Top Business Owner Mistakes With Serious Consequences and How to Avoid Them!
Running and operating a business comes with its fair share of ups and downs. Owners today have so much on their plates that it’s not uncommon for mistakes to happen. Much of the mistakes we make in business are minor and have relatively limited consequences. Every now and then, however, we make some serious mistakes that have lasting and severe consequences. These are the mistakes that we need to be laser-focused on avoiding to the best of our abilities. Get this right, avoid these mistakes, and you’re likely looking at significantly accelerated growth, sales, and profits in a business. You’ll likely enjoy the work you do a whole lot more too! Decision Making Fatigue One after another, they don’t stop. As owners, regardless of the size of our business, we need to make a series of decisions every day that can have unimaginable consequences (good and bad!) for our businesses. Whether it’s early on in a small business or in the more mature stages of business with complex issues and multiple employees, our decisions have an impact on the business and the people around us! It should come as no surprise then that one of the biggest hurdles owners need to overcome is the fatigue that comes with decision-making. Decision-making fatigue is a deterioration of the quality of decisions we make. As we make more and more decisions and the stress and mental effort that comes with those decisions it’s common for the quality of our decisions to actually suffer. In other words, we’ll make better decisions when we aren’t tired, stressed, and worn out. There was a study done on parole hearings for inmates. The study looked at the decision-making of the judge on how statistically likely they were to release the prisoners at different times of the day. It was found that first thing in the morning and then shortly after a recess for lunch or a snack were the best times of day to be up for a parole hearing and the most likely times of day that the inmates would be granted parole. There was more than a 6x likelihood of release early in the morning rather than later in the day. It’s fairly clear that the decision-making process by the judges was influenced by the stress and effort of ongoing decision-making. This was corrected with proper rest and nutrition but shortly afterwards the inevitable load from the day again began to influence the decision-making of judges. Sources: https://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/apr/11/judges-lenient-break Imagine for a moment your decision-making determined the quality of life of someone in front of you. You’d likely want to make the best decision possible. As business owners, whether we recognize it consciously or not, many of our decisions will have an oversized impact on the people around us including our employees, partners, and even our own families. Unfortunately, decision-making fatigue is a very real and very common mistake owners make regularly. In today’s culture, especially in the United States, overwork is not merely accepted, it’s lauded. Yet overwork is nearly a guaranteed recipe for compromised decision-making. On the bright side, there are a number of ways we can self-correct for decision-making fatigue that are easy to implement and execute on. Here are a few suggestions you can likely implement today. Take Breaks This should be obvious but it’s worth repeating. If you want to save an enormous amount of time, stress and money, take more small breaks more frequently. Healthy Habits Nourish yourself with healthy foods, enough sleep, exercise and methods to reduce stress. Decision making fatigue is at least partially caused by all of the above factors. By controlling what you can you’ll reduce the impact of poor decisions. Prioritize & Limit It seems like common sense but if continuously being put in a position to make decisions increases decision making fatigue, then we should be prioritizing what decisions are actually important to make and limiting our decisions to those. This should help reduce paralysis by analysis, overthinking and ruminating. It’s very hard to give up control and yet stepping back from too many decisions is an absolute game changer for a business owner. Develop Routines The great thing about routines is they put our brains on autopilot. The less we need to think about something the less willpower it takes. Willpower is a finite resource and when our willpower muscle gets tired our form will struggle. Not into the muscle analogy? The more routine you can develop around recurring decisions the less tired you’ll get and the better decisions you’ll make when it really matters. Dependency and Bottlenecks One of the biggest challenges to accelerated growth and ultimately selling a business for maximum value is owner dependency. We all want to be needed. It’s a natural part of being human. We want to be a part of a community and when we are the literal parent of something whether it’s children or a business it’s very difficult to let go and give up control. When we run our business out of this context it creates a fragile situation in which the business is dependent on the owner for critical operations and decision making. For a business to be run effectively it must be able to survive independent of the owner’s direct involvement. When a business needs to run through the owner it creates bottlenecks to accelerated growth. These bottlenecks might show up in many different ways but they almost always hamper the bottom line and they will certainly reduce and seriously discount the valuation of a business. It’s common for the bottlenecks to show up through roles, responsibilities and especially employees. As a small business owner the business may still be highly dependent on you for certain things such as business development, financial management and customer relationships among others. Now picture this…your business is functioning smoothly and suddenly you’re dealt a blow with a major health issue of your own or someone you are close to. You are pulled away from the
Supercharge retention by creating greater engagement in education
When we educate ourselves or someone else, one of the most critical indicators of success will be retention. How long and well do we keep the information we learned? Today, we recognize that higher levels of engagement directly correlate with increased retention and make our efforts at educating ourselves or others significantly more effective. In today’s blog we’ll explore how you can create greater engagement in education to drive incredible retention! You may want to engage with this! 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! Le’ts take a look at how we can create greater engagement in education. Offer Choice and Learning Pathways Much of education has been constructed by the hands of the teacher and often students are left with a model they must follow. By offering choice and learning pathways you can provide options to students on specific lessons they can learn within broader topics. Allowing for students to choose how they will demonstrate their knowledge also provides them with more excitement and enjoyment as they engage with the material. Emphasize Growth Mindsets Failure is ingrained in us as a bad thing. Yet some of the very best learning tends to be driven from failures and mistakes. Emphasizing a growth mindset means that we can and should embrace failure in what we do! Plan and build out exercises where failure is expected at least half the time and celebrated at the same level success is celebrated. Incorporate Active Learning There are many types of learning styles and rather than wax poetic on the various learning methods that are widely used and accepted we’ll instead focus our attention on active learning. Active learning can mean many things and typically will include, group projects, collaboration, interactive discussions and hands-on activities. By integrating this type of learning into traditional lesson planning we can greatly increase engagement across many different types of people and dramatically improve retention. By implementing some of the suggestions above you’ll create much greater engagement whether it’s in your own individual learning or any education you’re offering to others. The best benefit of creating more engagement is you will supercharge retention for anyone involved in the learning process! How do you increase engagement? 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.
