September 2018 « Confidence Coach

Smile Challenge

I want to talk to you about something really simple today. Basically, it is — how are you looking as you walk around your business, as you interact with your employees, your customers, as you’re representing yourself? And what I mean by that is, are you smiling or are you frowning?

We may not think that that’s a big thing, but everybody takes their queue from you as the business owner on whether or not how they react to situations. So my challenge for you today is if you’re not smiling — START SMILING. You can’t expect your people to be happy and to do the work they want to do if you’re going around frowning and being negative with your body language.

Start Smiling.

As you start smiling, be observant and then watch other people smile back at you. When you smile at somebody and you really mean it, it affects the other person, and they’ll want to smile back at you. Smiling changes everything — how we feel and the stress level that we have. It also can lower the anxiety that you may have as you work through your day, as you work through problems and as you are working with your customers and employees.

Today is a very simple tip yet very cutting edge. Show those pearly whites and smile. Share a smile with somebody and watch them smile back. Watch the dynamics of your office, warehouse, or your work environment change by you being somebody that leads with a smile. Leaders set the tone for a whole organization. And you know, we can say we’re going to make a difference with our words or by our work ethic — and these things do work, but the quickest way to change the dynamic is to start smiling.

So today we are issuing you a smile challenge. Let us know your results and how it affects your people when you lead with a smile. Check in with us at www.confidencecoach.org or leave a response on our YouTube channel where we covered this topic. We look forward to seeing your smiling faces out there in the marketplace.

by Scott Ballard , September 30, 2018

Investing in Relationships

You may recall that I have written in the past about the “Business of Marriage,” and how running a business and maintaining a healthy marriage use many of the same skills. Investing in relationships is essential and something we do not only with our clients but in own marriage as well.

Recently, my wife, Orlena and I had the opportunity to be on a Leverage podcast in regards to our marriage and dating relationship (yes, I did say “dating”). As some of you already know, we work together in our coaching business and we have been “dating” for 40 years! Actually, we’ve been married 37 years but I like to say we’ve been dating for 40 because that’s how long we have been a couple. We love working together, just being together and are best friends.

I wanted to share with you the podcast interview. It’ll help you get to know us a little bit better on a more personal level. It talks about our Thursday date nights. Yes, we still date each other and we highly recommend it. Check it out for yourself:

–Scott & Orlena

by Scott Ballard , September 23, 2018

What Pain or Problem Does Your Business Solve

As a business owner or CEO, have you ever asked yourself what pain or problem does your business solve for your customer? The other day I asked a coaching client this exact question and he couldn’t give me a clear answer — his response showed that there was some real fuzziness around what it is that they were actually doing for their customers. Since he really couldn’t identify what the pain or problem was that they solved, I told him that he had to get clear about this and actually put himself in the customer experience.

I wanted to share with you the process and questions I walked him through in case you find yourself in the same situation.

What is it that people pay you to do or create?
What solution or problem do they come to you (and give you their hard earned money) to help them with?
Write out what you do for people, for your customers, your clients.
My challenge to you is to actually then put on the client “hat” and go through your own process: call your company; email your company; buy your product; demo your product; go through the whole process from beginning to end as if you knew nothing about it and see what it would be like if you were a customer or client. And then ask if it really delivers the solution to the pain or problem that you think it does or is it something different? Maybe you need to add something or take something away.

This gives you a 360 degree view of what the pain or problem is that you’re really solving. If you do this, you might discover that something has changed since you started your business. At least then you can know if something is changing right now or if you are in touch with what the pain or problem is for your customer.

Depending on what you discover, this is a great starter conversation!

Pick 4, 5 or 10 of your best customers and sit down with them and ask them these questions:

What do you look to us for in problem solving, pain relief and solutions?
What is it that you’re actually investing in when you do business with us?

Out of their responses, I think you’re going to be surprised that there are other opportunities, and then there are also going to be things that you’re doing that they don’t really value at all! Things that can be converted into something else that’s a lot more profitable for you and makes the customer a lot happier about your service.

Also if you can start these conversations, it creates a lifetime relationship for a customer. What is the value of a customer, not just for one transaction but for the next 5, 10 or 20 years?

So that’s my challenge to you today. If you’d like help around this or if you’d like to talk about how to implement this in your company, reach out to us at www.confidencecoach.org. We’re also on YouTube. If there’s someone else that you think needs help in this area, please feel free to share this with them too. Make it a great day.

by Scott Ballard , September 16, 2018

Your Biggest Challenge

I’ve got an irresistible offer for you as a leader, business owner, CEO. My offer to you today is give us your biggest obstacle, your biggest challenge or let us know what your biggest thing in your business is that you haven’t been able to figure out. You haven’t been able to get past. You’re stuck in. My challenge to you is to bring that to us and let us spend 90 minutes with you. We will take you through a process to make a breakthrough around that challenge, around that thing that feels like it’s impossible or that there’s no way forward or that you’re stuck in. And we will do it for FREE.

That’s our irresistible offer — 90 minutes of our time and our processes for free to help you solve your biggest obstacle or challenge.

