April 2018 « Confidence Coach

Who is Your FIRST Customer?

Here’s a question or thought for you today: Who is your FIRST customer? Who’s your most important customer in your company, business, or organization?

We talk about this all the time with The Dream Employee process. Our view or take on this is that your “EMPLOYEE” is your FIRST CUSTOMER.

A couple of reasons for this that you may not have thought about are as follows:

They spend more time in your business or organization than anybody.
They know more about what’s going on there than your paying customers would know.
They are the most important interface with your paying customers that you have.

So, how we treat our employees, how we interact with them, how we value them as our first customers needs to be the same mindset as what we have with our best fee paying customers or fee paying clients.

And so my challenge to you today is to ask you what’s your plan and how are you going to do this?

What’s your process to treat your employee like your “first customer” so that they feel like they really matter, and in turn they transfer that same treatment on to your paying customers?

This is a mind shift for a lot of you because you’re always thinking about the paying customer.

But when you really think about your business, who knows more about it? Who’s more vested in it? Who spends more time there, and who has greatest influence on your paying customers? In most companies it is those people out on the front line – your employees.

So we need to start thinking, acting and treating our employees like they’re our first customer.

At Confidence Coach, our plan for that is something we call “The Dream Employee” process. This is a process where we actually make deposits into the individuals and see a result in their attitude, their productivity and their collaboration at work because we help them pursue some of the goals they personally have.

Sound interesting? Schedule a free catalytic conversation and we can fill you in on it a little bit more.

by Scott Ballard , April 29, 2018

Why Do Some Employees Stay and Others Don’t?

What makes someone stay with a company or organization for a long time? As we’re doing The Dream Employee process with companies (both public and private), one of the things we’re learning and figuring out is what makes people stay.

We are finding as we interview people and take them through The Dream Employee process, that when we see someone who’s been with an organization 5, 10, 15, 20, even 30 years, and we ask them why they have been there so long, we consistently hear the reason is because they feel acknowledged.

They are acknowledged, first of all, for the work that they’re doing and the contribution they’re making in the business.

And number two, they’re appreciated for what they’ve done — their contribution, the value that they’re bringing to the company or the organization.

So as a leader, manager, CEO, or business owner,i f you can remember those two things — ACKNOWLEDGE and APPRECIATE your employees — it will extend the life of really good employees!!

That’s our thought for today. If you have any comments or thoughts on this, let me know. Make it a great day and we’ll talk to you soon.

by Scott Ballard , April 22, 2018

What Truly Engages An Employee?

As we work with business owners and CEOs on the whole idea of employee engagement, some of the questions that come up are:

How do you engage employees?
What’s fundamentally going on in the employee’s mind?
What are they really seeking as far as a relationship as you work with them and they work for you in your business?

There are two things today that I want to point out to you that are important for them. The first is to be “known”. Think about this, how many times do you walk down the hall or go through the warehouse, or maybe you’re out on a job site, and you don’t acknowledge them. You don’t call them by their name and say hi to them or ask them how the project’s going or wherever it may be.

The second thing is to give them a place in this business or relationship, where they have a voice and can be heard, Whether that’s about safety, a project, ideas for the company or just what’s going on in their life.

So those are the big two takeaways today that I want to tell you that we have found and learned as we’re working with hundreds of employees. When we sit down and talk with them, these are two of the biggest needs that they have.

Really simple to do, but you have to be intentional for them to feel that they are known and heard. These two things are critical. If you’d like to talk more on this subject, please reach out to us. We’d love to hear from you. Make it a great day.

by Scott Ballard , April 15, 2018

The Person With the Most Belief in the Company Has the Most Influence

Something that we’ve been talking to our clients about is an idea that doesn’t really get talked about much — the person with the most belief in the company has the greatest influence.

We often wonder why some people who are Presidents, CEO’s, or business owners are so much more impactful than others. They get greater results, have better teams, leverage their time better, and give their customers transformational experiences. They’re breaking new ground. They’re growing exponentially.

