Tag Archives: small business owner

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

Stuckedness

Here’s a new term for you: “stuckedness.” Life is too short to stay stuck.

It’s not your challenges that are holding you back from reaching your full potential and your best future. Instead, it’s the lack of action to overcome these challenges. You need to grow and change through the experiences that you live.

Are you living your best version of yourself? Or, do you feel stuck in one area or maybe several areas of your life?

Stuckedness Statements

Over the last five years, I’ve been keeping track of people’s “stuckedness” statements and how they’ve gotten stuck in their business and/or their life. I’d like to share some of those statements with you. See if you recognize yourself saying some of these things.

I don’t feel worthy (or better known as the imposter syndrome). I’m really good at what I do, however, there are so many others who have been doing this for so much longer with so much more education or experience or maybe a larger following. It makes me feel like an imposter. Why would somebody even consider me when they could just go to one of my competitors in the industry?
Nobody will ever pay me that much money for the service (or product or experience) I provide. I have a great fear that I’ll never be able to make more money than what I need to survive on.
I’m stuck. My stuckedness is — I have dyslexia, ADD, ADHD, a learning disability, etc. Because of that, I can never get past where I’m at today. I’m stuck here in this crappy job or in this business that owns me and controls me 80 hours a week.
I’m afraid of what people will say. I am afraid if I start this business, or if I buy that location, or if I hire that person, or, or, or whatever. I’m afraid of what they (the great “they” out there) might say about me. Am I greedy? Am I selfish? Have I sold my soul for the dollar.
I don’t have time to finish that degree. I don’t have time to have a relationship. I don’t have time for my kids. I don’t have time for my marriage. (These are the lies that say you don’t have enough time.)
I’m stuck in my head. I’m overanalyzing, overthinking, over planning, over worrying, to the point of never doing anything.
Whenever I think about my future, I can only see or think or believe that it’s not going to work out.
I’m afraid to hire someone. I’m afraid to make an investment. I’m afraid to leave my current security to go after something better.

These are just some of the “stuckedness” statements and comments that I’ve heard over the last five years from clients that reached out to work on their problems. These statements were holding them back from taking what we call “brave” or “massive” action to face their fear and become 100% committed to doing something about it. I’m thrilled to say that all the clients that shared the above statements with me have resolved their issues. Not only have they resolved them, but they’ve overcome them and are succeeding far beyond their wildest dreams as a result of getting unstuck!

One-on-One or Mastermind

My great passion, joy, and gift in this world is to bring insight, breakthrough, and transformation. I love to bring miracles into people’s lives through one question or one conversation that changes everything. I do this one-on-one with people and also through a group coaching program.

There’s currently room for two one-on-one coaching clients right now. We also have room in our next mastermind group which will start in August of 2021. If you’re interested in taking on one of your places that you’re stuck and take that part of your life to the next level, reach out to me by either emailing me (or hit reply) or schedule a free consultation. Let me know the area of your life, whether personal, business or both, where you feel stuck. I look forward to hearing from you.

by Scott Ballard , June 20, 2021

Achieve Your Dreams and Goals by Helping Others

Here’s an interesting thought by Byron Katie. She has an idea which takes the massive dreams, goals and aspirations we have for our business, our life, and our relationships and breaks it down to a very simple interesting thought which I have taken the challenge of, and I hope you will too. We can journey on this together because accomplishing your biggest hopes and dreams in your life and business are wrapped up in this statement.

“You can have anything you want in life if you’re willing to ask 1,000 people.”

Because of the experience with our clients and their employees using the Dream Employee program, I would change her saying a little bit. The second one that I came up with (and a lot of people have said this as well, maybe just a little differently) is:

“You can have all of your dreams and goals in your life if you’re willing to help 1,000 people achieve their dreams and goals in their life.”

I think these two statements can reframe the big goals and dreams you have for the next 5, 10, 15, even 25 years into bite size steps you can take.

How does that fit into you achieving your 10 year goal?

These two mindsets or ways of approaching goals, dreams and aspirations are incredibly powerful!

Let me challenge you to apply them as well. Send me an email with your thoughts and share your results. How are you going to apply these two mindsets to your life and your business going forward? Reach out today and schedule a free call if you’d like to talk. We are here to help you make progress towards your own goals and dreams.

by Scott Ballard , January 27, 2021

Desire

I’ve a very short statement for you today. I’d love to hear your thoughts about it and whether or not you believe this is true.

