Reflect 2021
Reflection is important and It’s the time of year when we naturally pause to reflect. For our blog today we took a look back at the last 12 months’ worth of weekly blogs to pick some of our favorites, in no specific order! We can attribute many of these to podcast guests. Where possible we’ve included the names and businesses of the professionals that directly influenced our blogs! We also included the links to the individual blog articles and our podcast if you’d like to listen to these conversations. Masters of Improv – the balance of being deliberate and thinking on your feet Influenced by Jonathan Garber of Flying Chimp Media “Most of us, when we build out presentations and practice our messaging, do so in a ‘sterile’ environment. Sterile, meaning, an environment very much set up for us to succeed. We’ll likely practice in a quiet spot. We’ll practice what we’re going to say and how we’re going to say it. We’ll practice (if we’re smart) enough to be able to work out what cadence we’d like to use, what words we’ll emphasize and the points that are most important to make. Overall, our practice will be structured in a bubble. Funny enough, reality doesn’t operate in a bubble and it’s rarely as structured as we’d like. Reality is dirty, not sterile. It’s loud. It’s uncertain. How we’ll start, who is sitting down, who is listening, who is distracted, where we will stand, will we have our resources, will the technology work….dirty, dirty, dirty. There’s a number of variables that will come into play.” Read here: Masters of Improv Listen here: What does Ross Geller, Black Panther and Jonathan Garber Have in Common? ~ Episode 51 The Influence of Mindset Influenced by Suzanne Taylor of Taylord Consulting “…the power of thought is so strong that even something you carry expertise in can be cast into doubt with the smallest of questions. Have you ever been asked a question about something you at any other time would be 100% positive about? Something you knew so certainly that you’d bet your life on it? Then all of a sudden, that certainty is questioned and now you’re doubting your own knowledge that you would have bet your life on at another time. This happens to people all of the time. It’s perfectly natural and it’s also perfectly indicative of how strongly our thoughts influence who we are. Are we an expert, or are we a fraud? Do we know this for certain, or do we doubt our own expertise?” Read here: The Influence of Mindset Listen here: We‘re Positive that You‘ll Connect with our Convo w/ Suzanne Taylor-King Ready Set Action “Action should never be taken without regard to direction. To say that another way – we believe in thoughtful, intentional, deliberate action. You won’t always choose the best action, but we’d rather have you going 100 mph in any direction vs 0 mph in no direction. Movement requires inertia and inertia requires energy. It takes much less energy to shift direction than it does to get moving.” Read here: Ready, Set, Action Listen here: Ready, Set, ACTION! ~ Episode 31 Setting Goals – Insight from Genesis Games Influenced by Genesis Games of Healing Connections “Big goals, big hairy goals, big hairy audacious goals. Smart goals. Specific goals. Specific and measurable goals. Specific and measurable goals that are actionable. OH MY GOSH. Cut it out. It’s too much. Break all of this down into an end vision and small simple steps that will get you there. Keep your eyes on the individual steps and work backwards from your vision and you’ll achieve your goals. It’s that simple. Not smart, not bhag, not the longest mouthful of words and acronyms possible.” Read here: Setting Goals – Insight from Genesis Games Listen here: G’s to a Great relationship: Goodness, Goals and Genesis Games ~ Episode 22 What Keeps You Up At Night Influenced by Barbara Flynn of People First “We can never be risk free in any aspect of our lives and certainly not in our businesses. Good leaders and entrepreneurs will make risk – adjusted decisions. They’ll try to figure out what level of comfort they have for risk as well as their ability to manage to that risk. Risk always comes down not just to tolerance levels, but also to capacity. Can I afford to take the risk, even if I’m comfortable with it. A risk that could put your business out of business for example, you may be comfortable with taking, but your business does not likely have the capacity to take that level of risk!” Read here: What Keeps You Up At Night Listen here: Risky Business? Not with Barbara Flynn ~ Episode 34
How Rewarding Yourself Backfires
