‘Christy, I don’t know that I want to sell my business. Maybe that’s not in the cards for me.’

I hear you. AND if you run your business today like you want to sell it tomorrow, it will make you more money no matter what you decide to do. 

And here’s the thing.

Sell. Don’t sell. That’s up to you. 

When you build a business that is sellable, by definition it's profitable. 

All those things sound like positive outcomes to me. Things I want for my business and for me regardless of whether I want to sell it at some point. 

Essentially, buy building your business like you plan to sell it you’re building your business with intention. Making thoughtful decisions, investing in operations, getting good at routine administrative functions, and delivering on your promise to customers. 

Rather than worrying about whether you might want to sell or thinking it’s too early to worry about it, what if you looked at strategic business growth as a long-term investment that will increase your income today and the value of your business - to you, your employees and customers, and potential future buyers?

What do you have to lose!?

Interested? Let’s talk.

I talk a lot about the importance of clarity - clarity of purpose, role and process. 

Sometimes people confuse clarity with certainty. They’re not the same. 

I can be clear about what I’m supposed to do, how I’m supposed to do it, when it needs to be done and why it’s important. AND lack certainty about how the work will unfold, what the outcome will be or whether I will need to reevaluate and change course. 

Since uncertainty is the norm, it doesn’t do you a lot of good to struggle against it. 

Or to fantasize about a day when all will be ‘under control.’

Instead, a better use of energy is to recognize the risks uncertainty can create in your business and make decisions to mitigate its impact.

This might look like asking and answering these questions:

  1. What’s most important to me?
  2. How do I define success?
  3. Who needs to understand this?
  4. What business levers can I use to get my desired end result? 

What’s most important to me?

You started your business for a reason (or two.) What are they? Is your business helping you create what you most want? If not, why?

Getting clear on what you care about most makes it easier to answer the next question. And it helps you stay on track despite interruptions, disruptions or when there simply isn’t much information to go on. 

How do I define success?

In a world where overwork is the norm and success is often defined as ‘more,’ it’s important to be clear about how you define success. 

Achieving someone else’s definition of success can leave you feeling empty and unfulfilled. 

Defining and sticking to your own definition of success may feel risky, if it doesn’t fit the norm. But being able to pick your own metrics (financial goals, giving your kids experiences you never had, having a flexible schedule, avoiding burnout, etc.) makes it easier to stay the course when you feel pulled to fulfill the expectations of others. Or when uncertainty tempts you to follow someone else's playbook. 

Who needs to understand this?

Who in your family, professional network and business needs to understand what is most important to you and how you define success?

Anyone who is directly or indirectly helping you grow your business needs to know this information. Only with this clarity can they make choices and take action in ways that align with what you care about most and keep you on track to succeed on your own terms. 

When all else is uncertain, the clarity this information provides helps people cope with ambiguity and stay focused. It reduces the risk that you (or anyone else) will start doing things that relieve feelings of uncertainty in the short term and derail your long term success. This is one way clarity helps us get cool with uncertainty. 

What business levers can I use to get my desired end results?

In the midst of uncertainty, it’s easy to start doing things that feel productive but don’t help you achieve the success you desire. 

It can also be tempting to try to do a whole bunch of things at once, which dilutes the impact any one strategy can have.

And we can run smack dab into inertia if the options seem overwhelming. 

By identifying which business levers to focus on you work smarter, not harder and deliver faster results. 

Your lever might be money or people. It could be time or technology. Perhaps its processes or skills. 

There is no ‘right’ lever, just the resource that, when focused on a specific goal, is able to help you achieve success as you have defined it. 

Now every lever needs a good strategy…more to come on that soon!

Bottom line:

Despite the uncertainty you experience in business every day, your job is to lead the growth of your company. Hopefully, these questions will help you define and achieve success regardless of the ambiguity you face. 

Of course, it can be easier to ask and answer these questions with the help of a business coach. Purpose First Advisors is ready to help you (re)start the process. 

Wanna grow your business?

Start with making time to ask yourself good questions about what growth means for you and how you want to achieve your desired results.