Our deepest desire in life is to find somebody who will make us do what we can do.

Let me know if you believe that’s true, or what that means to you.

This is my actual job description as a coach.

by Scott Ballard , January 10, 2021

What are you tolerating?

“What are you tolerating,” I recently asked a client. He hesitated and got really quiet and still.

I knew from my experience in coaching that something amazing was going to happen. That there was going to be a breakthrough which I knew hadn’t been there in months.

He then started to share with me all the things in his personal and business life that he had been tolerating. These were things that he had never stopped to think about before. And then he asked himself — why am I tolerating this? Why am I allowing this in my life? Why have I allowed this in my life the last 10 years? Then he said, when am I going to stop tolerating it and get rid of it?

We talked about the commitment it would take to do this. The courage it would take. The confidence to get rid of these things.

We also talked about the accountability that I was going to help him with to get these things that are intolerable out of his life.

I dare ask you the same question: What are you tolerating in your life? What do you need to eliminate?

This is a great time of year to ask yourself the same question. What are you tolerating that you need to get rid of in order to make 2021 the best year ever?

by Scott Ballard , January 3, 2021

Is this you?

I have some questions or thoughts for you today that I want you to do a little soul searching and see if any of them sound familiar or maybe you’ve just thought them to yourself in the past. Is this you?

Do you say to yourself, I’m not lonely but I feel very alone being a leader?
If I stopped working so hard would this all just disappear and go away? Would I lose my business?
It’s strange but people admire me but sometimes I feel really lazy.
My big vision that inspires so many people in my company and in the business world doesn’t really inspire me anymore.
I’m so good at solving problems that I don’t even see it or know it. It’s like a blind spot for me, and I just kind of unconsciously solve people’s problems.
I have a lot of success, money, recognition, all the toys but inside I feel strangely unfulfilled.
I feel like I’m in a rut. I feel like I’m bored and like I’ve already done this and there’s not really a challenge anymore. I could do this with my eyes closed.

If you think any of the above thoughts, I totally get it. I hear these things from my clients all the time.

It’s the part of being a leader, of being successful, of being somebody that has “achieved” what the world would define as success. But from working with high level leaders, I know there’s more. There’s so much more and the traditional definition or markers of success are not it. For you there’s something bigger and deeper that you want to do.

So that’s who I work with, and that’s what they do. We go past whatever is deemed success by the world, dig deeper, go further and change the world.

If this resonates with you, reach out to me. Let’s have a 30 minute conversation and see what happens.

by Scott Ballard , December 20, 2020

The 4 F’s of Customer Service during a Covid-19 Season

Something I’ve noticed we could all use some help with during this Covid-19 season in regards to customer service, customer experience and customer retention is what I call the 4 F’s – first, friendly, firm, future.

I want to say there is an order to this customer service suggestion. My wife and I recently travelled for the first time in a very long time. We flew, we rented a car and we stayed at places for the first time and what we experienced was “firm” first. And that set a really uneasy tone for us. How we were treated really sparked my message to you today.

1. FIRST

The first point is “first”! When we think about people’s first impression, first experience, first thing they see, first thing that they feel, first thing that impresses them about your business — what is that?

How are we making a great first impression in a COVID-19 world? In a world that has changed and dramatically impacted people, have you gone back and thought about what is the first impression that somebody gets when they interact with your business? How does it make them feel? What are they experiencing? How does that impact them as a customer and what are they thinking? Or, how did that affect them and they aren’t a customer anymore?

2. FRIENDLY

Point number two is “friendly”. I bring up friendly as point number two to ask you if your first impression is friendly. People do business with people that they like and trust. We have to be friendly first. Be happy, excited, greet them and welcome them. Ask how you can help them and start to build a positive friendly relationship.

So we have the first impression, and then we have friendly as the second word in this teaching.

3. FIRM

The third word is “firm” because we have regulations. We have people we have to think about. How can we be firm about being healthy, safe, social distancing, masks, washing hands and all the protocol?

Remember, I said before that when we travelled we were given the “firm” treatment first and it left us feeling not so great. So, firm is making sure that after we make a great first impression and we’re friendly, then we can be firm about following the rules or regulations so that we keep everybody healthy, We keep them safe and protected. But there’s an order to doing this well so that we can get to the fourth word, which is “future”.