We’d love to coach you through a process to help you get clarity, and then help you create a breakthrough or solution for you to get past whatever is stuck in your business. This could be finances, it could be employees, it could be competition, it could be about what’s happening in your industry, it could be governmental regulations, it could be something happening with you personally that’s going on. It doesn’t really matter. We’re Confidence Coach and we’re 100 percent confident that you can’t bring us an obstacle, barrier or roadblock that we can’t help you create a solution or breakthrough to.

So that’s our big challenge. If you have an obstacle (and if you’re in business we know you have one), we’d like to offer this to you today. Reach out to us on our website at www.confidencecoach.org and schedule a catalytic conversation. We will take you through a process that will lead you to the solution. There’s no charge to you. See what we can do in 90 minutes to get you from where you’re at to where you want to go and get you past whatever’s holding you back.

Now you’ve probably tried everything yourself. You’ve tried everything internally, you’ve talked to other people and maybe it’s been a year, two or even three years, and you still have not been able to figure this out. So today we’re saying to you, here’s our offer — we can help you figure this out! We’re confident in it enough to say we’ll do this for you and prove it to you without any cost to you, other than you investing 90 minutes of your time. We will work through a process that will help you to be honest about what your obstacle is and also be honest about being fully engaged in the process. When you hear our questions and then respond, out of that we will create a breakthrough solution that you’ve never thought of or you didn’t think was possible.

If you know somebody that’s in this situation (or maybe it’s you), send them our way. We’d love to serve them and show the value that we can create in just a short period of time.

Make it a great day.

–Scott

P.S. Here are 4 ways I’d like to help you improve your business:

FREE BOOK – We would love to send you our book, “The Biggest Disability is a Bad Attitude”. It’s our story of who we are, why we do coaching, the way we do it, and how our strategy and processes work. Just sign up on our website to get your own hard copy now.
FREE 60 minute coaching session – For one hour we will talk about your business’ future, what’s in the way, what your leverage opportunities are going forward, and how to keep building on your confidence. Schedule your catalytic conversation here.
FREE The Solution System pdf. My favorite thing to do is to take business owners through The Solution System and watch their thinking create a huge breakthrough for their business. You can download a free copy here.
Work with me One-on-One. If you would like to work directly with me to create a bigger, better future for your business, just reply to this message and put “One-on-One” in the subject line. Tell me a little about your business and what you’d like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details.

by Scott Ballard , September 9, 2018

Delegation for a Day

How many different tasks, decisions, meetings or things are YOU doing in your business that somebody else could do instead? Maybe it could be delegated to someone else in the company or it could be outsourced. I want you to look at one day in your calendar (or your to do list) and count up how many tasks or things you did that day. Now, I challenge you to see if half of those things could be done better and more effectively by somebody else! What I’m talking about here is the power of delegation.

I know one of the biggest things when I’m working with a lot of business owners is that they don’t have enough time. Everything is always a time crunch and pressure; they work more and get seemingly less done. They’re not making the progress they want to make. My thought about that after watching and coaching a lot of people is that they’re doing a lot of things that somebody else should be doing. As an owner or CEO, you have two or three things that really move the needle in your company that you provide and bring to the table. You need to figure out what those are and then you need to stay in that lane. Then look at everything else that you do — maybe it’s answering the phone, sending/responding to an email, or booking your own travel. Who else can do these tasks? Is there someone that this is their best ability? They could do this really well? Push those tasks out to those people so that you can elevate the two or three things that you’re great at, and then you will have the time to take your company to a new level.

So, what is your delegation number? What are the number of separate tasks that you’re doing a day that you could cut in half? That’s my challenge. Give me your number. Then my next challenge is for you to cut that number in half again by delegating. When you delegate, remember to be specific and clear about what you want done. Let the person or service you use know what you expect the result or outcome to be from this delegation.

If you want to increase your effectiveness, if you want to get greater results, you have to start thinking about all the things that you’ve taken on that are slowing you down. You’ve got to start thinking about how you can take those things off your plate so that you can be and do the things that you’re great at — and that’s usually only two or three things.

By delegating, you can get back control of your time. It’s getting in your lane so you can have a multiplier effect with those things that you are phenomenal at. It’s getting your business back on track to where you want to go. It’s all about changing your thinking about everything you do to ask the question, “Is there somebody else that can do this more effectively or better than I can?” And then let them start doing it instead of you.

So that’s my challenge to you today. Look at your day and see what you can delegate, and let’s see if we can’t cut that in half again. I think you’ll be amazed at the results and blown away by what will happen.

Reach out and give us the number of how many things you’re doing a day and then give us your number that you’re going to delegate.

–Scott

P.S. Here are 4 ways I’d like to help you improve your business:

FREE BOOK – We would love to send you our book, “The Biggest Disability is a Bad Attitude”. It’s our story of who we are, why we do coaching, the way we do it, and how our strategy and processes work. Just sign up on our website to get your own hard copy now.
FREE 60 minute coaching session – For one hour we will talk about your business’ future, what’s in the way, what your leverage opportunities are going forward, and how to keep building on your confidence. Schedule your catalytic conversation here.
FREE The Solution System pdf. My favorite thing to do is to take business owners through The Solution System and watch their thinking create a huge breakthrough for their business. You can download a free copy here.
Work with me One-on-One. If you would like to work directly with me to create a bigger, better future for your business, just reply to this message and put “One-on-One” in the subject line. Tell me a little about your business and what you’d like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details.

by Scott Ballard , September 2, 2018