In a world that’s shifting to an ever-growing reward culture it’s hard to imagine that rewarding yourself can actually backfire, but it can and it does. Rewarding yourself can create a very positive reinforcement loop for great behaviors and routines but there are instances and ways in which rewards end up being self-defeating not self-inflating. Imagine rewarding yourself and instead of receiving the benefits of reinforcement, gratitude and motivation, you end up sabotaging the very thing you were rewarding yourself for? If it doesn’t concern you, be aware, it happens more than you might think! Here’s a few things to watch out for so you don’t fall into the trap of hurting yourself more than helping! 1. Beware consistency We do well with rewarding ourselves when the rewards come unexpectedly. It’s because we respond well to novelty. This excites us and creates a sense of thrill. Normally we are big advocates for consistency, especially early on in a reward system cycle. After a while, and once a behavior and routine are habitual, is when you want to keep an eye on switching up when, how or what you receive as a reward. 2. Don’t get caught up in end points We spoke about the end of year and resolutions in our most recent podcast. You can listen in to it here! We spoke specifically about how making the year end into just that, an ‘end,’ is an inherently dangerous perspective. When we hit an end point it’s normal for us to go into a lull or a pause. If you’re rewarding yourself for an end achievement, the bigger the achievement and reward is the more likely you are to find yourself in a bigger pause. It can completely destroy momentum. 3. Reward type mistakes Proud of yourself for shifting your morning routine to be a 5 am riser? Ready to reward yourself with a late night out and an 8 am start? The very act of giving yourself this reward TAKES AWAY from the progress you’ve made on your routine and ritual. The type of reward you give to yourself matters. Reward yourself with something that doesn’t contradict the behavior and work you focused your energy on. In this instance a great reward might be a special dinner out or a nice gift to yourself, not a late start to the day. What happens if you go the late start of the day as a reward. You put at risk the progress you made in the first place. Looking for more ways to reward yourself and still hold yourself accountable to your goals, process and routines? Check out some of the services we offer in our 2 on 1 coaching where we bring the expertise of behavioral modification to your real world business and profession. You can check out our services here! Want to be surrounded by other professionals like yourself? Join us in the lab if you haven’t yet. We’ve put together a ton of free resources, content and insights to help you level up to your greatest potential. Join us now! Need more than just free content but afraid you can’t afford our services. We know the struggle is real and it’s why we offer scholarships to deserving professionals and entrepreneurs. Tell us your story and have a chance to work with us on a fully paid for scholarship! You can submit for a scholarship here!
Viral Customer Service and Exceeding Expectations
Great customer service means always meeting expectations. Viral customer service means you consistently exceed expectations. Certain things will happen when you offer the very best customer service, consistently. We can sum it up like this. Start exceeding expectations and you’ll be paid less than you earn. Consistently exceed expectations and you’ll consistently be paid more than you earn. Here’s what will happen when you have a practice of exceeding expectations and offering the best possible. Your reputation will precede you. One you consistently exceed expectations, you will start to go viral, and you will have a reputation that reaches far beyond your organic market. You will create raving fans. Raving fans are different than normal customers. Raving fans are torchbearers for your business. They will relentlessly advocate for you. The door opens to new opportunities. Exceeding expectations will open the door for you to grow. We rise to our level of ability and by holding yourself to the highest standard you will find yourself receiving greater opportunities from others that share your standards and are looking to work alongside the very best. To find out some examples of exceeding expectations check out our most recent podcast here when we spoke with Austin Bergman about phenomenal customer service! If you’re interested in learning how to exceed expectations and practicing this within your business, we’ve got you covered. You can check out the services we offer our coaching clients and we are happy to offer a free consultation around how we can help you create viral customer service in your business. Check out our services here! In need of some help but not sure you can afford us? That’s ok, we offer a scholarship for our services! Submit a form, here, and we’ll consider you for a scholarship to our coaching or our courses. Interested in meeting Austin and engaging with the best group of professionals out there? Join us in our private Facebook community, The Entrepreneur Mastery Lab!
