My Business On Purpose

There’s a new generation of kids hitting the workforce. So, with thousands of options, how do we attract them to our business?  And how do we make sure we have enough runway in front of them so they don’t just jump at the next available job that pays a little bit more? Well, let’s talk about that today! Good morning friends, Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here. We met last week with about 125 business owners and key leaders to plan out the 4th quarter. One of the resounding issues that kept coming up was attracting talent in the trade industries. Now, about 70% of the businesses we work with are in the trade industries, so we asked them to go a bit deeper into the problem. Well, there’s this huge push for high school kids to go to college. Which is great! But, when they get a random business degree or marketing or some other generic degree in communications that they have spent good money and 4 years of their life on, they fully expect to be compensated at a higher rate and to find a job in their fiel

Marketing and I have a love-hate relationship. The results are powerful when the results exist, yet too often, the results are more aligned with vanity than they are with actual growth. Marketers are like business coaches (of which I am one) and gypsies, each profession has a low bar of entry and the results are often quantified and masked by generalities. I can’t speak for gypsies, but marketers and business coaches have real opportunity to move the needles for businesses IF the needle is well defined and well tracked. Our business coaching firm has been growing over the years as we work with business owners (75% of those are contractors or contractor-related industries) between 2 and 50 employees to help build systems, process, and purpose using our Business On Purpose Roadmap in an effort to liberate business owners from chaos so they can make time for what matters most. The majority of our business has grown through intentional word of mouth and direct referrals. Growth has not been haphazard, but also no

Every day you are waking up and chaos seems to reign. Material delays. Pricing volatility. Subcontractors and vendors not pulling their weight. The labor pool seems to be vanishing, and recession is on our doorstep. Those aren’t the greatest challenges, though.  We know what the greatest challenge is.  All of these elements are leading you to question whether or not you are even in the right business because as much as you try to be present at your daughter's softball game, or your son's soccer match, or simply focusing around the dinner table… you aren’t present because the chaos is consuming you. You wonder, “how can I keep going if all I am doing is robbing Peter to pay Paul?” “How can I have plenty of work, but not plenty of cash?” “Why do those other contractors seem like they’re crushing it while I’m wasting away, just trying to keep up.” Some of you, like TJ, have asked, “what happens to my business if something happens to me?” The professional chaos is taking a toll on your personal life.   That stops

Every day you are waking up and chaos seems to reign. Material delays. Pricing volatility. Subcontractors and vendors not pulling their weight. The labor pool seems to be vanishing, and recession is on our doorstep. Those aren’t the greatest challenges though. We know what the greatest challenge is. All of these elements are leading you to question whether or not you are even in the right business because as much as you try to be present at your daughters softball game, or your son's soccer match, or simply focusing around the dinner table…you aren’t present because the chaos is consuming you. You wonder, “how can I keep going if all I am doing is robbing Peter to pay Paul?” “How can I have plenty of work, but not plenty of cash?” “Why do those other contractors seem like they’re crushing it while I’m wasting away, just trying to keep up.” Some of you, like TJ, have asked, “what happens to my business if something happens to me?” The professional chaos is taking a toll on your personal life.   That stops toda

Contractors are notorious for leveraging tomorrow’s money to pay yesterday’s bills…” robbing Peter to pay Paul.” We can look around and justify the practice, and yet we know deep down that it is a dangerous line to walk; a bit like an expensive game of musical chairs.  Eventually, the music does stop… or at least pauses. The most dynamic way to prepare for any event moving forward, whether it be growth, recession, boom, or bust, is to know your numbers. As you know your numbers, you also know there are two primary ways to affect cash availability in your contracting business; increase revenue and/or decrease expenses. Actually, I like to think it a better practice to increase revenue and manage expenses.   If you want to grow, you will likely have to spend more for that growth in the form of hiring, or increased investment in tools or resources to generate and deliver on that growth.   Here are a few methods for controlling costs in your Construction business. First, stop spending on things that don’t align w

Recession chatter is at a continuous buzz due to the identification of predictive recession markers in the same way that hurricane preparation chatter would be abuzz if weather forecasters identified the predictive markers of a hurricane. Where I live in the lowcountry of South Carolina, we went through a four year stretch where we were either brushed or directly hit by severe hurricanes. The storms were no fun, and in some cases deadly.  In advance of those storms weather forecasters and government officials worked overtime to ensure readiness.  They were not able to influence or avoid the storm, but they were able to provide a helpful forecast based on predictive and principles markers that allowed for thoughtful preparation; the ability to make ready prior to the storm. Oxford Dictionary defines a recession this way, “a period of temporary economic decline during which trade and industrial activity are reduced, generally identified by a fall in GDP in two successive quarters.” The markers of a recession se

Every time we dive into our delegation roadmap with a heroic business owner, we get a bit of pushback when we tell them they only get 3-4 items that are off limits as far as delegation goes. So how do you delegate the impossible? Well, let’s dive on in… Happy Monday friends, Thomas Joyner with BoP here. It never fails, the excuses go on and on and on! That’s impossible to delegate. You don’t understand! I can’t let go of that, I can’t train someone to do all of that! We’ve heard it all. And yet think for a moment, about some of the biggest businesses you know of. The big boys. Did they start out as multi-billion dollar businesses? Heck no! Most of them were mom and pop 1 location businesses that figured out the magic to scaling their business, delegation, and training. That’s it! They created and implemented new job roles and equipped their team to do the jobs they were asking them to do. So, if you were to write down all the things you do on a weekly basis. What’s that one thing that came up in your  mind th

