Category Archives: Featured

The 3 G’s of Happiness

I think that you would agree that we all want more happiness in our lives; less complications, less problems, less stress and MORE happiness. This is something I have shared with my clients when they come to me and want more happiness. It’s called the 3 G’s. I’ll break it down for you.

Gratitude. On a daily basis, find a small thing that you’re grateful for. Not some big thing, but something small that you can be grateful for every day.
Generosity. Be generous towards somebody or something in your life. That could be money, that could be time, that could be a note you write to somebody to encourage them. Or maybe it’s something you do for a coworker or for your spouse. It doesn’t have to be big, but you’re giving to somebody without the expectation of a return.
Goodness (or doing good). Is there somewhere or something you can do good around or for? It might involve your child — maybe helping out at your child’s school event. It could be serving at your church. Or maybe doing something for a stranger. It might be giving something away to somebody and doing good in that way. Anyway, get creative and think about something you can do that is good. It could be as simple as saying please and thank you or maybe leaving a really big tip for your waiter at dinner tomorrow night.

Now you have the secret to creating more happiness in your life — the 3 G’s of Gratitude, Generosity and Goodness/Good.

If you practice and do one of these every day, your happiness factor will go up.

We all know about the 3 G’s but unless you actually do them and practice them, you’re not going to get the benefit of Happiness that they bring.

by Scott Ballard , May 1, 2023

Acknowledge the Wins!!

Do you know how to start your meetings with wins so that everyone will want to attend your next meeting (be it virtual or in person) and be excited about it??

As we work with clients, one of the things we are seeing is that they’re having a lot of meetings and/or doing a lot of strategizing. They’re meeting with their team all the time. Those meetings tend to be a real drain, not only for you as the owner or manager, but also for the team. So our tip for you today is an idea that can help stimulate and make meetings much more productive so that you can get a greater result out of them.

Here’s the simple tip that you can add to each meeting at the very beginning once everybody is there. This has nothing to do with your agenda or the project that you’re working on, nor does it have to do with what you want to talk about.

Start your meetings with everybody in the group taking 30 seconds and sharing what they’re most excited about in their life right now.

For example, it could be at work, it could be personal, it could be family related, it could be a recreation or whatever they’re doing — but give everybody a chance to do this and share. What you’ll find is that mentally by doing this, their engagement will increase 10 times just because now they’re talking and thinking about something that they’re truly engaged in. There’s energy around this and it will then transfer on into what you’re talking about in your meeting. They’ll have this positive mindset and be ready for the meeting.

So this is how we change meetings from being basically the “death of a business” to something that people look forward to! Recognize and let people acknowledge the “wins” in their life. Because if you do this at every meeting, as you go on, people will come with the anticipation of sharing what they just did. Maybe someone will say, “Oh, I want to share with everyone that I just finished my first half marathon” or, “I just did this…” and they will say what they are excited about. This is how to change meetings from being this thing that people dread and they think are wasted time killers to making them productive, exciting and a great experience.

If you found this idea helpful, please share it with somebody that’s a fellow business owner. We’d love to hear back from you if you have any comments about this as well. To learn more about this or other ways to have a great meeting, schedule a free consultation or you can also subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Make it a great day!

by Scott Ballard , May 11, 2022

How to engage your employees

As we help business owners and CEOs with employee engagement, some of the questions that I ask them are: How do you engage your employees?

What’s fundamentally going on in the employee’s mind?

What are they really seeking in this working relationship?

Two Takeaways.

There are two things today that I want to point out to you that are really important for your employees.

The first is to be “known”. People want to be known for who they are and hear their name said. When you call them by name, it makes them feel good. Think about this — How many times do you walk down the hall, go through the warehouse, or maybe you’re out on a job site, and you don’t acknowledge someone that you see? Do you call them by name and say hello? Or, do you simply go on by? Do you ask how the project is going? How their day is going? Are you too focused on your own thoughts to stop and be friendly?
The second thing is to give your employees a place in your business or relationship where they have a voice and can be “heard”. Do you have a specific place where they can report to you about safety, a project, ideas for the company or just whatever’s going on in their mind? Do they feel comfortable expressing their thoughts or concerns to you?

When we work with companies, we not only work with the owners and leaders, but we also work with their employees using The Dream Employee. Being known and heard are two of the biggest needs we hear from employees. I hope you will use these two big takeaways to improve your company culture and engagement.

This sounds relatively simple to do. However, it takes intentionality on your part to really make your employees feel that they are known and heard. These two things are critical. If you’d like to learn more of what we do and how we can implement The Dream Employee in your company, schedule a free consultation today.

by Scott Ballard , May 10, 2022

Give hope and show you care

We’ve been talking about ways for better employee engagement, retention and how to deal with the great resignation and ghosting that is so prevalent today. The employees today want more than just to have a job. They want to be seen as individuals with a purpose, be known, heard and even loved.

Let me ask you a question: “Does everyone have a dream or goal for their life?” — the answer is definitely “Yes!” We have created a benefit for your employees that will show that you really care for them personally which will create more hope and commitment and loyalty within your company.

