaches who have been coaching for years who are still struggling because they don't know how to generate leads.

I was introduced to Tom Poland, author of Leadsology, a few months ago.  I have since read his book and had several conversations with him about his philosophy to generating leads in an authentic way.  In this short, powerful interview, Tom shares his tips on:

• What most program providers get wrong when they try and generate leads
• How to generate consistent in bound leads (no more shitty networking events)
• Why most lead efforts don't work (hint: business owners typically don't have the right process in place to ensure success)

Check out our interview by clicking the player above and subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.  Tom shares some free tools that you can use to assist in your lead building process so make sure you listen to the interview.  For more info about Tom and his book, go to http://www.leadsology.guru/

In today's interview, we cover, among other things:

• Some of the principles that you will learn in the book What Would the Rockefellers Do?
• Keys to surviving a financial crisis and the power of celebration.
• How to invest in a way that allows you to be more productive instead of being distracted by unproductive investments.
• How financial institutions use money that is completely opposite of how most people use their money personally.
• Where most people go wrong with their personal financial system?

This is an offer that is only available through an interview like this or at a speaking engagement or other exclusive event. You can get a free digital copy of the book, What Would the Rockefellers Do?  by texting to the number below.  If you don't stop what you are doing and get this book right now, you are crazy!  Get this book, it may very well change your financial life for the better.

To get the book:

Text opt in:  Text “Freewwrd” to (801)396-7211 to get a free digital copy of the book. 

To Learn more about Michael go to Vault AIS: https://www.vaultais.com/

If you know someone who would love to have access to this info, share this episode with them and make sure you subscribe to the show and rate it in iTunes.

We have little conception of how worthwhile we are because we are working so hard to prove how worthwhile we are! ~ C. Terry Warner

I had the opportunity to be a guest on the Rusty Lion podcast recently and I shared with their listeners my approach to being vs doing.  Later that same week that the interview came out, a friend of mine posted a similar sentiment on Facebook about the importance of who you are over what you do. What surprised me was the amount of opposition my friend received to the sentiment.

This begs the chicken and the egg question, what's more important being or doing?  Are you who you are because of what you do or do you do the things that you do because of who you are?

This question trips a lot of business owners up who spend more time in activity (a lot of times pointless, mindless activity) and less time in working on and developing who they are and who they are becoming.

This was a personal struggle of mine until life taught me lesson that I detail here. 

This is the challenge that I tackle in today's podcast. If you haven't subscribed to the show in iTunes yet, do that now. 

We tackle the question of who you are in our business habits workshop.  If you have wanted to dive into this more intentionally, this workshop is a good place to start.  Check out the event here. 

If you like:

• Having a level of certainty and control in your business (For the love of God, you're an entrepreneur).
• Creating repeatable results.
• Growing your business.

Then maybe you are someone who gets excited about the process or at least the by product of that.

Check out the podcast  by clicking the player above or subscribe in Itunes.  Also, I always enjoy when you guys rate the show so if you haven't given the show a shout out yet, please do.

My clients are smart people who get stuck in a certain state in their business and it's not due to a lack of knowledge. What typically holds them back is fear, lack of belief in themselves, holding on to an event from their past as a reason to not move forward today, etc. The inability to move forward isn't free. It comes with a price.

Today's podcast is about what happens when you don't move forward and what questions to ask yourself if you are stuck.

If you haven't subscribed to the podcast in iTunes, check it out here.

Managing the different wealth components in your business can feel overwhelming and impossible without the right support.

Neal and his team have been offering that kind of support to business owners for years.

We touch on several topics in our discussion that business owners want to be thinking through and handling to run their businesses' finances.

Topics like:

• Cash flow
• Asset protection
• Exit strategies
• Investing surplus cash
• among a few other things.

Click the player above to listen to the interview and if you haven't subscribed and rated the show in iTunes, then do that now.

If you want to learn more about what Equiti can do for you and what's missing in your own business.  You can fill out a Healthy Business Checklist (takes 2 minutes) and get a 30 minute one-on-one meeting with Neal to talk more. Check that out at www.getequiti.com

It took 16 hours for a project that Microsoft, no doubt taking a significant amount of time to develop

When things go sideways on Twitter, it escalates fast. When you run a company like Microsoft, the reaction magnifies. This is embarassing right? Maybe something like this has happened to your business.