On a recent episode of the Bold Business Podcast, I talked with my fellow panelists about how much time it takes to ask strategic questions that drive your business forward.

Before we get to how much time this takes, we agreed that first you have to make the asking of those questions a priority so that like other important things it gets on your calendar and your to do list.

Then you have to treat the time you schedule with yourself to ask questions of and about your business as important as any other appointment you have.

In other words, make a standing appointment with yourself and keep it.

That’s where you start.

Not every question you ask will be a strategic question but with time and practice you’ll get better at asking good questions that lead to other good questions.

You can get better faster by

  1. Giving yourself grace: Making appointments with yourself to focus on what you and your business need can be a challenge. Sometime you won’t do it as consistently or frequently as you would like. Understand where you’re at and be flexible. Some planning time is better than none. Be flexible.
  2. Stop worrying about getting it ‘right’: There is no ‘right’ way to ask strategic questions or some magic set of questions you should be asking at any given time. In my experience, you can’t hack growth so just start thinking, reflecting and asking.
  3. Experimenting: Have an idea but you’re not sure if you’re on the right track? Find was to test it - fast and cheap. What did you learn? What new questions do you have?
  4. Engage others: Even solopreneurs have people they talk about business ideas with. Pull in your formal and informal advisors, employees, key vendors and anyone else who can help you ask better questions or source the answers to the questions you’re already asking.

It also helps to

To hear more musing on the topic of asking strategic questions, check out our entire #BoldBusinessPodcast episode on apple podcasts or watch the YouTube video below.

//www.youtube.com/embed/E6W9Gc8fctk?wmode=opaque

 

One great way to commit to making time to ask strategic questions to grow your business is to work with a coach. Ready? Let’s talk.

I wrote my first ‘reminders’ blog for small business owners back at the beginning of pandemic in 2020. Since then, a lot has changed and stayed the same. 

Running a business continues to be hard and it's easy to get caught up in the weeds. 

So whether you’re dealing with a pandemic, inflation, a recession, generalized anxiety about the economy, or an average Tuesday, it can’t hurt to have some gentle reminders that help you recenter and reorient to take your next aligned action. 

1. Plan for the future 

Planning is hope in action. 

To plan is to believe in a future that doesn’t yet exist and your capacity to thrive regardless of the circumstances. 

Planning gives you a running start to take advantage of new opportunities and respond thoughtfully to unforeseen challenges. 

2. Improve your relationship with time

Time is a construct. So you get to build the relationship with time that best serves you. 

My friend Jess Dewell helps her clients make more time. No, she doesn’t have a time machine. Instead she works to create a schedule that maximizes her time to plan, ensure that she’s focused on the right things, delegating what needs to be done by others, and setting a pace that allows her to take care of business and herself. 

You can get started making more time by

3. Stay connected

People do business with people. You need to be in deep, authentic relationships with our customers, employees, and vendors. Lean into your relationships and continue to be of service, create value, and create connection. 

Interested in working with someone to put these reminders into action? Let’s talk.

There are three ways you can increase cash in your business TODAY:

  1. SPEND LESS When you want to spend less you can
    • review expenses so you know where every penny is going
    • cancel memberships and software subscriptions you’re not using
    • reduce travel (if feasible)
    • negotiate with vendors, add vendors, and/or switch vendors
    • reformulate products and services to eliminate expensive or hard to acquire raw materials
    • discontinue under-performing products and services
    • reduce rework and waste
    • avoid over working work contracts
    • track your time - make sure your team is focused on the most high value activities that generate revenue and maximize profit
    • standardize processes to increase efficiency and productivity
    • replace equipment, hardware and software that’s outdated and costing you more to repair and maintain then it will to invest in new
    • avoid DIY
  2. INCREASE REVENUE When you want to increase revenue you can
    • raise prices
    • increase the number of sales
    • increase the frequency of sales
    • increase the size of sales per buyer
    • make it easier for customers to buy (more payment methods, more locations, etc.)
    • discount underperforming inventory to turn it into cash
    • evaluate your pricing, adjust accordingly
    • evaluate the profitability of specific products and services - focus on selling the highest margin items
    • build a loyalty program to get customers coming back regularly
    • have and work your marketing and sales plan - always be selling
  3. MANAGE CASH FLOW When you want to manage cash flow you can

DON’T

Need help implementing these strategies? Let’s talk.

