The CEO Elite

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Transition, Loss, and A Reckoning

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Photo by @monisilvestre via @Pexels

We are quickly coming to the end of the first half of 2019. You have not heard much from me this year as I have been dealing with the illness and loss of my father. The amount of emotional strength and mental capacity required to support this transitional time, not just for myself by for all the others affected by this, has been challenging and, at the same time, solidifying for our relationships. This year I have lost one parent to cancer and the other to dementia. One gone from this world and the other quickly leaving their past reality. All I can tell you is that having close family and great friends have made this painful time much, much easier to bear.

I have also been on another path of transition this year, not just the journey of life, love, and loss, but in my business. Almost a year ago I disbanded the last CEO Elite council, even though over the previous two years, 100% of the members that stayed with the program had met or exceeded their goals for their business. It was working for them, but not for me. I could hear the words I use for my students ringing loudly for myself:  “If you are not making money in your business, you basically have an expensive hobby.” By the end of the semester, the students will be completing this sentence as I drill this concept into their minds for their future business launch. And, here I was, creating hundreds-of-thousands of dollars in new business for my clients, but not for myself. So I closed it down to discover what was not working.

This past year has had some great successes, new programs, new clients, new opportunities. It has also had some challenging work, income decline, loss of focus, and feeling like a fraud. Those of you that know me well, know that I look at everything as a possible way to create new learning for others. I learn to teach. For example, everything I have learned to help my children grow up has been lessons I can apply to help my clients grow their business. So here is what I discovered over that last year that changed my business and will help you grow your business as well.

I Couldn’t Do It For Myself

The things I was able to do for my clients I could not do for myself. I could not hold myself accountable, I could not see my path clearly, I could not see what was not working, I could not build my own council and hope someone else would run it for me with the skill I had. My business was failing because I could not do for myself the same amazing things I was able to do for so many other people.

I Need To Listen To My Clients

“I was hoping for more of you,” was the input I got from an introductory meeting I had held for the CEO Elite. This introductory meeting was to help guests feel out what the peer-driven council would be like, but with unvetted guests, it was not as powerful as I had hoped. I thought that getting into the vetted group would help those people experience that expertise, but it was still more of me, the business strategy expert, they wanted. It sounds simple; they said they wanted more and I should have just given them more, but I didn’t believe them. It was my blind spot.

Own It

I am great at what I do and people come to get me to do that for them, but I don’t feel that it is enough. I have the “imposter syndrome”, like so many other people. I have seen this in most of my clients in some aspect of their business or another. In my experience, it shows up as a bigger problem in more women than men. The problem with this is people don’t hire people that don’t believe in themselves to the core. I come across as confident, knowledgable, and experienced. If someone had said to me, “you don’t believe in yourself” I would not have understood how they thought that was true. What I learned is that the core belief is different than the facade belief. I am confident, knowledgable, and experienced, but each step up the complexity level put me on new ground. I had to learn more and I didn’t feel the expert any longer. There was always someone better and more experienced at what I wanted to do or be.

Pulling It Together

So how did I reckon my inner knowledge with my inner beliefs? Like a building with a beautiful exterior, people could see in the windows to my core, and they saw an empty building. “I’m not an empty building, I am full.” That is what I had to work on. I had to fill my empty building with inner work to ensure that I showed up confident, capable and willing to do the work that I was called to do. It’s actually harder work than just getting the details complete. It is harder because it is not visible. I could not see it for myself. I needed to have someone else to give me insight and clues as to what was going to work better. I had to spend time trying new things, learning new concepts, working with new people, investing in me. These are the kind of things that, to me, feel like weakness. But the stronger I became at seeing what was unseeable, the less weak, or incapable I felt about having to do the work. In fact, the people I most respect and admire, spend time doing their inner work too. The people I know that struggle with any part of their lives, often refuse to do any of this work for themselves.

Am I an expert at helping myself grow? No, I leave that expertise to others to help me find my way. Have I learned anything to help my clients? You bet I have. I have new tools, new insights, new stories, and a new perspective on what my clients want and what they need to be even more successful in their business and life. The good part is, now I am growing with them so I can continue to be the expert in their lives too.

If you and your team are working to create your growth path, this is the perfect time to have a business strategist come in and help set that path for you. If you are the CEO of that team, then I am the advisor and confidante you need, that keeps you confident, accountable, focused and able to do the work you are called to do in your business. After all, I didn’t accumulate all this knowledge and experience to keep it all to myself, I am a teacher, let me share my wealth with you. 

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Why Respect Affects Your Bottom-line

Respect Definition

Respect is what we give to and hope to receive from others. With respect comes an understanding of someone else’s’ perspective, choices, values, and priorities. We can give respect without agreeing with others perspective, but we cannot get respect without understanding the value of someone else’s life.

Respect is usually given as a result of getting to know and understand someone, which usually means we personally know them. In this age of technology, social media, and virtual connections it is more and more likely that we will have connections we have built a level of respect for without ever meeting that person face-to-face.