Well, one of the things I’ve drilled it back to is that people that carry belief at a dramatically higher level than everybody else in an industry or company are the ones that are winning! Those are the people that are doing amazing things for their clients, stockholders or teams and are transforming industries. For example, when you look at somebody like Jeff Bezos at Amazon, I think of the picture of him by himself in his office in 1999, and today he’s the richest man in the world. His company is totally transforming the world. He went years and years and years without making a profit. But in all that time he was able to raise money and capital continually because he had more belief than anybody that what he was doing was going to work out and was going to make a huge impact in the world in business, both professionally and personally. You can name a number of other people who have done the same thing – how about Steve Jobs at Apple.

The one common trait that all of these people have is that they are industry transformers. The people that are doing these epic things in the business world have a greater belief in what they’re doing than anybody else. They’re able to pass on or transfer to their team, venture partners, investors, suppliers, audience, customers, that what they believe in is going to be amazing! That this is an amazing thing, product or service or maybe it’s an experience they are creating. The greatness all stems from the idea of their own personal belief in it.

Beliefs are incredibly powerful. Think about your own personal spiritual or faith life. This is all based on believing in that idea or person. It’s what we stake our lives on.

We don’t think of it in business as “belief” being the thing that is an attribute that a leader of a company needs, but it actually is the game changer! The big separator.

At Confidence Coach we teach people to “think about your thinking”. We talk people through processes on how are they holding the belief for their company and their business. We ask questions such as: What does that look like to other people in the business? What does that look like to the world? What does that look like to the customer? Then we help them take score of that. For example, where are they in their belief about what they are doing. It all starts with this simple thinking.

You know if you’re not where you want to be in your business right now.

Check your BELIEF!!

If you don’t know how to do that, reach out to us and schedule a free catalytic conversation and we can talk about where you’re at in the belief spectrum. We can give you some coaching on how you can increase your belief and what the main ingredients are to building that belief.

Whether you need belief in your business or company, your people, your product or service, it’s all related. What does it tangibly mean to hold that belief? We can show you how that is totally possible!! But the first step is to be aware of where your belief is in what you’re doing. This little tidbit can make a tremendous difference in your business.

In the last quarter this has become a huge theme for us with all of our leaders that we’re working with. We just wanted to share with you that the person with the most belief in the company or business is the person that has the greatest influence over the future and results to come for that business.

If you have any questions or want to discuss this more, please reach out to us or check us out what we do at www.confidencecoach.org.

by Scott Ballard , April 8, 2018

What Are You Doing With Your Time Today?

Here’s one question for you today as a leader, business owner, entrepreneur or CEO — what are you doing with your time right now that is going to get you the best result for your future? Really think, analyze and ask yourself this question:

Is what I am doing right now going to get me the result that I want a year from now, two years from now, three years from now?

The reason for this question is because we are constantly talking to people about time. Time is the greatest asset in your company and in your personal life.

For all of us, the most precious thing we have is our time.

I’d like you to start thinking about your time as a multiplier; think of it as an investment. If you can do this and ask yourself the daily question about your time, then the next step is to get rid of the things in your daily schedule that you don’t need to do (or what we like to call the “Do Not Do List”). It’s not the “to do” list but it’s the “do not do” list — the things you don’t need to be or shouldn’t be doing. We want you to remove all those things out of your day-to-day schedule. We can teach you how to get these things out of your life, as well as show you how to teach others to do the same. Because by doing this, and consciously asking everyday: Is what I’m doing with my time right now going to get me the result I want a year from now, two years, etc.? — over time you’re going to narrow down and realize that there are probably only two, three or four things that you do really well that are going to have 80% of the impact on getting the results you want for your best future.

We really challenge you to say – okay, is what I’m doing right now really going to get me the results that I want or is this something I can put aside, decide it doesn’t need to be done, or is it something that can be done by somebody else (either at a later date or maybe outsourced). Because if you use your time as your greatest investment tool and leverage the results, this is one of the greatest predictors of where you’re going to be a year to three years from now. We all have the same amount of time. We all have the same ability to ask this question. Make this choice and ask yourself: Is what I’m doing right now the thing that needs to be done so that a year from now I can have the results that I want to have from my business or my personal life?

You know time is the greatest investment tool that you have. If you want to talk more about this or if you want to give us your answer to the question of what you’re doing with your time, please let us know. We’d love to start a conversation around time and how it’s tied to results for you personally and in your business a year to three years from now.

Make it a great day.

by Scott Ballard , April 1, 2018