It’s lunchtime on Monday and a client emails asking for a call before the end of the week. 

You open up your calendar and are hit by a jenga-like wall of stacked appointment squares and rectangles. You feel your heart rate increase and can practically see the calendar sway as you contemplate adding one more item to your schedule.

Catch your breath. You’re not alone. 

Schedule and capacity management is something every business owner I know struggles with. 

There’s lots of time management tools out there but if you wanna feel better about your schedule and workload you need to start doing two-week lookaheads. 

Yes, you need to look at your calendar more, not less. 

Lookaheads are a common project management strategy designed to make sure the team is able to anticipate problems and plan accordingly to stay on schedule.

For business owners and leaders it functions much the same way with some added bonuses. 

Lookaheads let you

If you’re ready to add coaching to your regular schedule, let’s talk.

I’m really not sure what the opposite of fear is. But I know that like you (and me), my clients have a lot of fears associated with being ‘good’ business owners.

Being afraid all the time, even some of the time, sucks.

I’m a big believer in the need to focus on our desired end result.

And since energy follows intention, your desired end result can’t contain something you want to avoid. So, I don’t want clients to focus on ‘not being fearful.’ Instead, I want them to imagine what it feels like for them to feel the way they desire. For me, that's calm confidence. 

Take a minute and give it a try. Imagine feeling great about your business and your role as owner.

How does your body feel? What are you thinking? Where are you located? Who’s around you? What are you working on? 

See it?

Feel it?

You've just identified how a successful coaching relationship will help you feel. Your desired outcome. 

With this information, you're ready to evaluate the state current state of your businesses and make an honest assessment about what scares you - what's standing between you and your desired end result.

What’s required next isn’t the absence or opposite of fear.

It’s courage.

Courage is what we experience when we are willing to take action despite being afraid. One isn’t courageous if they do something they don’t fear. 

Isn’t that crazy! 

By definition, you act with courage when you do something that frightens you or act with strength in the face of pain or grief. And fear is defined as an ‘unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat.’ Often, the underlying beliefs we have about what it means if we fail, succeed, relinquish control, etc. are allowed to dictate the choices we make. 

If I believe failing will cause me to lose the trust of someone I admire, I’m not going to fully implement growth strategies that feel risky. I’m going to hedge my bets and keep things small to stay safe. Likewise, if I believe that success will create a chasm between me and family or friends who will feel like I’ve ‘become someone else’ or ‘forgotten where I came from,’ I may set my goals lower than what I know I’m capable of achieving so as to not jeopardize the relationship. 

Our fear may be based on a learned belief that’s gone unexamined, like the idea that ‘I’m not good with money,’ which we decide can’t be true if we want to have a profitable business. So we start behaving like someone who is good with money and change our beliefs. Or we might get caught up in imagining all the things that could go wrong at the exclusion of what might happen if everything goes right, in which case we need a new perspective. Then again, sometimes our fear is based on a clear understanding of what will happen as a result of us taking action and we have to decide whether we are prepared to live with the disappointment of not taking action or the consequences of creating what we desire. 

My hope is that when clients are on the precipice of being timid, pulling back, freezing or fleeing in reaction to the unknown, they will choose to examine the belief that is driving their fears. If they are, then how do they become courageous? 

I believe knowledge and understanding is where we find our courage and the ability to make new choices about how to react when faced with our fears about failure, success, being enough, having what it takes, securing the money and people we need, appearing competent, meeting the expectations of others, and losing control. But you may have noticed that simply being more knowledgeable about business topics doesn’t often relieve your fear of being able to bridge the gap between knowing what you want or need to do and doing it. Likewise, more information and new ideas can lead to feeling overwhelmed by too many choices and opportunities.

Herein lies the power of having a coach.

