The Owner’s Journey
Business owners work through many stages during the time they run a business. For the most successful owners, they’ll take a business from ideation all the way through maturation and potentially an exit. It’s common to look at a business through the lens of the business itself and the various stages of a business can be broadly defined as: ideation, marketing, execution, growth, stability, maturity and liquidation or exit. However, it’s less common to look at a business through the lens of the owner’s journey and that’s what we’re going to focus on today because while similar, it is different from the stages of a business. The owner’s journey stages are as follows : Stage 1 – Idea and Inspiration Stage 2 – Planning and Learning Stage 3 – Foundation and Funding Stage 4 – Marketing and Sales Stage 5 – Launch and Daily Management Stage 6 – Growth and Scaling Stage 7 – Sustainability and Adaptation Stage 8 – Exit and Transition Let’s take a closer look at each of these stages STAGE 1 Idea and Inspiration Great businesses begin with great ideas and we often hear owners share a story about their personal discovery of a problem they had to navigate through. Successful navigation of these problems can create viable businesses and is a stimulating time for many owners. Ultimately, one of the greatest challenges during this stage of an owner’s journey is balancing optimism with pragmatism. The clearest sign that you’re ready to move on from this stage? When we commit to turning the vision into a reality. STAGE 2 Planning and Learning You may be able to start a business without planning. However, your odds of success are going to be dramatically lower than if you had planned. We’re confident, that while you may be able to ignore planning (to each their own), you’ll always be learning once you commit to turning your idea into reality. This stage of ownership is often where we’ll build confidence and overcome our doubts and fears about the viability of our ideas. Keep an eye on overwhelm in this stage, as people are very free with advice as you’re still getting up and running. STAGE 3 Foundation and Funding Business fundamentals such as setting up our legal entity, assessing our funding options and implementing the formal arrangement of the business all happen in this stage. Be aware of heightened stress levels as finances are one of the top causes of friction in relationships. This stage also happens to introduce increased work load and potential challenges with managing the business with the rest of our lives. STAGE 4 Marketing and Sales Just because something sounds like an amazing idea and solved a problem we have identified doesn’t mean the market is going to adopt it or feel strongly about it. Businesses thrive when products, services and solutions all address pain points people feel strongly about. Without that emotional response, a business can be dead in the water before the idea really ever gets off the ground. Frustration can go hand in hand with marketing and sales and dealing with rejection is a key challenge for many owners, especially if they don’t already have a strong comfort with sales and messaging. STAGE 5 Launch and Daily Management When you officially launch a product or service, it’s an absolute thrill to see it take off from the ground and to find your early adopters. That thrill can quickly dwindle when we are faced with the grind of the actual day-to-day operations of the business and also have to address consumer feedback. Responding well to tedious activity and to criticism is essential for owners in this stage. STAGE 6 Growth and Scaling One of the greatest bottlenecks and challenges owners of small businesses have is delegating with effectiveness and developing a team to help manage to growth and development of the business. It’s why so many owners never shift out of owner operator into greater roles. During this time, owners are faced with changing the control they exert over the business and allowing for others to begin to take responsibility and accountability for activity that may have originally been yours. Times of transitions like these lead to identity challenges and require great personal growth for owners to learn new skills such as leadership and management. STAGE 7 Sustainability and Adaptation Once our businesses have grown to a certain point, our attention will quite naturally shift to business sustainability and, hopefully, continuity. Additionally, we’ll be tasked with adapting the business to changing markets, environments and consumer wants. In a key inflection point for owners, this is a great time to re-evaluate our personal goals and a natural point for us to consider what the next stages of our own lives and involvement with our business is. If we find that our goals for our lives are not in alignment with what the business demands as owners, it can cause anxiety and uncertainty for many owners. STAGE 8 Exit and Transition Although 80% of businesses are unsellable, our goal is to help every business owner have the opportunity to successfully exit their business. Ultimately, an exit will always happen. It’s simply a question of whether the exit is done with intention or not. Unfortunately, when we allow transitions to occur without planning for them, it can lead to serious repercussions and, as we often see, a business that will be shutting its doors. The exit stage is one of the most difficult in the business owner journey. Exits and transitions require us to process a tremendous amount of emotion around identity, value and face our own expectations of success and failure. Why Does the Owner’s Journey Matter? Chances are the owner’s journey isn’t as carefully analyzed as the stages a business will go through and yet not only are they fundamentally intertwined, the human element to owning a business has a tremendous influence not just on our own well-being but on a business’s health as
How putting people first leads to business growth
