My Business On Purpose

Since I can remember Thomas Edison was the inventor of the light bulb.   Until I read Richard Friday's insightful book The Great Reset and found out Edison in fact did not invent the lightbulb.   In the early 1800's Sir Humphrey Davy began inventing a variety of safety lamps for coal miners and presented them to the Royal Society in return for accolades.     On into the mid-1800's lamp technology...

I've been working through the true account of Earnest Shackleton's 1914 voyage from England to Antarctica where Shackleton, and an entire British nation were hoping he would be the first man to cross the Antarctic continent on foot.   I'm a little more than three fourths of the way through Alfred Lansing's powerfully descriptive book " Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage " and already the pr...

Jason had the job of his dreams .  He was mostly working with people aligned with his values.  Working for people who were considered vulnerable and in need.  And was responsible to a board of directors who, for the most part, were cheering him on and providing the insight and support that he needed to lead this important organization towards its vision. Daily Jason was meeting with team members a...

Starting out in the survival stage of your business meant you spent most days dreaming, doing, and making sure that everything is being held together. Growth slowly (sometimes not so slowly) begins to creep in and before you know it you are maxed out not knowing how to get it all done in a 24 hour day. Jason has spent years on this hamster wheel and his health and family are starting to really pay...

The first time I stepped foot onto Nigerian soil it was clear, "this was way different than home." We have been traveling in and out of Nigeria since 2006 and have developed some dear friends and partners during that time allowing us to work on important projects. While in Nigeria the climate feels different, the food tastes different, the accents are different, the business climate is different.....

Over the weekend I devoured John Eldredge's new book, Get Your Life Back: Everyday Practices For A World Gone Mad . A line in his introduction had me hooked as he was laying out the purpose of the book, "I found myself flinching when a friend texted and asked for some time.  I didn't want to open email for fear of the demands I'd find there…It made me wonder -- am I becoming a less loving person ?...

There are seven things you will have to obsess over and implement if you wish to be the " leader that your looking for is looking for"   The Leader Your Looking for wants a WRITTEN and repeated Vision   Story: BOP began in March of 2015.  Most of my biz owner friends had what everyone saw as a successful biz...and they worked hard.  When I began to ask them, do you know where you're biz headed? Th...

We are wrapping our fifth calendar year as a business and in pursuit of our mission to liberate business owners from the chaos of working IN their business so they can build a business on purpose and leverage their business AS their mission in life. Why We Are Doing This Work E.F. Schumacher says there are three purposes to work: To provide a necessary and useful good or service To enable every on...

Michael Beaumont was doing a masterful job yesterday of teaching about the priority and necessity of vision.  I was in my happy place. There were friends who I could here in our small church meeting space snickering and chuckling as Michael talked about vision, as if to say, "Scott must be lapping this stuff up!!"  Michael then shared a story about Matthew Emmons that made me immediately think of...

Over the holiday break I had a chance to restructure my bookshelves and do one of my favorite things...meander through my books! Books are NOT just for nerds like me.  Books are a wise conversation with an old soul.   Hemingway said, " no friend is as loyal as a book ."   Jefferson said simply, " I cannot live without books ." Or how about this more modern Game Of Thrones reference, ". .. a mind n...

Last month we hosted our 9th BOP 12 Week Plan LIVE Event with over 130 business owners and key leaders in the room all culminating with each person working on their next 12 week plan. Each event we ask for feedback on what people are struggling with, it was overwhelmingly clear what the current headache is in owning a business.  One owner said it this way, "I need to cut the distractions, and get...

Now is about the time that owners and key leaders think, "we need a plan for next year!" You are right...you do.  What about last years plan?  Did it work? Did you stick to it?   Do goals and plans even work?   Through our in depth research we have uncovered the secret in what plans and goal-setting tools work and which do not.  Stay tunes and I will answer that in a minute.   But first, why do we...

In his book Work The System Sam Carpenter writes, " systems are the invisible threads that hold the fabric of our lives together. "   Carpenter goes on in his book to describe how his spiritual atheistic worldview was even changed not because to typical religious education or training but instead because of the systems he saw around him.   In order for you to read or listen to (check out the Busin...

An article from Gettysburg College tells us we will spend roughly 90,000 hours of our life at work. That is one third of every day of our life...working. Owners have a responsibility for creating businesses that produce value for customers, profit for the business, and jobs for millions of people. As you build your business in whatever stage you are in (typically five different stages from "Surviv...

Recently I received an email from a client who is a part of our Architects coaching program which is known as the Architecture Firm Freedom Formula (Dream Practice Accelerator) serving Architects, Engineers, and Interior Designers.. It is a program that Enoch Sears and I have run jointly for four years and we've had the privilege of seeing more than 100 Architects through the program around the wo...

Last week NFL players Miles Garret and Mason Rudolph were locked in a nasty tussle that left one with a bruised head and ego, and the other with an indefinite suspension without pay (his contract is said to be worth roughly $34mm over four years). Last week Ambassador William Taylor (acting Ambassador to the Ukraine) read prepared testimony giving insight into questionable practices from high rank...

My very first job in High School was working for my neighbors who owned Country Boy's Home & Garden Center in Greenville, SC. My office space was an outdoor nursery filled with plants, herbs, shrubs, pine needles and produce.  Allen and Lucy were generous to provide me with more responsibility than a 15 year old kid should have had.  It was a great training ground. From there my office spaces cons...

Too many owners see their businesses either as an irritation to endure or as a machine merely for profit-generation. A business is so much more. Business and commerce are incredible tools in the hands of thoughtful owners that can be leveraged as a powerful force for life transformation in the major areas of life-- faith, family, finances, friends, etc. Ryan O'Shaugnessey's is a growing Project Ma...

Coaching business owners has allowed us some pretty exciting highs.  Coaching also requires the thickening of a coach's skin. There are plenty of days where I show up to "practice" ready to coach and the response is a subtle eye roll from an owner, "Really?  We're going to talk about this again?"   Most Tuesday nights throughout the school year we have a group of teenage emerging-men to our house...

The headline landed this past week that so many thought might be coming… Since 2008 virtually every business owner has thought, "when will the next recession come and how bad will it be?"   Yours truly has wrestled with the same question during moments of emotional and mental weakness in my well-documented struggle with fear.   Recently though I have wondered, "could I approach a market dip with e...