Coaches help create an environment where business owners can examine their beliefs, acquire knowledge and understanding, make plans, and take action.

For coachees, part of the experience is knowing you’re not alone. You are working with someone who has faced these fears before, challenged similar underlying beliefs, seen strategies others have used to achieve success, and is totally committed to your success.  

Your coach is also responsible for helping you DO the things that will provide evidence of your ability to achieve your goals. Some of this is a result of helping you decide what to do next to move toward your desired end result. Clarity of purpose makes it easier to decide where to put your energies. 

Another part is creating an environment of accountability in which you feel accountable to yourself having made commitments to your business that your coach helps keep you aligned with. This includes reflecting back to you what you have defined as your desired end result, especially when you might be getting off track. 

Other techniques focus on helping you create an environment that support you in making decisions and taking action aligned to your goals. This may include time tracking, calendaring time to work on your business, updating and reviewing your financials, creating financial projections, implementing a business development plan, using a project management system, writing job descriptions, documenting SOPs, creating a standing meeting with your team, and/or using standing meeting agendas. 

And, of course, your coach helps you raise your own bar, level up as they say, as you continue to grow your business and hit new milestones. Your coach should be committed to providing you with the insights, support, and encouragement you need to regularly reassess the current state of your business and reorient to new desired end results. This may be a shift from growing your team to finding ways to replace yourself so you can step out of day-to-day operations. Or you might be ready for your next adventure and turning your attention to figuring out what it will take to sell your business. 

Some might say your coach helps you feel the fear but do it anyway. I prefer to think that coaches help you examine the fear, and acquire the knowledge and understanding you need to make intentional choices about what you want. Then, with their help, you can take action - act courageously - knowing you have the support and resources you need to succeed regardless of the outcome. Each time you do this, you become more confident in your abilities as a business owner and tap into the pleasant feeling of calm.

If you’re ready to cultivate your ability to lead your business with calm confidence, the next step is to schedule a call so we can learn more about each other. 

We all know that the ability to grow and scale a business is dependent on the ability to systematize and operationalize. Where I see business owners and leaders fail is when they put systems and operations ahead of the humans who make them work.

Obviously, it serves no purpose to create and document systems for work to be done effectively and efficiently if the only people who can do that work are those who initiated it or who designed the system for their own needs. So at the core of operationalization is the successful assignment and delegation of work. And a consistent theme that I encounter with clients is that business leaders know that they need to delegate and prioritize the management and coaching of their people and teams, but they also feel that it’s their weakest area of leadership. In a nutshell, what I hear is this; “I respect that they're human, and they have emotions. But I don't want to spend my days managing people and their feelings. I just need them to get the work done.”

Understandable, but also unnecessary and perhaps even unreasonable. In my experience, you can maximize the impact of well-designed systems and effectively delegate using focused and intentional time spent coaching, and training, and managing people when you tap into the power of human nature.

It’s human nature to want to do meaningful work well and be rewarded for it. If you want to spend your days being a visionary and a strategist and have your human team spend their days performing at their highest capacity,  emotionally engaged and committed to their work, you can neither abdicate your role as coach and leader nor be a micromanager or therapist.

I believe it’s your job as a leader or manager  to ask, “What do you need to get the job done?” Then get the resources your people need and remove the obstacles in their path. There’s no need to step in and in all likelihood screw things up by trying to help or take over, insert your last-minute opinions, or dictate how something should be done through what I call “random acts of management.”

If that sounds like a dream come true, then there are three requirements you need to take into consideration:

Granted, we can’t always make promotions available in terms of title or status. But if we’re growing and scaling the business, we can find opportunities to hire and promote people into higher levels of challenge, ownership, and compensation, which is one of the keys to being able to grow and scale.

As an example, I recently took on a new client who had a history of losing new account managers before they had time to really learn the role. She wanted someone who was highly aspirational, but she was hiring them at the lowest entry level, assigning them the easiest and lowest risk clients, and telling them that when they mastered those clients they could move up. I suggested that her next hire be assigned to a high value client. We made sure the new hire had the adequate level of clarity about both the importance of the account and the requirements of the role. We also ensured that the appropriate level of training and support were in place. Ultimately, we got an account manager who was performance driven, and rather than bringing them on the lowest rung where they would naturally lose interest due to the lack of challenge or meaningful contribution, we gave them the chance to contribute in a meaningful way from the outset. Now my client has a very successful employee who has told her, “If you had done what you'd always done before, I wouldn't have stayed.”