This is the kind of situation where a leader can show what they are made of. Leaders will show their true heart in the face of adversity. Many leaders would have cast blame, fired people and expressed public outrage.

The Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, did the exact opposite. This is part of a message that he sent his team:

“Keep pushing, and know that I am with you … (The) key is to keep learning and improving.”

Here's what you can learn from this leadership exchange:

1. Take responsibility and learn from it: We all screw up. This was not the outcome that anyone on the team was looking for. Now that the issue has come up. What can be learned from the situation that can be used for good in the future.

2. This is the only was to play it if you truly want an empowered team: If you want your team to play inspired, creative, and bold, then insulate them in a way that fosters this sort of behavior. Don't kill people for mistakes and let the team know that you have their back.

What can you do differently in the management of mistakes in your business? What sort of impact would a positive change to your approach make in your business?

This week's podcast I talk about why our society has bred ignorance over the last hundred years and five things to engage in to overcome ignorance and live a life of freedom.

Subscribe to the show on iTunes, rate the show and share it.

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Via AkkenCloud

This week's episode is a discussion with consultant and author, Jeremy Cage.  I read the book and was inspired by the level of Jeremy's intentionality for how he lived his life.  It's easy to live a life by default vs. a life by design.  All Dreams on Deck dives into the vision and goal setting process of achieving your dreams in great detail.

We cover a wide range of information in the book including:

Dream Like You Mean It – Sailing around the world, starting a business, or winning a competition are all amazing dreams. However, dreams need to be specific. When dreams are vague, people tend to focus on obstacles, fears, and dreads. Being specific about your dreams enables you to clearly define the steps you need to make them a reality.

Climb Your Ladder of Intentionality – Having specific dreams is not enough. You need to become intentional. Commit. Write them down. Declare them out loud. Get others talking about them. This helps you climb your ladder of intentionality.

Ready Yourself, Your Crew, and Your Ship –The better you plan and prepare, the more likely it is that you will succeed. Understand what you need to know, do, and know how to do, to accomplish your business and personal dreams.

Summon Your Courage – Venturing into the unknown is not easy. Whatever your dream, you will encounter obstacles and challenges. Overcoming your fears will allow you to achieve your goals. Trust yourself and your team. Be optimistic. Listen carefully. Accept reality quickly. 

Jeremy walks the talk and you will definitely be inspired by the book to play at a new level in your own life.  Buy the book on Amazon.

Oh and pretty please subscribe to the podcast for regular updates.

Confrontation and handling confrontation

How often have you confronted an employee where they told you they would:

• Try harder
• Do better
• Work on it
• Say they don't know
• Say it's someone else's fault.

None of these solutions create real change and typically end up with you confronting the issue again in the near future. This week's podcast is about how to address these issues and create, efficient, powerful conversations for moving forward with your team when issues come up.

Subscribe to the show in iTunes for regular updates and if today's show was helpful, share with a friend.

In case you were wondering about the definition of team. I looked it up.  It says, “A group of people with a full set of complementary skills required to complete a task, job, or project.”

This week's podcast is about how great leaders build teams and grow teams to do their best work. Check out the podcast by clicking the player at the top of the page and make sure you are subscribed to the podcast in iTunes.

I asked Eric to come on the New Work Revolution podcast for two reasons.

#1. Most small businesses that I work with struggle telling their story.  You are too close to your story to tell it powerfully.

#2. They have a book coming out that will distill a lot of their storytelling secrets for you to use in your own storytelling journey.  Get access to the first two chapters here. 

In our interview you learn about the Diamond in a Haystack process that Eric's team uses to uncover the hidden gems of your story.  You will learn how to use your story to market your business, particularly through the use of video.

Eric's Story:

Eric began his career at a digital innovation agency where he produced hundreds of videos for a number of global brands. But, he just wasn’t satisfied with the way agencies were doing video marketing and brand storytelling. Later, he found out that B2B companies weren’t so good at it either. In 2012, he launched Explainify, a firm specializing in custom videos that help clients capture attention, motivate action, and drive more sales. Since founding the company, Eric has had the opportunity to assist in the creation of award-winning videos for hundreds of great companies, from early stage startups to Fortune 100s like Pfizer, GE and Tyson Foods.

