Entrepreneur – Page 4 – thoughtLEADERS, LLC: Leadership Training for the Real World

6 Steps to Achieving Your Goals in 90 Days

June 27, 2022/0 Comments/in Books, Communications, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Sales /by Trevor Jones

Achieving your goals is all about taking tangible steps every day. If you change your time horizon and ask yourself six simple questions, you’ll find you’re achieving your goals more rapidly than you ever thought possible.

Today’s post is by David Horsager, author of THE DAILY EDGE: Simple Strategies to Increase Efficiency and Make an Impact Every Day (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

I met an eighty-eight-year-old man named Orville at my health club. I first noticed him one afternoon while checking in at the front desk. He was stumbling along behind me. There was no way this man, slowly shuffling along the path to the gym, was going to do any kind of meaningful workout! Orville patiently moved, inch by inch, into the weight-training area, picked up some dumbbells, and, with an audible grunt, started his routine.

One day I happened to see Orville out of the corner of my eye, stepping onto one of the treadmills. I was across the room, and he was already reaching for the start button. Too far away to help him, I just stood there and watched. As the treadmill came to life, Orville took one small step, and then another. The machine picked up speed, but miraculously, so did his legs. Within a minute, he hit full stride, running like a man half his age!

At this point the reality of the situation dawned on me. Orville’s problem was not with his legs, it was with his vision. He couldn’t see where he was going. Though Orville did nothing to cause his vision problem, it is a powerful example of how limited we are when we lack clarity and vision.

How often do leaders and employees lack clarity in their communication, and as a result, drive forward ambiguous goals?

I think 90 days is the best timeframe for most goals. A year is too long – see how few people keep New Year’s Resolutions? Twenty-one days is too short for most real change. However, in 90 days, I was able to lose 33 pounds! And I’ve seen people triple their sales in 90 days.
That’s why I like the 90-Day Quick Plan. It is a strategy for clarifying how you are going to achieve your most vital goals.

Pick an area of your business or personal life that you’d like to address, and then ask six questions. Don’t wait to start because the plan should take less than thirty minutes to create. All you need to do is ask and answer these six questions:

Building Creative Stamina: Three Keys to Strength Training for Adults

May 23, 2022/1 Comment/in Balanced Lifestyle, Books, Career, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership, Training /by Trevor Jones

Creativity is a skill that can be built like any other. Understanding your passion and challenging the voices in your head that say “no” are a great way to start.

Today’s post is by Jane Dunnewold, author of Creative Strength Training (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

Maybe it’s disingenuous to say that each of us has the potential to be a creative genius. Gifts of personality are dispensed in varied measures at birth. Humans are tangled balls of social conditioning, reactions to environment, and serendipity. Life isn’t fair. Luck plays a part. We’ve all heard someone say, “I was in the right place at the right time” or “I never get lucky.”

As far as creativity is concerned, most people believe you’ve either got it or you don’t. I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard someone say wistfully, “I’m not creative.” When I hear a statement like that, I think to myself, “No one has ever shown you where to begin.”

Because the fact is, creativity, like any skill, can be cultivated. It takes a healthy combination of self-knowledge and stamina.

Athletes have an advantage: prescribed methods of building stamina, because physical prowess is revered by our culture. Hire a personal trainer and you’ll start with a series of exercises done repetitively – gradually adding reps as the body gains strength. Exercise is specific, varied, and involves what’s called cross training. One day a session of running to work cardio. Next time? Yoga to maximize flexibility. A steady, balanced program of activity keeps the human machine functioning at its optimal level.

So what about the rest of us? How can we engage creatively with what we care about – whether it’s a job or an avocation? And just as important – how can we identify what works against building creative stamina in every aspect of our lives?

I teach artists how to build stamina through what I call “creativity strength training” but the fact is, the lessons apply to everyone.

Here are three aspects of thinking more creatively each of us can embrace.

The Inner Rebel

Scaling Up From Individual to Team

February 16, 2022/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Entrepreneur, Sales, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

When scaling your consulting firm up from an individual to a team, you’ll have to decide whether to hire contractors or employees. Learn the pros and cons of each.