3 Easy Tips to Strengthen Your Communication
Communication skills are some of the most important skills we can develop. For many of us, our development of these skills started as children and ended by the time we graduated from school. Yet there are many powerful techniques we can implement that can easily strengthen our communication skills. In this blog we explore 3 easy tips anyone can use to strengthen their communication skills. Have we been clear that we have a free gift that you may be interested in? 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! If you want to strengthen your communication skills then check out these great tips that are easy to start using today! 1. Practice Active Listening Active listening is an incredibly simple concept that anyone can put to practice today. It requires us to pay attention to more than the words that are spoken. We can pay attention to body language, what’s not being said and carefully consider what it is someone is trying to say, not just what they have said, to achieve active listening in our conversations. 2. Reflective Language Reflective language is a way of responding back to someone that allows us to ensure we understand what they are saying. We can do this through statements or questions. A reflective question or statement confirms if we understood what was being said. Implementing reflective language means we don’t take what someone says at face value, we dig deeper to ensure better comprehension. 3. Motivational Interviewing Motivational interviewing is a series of techniques designed to help bring two different viewpoints together. Motivational interviewing can be used to help reframe, to agree with a spin or shift focus onto something to reduce friction. When we communicate with someone and feel like we aren’t getting anywhere this type of communication can be essential to making progress towards a meeting of the minds. What are some easy tips you suggest to strengthen your communication skills? 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 Acquire More Skills
Acquiring new skills is essential for long term business success. As the world globalizes and business evolves it is of utmost importance for us to continue to learn new skills if we’re going to stay ahead of the competition. This can include skills like learning new technology, basic communication skills and even technical expertise in different subject matter. But we often get asked what the best ways are to learn new skills, and, in our blog, we explore some simple ways on how you can acquire more skills. If you don’t know what skills to focus on, we have a free gift that you may be interested in! 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! Attend Conferences and Workshops Yes, you can find almost anything on YouTube, Reddit and Quora today. However, skill development is much easier when you have an ordered way to learn the skill. Conferences and workshops will give you a structure and a community of other people interested in the same skills as you. They are a great way to learn new skills quickly. Find a Mentor or Coach Great mentors and coaches can help you learn more skills more quickly and effectively than trying to do it on your own. Mentor’s can show you how they picked up skills and the lessons they learned. Coaches can help facilitate your skill development by raising your awareness of where there are opportunities to develop new skills or strengthen existing skills. Podcasts, Books and Courses In a world full of resources there is no lack for ways to learn. Finding solid podcasts, books or courses from credible sources are a great way to continue to develop new skills. In a shameless plug we suggest you check out our podcast or some of our courses currently offered! You can check out our podcast here and the link to our course is at the end of the blog. What’s the next skill you want to learn? 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 Execute a Plan and Why it’s so Hard to do!