The Dream Employee

We work with companies who hire us to come in and implement a process with their team members called “The Dream Employee.” The Dream Employee is basically the concept of finding out for each one of your team members what their dream, goal or aspiration is for their life. If you can find out what really motivates them and have a conversation with them about how you can support, encourage and help them to achieve their goal, this in turn helps them see the connection between their work or job and the contribution they are making in your business with what they are after. By figuring out what really motivates them internally in their personal life and showing them the connection between their work and their goals, we find that we’re able to transform whole cultures, have greater employee engagement, and improve the feelings and emotions of people. They bring their best self to work.

Goodwill

When you start talking about the one, two or three things that they are most motivated about personally, you’re depositing goodwill into them. In doing so, when they come to work on Monday morning, they come with batteries! Meaning – they come to work ready to go because they understand the connection, they feel your support, and they know that you know what is really important to them in their life. This could be a myriad of different things — maybe it’s putting braces on their daughter’s teeth, it could be getting a second car, a dream vacation to Italy, learning a new language, finishing a college degree, getting their GED, learning woodworking or painting, or maybe running their first half marathon. It could be any number of things — the list of people’s dreams and goals are endless!!

But what we’re saying is, if you invest time systematically into what’s most important to them, then ultimately they’ll start to see the connection between their life and their work. They know you care! So then when you speak about what’s most important to you or what the vision or mission of the company is, they will respond to that in a much more positive and open way.

The other benefit of this is when you do have to have those difficult conversations about their performance or attitude or about something that went wrong or needs correcting, you have made positive deposits into their life by supporting their goal. This helps those difficult conversations go much better and there’s a lot less negative pushback because they know that you really care about what they really care about.

Celebrate the Wins

This also creates a whole culture of amazing momentum. It’s a culture where as people are achieving things personally, we all celebrate (just like when the company wins)! We celebrate them as individuals as they accomplish whatever goals they have; doing so builds unity, collaboration and a winning attitude in your business.

We get great pleasure doing this with companies. If you are interested in learning more about The Dream Employee, reach out to us today. We’d love to talk to you about it. We can also introduce you to other companies that are doing this and having great success. Make it a great day!

by Scott Ballard , April 29, 2022

Your Peak “Thinking” Time

Science, research, history, and plenty of personal experience all point to the fact that each of us have a peak ‘thinking’ time during our day. We have a time when our mind is working most efficiently, we get the most done, and we’re most productive.

Think about your own day and the times when you’ve had breakthroughs for your business: the times when you’re thinking the most clearly. When is that usually? Is it early in the morning? After lunch? Or maybe after you’ve taken a long walk in the afternoon? When is your energy the best for building your business?

Now, have you ever thought about putting your most important tasks or goals into that slot of time every single day? This is a simple way to leverage your best thinking to get the greatest results for your business. Use it, and create an unfair advantage against your competition.

If you’re not sure when your prime time is, set up a free coaching session with us — we’ll help you figure it out.

by Scott Ballard , April 22, 2022

Retaining your employees

When we do executive coaching, it’s clear that every CEO, business owner, or entrepreneur comes to us with the dream to build something. That’s the mission that drives companies from a kitchen table to a billion-dollar empire. Unfortunately, there’s one thing almost everyone forgets. We forget that our companies are made up of people.

More than ever before, businesses are having a difficult time with employee engagement, retention, the great resignation, and ghosting. The best thing right now is retain the employees you have due to the shortage of replacements.

One important thing to remember is that each of the people that work for you has a dream. Everyone has hopes and dreams for themselves outside of work. But in the past those hopes and dreams were often seen as liabilities to mitigate instead of assets to leverage.

It’s essential that you change your mindset in regards to your employees and come at it from their perspective. For example, if you could help your employee make a connection between their work and their dreams or purpose in life, it would show them that you really care about them as a person.

At Confidence Coach, we help companies engage more with their employees by asking the question: What are your hopes, dreams, and aspirations? This actually shows your employees that you care about them by giving them support not only at work but in their personal life too.

This isn’t just about being nice. When people are in the process of achieving their dreams, that’s where real productivity happens — that’s where growth and creativity and connection happens. Bonuses aren’t enough anymore. People want to have hope and actually feel loved. I did a short video about this that you can check out here called Hope, Commitment & Love. As an employer, you can’t compete in this world anymore with just a paycheck. Employees want to live for a purpose, and if you can help give that to them you’ll have the most motivated team of employees you could dream of. There’s nothing like purpose to drive your team towards real productivity and customer connection.

Everyone has to live and work in their own greatness. If you can harness and build that up, you can make a huge impact on your team. And, together, you’ll have an even bigger impact on the world.

by Scott Ballard , April 21, 2022

The Difference

One afternoon, two business owners who had graduated from the same university ran into each other. They had both had the same professors who taught them the ins and outs of running a business. They were both filled with dreams of becoming rich by building a successful company that made a huge difference in the world.