We spend a lot of time here at BoP figuring out who our ideal client is. We think through what their frustrations are and how they spend their day. We look at what motivates them and how that meshes with what we offer. Is it a fit? No? How can we make it a fit? Because here’s what we know…for every person we spend an hour with who is NOT our ideal client, equals an hour that we’re not spending with someone we need to be working with. It’s that simple. So…who is your ideal client? How do we figure that out? Well, let’s talk about that today, Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here. We really are serious about our ideal client. For a series of reasons, but 3 quick ones. Because we know we have the tools to solve our ideal clients' problems. An ice skater that needs help with her choreography? Nope, that’s not the scope of work we need to be involved in. We don’t have the tools to truly change their life, so why spend our most valuable resource, our non-renewable time, on that. But a business owner with 2-5

You just completed the relentless and methodical work of recruiting and hiring a new team member, and you are still left with that big, expensive question, “is this new person even going to work out?” Hiring new roles and new team members always seems to be an obvious and easy solution to everyone except the person whose time, attention, and bottom line is most on the line.  It’s day one for that new hire…how does the mission get the most out of that new person, and how does that new person get the most out of the mission of the business? American style football is a very set-play-specific sport.  All eleven players on the offensive side of the ball must be in lock step technique choreographed in unison.  Each position targets a specific direction and technique because the other positions are depending on it.  The right guard trusts that the center has the other guy.  The running back trusts the right guard to block that huge human being coming straight for him.  The quarterback trusts that the running back m

Could you leave your business for 30 days and not check-in at all? Why or maybe why not? Let’s talk about that today. Happy Monday friends, Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here. The litmus test for our coaching roadmap is always what we call the 30 day test. Could you leave your business for 30 days and not answer email, voicemails…whatever. What would happen to the business? Would it be able to survive? Would it limp along with quality control issues and employees aimlessly getting through each day? Would people even know what to do and would they get it done? If you’re anything like most of our clients when we talk to them…the answer is always, no way. That’s impossible! But it’s not. I was sitting with one of our former clients last week and he was saying how freeing it was for him to actually try it. He had finished recording all of his systems and processes. He had delegated all of his responsibilities and the day to day operations of his business…and he took off. Loaded up the family for an RV tr

It is the first day for your new employee.   Yet most new employees for small businesses walk into their first day staring at what feels more like a rusty, duct taped operation instead of a well-oiled machine. The very first impression that a business makes on a new employee takes place during the hiring process when the business team is simply telling the then-candidate about the wonders of their business. Day one is usually the day where the new employee walks in and comes face to face with reality, “what I see feels different from what I was told.” This story has played out too many times in our coaching calls where an owner will tell us they just hired a new employee and when that person walked in on day one, not only did the owner forget they were to start that day, they also began scrambling to find busy-work that would occupy the new employees time. The owner then justified that haphazard training by saying “it’s just better if we throw you to the wolves”. No.   It is not better to simply be thrown to

This summer, we have had multiple business owner clients physically leave the location of their business for an extended period of time (anywhere from two to four weeks).   Most of these are physical location businesses, and no, this is not a fantasy…it is real life. For the most part, these owners are not spending the time away from their business simply sipping bubbly and eating bon bons.  Most are staying active through the duration of their time away, and in many cases working on their own business, or learning about the inner workings of another business they are visiting. One owner traveled north for five hours and worked three days a week at another business that is in the same industry.  He simply called the owner up and asked to come work as an employee so he could watch and learn.  The perspectives and takeaways were endless.  He would spend a few minutes each evening creating audio notes from his time each day.  No conference could equip him in the same way he was able to see it for himself.  How d

I’ve sat down with a few businesses recently for introductions and after chatting for 30 min or so, they have each said something along the lines of, “man this sounds awesome! I’d love to get through this busy summer and start up with y’all in the fall.” That’s great, so what’s going to be different in the fall? If you can’t make the time right now, what happens in the fall where things magically slow down? So, this raises the question…”When is the right time to work on your business?” That conversation has probably happened 25 times. And I’m being more direct than I probably would be with them, but the truth is right there. Nothing changes in the future. Life doesn’t magically slow down and give you this green light to finally work on your business. At least not with any of the businesses we work with. It’s fought for and scheduled and followed religiously until it becomes ingrained into the fabric of your business. You know, just like I do, that your business doesn’t care if you have a vacation planned or w

Today I want to talk about something that holds businesses back more than anything else. Continual learning and implementation. Thanks so much for listening in today, Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here. One of our core values here at BOP is learn and implement. We want every conversation with business owners, every coaching meeting, and shoot every time we show up to work to be a learning experience. Relentless and never-ending. We never just want to step back and look at our content, our roadmap, and think…man it’s perfect! Because the business world is always changing. It morphs and moves and the climate it operates in changes. We have to be willing to learn and adapt and change with it. Now, we don’t want to change the core of who we are, but operationally and strategically we can be out in front as we respond to all of that change. But here’s the thing, we don’t just want to learn. We want to adapt and implement that learning into our every day. It’s next step that so many businesses fail to do t