Another way to both protect your time and energy as a leader and to promote your team into higher levels of ownership is to learn to delegate coaching, mentoring, and training. Leaders, as they say, create more leaders. And when you focus on creating leaders within your teams, you’ll not only be able to scale faster, you’ll also be able to offer more opportunities for your team to be connected to each other, to have greater opportunities to contribute and meet new challenges, and you’ll be sending a strong message that you have confidence in each and every one of them.

The question I’d like for you to ask yourself is this: Are you looking at systems and operations as something your people need to support, or are you looking at your systems and operations for how they can support the people in your organization? Successful delegation that leads to increased business growth will always be best served by the latter.

Sweaty with desperation, sleep deprived, and wearing the clothes they had slept in on the terminal floor, I doubt any traveler in an airport, flying Southwest airlines in December 2022 would’ve talked about the silver lining in the experience.

Once, Southwest was the protagonist in the stories business coaches told about how to use the business model canvas, or as an example of a company that excelled at dominating a niche and exploiting a gap in the market left by incumbent competitors. Its mission statement has probably been cited in countless MBA classroom lectures. Its legendary people-oriented culture is evident in every punchline filled safety presentation or spontaneous gate-side dance party, the envy of many, lauded by flyers and employees alike.

Now we will add the Southwest meltdown of 2022 to the library of cautionary tales about what happens when a business stops using its values to make decisions, rewards short-term gains over long-term investments, and no longer takes time to empathize with its customers.

We've all heard these stories before. The ones about delaying repairs, replacements, or upgrades until something horrible like a mine explosion or derailment happens. Or the ones about big companies losing touch with employees and customers as they grow, conducting mass lay-offs via email. Some might write the Southwest debacle off as just another example of big business gone bad, forsaking customers and employees for shareholders. 

I believe that while being a publicly traded company with shareholders to please made Southwest's leadership more susceptible to poor decision-making, it would be too easy, dismissive and reckless to think small and mid-sized companies are immune to their own pressures to make short term decisions without fully considering long-term costs. 

Regardless of how many people you employ, how much revenue you earned last year, how your net profit stacks up to the competition, or whether you operate locally or nationally, Southwest's missteps provide important reminders about leadership, risk analysis, understanding your business and revenue models, being accountable, and being a good steward of relationships.

So what can we take away from everything Southwest, its employees and customers endured during the great meltdown that will help us build stronger businesses? 

There may not have been a silver lining but I offer you four golden nuggets, aka what we can all learn from Southwest Airlines: 

