How to Avoid Burnout

November 17, 2020 By Sean Leave a Comment

The feeling of not being able to do the thing you need to do anymore.

The feeling of just wanting to disappear for a while.

This is the description of the feeling of being burnt out.

It’s funny how people get burned out just being at home during this pandemic. Human beings as a species just seem too good at finding things to do that tire out our souls to the point of exhaustion.

Burnout is not just a Matter of our Emotions.

Even if we describe burnout as a ‘feeling’ it is not. It is very real.

Our bodies know when we are at our limit and it communicates that back to us.

Burnout comes with physical activity and thinking. It comes with stress – which are very physical things.

So burnout is not just an emotion.

Burnout is not just a Physical State Either

Then why are there days when we are physically well-rested but we feel like we are tired inside?

Not just empty or hollow – but unwilling to exert more effort for another day to produce good work?

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Our bodies are 100% a-ok but we feel like our soul is dragging it to work.

This is because burnout is not just a physical state either.

Watch your Spirit

Burning out is a matter of the spirit.

There are two kinds of fire that ignite you – the fire of the world and the fire that comes from God.

The fire of the world is a passion that can drive you long and hard – until it consumes you and you’re exhausted and you say “no more”.

But the fire of God does not consume.

“And the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.” – Exodus 3:2

The fire of God does not consume but glorifies – it draws people close to God’s Work and His Word.

“This is amazing,” Moses said to himself. “Why isn’t that bush burning up? I must go see it.” – Exodus 3:3

This fire is the Word of God working in you.

If you know that the work you are doing – everything you are doing – is for God’s Kingdom then you will never burnout. Even if you’re doing business, or doing work for someone else, or doing ministry – your fire will never consume you.

“They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” – Luke 24:32

God’s fire is always there and burning but when we leave his presence – when we go further away from Him, we start to lose that fire and the world will try to light us up with something else.

Something that will ultimately consume us and leave us burnt out.

How Do You Deal With a Team Leader With No Leadership Skills?

November 13, 2020 By Sean Leave a Comment

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Excerpt

This is a part of my very first AMA Session where I answer questions about management, entrepreneurship, self-improvement, and leadership. Want to ask me hard-hitting questions? Send them over on the Leadership Stack Discord Server so I can answer them in my next session!

How do you deal with a team leader who has no leadership skills?

Demote him or her to a follower. Having a team leader who can’t lead is dangerous, I have firsthand experience. Demote that person, or you have to let that person go if they don’t want to get demoted. And that’s because a person who can’t lead and is in a leadership position will cap the entire team. They will slow down the entire team.

Your team will not be able to grow above that leader. Because if the leader is leading at the level of a five or six, and you have followers under that person who is an eight or nine, It will no longer improve, because this person will just be on top of that follower and that follower will feel trapped. And then will leave. That would be a great loss because he or she was an eight or nine, but the one you made stay was just a five or six.

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Do the hard decision and either remove that person from the leadership position because he or she has no leadership skills. Again, I’m just using your wording here. No leadership skills. So just remove that person from the leadership position, or if they’re contrary to that. They don’t like being removed, then you have to let them go. You have to part ways. Otherwise, you’re chopping off the legs of that entire team that the person is leading, and that might be a critical part of your organization. You’re kind of waylaying yourself there, which doesn’t make sense.

How to Find Your Successor in Your Business

November 11, 2020 By Sean Leave a Comment

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Excerpt

Sean:

I want to ask one very important question that also a lot of entrepreneurs who have a retirement plan at the horizon is how did you find Julia? How did you know that she is the right person to replace me as CEO? What was the process like?

Laura:

Honestly, I placed a lot of ads, but the people that know you best will lead you to the people you need. And I firmly believe that it was actually a woman that used to run my company that knew me really, really well. And she saw me through some of my darker times and saw her through some dark times. And we’re still really tight friends now. I just told her, I was like, yeah, I got it. Go. I gotta go. But I don’t want to let go of the money. I just don’t want to do this anymore.