Check out Eric's most recent article in Entrepreneur.

Also don't forget to click the player above to listen to the entire interview and…..

get two chapters of his upcoming book by clicking the button below.

If you haven't subscribed to the podcast in iTunes, check it out here.  If you are a fan, rate and review the show as well.

To uncover what's next for your business to grow and for you to create more freedom, do your free 15 minute online assessment. 

“Care about people's approval and you will be their prisoner.”

–Lao Tzu

There is a tension between serving others and taking care of yourself.  How far is too far in any one direction? Business owners are value creator.  You know how to create value for others.  You are so good at it that you built a business around it.

You're so good at creating value for others that you are:

• Burnt out
• Frustrated
• Disillusioned
• Ready to quit

This week's podcast is gives three tips to be great and stay great at work.  Not just work though.  How to take these same principles and be great in all areas of your life.  For others? Yes. For yourself? Absolutely.

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.  Rate the show and share it with others.

Think about it.  How often do you shrug off working on your business when you set aside the time?  When was the last time you rescheduled a training session with a team member because you didn't feel like doing it? No matter how disciplined a business owner you are, you probably do this at some level.

When we shrug off working on the business activities, the thought is that it's not that important or that you can always do it later.  Would you approach it differently if instead of it being about working on the business, it was about solving an issue that a customer had with your product or service?  What if that employee training session was a client meeting, would you blow it off then?

My Total Experience Design manifesto says that the internal culture is the caretaker of the external experience.  Treating your business like it's one of your products/services is a great way to ensure that your business delivers an experience to your customers that is inline with your vision and mission and separates what you do from the other businesses that operate a similar business in your market.

2017 is here.  If your like me, you want to make this year great and deliver a lot of value to your customers.  How could focusing on your business like a product/service help you achieve your goals?

PS…If you are looking for the next level in designing your ideal client experience, take our free assessment to see what's missing in your business.

Today's podcast steps out into the realm of what some people would call fluffy bullshit…philosophy.  In today's economy, you get paid to think.  The old paradigm of following orders continues to get in the way of thinking deeply about the world around us.

What's your philosophy in life, relationships, business, leadership, etc?  I dive into that this week.  Be a philosopher.  Listen to this week's podcast to find out why.  Check it out in iTunes and don't forget to rate the show.  

Photo courtesy of David Marcu, check out his great work here.

This week's podcast inspiration came from church (and you thought I was sleeping) and I want to share the concept of pre-decisions on the podcast.  I run into a lot of business owners who feel like their day-to-day lives run them instead of running the day with intention.

Check out the podcast by clicking the player above and don't forget to subscribe and rate the podcast in iTunes.  Thanks for listening!

Photo courtesy of George Becker, check out his stuff here.  

It's not uncommon to feel a little sheepish about business growth or to even want to apologize for setting a growth goal.  You may not want other people to think that you a greedy bastard that smokes hundred dollar bills in your spare time, I get it.

Dollars follow value.  The more value you create for people around you, the more it opens up the possibility for an increase in the money that flows to you.  When your business grows.  Congrats, you created more value for the world.  How often do you think about that?

Money isn't why you do business but it sure does help you keep score on how you are doing with value creation (as well as puts food on the table and pays the bills but I digress).  Next time to you set a growth target, think about the context of what achieving this means.  It means you served your mission at a high level. Got closer to achieving your vision.  Served more of the community that you help.

This week's podcast is about creating meaning around your money.  Click the player above to listen and subscribe and rate the show in iTunes as well.

2017 is coming and like a lot of people, the subject of goals has come up for you.  If you are serious about transformation and achievement in 2017. Goal setting and tools won't be enough. Changing who you are is crucial to the execution of any plan.

Tony Robbins said that there is the business that you are in and the business that you are becoming.  This is true for people as well.  When it comes to the next year.  Think about how who you are being will change to get to the destination you want to get to.

Listen to this week's podcast as I talk about the how and why of this process for your business and your life.  If you haven't subscribed in iTunes yet, check it out and rate the show here.

