My Business On Purpose

Our family feels like it's been stuck inside for so much of the last month. Some sick kids, tons and tons of rain, brutally hot weather that we thought was finally behind us, you name it! And yet with the cooler temps yesterday we took advantage of it and took a long family walk. Something we used to do nightly that just had been pushed aside as life got in the way. The simple, little things! We w...

Thomas and I were doing our weekly check-in when we got to the last statement after I had asked him the Check In questions (Thomas walks you through the Check In questions here ), "what I see and what I need from you." At this stage of our business, my role is requiring more and more visioneering and more accountability to macro-level task items.  If my head gets caught up in too much day to day s...

Every year, each one of our heroic business owner clients has an opportunity to commit to PREP WEEK... it's the one week of the year (in November) where we walk business owners step-by-step through the priority items they need to spend time on prior to the upcoming year to ensure that their time and energy is locked and focused on their WRITTEN vision.   Here is how PREP WEEK works...

We have been misled about the idea of culture. After poorly thought out ideas of free-Friday-lunches, bean bag chairs in the break rooms, ping pong tables, open office concepts, and incentive compensation plans, team members are still disengaged and frustrated. We are trying to solve a pervasive, soul level challenge, with the oscillating fan of surface level ideas, rather than dousing the underly...

If I were to walk into your office this week, pick an employee at random and ask them where you're headed as a business over the next year or so, would they be able to answer correctly? I'd wager they may be able to nail a few small things, but would probably fall short of where you'd like them to be. So how do we communicate those things and effectively put the bullseye on the wall for the whole...

A few months back I was driving the most beautiful stretch of interstate on God's green earth, I-26 between Orangeburg and Columbia…and I'm on one of those long stretches where it's 40-ft tall pine trees as far as the eye can see and I start to notice some clouds stacking up in the distance. Cars just disappearing into it a mile or so out and here I am driving 70+ mph right at it. Kind of an eerie...

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...

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...

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 busin...

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...

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 g...

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 stor...

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 under...

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 wit...

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...

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 ab...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 capa...

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 peopl...

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 str...

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 (ident...

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...