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Cause it’s just really killing me. And I don’t even think I’m doing a good job anymore. Do you know anybody? She’s like, no. I’ll let you know. And eventually, she managed to introduce me to this woman. She’s like, you know, I’m not really sure that she’s your person, but you guys should definitely hang out. She’s the only person that terrified me as much as you. And then I met her. I was like, yeah. Wow. If that’s how I come across, Oh my God, I’m scared. But turns out Julia was coming out of a very toxic employment situation that made her a little grumpy. I was just coming out of my own toxic situation that I built, I basically built my own prison.

Julia needed somebody to be with a person that appreciated her, valued her, gave her lots of freedom, and lots of trust. And I’m a very trusting person. I’m a very clear person. I’m going to show you how to do it, and then I’m going to watch you do it. And then when I know you do it right, I’m not going to micromanage. Get me the reports I asked for on time. I will never bother you.

Julia and I are very much, I guess, twins in that regard. I just think that things happen in the times that they should and when you. Put it out there to the people that know you really well, what you’re looking for. I think it will come to you and some people are just looking for straight-up buyout cause they want to be completely done.

Other people will, might be looking for, you know, a partner, a legacy partner. Like I was somebody else might be looking to sell to a larger enterprise and just get absorbed. There’s a lot of different options and you know, there’s a million people out there that can help you do it, but what I would say is if you don’t have your plan, actually formulated start talking to somebody that knows about exit strategies, about how to build one and what options exist. Then talk to somebody else about it and ask them, what did that first guy not tell me? Because the first guy will not tell you everything.

How Your Habits Shape Your Happiness

November 6, 2020 By Sean Leave a Comment

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Excerpt

Sean:

I’m learning from you and want to ask that question, like, how did you make that swing? How did you jump from “where I am right now ” to being where you are?

Laura:

I hated who I had become, you know what I mean? When I looked in the mirror, I just saw grumpy dirtbag looking at me and I didn’t like her. I wasn’t proud of who I was being. That probably hurt the most. I remember leaving my first marriage and one of the major reasons why I wanted to end that marriage is because I didn’t like who I was being. I think a big part of why I wanted to retire is because I didn’t like who I was being. And I actually used to think that it was the company that made me that way. No. I made me that way. And also I believed a lot of the lies that society and culture told me for years about how I needed to be in a marriage and accompany, whatever.

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So for me, I needed to figure out what all happy and successful people seem to have in common. I needed to figure that out. I needed to figure out, why is it that I’ve been to the retreats and I’ve gone to all these classes and I’ve done the Tony Robbins stuff, and I’ve done this lecture and this meditation and read that book. Why is it that I’ve done all these things and spent thousands and thousands of dollars in the pursuit of happiness, but I’m still an unhappy lump.

Why what went wrong? What did I do wrong? Turns out it wasn’t me. There was a lot of things that were actually missing. A lot of the personal development world exists based on one particular notion, which is:

You are broken. Buy my product. This will fix you.

And that upset me because part of the reason why I always loved doing things at my marketing company is because I wanted to do things with high integrity and stuff, things to people for the right reasons. And it’s like, Oh no. Don’t buy that magazine ad because the salesperson told you to. Buy the other one because I’m objective and I make money regardless of what you do.

High integrity has always been one of my major core values. I guess I just got like really frustrated and felt like I’d been lied to. And I thought it was, I actually thought it was the self-help world that lied to me. And that’s where I began my journey turns out it wasn’t the self-help world.

There’s a lot of amazing, amazing lessons out there. So many wonderful books and so many wonderful products and whatever. But if you take a look at so many of these different things, a lot of these now that I’ve written this book and done all this research, I can put a lot of those in the context of those are a really good step two. You need a really good step one, which is give yourself a solid foundation within your relationship with you. When you do that, you can take this course, that class, that meditation, this and that, it will mean more, it will land better. It will stick, and it will give you a much more permanent impression.