There is a way to stay engaged and hit your big picture goals for the year.  This week's podcast discusses the steps to ensuring that this year is your best year for execution of goals.

Click here to subscribe in iTunes. 

What if your employees did care?  Were trying their hardest? Wanted to do great and have hopes and dreams that they want to achieve?

This week's podcast was inspired by a conversation my wife and I had recently around the book, Rising Strong by Brene Brown. Check out the podcast and subscribe in iTunes for regular updates.

Leaders are really good at telling people what to do to their detriment.  Leaders are also notorious for lacking margin and time.  When you put these two factors together, you get uninspired team members and frustrated leaders.  Today's podcast is about getting past the what.

When you lack time and patience, the last thing you want to do as a leader is explain yourself.  Just get it done damn it!

Leaving out the why means missing a chance to empower a team member to go further in their own development and step out of their comfort zone.  The more this happens, the more they start taking their role into their own hands and the less they come to you to solve their problems. It's challenging at first but reaps dividends down the line.

This week's podcast talks about how to get past the what and connect your team to the why for more powerful results.  Check out the podcast in iTunes for regular show updates and to rate the show as well. Thanks again for listening!

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• Growing a business and using the growth to do give back to communities in need.
• Stepping out of your comfort zone of a regular 9-5 gig to jump into the entrepreneurship realm

These and a few other topics come up in this week's episode of the New Work Revolution podcast.  I interviewed the founder of Affiliate Mission, Priest Willis.  We talked about his career, what motivated him and how he separates his affiliate management company with all of the others.

Click the player above to listen to the interview and also make sure you subscribe in iTunes if you haven't yet.

In my Building Winning Teams workshop earlier this year, I spent time talking about onboarding an employee.  Onboarding is about setting the right context with an employee for a powerful, long term, productive relationship with a new team member.

Part of the process may include reaffirming why you hired the person.  What their role is as well as expectations that you have of that person as their leader.

I am big believer in the fact that you can take an “A” team hire and make them a “B” team hire based on the environment that you bring this person into. It's not uncommon for me to see a new employee get hired in a company and then watch as they get stuck in a corner and treated like Milton from Office Space.  You don't want new employees to feel uncared for and unsupported.

Above is a picture of the welcome kit from Fanduel, the daily fantasy sports site.  If your first day looked like this, how would you feel?  I bet you would feel pretty damn good.  I know I would.  Take a look at your initial employee experience. Where can you take this experience to the next level for your team?

Time is another issue that comes up for business owners.  Are you too busy to train and develop your team?  What kind of message does that say to them?

In this week's podcast, I talk about how to look at employee follow up differently and how to get it right so it builds powerful relationships.

Check out the podcast and rate it in iTunes.

When you try big things it's easy to get overwhelmed by the enormity of the idea, in this case 26.2 miles, and run from the opportunity.  Training and running a marathon taught me and/or reinforced three things that are helpful to accomplishing big tasks/goals.

Tip #1: Build a good support system.  Within the first 3 weeks of training for my marathon I went on a 10 mile run with my wife.  I walked most of the last 2 miles and felt like total garbage. When I finished I looked at my wife and said “There's no way that I can do a marathon, I can't even run 10 fucking miles.” My wife looked me in the eye and let me know that I could do it and to stick with it.  I needed to hear that because I wanted to quit. So I stuck with it.

In addition to my wife being a great support.  I also tore my Achilles during training which was crushing.  This forced me to pay attention to my body and seek out great healers to help me stay in the game.  If it weren't for the great chiropractors that I worked with, I would not have been able to run.

Last, the numerous friends that supported me along the way.  In my past, I was notoriously someone who was always “good”.  To admit anything less would be too much vulnerability.  One of my good friends offered to come down and cheer me on and my initial reaction was to say, “don't worry about, we're good”,  I caught myself thinking that and instead let him know that I would love it if they came down to the race to support me.

All these things allowed me to stay with my goals and plans and to know that I am not alone.  The impact was the difference between me achieving and not achieving my goal of completing the marathon.