All businesses bloom when you’re solving a problem for other people. This is the heart of every successful business. Yet there are many instances where putting people first becomes a part of the very culture of a business and it can often come with startling results. In this blog article we’ll explore how putting people first can lead to amazing business growth and results. Before we strap in for the weekly blog topic, we put together a FREE guide identifying the Top 6 reasons businesses fail and give you actionable steps you can take on every one of these to make sure it’s your competition failing and not you! It’s our free gift to you. Access it here! Let’s review some examples of businesses putting people first and how it resulted in amazing business success. Costco When you think Costco chances are you think about the hotdogs, free samples, or loads of pallets before you think of the people. How do they sell those hotdogs for so cheap? However, Costco is well known for its loyalty to its employees and putting people first and it’s made a tremendous difference in their results. Costco not only promotes and develops from within but over 90% of its employees have benefits and are paid well above many other large box store employees. The results are clear as well. Costco not only has higher employee retention rates than their competitors but they also have twice the sales per employee than competitors like Sam’s Club. This has resulted in stunning growth for Costco over the years and is a great example of how putting people first can pay off. Patagonia Known for their great outdoors gear you might not realize how much emphasis Patagonia puts on their employees. Patagonia is so well respected for their employee benefits and putting their employees first that it has appeared on the 100 Best Companies to Work For list by Fortune 6 times! Employee turnover happens to be one of the most expensive challenges businesses face today and Patagonia shows clear results here by having 100% (yes, you read that right) of employees return from maternity leave. Talk about an impressive result! Wegmans If Patagonia impressed you, stand back for Wegmans. Wegmans showed up on the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list 22 consecutive years showing tremendous consistency and upholding a strong reputation as an excellent employer. Wegmans doesn’t just stop at employee satisfaction as they are very well known for extremely high customer satisfaction as well. Wegmans has been growing for over 104 years and has shown tremendous success when it enters new markets such as North Carolina or by the fact that its food services alone accounts for nearly 10% of its almost $10 billion in sales. Putting people first is essential for a business. Making it a part of the culture can lead to even greater results. How do you put people first? Let us know your thoughts, you can email us at info@jbandthedoctor.com! If you’re looking for an outside perspective on how best to put people first then take a look at our brand new mastermind and owner advisory boards launching in January of 2024! IVOLVE + THRIVE is a next-level advisory board to help you combat isolation, overwork, and blindspots. If you’re dealing with these challenges as a small business owner, we are here to help! owner advisory boards IVOLVE + THRIVE CLARITY + WORTH + FREEDOM Learn more Did you know we work with professionals and leaders with 2 on 1 coaching that marries the expertise of a Doctor of Psychology and mindset coach with the business savvy of a former Fortune 50 sales executive. We specialize in helping entrepreneurs and professionals like you master your soft skills to evolve you to your greatest potential. To learn more about our coaching you can contact us here! Feel like you need coaching but not sure you can afford the investment in yourself? That’s ok! We have a scholarship available to diverse candidates of need. You can apply for our scholarship for our coaching and our courses here. Not enough time in the day, we get it. Check out our AYOP course, 2x Your Time, right here. We walk through everything from time management and calendar basics to how you can supercharge your days weeks and months through practices and techniques that are grounded in experience and proven by science.
Business lessons we can learn from the stage
Although business and the theater can feel like two totally different arenas there are tremendous lessons we can draw from the theater to business today. In this blog we have compiled a few of the best business lessons we can learn from the stage. It’s not like we staged this, you know! We put together a FREE guide identifying the Top 6 reasons businesses fail and give you actionable steps you can take on every one of these to make sure it’s your competition failing and not you! It’s our free gift to you. Access it here! Let’s jump right into some of our top business lessons we have learned from the stage! 1. Timing matters…a lot In theater, timing is essential to the success of a production. If timing is off it’s like the difference between a comedian telling a joke versus that one person you know. That’s the one, the one with the bad timing and they are the only one laughing at the end of the punchline. On stage, and in business timing is critical to success in our endeavors. 2. Preparation and rehearsal can’t be skipped One of the most common mistakes I see business people make is lack of preparation and rehearsal. In the theater, nobody dares to step onto stage without spending hours (usually hundreds) preparing for their scenes. Yet, in the business world it’s far too common for people to never spend any significant time preparing or rehearsing. Whether it’s for a product pitch or stepping in front of a room of people, preparation and rehearsal are must do’s for success in business. 3. The show must go on Life happens and we get it. In the theater, regardless of what happens, the show must go on! Actor sick, bring in the understudy. Lighting issues, missed cues, makeup snafus…they don’t matter individually relative to the production itself. Business is similar. We need to be resilient and recognize that obstacles are inevitable. It’s our mindset that matters here and it’s one of the most important lessons that we can take from the stage. Our business must go on. Want more lessons from the stage? Let us know your thoughts, you can email us at info@jbandthedoctor.com! Did you know we work with professionals and leaders with 2 on 1 coaching that marries the expertise of a Doctor of Psychology and mindset coach with the business savvy of a former Fortune 50 sales executive. We specialize in helping entrepreneurs and professionals like you master your soft skills to evolve you to your greatest potential. To learn more about our coaching you can contact us here! Feel like you need coaching but not sure you can afford the investment in yourself? That’s ok! We have a scholarship available to diverse candidates of need. You can apply for our scholarship for our coaching and our courses here. Not enough time in the day, we get it. Check out our AYOP course, 2x Your Time, right here. We walk through everything from time management and calendar basics to how you can supercharge your days weeks and months through practices and techniques that are grounded in experience and proven by science.