Respect Foundations

I believe respect comes in different levels of intensity and is mostly tied to how much we think we know about a person.

Level 1 – Just met you

When we meet someone, the level of respect we can give them and expect from them is determined by the etiquette of our society. Anything from acceptable personal space and phone manners,  to how to queue for coffee are all a form of respect. Not understanding someone else’s social norms means we can sometimes see their actions as offensive or that we are not accepted because they don’t see our action as appropriate.

Level 2 – Acquaintance

Those people you know, like and trust that you have met several times at different networking events, at the office, or in common locations, like the neighbours house. These people are not yet friends that you have invited to your home and can be thought of as acquaintances. They don’t know that your mother is sick or how many children you have, but will always say, “hi” when they see you in public. Respect for these people and from these people comes from how consistent you are when you see each other. Do you make eye contact, do you remember what was said the last time you met, do you remember their name. If not, they are more like strangers you just met; no expectation of familiarity is required and no respect beyond level 1 is earned.

Level 3 – Friends and Family

Friends and family have developed a lot of respect for you and you for them for some aspect of who they are. Especially friends, who are not required to stay with you for a lifetime of friendship. A family member may forgive transgressions that lower their respect for you and visa-versa, but friends can simply walk away, as they are not likely to see you at the next family gathering. This level of friendship goes deeper than how you show up. Respect is often tied to your family’s respect level, your public image, your results in competition, school, or on the job. This level of respect takes longer to earn and is harder to repair if lost.

Level 4 – Close Family and Besties

A close family member or a life-long best friend is someone you love, no matter what. This is the highest level of respect you can earn and takes a lifetime to build. It is less fragile than Level 3 respect, but once broken is likely not repairable. This respect comes from consistent behaviour with expected outcomes. If you can know for sure someone will show up and behave in a consistent and expected way, you can count on their actions. Because of this, people that have level 4 respect create respect for others by giving a referral or testimonial of their trust in that person. Sometimes respect is a result of simply being under their influence, being seen with them can transfer respect through proximity. What is seen by others is that, “you must have something of value if this person is being seen with you.” Their respect is transferable on a level 2 scale and sometimes a level 3, without you having to create even the simplest relationship.

How to Lose Respect

So where in business do we expect to be respected, and for what? The place our trust is most often violated happens in wasting someone else’s time. Somehow, some people believe it is OK to be late, cancel an appointment just before a meeting, or show up unprepared. In general, without a really good reason, this is unacceptable behaviour. We all know “shit happens” and there are times when being late or not making a meeting are legitimate problems. Since the only resource we cannot buy more of is time, wasting someone’s time is, I believe, the number one way to lose their respect for you.

How to Gain Respect

The best way to gain respect is to go through the levels of respect over time and build a relationship that includes knowledge of the other person, and understanding of their needs and wants, acceptance of their differences, and a close connection that is built on open communications and trust.

Why Bother?

Respect is a social capital that can be used to create valuable relationships and connections with people that can help us build and grow our businesses and make a difference in our lives. Don’t waste this resource you have. Give respect to get respect.

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Three Signs Your Business is Ready to Take on Employees

Hire new employee

Small business owners often say to me, “I could really use someone else but I’m not sure I’m ready.” There are so many things to think about when hiring someone into your business, the first being, how do I know I really need someone else. Here are three signs that your business needs employees.

Intended Growth

The most important sign a business will need employees is that the business is actively looking to grow. A small, one person business may never need to take on an employee if growth and leverage are not in their goals. But, if growth is your goal then doing more with no more time means that you will have to start the process of evaluating how you can use another person (or people) to make you more money or save you time.

Turn Down Work

A clear sign a small business is ready to take on employees is when they have to turn down work because they are too busy. I have heard many small business owners complain that they cannot grow because they simply do not have enough time to do their current work let alone take on the extra work of training new people or handling more clients. They want growth, but they stop at actually doing the work to make the growth happen.

The Ownership Role

When a small business needs the CEO to step into their role full time, so that they can do the work that creates more business, the owner then needs to have someone else do the work they had previously been responsible for. This means they need to find other employees to take on their offloaded duties. Often small business owners feel they are the only ones that can do certain work a certain way and therefore cannot offload it to another, less experienced person. The challenge is, when a business is in growth mode and more growth is expected and wanted, the business owner will have to give up more of the work they did as a solopreneur so that they can make the company more money. After all, it does not make sense for a small company to pay the CEO to do work that they can get an employee to do at half the wage.

If more clients, sales, and growth is in your future, then more employees will be the key to accomplishing your goals.

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What Happens During Transition Determines Where You End Up (Good or Bad)

In the immortal lyrics of The Clash’s song Should I Stay or Should I Go,  “This indecision’s bugging me”.

One of the toughest things about business is the decision making. It often feels like one wrong decision and your ‘toast’, ‘the game is over’, ‘the fat lady is singing’. OK, too many metaphors, but I feel the looming outcome of a bad decision can stop many from making any decision at all.