Tip #2: Planning is key.  You can't go from couch to marathon without a plan.  I had been doing some light training for another race but had been in a period of inactivity prior to that.  Once I found a training schedule that I liked, I enlisted the help of an accountability partner who made sure that I stayed on track with a hefty penalty each week for non-compliance of my training plan.  I never had to pay up.

Beyond a running schedule, other planning included, mapping out routes, coordinating schedules, planning training meals and hydration for the long runs.

I couldn't have done this without a specific plan and the space created to execute that plan.  The plan not only helped me finish the race but it also gave me piece of mind that I was ready.

Tip #3: Push Yourself Past Your Boundaries: Every weekend of the training schedule entailed a long run that escalated to 20 miles. I finished every run on fumes. Initially I could barely finish 10 miles. Then 10 miles became a no-brainer run despite the fact that weeks earlier I could barely do the distance and was ready to quit.

This situation reminded me of a quote from Thomas Edison, “If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves”.  Running a marathon was further proof that I can go much farther than I think I can.  Not only with running but in all aspects of my life.

We are closing out 2016.  Is there a big goal that you can start before the year ends?  Maybe one that you can finish this year? What about 2017? What's your marathon?

Results don't lie!

Successful people don't watch TV!

You are the sum of the people you spend time with!

Are these ultimate principles for success?  Destructive myths?  Somewhere in between?

This week's podcast tackles these statements that float around social media under the banner of inspiring people to be successful.  Click the button above to listen to the podcast and you can also subscribe in iTunes.

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I have experienced the challenges of running my own business as well as the challenges of working for someone else. I spent time working in a corporate environment for almost a decade.  Like a caged animal being told what to do and when to do it. I about lost my damn mind in that model so I decided it was time to break free and work more on my terms.

Myth #1. Job's provide a guaranteed income:  Tell that to all the people that lost their jobs in 2008 and 2009.  In 2016, companies like Walmart (17,500 layoffs), Haliburton (15,200) and Bank of America (8,000) are laying people off.  These are well established companies with a track record of success.  Even if you don't get laid off, for most employees, their income is flat and they have no opportunity for significant increases in income.  As a business owner in any given month, I could make $0 or I could make over $100k.  There is bigger downside and an even bigger upside than a steady paycheck.

Myth #2. Paid time off and less work: As a business owner if I work more, it's my choice.  If your manager Lumberg asks you to come in on a Saturday at your 9-5, he's an asshole and you likely work in a shitty job.  Smart business owners know that you have to create leverage and recurring revenue to be successful.  When I'm on vacation, I'm getting paid because I have systems for delivering value and a team that helps me do it.  If you work long hours as a business owner it's by choice and simple leverage of a team and systems can help to alleviate that.  If you work for someone else, you work as much as they tell you to work.  You know what I don't have to do?  Ask my boss if I can go to my daughter's soccer game or cheer competition.  I get to go on field trips, have lunch with my kids at school all while appearing to others to be that dad that clearly doesn't have a job.

Myth #3. You can work in a fulfilling environment for someone else: There isn't a purer form of self expression of your purpose than entrepreneurship.  Period. At a job, you are one management move away from having the best job in the world to having the worst.  You will never be as fulfilled, appreciated and well-compensated working for anyone else.  Not to say you can't have a great job that you love but those jobs have limits and boundaries and can only do so much.

Entrepreneurship isn't overrated and it's also not for everyone. For the right person, entrepreneurship is a great opportunity to create massive value for the world as well as live life on your terms. If you care about freedom and are tired of “playing it safe”, then I would definitely recommend that you explore entrepreneurship.

Most business owners rush through this process and don't make their business sound as great as it is.  This week's podcast gives you some insight to think about and some practical next steps to making your business sound interesting.

If you haven't subscribed in iTunes, check it out now.

This week's New Work Revolution is about getting to the root of issues and concerns that come up so you can truly make great decisions that create wins for everyone.  Listen to the podcast by clicking the player above.

If you haven't subscribed in iTunes, click this link to do so.

Giving five percent more is one of those concepts that is easy to understand (give more effort) but also hard to live (these things are easy not to do).

I take time to talk with Michael Alden about some of the key concepts of his book and how he has applied these concepts to build growing businesses and author popular books so you get a feel for what this could look like for you.