So back to your question, how do you do it? Figuring out where do I start? Right. That’s where I started. Okay. Well, here’s the information. Here’s where you start. Six habits is where you start. You read the book, you Oh wow. You do all the exercises they’re free. And then you begin your mastery journey. I’ve got a thing that can help you with that. Or you can do it on your own, but at the end of the day, It’s not called the six Epiphanes they’re the six habits. What is a habit? It’s something we do unconsciously and we do it automatically. This is like you get every day, get up every day, and brush your teeth. I do it every day without even, or, you know, you roll over in your sleep and you always cover up that one shoulder. It’s a habit, right? That’s what needs to be cultivated here is actual habitual behaviors that you no longer think about. That’s the trick. And that’s why that’s why it’s the foundational element.

What Is So Important About Happiness?

November 4, 2020 By Sean Leave a Comment

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Excerpt

Sean:

What is so important about happiness? Why do you give it such weight? Especially when I read about it in your book, the six habits you give it, you gave it so much weight. There is a lot of times that you mentioned it and the six habits are there for you to have happiness in your life. I just want the audience to know what is so important about happiness.

Laura:

Happiness is basically– it’s the reason why people do the things we do. We get married because we’re pursuing happiness. We have children because we’re pursuing happiness. We start companies because we’re pursuing happiness. We do a lot of different things because we’re pursuing happiness. That’s ultimately what we really want. When we’re chasing money. It’s because we think it’s going to buy us happiness.

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Meanwhile, listen, I spent 20 years in executive leadership. And I can tell you that it’s really nice having money. It’s really nice traveling the world. It’s really nice. You know, traveling and seeing stuff and meeting people and building companies and doing all the things. It really is.

But they give you short bursts of temporary happiness. That’s why we continue to chase them. It’s because we haven’t found the kind that’s lasting. It’s very easy for us to get caught in the cycle of chasing more.

I know you’re not in America and I’ll tell you, one of the things about American culture is a lot of people when they heard that I retired at 37 and that I’ve done all these things with my life. They’re like, wow, well, what’s next for you?

Is it a crime to admit that nothing is next?

They’re just enjoying what I’ve achieved and enjoying being here. That’s actually the goal. There is no next. This is it. You know, as Americans, we are trained to constantly just achieve for the sake of achievement, but not for enjoyment. And I believe that life is for savoring and enjoying.

How Much Should You Pay Yourself as an Entrepreneur?

October 30, 2020 By Sean Leave a Comment

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Excerpt

Sean:

I want to know how much should you really pay yourself as an entrepreneur when, like you, Tracey, has a three-year-old startup? How much should I get from what I’m making? How much should I pay myself?

Tracey:

The first thing that needs to be assessed is your profitability. Do you actually make money on the products or services that you sell? I can tell you that 80 to 85% of the entrepreneurs that I worked with when we started working together, they are losing money on most products or services. That’s where you’ve got to start.

My first step is I always encourage a deep dive on pricing. Let’s start with the basics. How much does it actually cost you to deliver this product or service? And make sure, um, if there’s an element of labor, whether it’s you or a team member, how much time does it take, and then how much does that cost? If there are materials, then we’ve got to tap on an appropriate percentage for overhead those things you’ve got to pay whether or not you make a sale like rent, like Internet, insurance. Then you ideally would have a profit margin.

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I suggest starting from that bottom-up approach, figure out what you think are your ideal prices. Then you’ve got to compare it to the market. What will they pay? You might want to charge $100 for a beaded bracelet, whereas the market will only pay $2. So you’ve got to see where is that disconnect? I encourage entrepreneurs before they even open their doors to do a business plan and to figure out if this is going to work from a financial standpoint before you outlay any time, any money.

Most entrepreneurs are super keen to get going right away. They don’t want to take the time to do that, but it is so worth it. So if anybody’s contemplating a new business, who’s listening, please do that. It will save you so much headache in the long run, because if you find out that it’s not going to be profitable, you can pivot your idea, you can maybe target a different client base who will pay more for what you’re offering. It gives you all kinds of options again.