Recently when these two guys ran into each other while on a break at a seminar, they realized they were still very much alike. Both were happily married. Both had young kids. And both, as it turned out, had started a business in the same industry.

BUT there was one difference!

One of these business school grads was working as a solo entrepreneur making a comfortable $100,000 per year; the other guy had built a team of Dream Employees that were fully engaged and all had an “ownership” mentality. He had invested and leveraged all their skills, abilities, hopes, dreams, aspirations, and their creativeness to build a company that had accomplished all his hopes, dreams and aspirations. He was raking in over $1 million a year in net profits.

What made the difference?

The Secret was The Dream Employee Process

If you’re like me, when you hear a story like this you wonder what really did make the difference between these two men?

We all know stories like this, and we all have evidence demonstrating that it isn’t always raw talent, intelligence, perseverance or even dedication that makes a difference. It isn’t that one person has a “burning desire” and the other doesn’t.

The difference lies in this –

What each person knows.
How they personally make use of their knowledge.
The difference is in continuously growing and using their knowledge.

I’d love to help you can grow your knowledge and learn how to have a successful business by leveraging The Dream Employee process. Schedule a free consultation now to learn more about it.

by Scott Ballard , April 14, 2022

Are you in control of your mind?

Finding a better path is all about thinking. Our mind does not control us; we control our mind.

Many people don’t realize that they are actually in control of the supercomputer in their head. They let their mind take them wherever it wants to go rather than consciously thinking and making choices. And for most people, myself included, if we don’t consciously choose to do positive things — to be all that we are supposed to be — our mind will lead us to making bad choices instead. Our mind will say, “I’m not going to get up and go to work today. I don’t feel like it. I’m going to call in sick.”

Changing your life’s path can seem like a huge, unattainable goal, but it starts with a very simple task — a tool that I give to my clients to help them change their choices and the way they think.

The task is easy.

First, every morning, say to yourself,

“What are the three achievements I’m going to go after today?”

Not a million achievements; just three things that are going to change your own world in the biggest way you can with your God-given ability.

Then at the end of the day, before you go to sleep:

Take inventory of the day’s EXPERIENCES:

What are you grateful for this day?
What PEOPLE are you grateful for today?
What you were able to CONTRIBUTE to the world today?

You have the FREEDOM to make a choice to do and to think and to live and to be a person who is going to make a great impact on the world today and everyday.

Be that world changer who will make a difference in the world, and then show your gratitude to those around you.

In my book The Biggest Disability is a Bad Attitude, I share more about the habit of gratitude.

by Scott Ballard , April 13, 2022

Time and Money

Have you ever made the correlation between how you invest your time and money in your marriage relationship with how you invest time and money in your business?

Last month I spoke to you about the Business of Marriage with the idea being you can use life lessons from your marriage that can cross over into your business as well. Today is another thought on that subject regarding investing.

Let’s say you “invest” in your marriage by buying an anniversary trip to Hawaii. By doing this you are investing in this trip with intentionality. You are also investing in your spouse and your relationship. And, you are creating value and longevity through positive experiences.

When you think about investing in your business are you thinking the same way? Are you thinking long term? Because we all know in our business that the greatest investments are the ones that pay off long term; not just a one off deal, but for the long term of your business.

This is just another way of looking at marriage, and then reversing it and asking how would this be really effective if I thought this way about my business and I invested in that for a lifetime for the long term.

Reach out if you’d like to talk with us about this. Schedule a free appointment today.

by Scott Ballard , September 5, 2021

The Business of Marriage

The business of marriage is the idea of using lessons from your business life to help you in your marriage. And, using lessons and things you’ve learned in your marriage to help you in your business.

I love talking about this because Orlena and I have been married for 40 years and we’ve been in business and worked together for the last 10.

We have had many conversations about how we have learned different things from our business that we can apply to our marriage; and how we have learned different things from our marriage that we can apply to our business.

Business/Marriage

Here are a couple of things to think about that will help sharpen and make both your business and your marriage better.

In business you need to know your customer. You need to know their needs, what they like, and what they don’t like. You also need to know all the little details about them so that you can serve them well and they will stay a lifetime customer.
Well, that’s no different than what we’re talking about for a marriage. You need to look at your spouse and learn about them. You need to find out what makes them tick. Find out the things that are meaningful to them; the things that create value and build on that long term relationship.
How much time are you investing in your business? Let’s say you’re working 50-60 hours a week. When you do so, you expect a certain return, result or experience out of that.
So let’s flip that question around and ask how much time are you really investing in your marriage or your family? And are you investing in them with the idea that there’ll be a positive or good return out of that?

It’s a different way of looking at your marriage, and it’s a different way of looking even at your business result.

Where are you at in your business and your marriage these days? At Confidence Coach we are here to help business owners, entrepreneurs and CEOs to grow in their business and work, but our lives are not one dimensional, we all have a life outside of work. Are you putting as much time and effort into your marriage as you are your business?

Reach out if you’d like to talk with us about this. Schedule a free appointment today.

by Scott Ballard , July 22, 2021

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