How to Know When You’re Sacrificing Too Much
We all have trade-offs occur every day. No matter what decisions we make there is a trade-off. For example, let’s say we choose to wake up early to get a strong start to the week. We are accepting that our sleep will be impacted to have more time in the day. Some sacrifices we make are greater than others. For example, we might pull an all-nighter of work to hit a necessary deadline knowing that it will have a huge impact on our overall performance later in the week. How do we know if the sacrifices and trade-offs we make are worth the cost? What if we told you there are signs you could look for that will let you know if it’s a healthy trade off or not? In our blog today we look at a couple of signs you can keep an eye out for to let you know if you’re sacrificing too much! This is a trade-off that’s worth it, 2 minutes of your time to receive our free gift to you! We put together a FREE guide identifying the Top 6 reasons businesses fail and give you actionable steps you can take on every one of these to make sure it’s your competition failing and not you! It’s our free gift to you. Access it here! Sign 1 That You’re Sacrifice Isn’t Worth It Sacrifices and trade-offs often lead to short term impact. Staying up late or waking up early for a day? Short term impact. Staying up late or waking up early for a week or longer? Long term impact. When our sacrifices and trade-offs become detrimental to our health it can be a clear ‘caution’ sign that we need to pay attention to. Keep an eye out for any developing, long term negative impacts that stem from your sacrifices. This could be a clear sign that the sacrifices aren’t worth it. Consider, staying up for 24 hours and driving produces some of the same deficiencies in reaction time as drinking and driving can. Sign 2 That You’re Sacrifice Isn’t Worth It You find yourself unbalanced and unhappy. Sacrifice means you’re giving something up, willingly. However, if the extend of what we give up leads to mental illness such as depression and anxiety, we may be trying to take on too much. There is no personal benefit to being a martyr if you can’t enjoy the results of your sacrifice. Pay attention to your mental health as you make sacrifices and be honest about. What signs do you look for to let you know that a trade-off isn’t worth it? Let us know at info@jbandthedoctor.com Did you know we work with professionals and leaders with 2 on 1 coaching that marries the expertise of a Doctor of Psychology and mindset coach with the business savvy of a former Fortune 50 sales executive. We specialize in helping entrepreneurs and professionals like you master your time, sales, and confidence, to evolve you to your greatest potential. To learn more about our coaching you can contact us here! Feel like you need coaching but not sure you can afford the investment in yourself? That’s ok! We have a scholarship available to diverse candidates of need. You can apply for our scholarship for our coaching and our courses here. Not enough time in the day, we get it. Check out our AYOP course, 2x Your Time, right here. We walk through everything from time management and calendar basics to how you can supercharge your days weeks and months through practices and techniques that are grounded in experience and proven by science.