Belief and the beRICH mindset
Beliefs drive our behaviors, our actions and our reactions. They influence how people see and interact with us. They produce and determine our inner circles and even our perceptions of the world around us. Beliefs Matter It’s why we, JB and The Doctor created the Entrepreneur Mastery Lab (EML) and it’s why we built the #beRICH mindset as our core value system. Both the EML and the beRICH mindset are products of our belief systems. So what are our beliefs and how can you see and feel them? Here’s a few. We all want to be great and be a part of something great Community will allow us to become greater than ourselves and will create opportunities for legacy and impact There’s no real fulfillment in being materially successful, we need to lift others up with us We can always do better Life requires constant experimentation The beRICH mindset The beRICH mindset is about living a fulfilled and satisfied life. It specifically states: R – Rise to mastery Whether it’s in your profession, your craft, your personal development, we need to develop mastery to develop respect for ourselves. Without true dedication and mastery there is no true self respect. I – Inspire greatness Being an inspiration to others means leading by example. It’s earning the reputation of living a life aligned with your beliefs even when it’s hard, and even when no one is looking. C – Celebrate knowledge Knowledge is the tool we use to better ourselves and the people around us. Celebrating the quest for knowledge and rewarding ourselves for the development of our minds is a must. H – Help others along the way People are tribal. We are not meant to be alone. Everyday we make the choice to develop the community around us. When we do, we find we strengthen ourselves. We are the multiple and the prodigy of the community around us, as they are of us. Entrepreneur Mastery Lab (EML) If you’re in the EML it’s because of our belief system and that you share some, or all, of our beliefs. The lab was created as movement and a vehicle to better the way that we do business and live our lives. If you’re not a member we highly encourage you to join right now and become a part of something greater than yourself. Join our Facebook Group If you’re curious why we’re discussing beliefs at all, check out our most recent podcast where we spoke with Mark and John Cronin of John’s Crazy Socks, the worlds largest sock company. You can listen in here!
Three Exercises To Become More Dedicated
Maybe you’re going through a rough patch. Maybe you are looking to evolve to the next level. Either way you’ve decided you need to really dedicate yourself to something. If you’re looking for ways to become more dedicated to yourself, a relationship, your business or other commitments you’ve made, we have you covered! Many of us search for ways to become more dedicated and we have found these exercises are incredibly helpful. 1. Review If you’re just starting out or if you’ve been going at it a while there was a reason why you made a commitment. Think about what that reason is and write it out to the best of your ability. Once it’s down, take a close look at it again and ask yourself ‘but, why?’ Write down your response to that question. Keep repeating that until you get to the point that you have uncovered your deepest reason for the commitment. Once you’ve settled on the deepest reason and it’s on paper you can put it on the wall, in your wallet, or even snap a photo on your phone screen saver. Keep it close and bring it front and center when you feel yourself slipping from your dedication. 2. Reward You dedicated yourself to something for a reason. There was a greater end result you were looking to achieve. You wanted to make a change in your past or current situation. To become more dedicated make sure you remember to reward yourself. Celebrate the small daily victories and express gratitude for yourself when you stretch and push. Small regular rewards will help sustain a longer and deeper dedication to your goals. It’s especially powerful to find a reward that is specific to your reason (#1 exercise) and brings you a fresh reminder of the excitement that started you on your journey. 3. Accountability Create a check in with yourself or someone else. Whether it’s a journal, a mentor, colleague or coach you want to set expectations for yourself and you want to make sure you’re being held responsible for those expectations. Be realistic with your accountability. Whatever level of dedication you have currently, you will likely struggle to make giant leaps and bounds. The odds of increasing your level of dedication rise dramatically when you consistently and persistently add to your current load. At every check in, ask yourself three questions: how you will feel if you achieve the dedication you’re aiming for, what will your life look like living at this level of dedication, and, how will I feel if I don’t achieve this level of dedication. These questions will recenter you and help maintain a higher level of dedication. If you’re looking to join a tribe of like minded professionals that believe in the #beRICH mindset: Rising to Mastery, Inspiring Greatness, Celebrating Knowledge and Helping Others along the way, you’ll want to check out our private facebook group, Entrepreneur Mastery Lab. You can join the movement here!