Big goals for 2023, am I right?! Most people don’t set small goals. After all, small goals don’t exactly feel like they will be life altering and exciting. Small goals certainly don’t equate to feeling like you won the lottery. When we develop big goals, the next step is to put a plan in place. Unfortunately, most people are terrible at executing on their plans and implementing them. In this blog we’ll share with you some tips on the best way to execute on a plan and why it’s so hard to do. 6 Methods To Make Sure Your Business Doesn’t Fail Before making any more plans, 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. Why is it so hard to execute on a plan Consistency and default behaviors are why we struggle here. Most of us fail to be consistent and this is a top reason why we can’t execute on our plans. Life happens and our consistency goes out the door. What’s really happening here is we are reverting to our default behaviors. Our brains don’t ever forget our defaults. They stay in the back of our minds, lurking and waiting like some creeper. When we get off track it’s natural for our brains to trigger our default modes and behaviors. Just like that, our plan can get off track. Since this is totally natural and impossible to eliminate, it’s very difficult to execute on a plan. Plan Execution, Tip 1 Review the actions that will help you achieve your plan. The only way to manage to our brains defaults is to be aware of when we start to go back to our old modalities and behaviors. The best way to keep up our defense is to review and stay hyper aware of what we need to do to execute on our plan. This means, constant and, yes, consistent review of our days to make sure we are staying on track. A compass works a lot better if we use it every day instead of every few weeks or months! Plan Execution, Tip 2 Embrace the boring. Yes, you read that right. A lot of the time, plan execution requires us to focus on basic and repetitive tasks. While most of us don’t thrive on repeating the same things over and over again with excellence, time and again history has proven that those of us that work the basics the best are the most likely to execute on achieving our larger plans and goals. Are you a rockstar at executing on plans? 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 Say No
Do you struggle with saying no? It’s a common issue for many people. Especially if you are being asked by people you don’t want to disappoint! For those of you that can use some help let’s dive into a few ways you can improve on and learn how to say no! 6 Methods To Make Sure Your Business Doesn’t Fail Before we go into saying ‘no,’ 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. Set Boundaries Up Front A great challenge with saying no is it feels like we’re rejecting someone else. One of the easiest ways to avoid this is to set boundaries early and up front. That way if you need to say ‘no,’ you have already communicated what your boundaries are and use those as a mutually understood reason. Don’t Try to Explain Saying no is hard. It can come with a need to explain as well. To get better at saying ‘no,’ do it quickly, cleanly and don’t try to explain. It usually is unnecessary. Keeping to a short and simple ‘no’ will make it easier than also trying to come up with an explanation. Ask For Time to Decide When someone asks you something you want to say ‘no’ to, we can often feel pressure to respond immediately. By changing your default response to ‘let me think about it,’ you give yourself the chance to really make a better decision and be thoughtful in your response. What are your tips for saying ‘no?’ Let us know in the lab! Join our community 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.
3 Tips To Effectively Use Creativity in Marketing
If you want to get heard today, you need to be able to cut through the noise. One of the best ways to do that? Be creative! Creativity and innovation are the fuel for your messaging and branding. In this blog we offer 3 tips to be effective with creativity in your marketing. Embrace Experimentation and Failure The greatest challenge to being inventive and creative in our approaches is we never can know exactly what will or won’t work. Being willing to embrace failure and continue to experiment will allow you to dig deeper into your creativity and build something innovative and effective. If you’re too afraid to get creative you’ll limit your effectiveness. Push Boundaries What do the greatest and most memorable of us have in common? They push boundaries. Pushing boundaries allows you to see how far you can take your creativity and allows you to truly set yourself and your business apart. To be most effective in marketing you have to be willing to push boundaries on occasion. Be Contrarian Questioning the status quo is a fantastic way to inspire creativity in your marketing. One of the most effective ways to make waves is to take an established belief and turn it on it’s head. This could be serious or satirical in nature but it’s sure to create some waves! How do you make sure your marketing is creative and effective? Let us know, we still accept snail mail if you ask for our address politely! 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 be authentic without being cancelled
Cancel culture is very real and can be very dangerous. No one is immune to the court of public opinion and everyone out there faces a risk of censorship or, worse, full on cancelling anytime they put themselves out there. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be authentic and shouldn’t voice our opinion, but there is absolutely a time and a place to be authentic. Here are 3 tips on how to be authentic without being cancelled. 6 Methods To Make Sure Your Business Doesn’t Fail Before we address cancel culture, did you know we have a free giveaway for 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 and you can access it right here. #1 Pick your battles wisely It’s great that you want to be authentic but being authentic doesn’t mean sharing anything and everything you think and/or feel. It’s important to recognize what you really stand for and are willing to put yourself out there for. Since cancel culture is real, we you only take full on public stands on the beliefs that are most important to you. #2 Know your audience Having a strong opinion is almost certainly going to warm you up to certain people and turn you off to others. Make sure you know who your audience is and don’t try to speak to an audience that doesn’t share a common belief or common ground. #3 Be empathetic A lot of people struggle with cancel culture because they can’t empathize with someone else’s stance or opinion. If you do face scrutiny for what you said, it’s important to take time to understand why someone is feeling the way they are and to take ownership of your word choice. Perhaps what you communicated is not what you said. Not only do you need to be prepared to take ownership of that you also need to acknowledge the other view. Would public speaking lessons benefit you? Let us know in our private Facebook community, the EML! You can join here! Join our community Or we can you with our unique 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.