When you want to grow your consulting firm, you’re probably going to have to bring on additional people. There’s only so much of you to go around. Make deliberate choices about whether the people you bring on will be contractors or employees. Ensure those individuals’ interests are aligned with yours.

If you’re going to bring on contractors, you don’t run into all the employment and tax issues and they’re going to be a more flexible workforce. The downside is they can leave suddenly and they don’t always share your personal interests.

If the people you bring on are employees, they’re dedicated to the work, but they come along with a lot of administrative issues you’re going to have to deal with. If you need someone who’s fully committed to building your firm but that person’s only interest is part-time work to supplement their income, you’re not going to be happy with that result.

Ensure interests are aligned between you and the people you bring on. A lot of times I get people who say they want to work with me, and we run a training firm. They’ll tell me, “Well Mike, when you can’t do the training session, just throw me that gig.” The problem is, I don’t need people for bandwidth to do the training. I need salespeople. That relationship won’t work out, so I have to hire different people.

I’ve chosen a structure where I have contractors. I don’t want to deal with the overhead. I don’t want to deal with the administrative issues. It’s great that I have contractors because I don’t deal with those issues. The downside is, sometimes I struggle to get my contractors’ attention and have them focus on building my business versus other interests they’re pursuing.

Know the different benefits and drawbacks of contractors and employees. Make sure you choose deliberately to drive the outcome you’re looking for.

Want more weekly consulting tips? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start improving your decision-making strategies. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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Staying Connected With Clients

February 9, 2022/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Entrepreneur, Sales, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

As a consultant, your relationships with your clients are invaluable. Learn a few strategies for maintaining your client relationships.

Client relationships are the lifeblood of your business. Be deliberate about maintaining them. Regular contact will keep you top of mind. Beware of excessive contact; they’re going to ignore you or block you if you’re in their inbox too much. Find excuses to reach out to them like, “Hey I read an article and I thought of you,” or “I heard about a cool new technology and I thought you might be interested in it.” Send these notes and leave it at that. Don’t try and sell during these interactions. They know you eventually want to sell them something. Just focus on being helpful and good things are going to come.

I have one client who Read more

Differentiating Your Consulting Business

February 2, 2022/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Entrepreneur, Sales, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Learn the importance of communicating what sets your consulting firm apart from your competition.

When you run a consulting firm, you have to answer one very important question. What makes you special? If you can’t articulate what sets you apart from all the other consulting firms out there, you’ll be hard pressed to win business away from them. You’re going to have trouble winning the bid when other firms are in the mix. Have a clear statement about why you’re differentiated. It’s that differentiation that will enable you to compete on quality instead of being in a race to the bottom on price. Read more

5 Project Management Lessons from Walking Across Spain

January 31, 2022/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Entrepreneur, Leadership, Project Management /by Trevor Jones

Whether it’s knowing what you need and what you don’t on a project or knowing how to manage conflict effectively, a long 500 mile stroll can help you build these skills.

A few summers ago, I hiked the ancient Camino de Santiago trail across Spain. It was the best month of my life for many reasons. Along with a lot of other great things I got by walking almost 500 miles, it also taught me some valuable project management lessons that I can use at work.

Less is More

When you are carrying everything you need for a month on your back, you learn to be very smart with differentiating what you need versus what you want. Variety in clothing colors and styles drives complexity and weight in packing a backpack. By the end of the trip, I found that I used 20% of the clothes I packed 80% of the time, and the rest was dead weight. I ended up throwing away a lot of the “I want” clothes and just washing and wearing the “I need” clothes more.

LESSON – As I scope future projects at work, I will ruthlessly force myself to differentiate between what is essential to deliver well, and strip out all the “nice to have” parts of the project that aren’t absolutely required.