Showing Thanks and The Platinum Rule
When it comes to showing our thanks as professionals and businesses the sky and your creativity is the limit! There are countless ways to show your thanks and today we wanted to extend some of the ways we show our thanks in our businesses! My great-uncle was an owner of one of the largest dairy (milk) distributors in the United States many years ago. When I was a child, he shared a simple lesson to me that stuck out. If you want to do business with someone, break bread. Have a meal. Enjoy a drink. Build a relationship. There’s a lot more ways to do business with someone – I’ve run races alongside future clients and partners, I’ve played golf, closed business at a bar, heck I’ve even built relationship at cycle studios dripping sweat with my colleagues. Platinum Rule What my career has taught me is that doing business with someone requires you to treat them the way they want to be treated, what’s known as the Platinum Rule. You may be more familiar with the Golden Rule – treat others the way you’d want to be treated. The Golden Rule is good, the Platinum Rule is better. The Platinum Rule has you treat people the way they want you to treat them. It’s not about you, it’s about THEM. Giving thanks is no different than doing business. Your clients and your partners have passions. They have hobbies and values and most importantly, giving thanks is about THEM not about you. Following the platinum rule here are some of the ways we give thanks in our businesses: A personal touch We will write handwritten notes. It’s a lost art and yet many people still very much appreciate the extra effort involved with a handwritten note. Even if you have terrible handwriting (like I do). Personalized gifts For our coaching clients who are crushing something they have worked hard on, we love to send a small gift that recognizes their progress and their trust in working with us. Lunches, Dinners, Drinks Some people (like me) LOVE food. Want to make me a happy person, feed me good food with good company to make good memories! An unexpected call Calling is overrated, right? Nobody wants to talk on the phone anymore, yeah? Except, show me someone who doesn’t appreciate the extra authenticity and effort in a thank you phone call as opposed to a ‘thx’ text or message. The little things matter! How do you like to give thanks in your business? There are so many other ways, including, how you run your business can be an expression of thanks! You can take a listen to our most recent podcast to check out how Joy Nicholson of Unleash Your Marketing gives thanks and brings Joy to her clients! You can check it out here! Interested in meeting Joy and engaging with the best group of professionals out there? Join us in our private (free) Facebook community, The Entrepreneur Mastery Lab! Click here to join us and our movement to change how people do business! Join our Facebook Group
Our Favorite Ways To Break The Ice
Let’s face it. Talking to strangers is uncomfortable. If it was easy, everyone would do it! Yet how many times have you gone to a social event and felt the awkwardness and discomfort that comes from being outside of your comfort zone? The good news is we can build our confidence and become fantastic at introducing ourselves to new people, and make them feel great too! We just need to learn the best way to break the ice for ourselves. Here are a couple of really good ways to break the ice that we enjoy. 1. Ask for their opinion! People love to talk about themselves and one of the easiest ways to engage with someone is ask for their thoughts. One of our favorites is to make an observation about something striking or unique around you and ask their thoughts about it. 2.Use some humor! Most people will respond well to humor if it defuses an otherwise tense situation, for both of you. If you’re comfortable cracking a joke, go for it! Note of caution…not everyone will share your sense of humor so be aware of the type of joke you’re going to lead with. 3. Compliment them! Most people will appreciate a genuine compliment and it’s a fantastic way to disarm them while introducing yourself. There’s a number of other ways you can break the ice, think: pop culture, a feel good story you heard or read about, a story about a similar situation with a positive outcome, friendly light competition. For more ideas on breaking the ice you can join us in the lab here!
Tips To Quickly Shift Perspective
Having perspective is a powerful tool and important to our success in business. Quickly gaining perspective is a skill that will allow you to bring that tool to bear much more effectively and rapidly than your competitors. In a landscape where we are competing globally it’s becoming more and more important to develop and refine skills like this to give yourself an edge. Here are a few tips to quickly shift your perspective: 1. Read more often Research has shown that reading leads to greater emotional intelligence and empathy. Developing EI and empathy will enable you to quickly put yourself in ‘someone else’s shoes,’ or in other words, shift your perspective. 2. Listen more than you speak We are often blind to the fact that we are viewing the world and every situation we are in through our own lenses and interpretations of what is happening around us. Listening gives the people around you an opportunity to share their perspective and will enable you to learn to shift yours much more quickly. 3. Quit trying to be right The more open you are to conclusions that are not your own, the more likely you are to be able to shift perspectives. Putting your ego aside can help you shift perspectives much more quickly. Working towards these tips will give you the capability to adjust your perception quickly, identify other points of views and put you in a position to better understand the people around you. For more ideas on perspective, you can join us in the lab here!