  1. Great people can't succeed in broken systems. Systems work as designed. Southwest's scheduling system wasn't designed to handle the volume, complexity, uncertainty or volatility of current air travel. Workarounds reached the limit of what they were capable of. Highly skilled and deeply committed employees filled in the gaps, responded to customer needs in real time, and took a direct hit when no amount of kindness or flexibility could counter the brokenness of the system. The decision not to invest in technology sacrificed two of the company's most valuable assets, the trust and confidence of its customers and employees. Golden nugget: Put away the duct tape and chewing gum you’re using to hold things together. You know what’s not working well. What’s holding you up or slowing your team down. Identify which systems are 1) non-existent or 2) need improvement to support your business moving forward and develop a plan for building/fixing those systems. Using a work plan and financial projections, you can pace improvements and investments to align to your revenue goals. Putting it off won’t make it go away so figure out how to fix it. 
  2. Know whose ass will have to cash the checks you write. I can't imagine being a Southwest gate or customer service agent over the holidays with people screaming in my face, sobbing into their hands, and trying to find luggage and lodging while changing a diaper on the terminal floor. Airline employees had seen some unthinkable behavior on an average travel day. What they witnessed in the great meltdown was a Defcon 5 level chaos that no amount of training could prepare them for. Chaos that was the result of decisions made by suits in conference rooms who were far away and emotionally removed while their employees’ asses were on the frontline. Golden Nugget: It costs you nothing to get feedback and input from your team on big decisions, especially those that they will need to execute and/or live with the consequences of. Your team has a wealth of knowledge. They can help you avoid unintended consequences or have a plan in place for if/when things go sideways. They can have your back if you have theirs. Consider what you might be asking someone to deal with, manage through, or work around. Don't blindside them. Give them support and cover. Put your ass on the frontline with them.
  3. Make meaningful apologies. Southwest got slammed for the technology meltdown. But its response, whoa baby, that’s what really did them in! From being slow to offer refunds, track down luggage, and cover incidental expenses to then touting all the ways they were helping customers on social media, they missed the mark at every turn. People will remember how you respond when things aren’t going well. Learn how to say your sorry and understand what it will cost to make things right. If penny pinching got you into hot water I can promise you that the cost will only grow the longer it takes to make amends. Golden Nugget: Good news - we humans make mistakes all the time so there are plenty of opportunities to practice making meaningful apologies when the stakes are relatively low. Better yet, you can use this time to do some scenario planning to help you evaluate the direct and indirect impact of specific decisions. That allows you to anticipate the risks and benefits, as well as your response plan, before the dumpster fire begins. Sometimes you have to apologize for things you never saw coming. But when you know there is a high probability that a decision can result in bad things happening and you choose to roll the dice, you have to also be willing to pay the premium required to make things right when the worst case scenario happens. Think through what happens if things go bad before they do. 

    4. Live your values. Southwest's employees trusted that they would be given the people, systems, processes and policies they needed to fulfill the promises the company made to its customers. Customers trusted that Southwest would fulfill its promises to be safe, focused, and reliable and to win the right way. Anyway you slice it, the decision to delay mission-critical technology investments violated the company's own values and promises. Had the leaders been using their values to make decisions, the crisis could have been avoided. Golden Nugget: Your greatest decision making tool as an owner are the values on which your business was created. They are your foundation. You and your employees should be able to give everyday examples of your company values in action. Customers too (that’s what people write rave reviews about!) Consistently acting in alignment with your values creates trust. Behaviors that deviate from or directly violate those beliefs cost you the trust and performance of employees, and the trust and loyalty of your customers. 

Often, there are a lot of mouths to feed and someone is usually starving a little bit.

- Me on the Marketing Matchmaker podcast

In my experience, the person usually starving in a small business is the owner.

I want to change that.

In my recent conversation with Jennifer Tamborski on the Marketing Matchmaker podcast we went deep about earning a living and generating profit right out of the gate!

We got real about building your business from a profit mindset. That starts by defining your vision, i.e., being clear about what a successful business will do for you financially and how it will allow you to create a life you love.

Some of the things we talked about include:

Give it a listen and let me know what you think!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ImeUkdaNJ3Q%3Fwmode%3Dopaque

maroon quotation marks
  • I have said many times to colleagues, “I wish I had hired Christy Maxfield a few years ago.” Even with a 27-year-old company, I have learned so much from her. Christy has been an invaluable partner helping me operate my company more strategically, i.e. strengthening financial reporting, guiding succession planning, navigating complex people decisions, and increasing the overall value of my business. Christy brings insight, clarity, and genuine care to her work. Her disciplined approach and guidance has made me a more confident and effective business owner and positioned my company for its next phase of long-term success.
    Laurna Godwin
    Owner, Vector Communications
  • Christy’s coaching has has been instrumental in elevating my business to new heights. Her ability to facilitate strategic conversations has been transformative, helping me identify opportunities, overcome obstacles, and refine my business strategies for optimal results.
    Paya Sample
    Owner, Peak Leaders Collective
  • Christy took the time to assess my business model, understand my goals, and identify areas for improvement. What impressed me most was her ability to provide tailored strategies that were practical and immediately implementable.
    Sue Bailey
    Owner, Celebrating Life Cakes
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