Someone Has Probably Done this Before

An amazing thing about the Camino de Santiago is that people have been walking that same trail for over a thousand years as part of a Christian pilgrimage. Whenever I got a blister or a twisted ankle, I realized that hundreds of people probably had that exact same problem at the exact same place and got through it somehow. When I walked by the 800 year-old ruin of a hostel for medieval pilgrims, I realized they probably dealt with the same loud snoring and other problems that today’s pilgrims face. My guide book had the following quote from the journal of a German peregrino in the 1400s that could still be written today – “The women (nuns) in the hostel yell at the pilgrims a lot. But the food is good.”

LESSON – Whenever I start a new project at work, I will seek to learn from the experience of others who have done similar projects in the past.

Know When to Pull the Fire Alarm

Is Your Team Built to Last?

January 3, 2022/0 Comments/in Balanced Lifestyle, Books, Communications, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Trevor Jones

Our teams are under tremendous pressure. That pressure creates stress which diminishes performance. You can build a more resilient team through some simple leadership behaviors.

Today’s post is by Jon Wortmann, thoughtLEADERS instructor and author of Hijacked by Your Brain. He’s our primary instructor for our Building Leadership Resilience course.

Let’s imagine that you are in a unique position. Your team has the talent it needs. Your organization has a strategy that continues to work with a plan that will adapt to your competitor’s actions. You have enough cash to handle the changes in your markets. Your team is ready to work hard and the energy in your offices has never been better. There’s only one question left to answer: is your team built to last?

The problem with our global economy, political uncertainty, and reactive media is that too many of us are living at our edges. We work hard. Our kids’ schedules make us look like our schedules are calm. We play a lot. We travel constantly. We are on our phones frenetically. This means that our brains are always paying attention to something—until they can’t.

In the hot seats of Humvees looking for IEDs or the turrets of tanks, our service men and women rotate out every half hour to 90 minutes. Most of us can only concentrate for 40 minutes at a time, but we expect our teams to start early with staff meetings, handle conference calls on international schedules, and respond to emails at all hours. Our brains are not built for the constant stimulation.

So how do we stay focused and mentally healthy when our expectations of ourselves and our teams to produce keep us under constant pressure?

Give people freedom

Your ideal schedule may not match the people on your team. In a study where students were given control over their time, they reported higher happiness, more role clarity, and less overload. How much would happy teammates who knew their job and felt like they could handle it be worth to your organization?

Learn to measure stress

Are You Becoming a Leadership Dinosaur?

December 20, 2021/0 Comments/in Career, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Trevor Jones

Leadership is a skill that requires constant practice. The world changes and brings new challenges every day. How can you ensure you’re staying fresh as a leader and not going the way of the dinosaur?

Leadership abilities can grow stale and out of date. While most leaders have good intentions, and want to do a great job, the early excitement for the position can quickly turn into frustration from the demands.

Leadership isn’t for the faint of heart, and it isn’t ‘learned’ once you’ve attended a leadership conference. It is a challenging skill that must evolve with your personal growth and a changing workforce.

Make a choice to be the leader who is continually growing and maturing in leadership abilities and new skills for leading the team. This podcast will provide insight on whether you might be going the way of the leadership dinosaur and how you can turn that around.

Here at thoughtLEADERS, I’m fortunate to work with some incredibly bright people. Maureen Metcalf is one of them. She recently discussed the topic of staying fresh as a leader with Steve Caldwell at Manager Mojo. They got together on his podcast to discuss how to keep yourself from going the way of the dinosaur. Listen to the podcast here:

Four Ways to Become a Complete Leader

November 15, 2021/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Career, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

Stop beating yourself up for what you don’t do well—be a complete leader. Great leaders build processes that leverage their teammates’ strengths.

Today’s guest post is by Xavier Naville, author of The Lettuce Diaries: How a Frenchman Found Gold Growing Vegetables in China (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

The caller ID stated “Mike.” The phone was on the fourth ring. I held it in front of me, watching the screen, mouth dry, sitting at my desk, thinking, “Here it goes again. He’s going to speak Chinese and I won’t understand.”