Tips To Build Confidence Quickly
Confidence above almost everything else will determine if you’re going to be successful. A specific type of confidence is essential to achieve your goals in business and life. This is not a confidence in your skills so much as it is confidence in your ability to achieve your goals. We call this type of confidence – self efficacy. Self-efficacy is defined as: our belief in our ability and capacity to execute the behaviors necessary to produce specific performance. You can be confident in some areas of your life but not have self-efficacy. Positive psychology recently had a great article written offering some tips to improve and increase self-efficacy. You can visit the full article here! The fact is, we love this article so much we STRONGLY recommend you visit the site and read about it. Not only does it discuss self-efficacy it focuses in on self-mastery which is a journey we discuss all the time in the Entrepreneur Mastery Lab. If you’re unfamiliar with the lab you can request to join our private community here! We also encourage you to check out our podcast if you haven’t. This blog topic was inspired by our conversation around confidence in our most recent live Q&A podcast episode. You can listen in here! Or on any of your favorite podcast apps! In the mean time here are two very simple tips to start building and improving your self-efficacy and confidence! 1. Divorce yourself from your short term results. We know this can be a crazy idea to a lot of people but it’s important to recognize that a lot of our results will not be a reflection of how capable or good we are at what we do. Often times individual results do not correlate with our longer term goals and the results we are trying to achieve. If you get too caught up in short term individual results you run the risk of reducing your confidence when you might very well have been well on track to hit your bigger goals. Keep perspective and don’t let poor individual results hurt your confidence. 2. Break down your goals as small as possible. There is a reason people talk about micro-habits and establishing very small wins early in the day like making your bed. It’s because by achieving one small goal of waking up early, making our beds, or flossing our teeth daily will translate to a lot of small wins. Those small wins will build on each other and build up your self-efficacy and confidence. Enough small wins and all of a sudden you’re winning the bigger wins too! A big goal can be daunting. When broken down into a single activity or an hourly goal it becomes much more manageable. Use these tips to continue to develop your own self-efficacy!
When to Diversify
The right time to diversify is going to be different for every business. Every business is unique, after all. Even with your business being unique there are some identifiers you can keep an eye out for that will give you a sense of when it makes sense to diversify. On an aside, just because you CAN diversify doesn’t mean you should in your business. One of my businesses is very niche and vertical. There is no reason for me to diversify that business regardless of the opportunity. It’s designed to be narrow in focus and would require a complete change of the business to diversify. Since I am not interested in overhauling the entire business model it didn’t make sense to diversify. Of course, I opted to diversify how I spend my time and open up another business entirely, so, maybe we can have our cake and eat it too! Here are a couple of tips on identifying when it’s time to diversify: Your market is becoming saturated. No, I don’t mean competitive. I mean, saturated. As in your market share is a significant portion of the market and it’s more expensive to expand your market share than it is to expand the products or services you offer. This is more common in a limited marketplace be it limited by geography, access or a regulatory body. Your passion and energy for the current business is falling. Assuming you don’t plan to close up shop and/or become a silent partner in your business a new and fresh project may be exactly what you need to replenish your passion and motivation. This can be a great signal that it’s time to diversify in your business. You have identified some serious headwinds that could cause major implications to how you do business. The landscape we operate in shifts constantly. What works today and what is successful today has no guarantee of being successful tomorrow. If you, as an expert in your field, have identified a serious issue with the structure of your business moving forward you have three choices: jump ship, re-deploy your entire model, invest in a diversified business model that will allow you to ride out the coming storm. Either way, this is a tremendous signal to consider diversification. Once you decide to diversify it’s a question of how much should you diversify by. Again, all things we do should be experiments. When you consider your time, capital and energy as assets be sure to put a cap on how much of each you’re willing to commit. Perhaps your one business is on autopilot so you can put a substantial amount of time and energy into the diversification. If you do that, limit the capital exposure. A good benchmark to work from, no less than 10% of your non-essential resources and no more than 25% of your non-essential resources. What do we mean by non-essential? We mean the resources that are not INTEGRAL to running your current business model. To connect with us and other great professionals you can join us in our free, private facebook group here!