If I go there will be Trouble – If I stay there will be Double

Recently, I have been in a transition.  I have made some decisions around my focus for the next 1 to 5 years. I used a tool from Warren Buffet described in a book I am reading [Daniel H. Pink: When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing] that took me through evaluating the 25 things I want to accomplish in the second half of my life and then narrowed it down to the top five priorities for now. Even with this type of clarity, it was still unclear to me what had to change to make these 5 core priorities my only focus. Do I give up everything I have built to put one of those five at the top of my list of five? Do I try to restart some of the programs I’ve let go of, to get back some of the successes I’ve had in the past that align with my top five? If I chose one of these, what happens with the choices I’ve already made? I really feel that if I go forward without clarity on the ‘what’ then I will be in trouble and if I don’t move forward soon I will equally be in trouble (or as the song says, “there will be double” [trouble]).

The Direction I Choose

One thing I have always had going for me is that my clarity comes from faith. Faith that the direction I choose, no matter what it is, will result in my future experience. “Well, dah!”, you might be thinking. The key here is that my future has always been where I want to be. Maybe because I am happy with a lot of different outcomes, or maybe because what I put my mind to I make happen. If the latter is the case then it doesn’t matter which choice is the right answer, it matters which one I choose. I can choose to follow a path, maybe one I described above or one I have not envisioned yet, or I can choose to not follow a path. By abstaining from choice I inadvertently make a choice that has the same consequences: I will end up going in the direction of my non-choice. 

The Business Key

Decision making is based on the knowledge and understanding of what choices are available. Making great decisions cannot be simply choosing from A or B if the choice turns out to be ‘E’ (not even C or D). If you have never invited the opportunity to explore ‘E’ then how will you get to the place where you make the best choice? I believe, from what I have experienced, we often rush to make a choice from options that do not adequately meet our needs. We can tell which of the two or three are better than the others, but we still feel challenged to make the call because unconsciously we know that none of the other three were the exact right choice.

So, over the past 3 weeks, I have been spending time looking for the exact right choice. I don’t usually take this long to make a decision. For me this feels like a failure, not making a decision. In fact, I would have made a decision already, if the opportunity had not disappeared at the time I was saying yes. This is likely because the universe knew it was not my option ‘E’, it was just better than the other options. Since then I have spoken with mentors, friends, peers, and spent time simply working on things that are my top five. From that has come an awakening to a new perspective on my business. For me, it was relatively sudden and came during meditation. For you, it may be subtle and repeated.

Sometimes we have to ride the wave of confusion and do the work to uncover the options that are not clear at first. If you feel like none of your options will result in an exceptional outcome than you too are likely trying to make a decision without all the information. Go find your option ‘E’.

Postscript

If you were wondering what my ‘awakening’ was, it was that; My business is not the business to grow & sell, it is the business that helps others get to a salable business. My business is me. Focusing on me in my business has never been my goal, but it shows up, over and over. I have had people say, “I want more of you”, “I was hoping to work directly with you”, “are you the one that does this work”, etc. The universe has been trying to tell me this for years and I keep working on building a corporation I can sell wondering why I can create millions of dollars for my clients’ corporations but not for my own. Hmmm, now I see it. Option ‘E’ choice made – Focus on ‘Me’ and my personal service as the product.

 

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Problematic Employees Stop Change and Growth

 

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Running a business is way more than just doing the work. What happens when someone in your business is not doing their work? I have had several clients at a place in their business where they are growing, but employees in their business are not growing with them. It is weird to start seeing these employees become more entitled and embedded in the way work “was done” in the past. They have an argument and excuse why their old way is better. One of the funniest statements from this type of employee is when they say their work is so complicated that it requires extra work on their part to meet the requirements. Work that someone else cannot do. If someone’s job is so complicated that no one else can do it, it cannot change, or it takes too long, then either they are unwilling to change, they are incompetent, or there really is a problem with your business systems.

For my clients, it was all three. No one else could do the work because the person had made it so complicated it was not efficient or functional. They were also unwilling to change because it meant giving up control. This resulted in broken systems in their business. The options? Option 1– Fire them or Option 2– get them on board.

If you want to get them onboard and ensure they are really part of the new team you need to allow them to take control of the change in their job.

  • Give them the new work and ask them to implement it.
  • Give them a deadline.
  • Stay on top of their progress. Don’t wait until the deadline to check-in, do it every day.
  • Have them explain what they are doing, what the issues are, and what is working well.
  • Give them a teammate to work with that must also understand the changes and be able to take over.
  • Give them credit for what they accomplish.
  • Don’t accept excuses unless they come with a workaround that fits with the company’s growth plan.
  • If they don’t make progress, you always have Option 1.

Great employees are not people that do complicated work that no one else can do, they are great people that take pride in the work they do because they know it makes a difference to the business and their own lives. Problematic employees cost your business in numerous ways. Don’t spend too much time with a problematic employee that is unwilling to change.