Creative Food, the vegetable-processing company I had started in China the year before, was on the verge of bankruptcy. Every project I initiated had failed. All the foreign experts I had hired had left. My operations were in such bad shape that my own customers, who included big fast-food chains like KFC and Pizza Hut asked my new recruits why they had come aboard a ship that was sure to sink. On that day, once I finally answered the phone, I had to ask Mike to repeat himself several times. Read more

Is Your Executive Team Stressed? Then Move!

September 20, 2021/0 Comments/in Balanced Lifestyle, Books, Communications, Entrepreneur, Leadership /by Trevor Jones

Our brains are under constant assault from stressors. To reduce the amount of stress you feel and to improve your resilience, move. Move around physically. Exercise. Walk while on conference calls. Move. Movement has huge benefits in terms of stress reduction and resilience.

Today’s guest post is by Jon Wortmann, thoughtLEADERS principal and author of Hijacked by Your Brain. He’s our primary instructor for our Building Leadership Resilience course.

A data breach impacting millions. A failure of your core systems due to too much volume leaving users stranded. Two key executives leaving without successors in place.

If you are a leader, imagining each of the aforementioned, true, situations, is enough to double your heart rate. And it should. Thinking about attacks, major human errors, and poor planning triggers the region of your brain that causes stress.

Your amygdala, which I call your alarm, is a tiny, almond shaped region in the middle, left, and right sides of your brain. Bears have alarms. So do iguanas. Our ancestors a thousand years ago did too. Animals and old-timers needed their alarms to stay safe. To avoid danger, they had to be able to run and hide from nastier creatures or avoid the wrong food or water.

Our problem today is that too many moments in life feel like a Sabre-tooth tiger approaching, as we sit safely in our offices, drive comfortably in our cars, and have full fridges of healthy, nutritious food (in addition to cake, wine, and cheese).

That’s why you and your execs are stressed. Their alarms are on all the time. The risk from hackers has never been higher. Our technology is more powerful and more complicated than ever, and only continues to become more so of each. Our teams are made of independent, smart colleagues who will take a better job. As we think about these realities, unlike danger from which you can fight or flee, we need modern solutions. So many of our stressors are stuck in our head and we don’t know what to do.

What is also common with our ancestors is that they too sought relief from the things that stressed them out. What used to be the purview of shaman and healers is now the focus of neuroscientists and applied psychologists. Many of the answers that the ancients discovered intuitively, we now have empirical data to back up. You don’t have to let the stress you feel last. You can inoculate yourself from the real triggers that may, in fact, get worse in the years to come.

How?

Why You Shouldn’t Rush Into a Business Partnership – 5 Factors to Consider

August 9, 2021/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Career, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Too often, entrepreneurs seek business partners for the wrong reasons, from skills to capital. Whether leading a startup or growing organization, here’s how to avoid making a bad decision.

Today’s post is by Patrick Burke, author of The 10 Biggest Business Mistakes And How To Avoid Them (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

“Do I need a business partner?” I’ve been a business adviser for more than 40 years and this is one of the most common questions entrepreneurs ask, whether they are starting their first business or expanding an existing one.

Holding onto as much of your company’s ownership as possible and sharing it only when absolutely necessary is simple logic. But entrepreneurs often succumb to the emotional need to partner. Though by nature an independent and confident group, they start tossing ownership around with little or no regard for its current or eventual value.

So whenever I’m asked that question, I remind them that there’s no Rorschach test for what a successful business partnership looks like. Too often, you may think the inkblot looks like an opportunity, while your partner sees only obstacles. It’s an extremely tough chasm to bridge. But if you’re seriously considering a partnership, ask yourself these five questions as your guide: Read more

Which Comes First: The Entrepreneur or the Company’s Brand?

July 19, 2021/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Career, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Learn how your personal brand and your company brand can influence each other.

Today’s post is by Lida Citroën, author of Control the Narrative (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

Where do personal and company brands intersect? Should an entrepreneur seek to establish their own name first, or focus on the company brand to launch? Unlike the chicken/egg predicament, when the entrepreneur builds their personal brand first, establishing their presence and representing their vision, passion, talents and mission, the company brand becomes proof of that vision and an element of fulfilling their mission. Read more