Check out the interview and make sure you share this via social media.

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We live in a world that is fighting for our thoughts and our minds 24/7.  If you don't have a game plan for being intentional, you're a bag blowing in the wind to wherever it takes you.

This week's podcast is about how to rise above the noise and do that deep meaningful work.  Check out the show by clicking the player above or you can subscribe to get weekly updates by clicking the player below.

Also, make sure you leave a rating on the show!  Don't be stingy with your praise (or your criticism if you're a hater). Thanks in advance.

This week's New Work Revolution podcast is all about being the boss and three specific things to keep in mind to make sure that you are truly running the show in your business.

The podcast is on iTunes and Stitcher so get subscribed to stay current on shows.

I started my company, New Work Revolution, because of my experience of being and observing, over the past 17 years, broken leadership in the workplace.  We spend most of our lives at work.  This can be a blessing or a curse and one of the primary factors that determines our enjoyment of work is the leadership and the culture that they create around us.   Creating a great culture comes by design.  A poor culture is created through ignorance or a lack of intention on the leader’s part.

I have worked in building cultures and leaders my whole career and I have made plenty of mistakes along the way.  Through my own learning curve, I have been fortune to help leaders break through their own leadership challenges to create environments where people don’t survive they thrive.

If you want to improve your leadership and the leadership of people that you work with while creating an awesome culture.  Here are three principles to embrace.

1. People need support– When you fail to give leaders support you ensure that they create bad habits as leaders and eventually they will fail as a leader. When I got my first leadership assignment at age 25, I thought I know everything about business.  Then it became apparent that I didn’t know shit.  I had no tools to deal with the issues that came my way.  This happens to leaders in companies all the time.  You get promoted because you are good at your job but that doesn’t correlate to great leadership.  Get yourself and your leaders to leadership training, coaching, read books, create masterminds, etc.
2. Employees Aren’t Babies– If you treat your employees like children, they will act like children. Look at the sign to the right.  This sign makes me sick.  The only reason that you have to post a sign like this at your job is because you suck at leading a team.  Do you think that an employee will look at this and think “oh..great reminder… I am going to do better as a result of your condescending approach.” If you want employees to stop playing games give them meaningful shit to do.  Empower them and inspire them.  Connect their work to the big picture vision.  Talk to them about their goals.  Give a shit about their lives.  When you do that, you will be surprised at the level that they can perform at.  If you have a terrible team the common denominator is their underperforming boss.
3. Put people at the center of your business– Not just your customers.  All the people who are stakeholders of your business. I read a comment from an employee about why they liked working for a client of mine from a survey that we sent them.  He said that he knew the owner cared about him because of the fact that he asked questions, like the ones in the survey, about his life. Are you spending meaningful time with your team?  Are you taking time for training, accountability and personal development planning? What if you did more of this? It’s easy as a leader to forget that our employees are human beings who have fears, hopes, dreams, limiting beliefs and other things going on in their lives that we may not be aware of.  Take the time to know your people better inside and outside of your work environment. Keep in mind they aren’t you and look to explore who they are and how you can best support their greatness.  The internal culture is the caretaker of the external experience.  When you take care of your team, they take care of you.

You don't have to lose great people to leadership stupidity. It's time to focus on developing and building leaders who will create environments where people can thrive.  If you need help, you know where to find me.

PS… If you are looking to expand your horizons on leadership, you can check out my book, The Management Playbook on Amazon or you can subscribe to my podcast.

At some point in time you realize that, as the African Proverb says, if you want to go fast, go by yourself.  If you want to go far, go together. If you want to create bigger results in business, a team will get you there.  There is a time to delegate and there is a time wait.

This week's New Work Revolution podcast is about when you should delegate and when you shouldn't.  If you haven't subscribed in iTunes or Stitcher, get subscribed for regular updates.  Are you a fan of the show? If so, please share the show with people you know who would benefit and please take a minute and rate and review the show in iTunes or Stitcher.

There are a handful of specific ways that another person may use to derail a conversation that they are involved in.  How do you handle defensiveness, passivity, blaming others or when someone blames the situation on you?

This week's podcast is about how to handle the conversation derailers that may come up.  If you missed them, check out:

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4