The way that you can get paid from your business, there are three basic ways you can be on a regular salary. You can take dividends, which is after profit, or if you’ve loaned money to the business, you can repay that shareholder loan, they all have different tax implications. The bottom line is if you’re not making money, there is no money for you to get paid. Realistically, to your point, Sean, in the first couple of years, unless you’ve really got a business plan, unless you’ve got that client really lined up and you’re able to start very strongly. You’re not going to be taking a significant amount of pay.

Thinking that you are, and potentially making commitments to your family, but the vacation is going to go on. Maybe the car you’re going to have the house you’re going to live in. I would refrain from making those kinds of promises because it does take money to start the business and then you do need to put money back into it to grow it. If you want to grow your team, if you want to grow your sales. We’ve talked about cash flow, but growth is really hungry. It needs cash to fuel it.

I almost think about it and I’m gonna date myself. But when I was a kid, we used to play Pac-Man. You would have Pacman coming and eating those little bubbles. The same thing with growth, it eats up cash. You can’t just take everything out and expect your business to grow. It just won’t work. Basic math. If you have sales of $10, your expenses are $11 you’re already at minus one. There’s no room for you to take out a lot of money for your salary or your pay.

Cashflow Problems Entrepreneurs and Employees Encounter

October 28, 2020 By Sean Leave a Comment

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Excerpt

Sean:

Some of the struggles with, not just entrepreneurs but, people, in general, is about cashflow. What are some of the most common cashflow problems that entrepreneurs need to avoid and or that the ordinary people who are employees would that you know, that they need to avoid as well.

Tracey:

The first thing I see, especially with entrepreneurs, but it’s certainly is prevalent on the personal side too, is just thinking, I don’t need to worry about that. That’s not my forte. I’m just going to ignore those numbers. I’m going to make money and it’s going to work out. The second is I’m going to delegate it to somebody and then I don’t need to look got it. So on the entrepreneur side, people are just saying, okay, bookkeeper, accountant, you handle that. I’m handling everything else in my business, personally, but they might get a financial planner and then just say, okay, that’s it.

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Really I advocate for people to be accountable and knowledgeable about their numbers. It does not mean doing it alone. You certainly employ professionals to help you, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to be in charge of your life financially.

From a cash flow perspective, what is quite common, particularly on the entrepreneur side. that there’s a little bit of a disconnect between that P and L that we were talking about, and the sales and then the cash flow cycle depending on the business.

Let’s think about an event planning kind of business. We’re going to have a wedding. If I’m the event planner, I’m going to charge you a 50% deposit to book me before the event and then you’re going to pay me before I even execute on your wedding day. Versus other people may collect in full before they start delivering their products or services or another type, which is most common and creates the most check cast for all the challenges is, Sean, you can take my products home today and I’m going to send you an invoice and then you pay me later.

That later could be 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. So all of a sudden we’ve recorded these sales, but then the cash doesn’t come for this time, way later. We’ve got this disconnect. So when we’re thinking about cashflow, we absolutely need to think about what is the cycle of it. When does the money actually come and then does it correlate to when the money goes out. I know that from most business owners I work with, they’re not making a profit. So there’s generally not enough cash to cover all the expenses that need to be there. As you raised earlier, they’re not getting paid consistently, which is an issue for them. They’re not living up to the obligations of their family. It’s certainly not why they went into business.

People go into business to make money. And sometimes they think that it’s not going to be as much work as having a job. But that trade-off is you don’t, you have to work a lot, but you also don’t necessarily get that steady paycheck. That employment brings.

My best advice is start to understand that cashflow cycle. And when you actually start looking at the numbers regularly, you do see that there is a pattern and your business is going to be potentially different than someone else’s. So you can’t just start comparing yourself to somebody else. You’ve really got to look at it, the timing, and how things work with yours.