Implementing Regular Reviews
One of the most common opportunities that professionals can take advantage of more consistent and effective reviews. If you’re wondering why we are talking about reviews in the first week of January, it’s because we set our sights on moving forward in the start of the year but the best way to keep that momentum going is to also look back on a regular basis. Today we wanted to offer a way to implement effective, regular reviews. 6 Methods To Make Sure Your Business Doesn’t Fail Before we discuss our tips, did you know that 70% of businesses will fail? We put together a FREE guide identifying the Top 6 reasons businesses fail and give you actionable steps you can take on every one of these to make sure it’s your competition failing and not you! It’s our free gift to you and you can access it right here. Calendar It The best way to implement a review strategy is to put it on the calendar. We recommend at least 1 review day per quarter, or two full days for the first 6 months. This needs to be a blocked day in the calendar the same way you’d treat a vacation. Block it and do NOT make the mistake of booking anything during that day. Know Your KPIs Key Performance Indicators are exactly what they suggest. Make sure that your review includes the activities that are most important to the growth of your business. If you don’t know these already then take a step back and consider what activity really leads to your goals and put something in place that allows you to track it. Re-Center When we move forward it’s rarely in a straight line. Implementing a regular review means recognizing where we have lost track of our true north. It happens to all professionals and is a top reason it takes longer to achieve goals than we think. Reviews are like pulling out a compass and making sure we are moving in the direction we want to. You’d be surprised at how easy it is to find ourselves off track! How do you implement reviews? Let us know at info@jbandthedoctor.com! Did you know we work with professionals and leaders with 2 on 1 coaching that marries the expertise of a Doctor of Psychology and mindset coach with the business savvy of a former Fortune 50 sales executive. We specialize in helping entrepreneurs and professionals like you master your time, sales, and confidence, to evolve you to your greatest potential. To learn more about our coaching you can contact us here! Feel like you need coaching but not sure you can afford the investment in yourself? That’s ok! We have a scholarship available to diverse candidates of need. You can apply for our scholarship for our coaching and our courses here. Not enough time in the day, we get it. Check out our AYOP course, 2x Your Time, right here. We walk through everything from time management and calendar basics to how you can supercharge your days weeks and months through practices and techniques that are grounded in experience and proven by science.
How to Crush Your New Year’s Goals!
Most of us want to have a better year next year than we did this year. Even if we had the greatest year ever, it’s natural to desire more and aim higher. To help all of you out there looking to crush your new year’s goals, we have 3 very easy to follow tips in the blog below. Check it out! 6 Methods To Make Sure Your Business Doesn’t Fail Before crushing your New Year’s goals, did you know that 70% of businesses will fail? We put together a FREE guide identifying the Top 6 reasons businesses fail and give you actionable steps you can take on every one of these to make sure it’s your competition failing and not you! It’s our free gift to you and you can access it right here. Don’t Set Resolutions Resolutions are broad, grand gestures, that fail for almost everyone. Goals are specific actions you can recommit on every single day. Resolutions do not work and there is a boat load of evidence to prove it. Goals, when put in place are shown to be highly effective. This year, don’t bother setting a resolution, set yourself goals. Get Started Today The very best goals shouldn’t wait. Put them in place and get started on them today. If you’re reading this on publication, that means you’ll have a full week of 2022 to get a head start on your 2023 goals. Ever been in a race with someone that got a head start? It’s a whole lot easier for the person with the head start to win. You can be that person by getting moving on your goals right now. Small Goals Win Ever heard of the BHAG? Big, hairy, audacious goals? Love the idea, in theory. But in practice, it’s the small goals that win every time. Win a minute you can win an hour. Win an hour and you can win the day. Win the day, the week falls into place. So on and so forth. Small goals are easily attainable, provide excitement, energy and traction and our brains are designed to want something now. Feed your brain what it wants, and it’ll be a lot easier to achieve those great things you have in mind. How do you crush your goals? Let us know at info@jbandthedoctor.com! Did you know we work with professionals and leaders with 2 on 1 coaching that marries the expertise of a Doctor of Psychology and mindset coach with the business savvy of a former Fortune 50 sales executive. We specialize in helping entrepreneurs and professionals like you master your time, sales, and confidence, to evolve you to your greatest potential. To learn more about our coaching you can contact us here! Feel like you need coaching but not sure you can afford the investment in yourself? That’s ok! We have a scholarship available to diverse candidates of need. You can apply for our scholarship for our coaching and our courses here. Not enough time in the day, we get it. Check out our AYOP course, 2x Your Time, right here. We walk through everything from time management and calendar basics to how you can supercharge your days weeks and months through practices and techniques that are grounded in experience and proven by science.
How To End Your Year Strong!