It’s mid-July…back to school is beginning to rumble in the not too distant future, employees are restless and it’s time to begin preparing for another season of structure as the fall rapidly approaches. Hey everyone, Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here. So, what do you need to be doing to get ready for that? How can you truly kick it off with a bang and get your team operating at full capacity again?  Well, I’ve got 3 things you can do TODAY to prepare for the fall. I don’t want to waste any time, so let’s dive straight in. 1. Take an inventory of where your team is at? When was the last time you scheduled a meeting with yourself to do a self-audit? Are you struggling with motivation? With lack of training? Do you have the right people in the wrong seats on the bus or the wrong people on the bus entirely? Are there glaring holes or areas where your process is severely lacking?  I wouldn’t blame you no matter what the answer. But you can’t figure out a plan to get where you want to go without having a

A dear friend of mine sent me a book recently simply titled Success: The Glenn Bland Method…How To Set Goals and Make Plans That Actually Work! The book was written in the 1970s and quite frankly carried and implied genre that I don’t spend much time reading (but should probably spend more time). On page 42, I was stopped when Glenn Bland wrote this about goal setting, “only 3 percent of all people have goals and plans and write them down.  Ten percent more have goals and plans, but keep them in their heads.  The rest - 87 percent - drift through life without definite goals or plans.” Then Bland follows that shock statistic with this, “the 3 percent who have goals and plans that are written down accomplish from fifty to one hundred times more during their lives than the 10 percent who have goals and plans and merely keep them in their heads.” Fifty to 100 times more during their lives than the 10 percent. Brian Moran wrote a great book some years ago, The 12 Week Year.  It is a must-read, and a must-implement

After spending two days speaking to a groups of builders and contractors, there is an unspoken question that most have and is revealed when we begin to talk about the chaos they are feeling. What most builders and contractors want to ask, but struggle to open up about is simply, “how do I manage my small business successfully”.   They know what features the clients' desire.  They know how good structures are built, and yet they quietly live with an inadequacy of building a  structure of their business with the same integrity, the same stability by which they build their projects. In the volatile market environment we are in now, material delays, pricing increases, and employee challenges, how is a business owner to manage the business so that the business doesn’t end up managing them? A journey back into the annals of history can help us gain perspective on our current reality.  Where there is no vision, people become detached, scattered, and alone.  It’s proverbial…it’s a natural law. If you have written and

You are not your business.  I own The On Purpose Group, the entity that holds Business On Purpose, but that is not who I am. I heard a late-middle-aged woman recently say something that made me sad, “I wouldn’t know what to do if I didn’t own this business… this has been my identity for so long.” It is ironic that amount of time and focus that we spend trying to protect our digital identity (identification, credit cards, passwords, etc.) and yet spend very little time trying to maintain a distance between ourselves and the identity that is created from our work. You are not your work.  Today you can serve ice cream, tomorrow lead a class on pottery, and the next day lead a congressional hearing.  Of course acumen in any trade or profession is, in part, gained through right repetition over long periods of time.  So if you wish to have impact through your work, then it will likely require longevity and focus. Where we must be careful is when longevity and focus begin turning into obsession and idolatry along wi

Our family’s mission is to be a light through wisdom, adventure, and time around the table. Our family mission ties directly into the mission we have here at Business On Purpose which is to liberate heroic business owners, just like you, from the chaos of working IN your business. So that you can ENJOY your business, maximize the impact that it can have on your family and your community, and make time for what matters most! For a ground rule...IGNORE THE NOISE and distraction… “It pays to curate the incoming, to ignore the noise, and to engage with voices who are willing to show their work.” We are about to SHOW you our work.  It’s up to YOU to implement Surveying hundreds of heroic business owners just like you over the past few years we have heard loud and clear one of the biggest challenges that you face in your business...the feeling that you will never be able to step away from your business b/c you are SO busy working IN your business. Imagine the day, a lady named Josephine comes walking in your worksp

The U of SC football program had just won the first Bowl Game in the 100-year-plus history of the school.   After joining the rugged and tough SEC in 1992, the Gamecocks were still struggling to be the elite SEC teams like Florida and Tennessee.   Tennessee had a young QB with a head-turning last name…Manning.  We had a pony-tailed enthusiast named Taneyhill, along with two offensive lineman, two running backs all headed eventually to the NFL.   We were desperate for a signature win in the SEC. JAMES DEXTER STORY at Tennessee turning the table over, driving down to the five yard line  2nd and 1 (5 yard penalty): (7:40) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jPj3LKGMhc Blocked FG Returned 95 yards for a TD (9:51): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jPj3LKGMhc 56 - 21 Final Score… Often, in life, sports, and business, we do desperate things in desperate times in order to solve desperate problems. The last 2 years have created a desperate longing.  Let’s articulate the challenge that you are up against today. PAIN - S