When you put it together, this much comes in this much. Usually there’s going to be a hole at the bottom. The earlier you know, that you’re going to have that shortfall. The more options you can brainstorm to solve the problem. Can you get a loan at the bank? Maybe you can call some of those customers who didn’t pay you for a long time and ask them to pay you. Maybe you can put in some money, you have personally. All kinds of options can be brainstormed ahead of a problem. But if you’re not knowing that it’s going to come, all of a sudden, it’s the day you got to make payroll and you don’t have the funds to do it.

How to Become Financially Fit

October 23, 2020 By Sean Leave a Comment

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Excerpt

Sean:

When you’re going to be starting to engage someone in helping them with their journey to becoming financially fit, I wonder how do you analyze or benchmark a person’s or maybe an entrepreneur’s financial fitness?

Tracey:

So the first thing I like to do when we’re working together is I usually ask them what they know about their finances. Most times they tell me they don’t know anything, which very quickly I find out it is not true. But the people are very lacking in self-confidence around that financial aspect. So just getting them talking about it. I like to look at the numbers.

I do an assessment using traditional financial ratios. I compare it to their performance year over year. I compare it to industry benchmarks and we talk through it and it gives us a really good opportunity to talk about number one: what are these financial statements? The one that most entrepreneurs may know is the income statement also called the profit and loss, P and L,

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where you really have all your sales and then all of your expenses. That’s the one that most entrepreneurs take a peek at. The other one that’s very important is your balance sheet that shows all of the things that you own, all of your assets and all of the people you owe money to, and the equity or the funds you’ve built up in the business.

So explaining how those statements work and then–from an outsider’s perspective, very objective– how do they stack up according to those ratios? And the interesting thing is that while I’m talking about what I’m seeing, they’re able to fill in the gaps of the story of what was happening in the business because they knew how it felt.

If I start talking about liquidity, which is having cash to pay your bills, your short term obligations. And it’s a really formal term. They’ll remember that they had some cashflow challenges and things felt strained at that period of time when I’m talking about that in the numbers.

It’s really nice to see the analysis, then their story comes together because between the two of us, we can then build on their knowledge and help them start to see how the numbers can help them plan for future things in the business.

The Pandemic Almost Lost Her Some Clients but Instead She Got More

October 21, 2020 By Sean Leave a Comment

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Excerpt

Sean:

It has been a tough time. Me and my organization, we had our revenue kind of rewind four or five years back. It’s still more than when it started 10 years ago, but it’s tough as the founder and CEO, I see my bottom line and think: Hey, you know, all that hard work just wiped out. Four to five years. I’m wondering, how is this time treating you? What are you doing to get out of it and just improve everything?

Keziah:

We have been lucky in the US. Some people say we’re lucky. Some people say we’re not, but there were a lot of resources directed towards small businesses. That’s been helpful for my clients as well as for myself.

When they shut things down, there was a period of time in that March and April when I wasn’t closing any clients. Also with my existing clients, a lot of them were on a monthly program with people. I do a six-month program upfront. And then we often do monthly work and a couple of the businesses went to zero and they came up to me and were like, I’ll take a pause. I just can’t keep going forward. I went back and I was like, No. You are going to be infinitely more likely to be paying me full price in six months if we keep working together.

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So I did work with people on price. I started going out into the community and being more upfront about doing demo sessions. I was like if you bring me small problems, we’ll work on it. Let me give you some tools. Going out to people that I knew and offering them that because I knew that that would just be enough to kind of get them up, get them moving and taking action.

I do think that that attitude that you’re expressing, which is that feeling, which is very intense that, oh my God, I’ve rolled back to where I was. You have to imagine the area under the curve.

You still accumulated all of that money that you’ve spent on things and whatever, and then have the life that you want, and you also accumulated all of that knowledge, all of those contacts, all of that experience. So you’re not back where you were. Four years ago, right? Your business has evolved quite a bit and you have evolved as a leader and as a business owner.

What I am seeing is that for some people it’s, Hey, you know, this business isn’t really what I wanted to do. I started to get more clients after the first drop. People started coming in because they’re realizing that the reason their business is suffering so much now is because they didn’t plan for X or they didn’t know why, or they’re not very good.

