December 2018 « Confidence Coach

What’s Stopping You?

Have you ever thought about what’s stopping you or what’s in the way as you think about your next step for 2019?

What’s in the way either personally or professionally?

What’s the fear that has got you stuck?

Today, if you take the next 5 minutes to figure out what the first couple of small baby steps are that would move you towards getting unstuck you will create great momentum. Think about what small action steps will help you overcome that fear or roadblock. What can you do right now to get moving in a positive direction?

We call this the 5 minute miracle. This quick and easy exercise will give you momentum that will move you past that block of fear. Here is it:

Set your phone on a timer for 5 minutes.
Write the baby steps down.
Then take action; do as many of these steps as you can right now before the timer goes off!

I challenge you to do this today and start your New Year off on a positive note. You can overcome your fear in the next 5 minutes by taking action. You really can accomplish more than you realize if you set the timer and just get it done!

If you have any questions feel free to send me an email.

by Scott Ballard , December 23, 2018

Conquering the Mental Game

In order to increase and improve the success of your business you need to do what we call “conquering the mental game.” Eighty percent of being successful in business is how you think about things. What are the mental game things that you need to be aware of, deal with or have a strategy around?

Three Mind Challenges Identified

The three big mind challenges that we help our clients deal with and change their perspective about are:

FEAR. This could be any kind of fear that they have about their business. Maybe they are worried about what might happen and how that will impact how they operate and strategize their business in the future.
UNCERTAINTY. They could be uncertain about their product or service, their team, their employees, the customer, the economy, or their competitors. It’s important to acknowledge what you are uncertain about before they can deal with it.
DOUBT. Is there doubt about whether or not they can grow the company to $10,000,000. Are they doubtful about whether or not they can find the right person to be a Vice President. Doubt about whether or not the market is going to stay good for the next three years. Maybe doubt about their own ability to lead the company to $50,000,000 a year. It’s just doubt about anything and everything!!

Write It Down and Get It Out of Your Head

If our clients are experiencing any kind of fear, uncertainty or doubt, we talk about it and have them put their concerns down on paper or write it on a whiteboard. When their fear is written out where they can see it then it’s not occupying all their thinking, brain power and mental energy. This helps them to create a different perspective. It’s amazing when something is written on the whiteboard where they can see it, they realize it’s not as big of a deal as they thought. Most often, their fear has been greatly exaggerated in their mind which made it bigger than it really is. Acknowledging this takes away or reduces the fear.

Break It Down to Simple Steps

When it comes to uncertainty or confusion, we want to take the complexity out of growing and running a business. Breaking the complexity down into simple terms or steps removes the uncertainty.

Look Back at Your Accomplishments

How do we deal with doubt? We look back to the day you started your business and account for all the growth, accomplishments, and everything that you’ve done to get you where you are today. Take the perspective of looking back and seeing all that happened. Recognize that you started with only one customer or maybe it was just you. Where was your revenue when you started and where it is now? You need to make a note of how far you’ve come and see the positive as you look to the future to build the company that you dreamed about building and hoped for.

In order to conquer the mental game and come out on top, you need to write down and acknowledge what your fear, uncertainty and doubts are. When they are brought to the light they usually are not as bad as you think they are. It’s a matter of perspective and overcoming or conquering the mental game.

If you’d like to know a little bit more about who we are and what we do, you can still go to our website and sign up to get a free copy of my book. Or, sign up for a free coaching session and we will create value for you by taking you through a process that will change your business and your life!

by Scott Ballard , December 16, 2018

The Clarity Solution

There’s a coaching exercise that we call The Clarity Solution which helps you understand why and how you do what you do. It can also help you analyze why this is important to you. Because sometimes as owners, we forget the big stuff like this or don’t touch base with it. We can then start to drift one way or another and get off track. So with this process, people get refocused and it brings them back to who they really are and what they truly believe.

I was at a conference a couple of years ago and a gentleman speaking said this: “Love me or hate me; there’s no money in the middle.” A lot of business owners think they have to try to satisfy or help everybody. They are trying to be everything to everybody; that never works. It’s always a recipe for disaster. If someone is struggling with this, we use The Clarity Solution to bring them back into focus and ask them what it is that they really believe; what is it that they’re really doing; and who they’re really serving, both in their customers and employees.

CLARITY QUESTIONS – Ask yourself these questions:

What do you stand for? What do you stand for as a business owner, CEO, solo entrepreneur or whatever you are? What do you really stand for in your business and yourself? What is that? Get clear about it.
What do you believe? So what do you believe about what you do in the marketplace? What do you believe about the value you bring? What do you believe about your team (if you have a team)? What do you believe about your employees, the company, that type of thing?
What is the first priority for you in your business? What is the number one thing? Sometimes we’ve forgotten what that is, so it’s important to touch base with that again.
How do you go about making decisions in your business? Do you actually have a process that you go through to make decisions or are you just doing it randomly with intuition or on the fly? This question has helped a lot of people to develop a process for making great decisions for their business and their companies.
How do you connect with people now? How do you connect with your employees first and then how do you connect with your customers second? Are you doing this in a systematic way? So once again we’ll bring that into focus.
What are some good connection points that you haven’t been taking advantage of that you could with your employees and with your customers?

These are just some checkup points that create value for people. When you think about these things and answer the questions, you can then put things back into your business that you may have forgotten or add new things to give more focus and and clarity about what you believe. This will help you remember what you stand for and figure out who’s important to you. Once you’ve figured these things out and gotten focused again, it’s amazing how the results come back to your business in the way of increased revenue for you and value that you create for your clients.

Thanks for your time today and make it a great day. Reach out to us at confidencecoach.org/contact. We love hearing from you.

by Scott Ballard , December 9, 2018

After Action Review

Have you ever wondered how you could get better and improve your business or company in a systematic way? We’ve created a series of questions that we call the After Action Review in order to do so. It’s really taken from the military and they use it on all their training and exercises but we’ve adopted it and use it after coaching, training sessions and also for different things that we are doing within our company. We have found it to be really valuable and it’s a way to improve every time you do something. There are a series of five questions that we ask which I wanted to share with you today so that you could use them as a tool to improve what you do as well.

The next time you do a presentation, hire your next team member, make a sales call, do an employee review or whatever it might be — ask yourself these questions afterwards and watch yourself get incrementally better and better at what you do.

After Action Review Questions

What went right? Write down what went right on the project, process or event. Highlight and capture that.
What worked well? Were there things that stood out to you or maybe you got feedback on? Note if there was something that got a great result.
What needs improving? These are things that you saw that could make it better or improve the process or experience. Is there something that needs to be changed in order to get a better result next time?
What did you learn? Is there something that you learned from this experience or from this process that you maybe didn’t know before that you need to remember?
What was the biggest take away (from this event, process, project)?

Once you take inventory like this, then you know next time you can create more value, solutions, and an even greater experience for you, your company, your customers and/or your employees.

It only takes a couple of minutes to answer these questions (or 5-10 minutes if you want to include team members’ answers too) while it is still fresh in your mind after an event. At the end of a project or event, it’s a great way to really analyze and evaluate what went right by going back and reviewing what happened. I think you will find that it will transform your business one step at a time. You can learn more about us at confidencecoach.org.

by Scott Ballard , December 2, 2018