Most resolutions don’t last. People get a few weeks into the year, and they slow down, stumble or just plain give up. It’s hard to get started for a lot of people and sustain consistency. It’s also equally hard to keep that consistency up when we approach the finish line. For some people, they can break into a sprint, but for a lot of professionals out there, the holiday season can be very challenging. Thankfully, there are some great tips to help you end your year strong that we’ll be sharing in our blog today! 6 Methods To Make Sure Your Business Doesn’t Fail Before helping out with your end of year pushes, did you know that 70% of businesses will fail? We put together a FREE guide identifying the Top 6 reasons businesses fail and give you actionable steps you can take on every one of these to make sure it’s your competition failing and not you! It’s our free gift to you and you can access it right here. End Your Year Strong by Getting Started on Next Year TODAY Ending the year strong doesn’t mean your focus needs to be on the current year. Many pros and businesses hit their goals well before December. Often that can lead to opportunities to get a head start on next year’s goals. Utilizing the end of the year to springboard into the new year is a fantastic method to make sure you crush your new year! Review Your Relationships to End Your Year Strong Business is never done in a vacuum and relationships are the fuel that keeps your engine revving. Which of your relationships fell off, which strengthened, and which are new? Reviewing and then reaching out to your relationships is an effective strategy to uncover last minute opportunities and future business. End Your Year Strong by Adding a New Goal Sometimes the best way to make sure you finish in a sprint is to leave yourself with no other options. Putting a large goal in front of yourself right at the end of the year can force you to sprint even harder through the holiday season. Identify a goal to put in place before the end of the year and go after it! What are your favorite ways to end the year strong? Let us know at info@jbandthedoctor.com! Did you know we work with professionals and leaders with 2 on 1 coaching that marries the expertise of a Doctor of Psychology and mindset coach with the business savvy of a former Fortune 50 sales executive. We specialize in helping entrepreneurs and professionals like you master your time, sales, and confidence, to evolve you to your greatest potential. To learn more about our coaching you can contact us here! Feel like you need coaching but not sure you can afford the investment in yourself? That’s ok! We have a scholarship available to diverse candidates of need. You can apply for our scholarship for our coaching and our courses here. Not enough time in the day, we get it. Check out our AYOP course, 2x Your Time, right here. We walk through everything from time management and calendar basics to how you can supercharge your days weeks and months through practices and techniques that are grounded in experience and proven by science.
How To Build A Flexible Schedule For Maximum Performance
Great news, you control your day! Or do you? Chances are if you’re an entrepreneur or service based professional you’ve developed a calendar that works for you. Mostly. You may have also picked up some habits that harm you more than they help. Here are a few tips to help you build a schedule with flexibility so you can maximize your performance all day, every day. Before we discuss our tips, did you know that 70% of businesses will fail? We put together a FREE guide identifying the Top 6 reasons businesses fail and give you actionable steps you can take on every one of these to make sure it’s your competition failing and not you! It’s our free gift to you, you can access it right here. Secret 1 – Be more self aware Half of the battle with managing our calendars is recognizing how long it takes us to accomplish something. We’re typically pretty bad at this and deal with performance optimism. It’s the idea that we believe can get more done faster than we actually can. Do yourself a favor. If you want more flexibility in your schedule than add a little extra time for whatever is on your calendar. 60 minute meeting, better make it 70 minutes on the calendar. It’s amazing how much flexibility this will build and additional performance we can get out of the day. Secret 2 – Respect your time and everyone else’s If we try to schedule every minute of every day out we create an environment that will be break under stress. What do we mean by that? Well, life happens and to leave no time for life happening is, in our opinion, a very common and very costly mistake we see professionals make all the time. Plan for things to go wrong and we can find ourselves prepared for this and better able to handle it. Leave no room for life to happen and we all know how that can feel. Like a house of cards teetering and then crashing down. Secret 3 – Set aside time for yourself We aren’t robots, as much as we’d like to be sometimes. We need rest, we need little moments to recuperate. There was a study done on internal salespeople to see who performed the best. The highest performers were the smokers. No, nicotine doesn’t make better salespeople. But wouldn’t you know it, those smokers took a 5-minute break for themselves every 60-90 minutes. That few minutes for ourselves can make an enormous difference in our performance the other 55 or 85 minutes that follows. If we want to have a flexible schedule that allows for maximum performance this is a great way to ensure we can get it done all day long. This blog was inspired by our recent podcast interview with Pearce Cucchissi, a coach that previously served as a special forces Army Ranger! You can listen in to our podcast here, or if you prefer you can also check it out on our Youtube channel right here! Listen to Podcast Watch on Youtube Join our Community We love sharing tips like these in our Entrepreneur Mastery Lab private community. If you’d like to join us and other professionals that are striving to get better every day, you can access the group here! Join now If you’re working on being more effective with how you manage your time, we can help! Our unique 2 on 1 coaching marries the expertise of a Doctor of Psychology and mindset coach with the business savvy of a former Fortune 50 external sales Vice President. We specialize in helping entrepreneurs and professionals like you master your time, sales, and confidence, to evolve you to your greatest potential. To learn more about our coaching you can contact us here! Feel like you need coaching but not sure you can afford the investment in yourself? That’s ok! We have a scholarship available to diverse candidates of need. You can apply for our scholarship for our coaching and our courses here. Not enough time in the day, we get it. Check out our AYOP course, 2x Your Time, right here. We walk through everything from time management and calendar basics to how you can supercharge your days weeks and months through practices and techniques that are grounded in experience and proven by science.