Like I said, my clients, we could negotiate and they’re still paying me now. Some of those clients are paying me less. New clients are generally paying me full price, but like, I did have some negotiations, but they didn’t leave me. They didn’t fire me. We were able to work with that. I’ve seen that with the clients I’ve worked with for a longer time is often they were able to use this time to reset relationships.

Go out if you’re really looking at your business. Let’s say, for example, you were a retail business and you had no eCommerce presence. You have had 20 years of Amazon coming at you. So you’ve been in denial about the fact that it works. I’m not saying your retail business can’t survive, but what is the value to you? Why do I come to your store? It’s because I like you as the shop owner and you’re friendly and you help me. If that’s what it is, then you need to start selling that virtually. But you can still keep me as a client or a customer if you know what you’re providing me.

There’s a lot of stuff that is going on where people will be able to push through to the other side once they really understand what is the value they provide. I’m happy to talk offline about this because I know you’ve got a bunch of businesses. You’re definitely not back four years, as much as it feels like that.

Why It’s Important to Screen Both Clients and Employees

October 16, 2020 By Sean Leave a Comment

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Excerpt

Sean:

So what is the number one wrong thing that you think clients that you have are doing when it comes to the hiring process and how do you fix that?

Keziah:

I don’t do relationship coaching, but people can use it for that. This process that I’ve developed works really well for hiring because you get to enter the core of what you really want. Often that’ll help you with screening out people who didn’t go to a fancy college or who didn’t go to college at all. You start to understand like, okay, is that actually important? It allows you to be a little bit more flexible, which often, In the US will say, we can’t get good candidates. That’s one.

The other one is you’ve got to pay people. You have to provide something of value to them, them. And that’s like, sometimes I’m like you are as a business owner. You guys are mutual clients. So you pay them for the value that they create for you. They show up and bring their right energy and focus and dedication in exchange for the value you provide to them. And if you don’t understand what value you’re providing to your employees, And often people will be like, well, I just I’ll throw more money at them. And it’s like, well, maybe that’s not what they need.

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Maybe what they need is you to hire two or three more people, take the workload down and do a better job managing the organization. So I often find that they’re typically trying to throw money at their existing employees to get them because they’re leaving, jumping ship, and then they’re underpaying their new people.

And it’s like, let’s normalize this and let’s actually focus on what people want. So you kind of think of it from those two things. One is what do I really need? So it starts to let you cross off all the stuff that you thought was important and then looking at what I provide to them, and then the third layer is just being really aware.

If you can possibly name and gender and all those blind, applications, it’s very hard. because it’s very informal. Typically with smaller businesses called gray market jobs. If you can scrape those off in terms of when applications come in, there’s just well-documented bias. If somebody’s got a foreign name if they’re a woman. Will the same resume really be interpreted differently?

That just reduces the quality of your pool because you basically took very well qualified candidates. That’s the false negative part. So I’m just like, let’s, let’s make sure. And even when you write your job description, if you’re posting, there’s a bunch of like apps and stuff and you can, you can certainly bring in a hiring consultant.

I know a little bit, but I’m more likely to outsource that if it’s really important to make sure you’re not putting language in. People often talk about culture fit. The truth is when you say, what is your culture? It boils down to do we all get along?

And I’m like, yeah, but you, you get along with people who look like you.

So you’re just going to hire a bunch of people like you. If that’s your criteria and investors do this too, like, Oh, I want to go to the pub. Do I want to go out for drinks with you?

Is that what’s relevant to whether or not somebody is going to be a good employee?

I’m not an expert. They’re great resources. If it’s a larger business, I might bring in a consultant to help with that. But a lot of that is also just getting in touch with what’s most important to you. And when you say culture fit, usually what you mean. What does that mean? And what’s your culture?

Oh, I don’t actually know what my culture is. Okay. Well, let’s talk about how you want to structure your culture and how you want to create that because that’s part of what you’re offering the employee in exchange for their time.

I’m a white border, so that’s why I’m like this. I can draw this out for you.

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How do you deal with a team leader who has no leadership skills?

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