4. FUTURE

What I mean by future is, if we are making a good first impression with customers (whether online, in person, at a drive thru, or whatever it is), we’re friendly towards them, and then we’re firm about keeping everybody safe (our employees, our people, our customers, our vendors) — then we can do what we call the “future”. Which is we create an experience, a situation more in the future where they will want to come back and be a customer again and again and again.

SUMMARY

So these are the four F’s of customer service that we believe work towards creating a repeat great customer experience.

Once again the four words to remember in this order are:

First stands for first impression. What is their first impression? What do they first see, experience, hear or know? Is that positive?
Are you friendly? Is your first interaction with them friendly? Are you speaking to them as a friend? Are you creating a friendly environment?
Number 3 is new to us all but part of what we’re living into now is being firm. Being firm about the rules. Meaning, we all have rules now that we have to adhere to around safety and health and all that. We’re all about that. So how can we be firm is the third part of the equation.
And then the fourth thing is how do we leave an impression with our customer so that in the future when they need our product, service or our experience they come back to us? Will they think of us first? We need to be all of the above – first, friendly, firm and future in order for them to come back. People always ask me how do we get repeat customers? It’s fairly simple: you say thank you and acknowledge them for coming in, you’re excited that they’ve been there, and you invite them back to your business again.

If you apply the 4 F’s it will improve your customer service and retention not only in this Covid season but in the future too.

At Confidence Coach we are here to offer business owners a place to reconnect and rebuild their confidence; which leads to their better future in the days and years ahead. Reach out today and schedule a free call if you’d like to talk. We are here to help and encourage you.

by Scott Ballard , December 16, 2020

Who do you want to be a hero to?

In these challenging times, we have all seen a lot of heroes who are first responders, but recognize that you can be a hero too in your own way.

Our media, TV, movies and books are all built around the hero.

Who do you want to be a hero to?

Who are you being a hero to now?

And how can you expand, impact and influence those people and other people’s lives?

Heroes define a story.

Heroes are on a secret mission.

Heroes go the extra mile.

Heroes act when they’re afraid.

Heroes overcome amazing obstacles.

Heroes defeat the enemy.

Heroes are people that on the outside seem normal or average, but on the inside, they have something extraordinary.

Heroes are the people that make a difference and impact in the world.

Who do you want to be a hero to?

Who are you a hero to?

And, how can you be a hero all the time?

At Confidence Coach we are here to offer business owners a place to reconnect and rebuild their confidence and help you be that hero that you really want to be. Reach out today and schedule a free call if you’d like to talk. We are here to help and encourage you.

by Scott Ballard , December 8, 2020

Your One Big Idea

Your “one big idea” is so important, but not so easy to capture because the world is throwing information at you at a million miles an hour.

Everything is sped up.

Everything is faster.

We have podcasts instead of books.

We have the ability to listen to recordings at one and a half times speed.

Then we have apps that tell us what the books say!

But let’s think about this: Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s longtime business partner once said, “Take a simple idea and take it seriously and you’ll change the world.”

Let’s talk about that.

What is your one idea that five years from now you can become known for taking?

You’re known for it.

What is that? What would that be?

Let me know.

At Confidence Coach we are known for asking the questions that no one else asks, helping you get the breakthrough and insight that you really need to move forward to the next level. Reach out today and schedule a free call if you’d like help in moving forward or getting clear about your one big idea.

by Scott Ballard , November 29, 2020

The Way Forward

In helping people find their best way forward, I have been asking them these questions to really get them to think and process where they are at during this time. Here are those questions for you to ponder and think about too.

What if everything that has been happening in the last six months was to teach us and make us stronger?

What if it was to make you and me focus on what’s truly important?

How do I switch from seeing these things with my own eyes to seeing it with the eyes of my customers?

All the challenges that we have gone through lately are going to make us better leaders and help create a clearer vision for our business and our team.

The questions again in a little more detail are:

What if this is happening for us?
What does this make possible?
What if this is actually meant to strengthen us as a company and you as a person?
When was the last time you identified your why? Why are you here? Why are you doing this work?
When was the last time you let your “why” dictate the way forward as you did your work?

We know this — when you’ve lost your way, go back and deeply connect with your big why. Then, watch everything make sense again and get clarity.

If you’d like help in figuring out your “why” again and the best way forward, reach out to us and schedule a free consultation. At Confidence Coach we are here to offer business owners a place to connect, build their confidence and a better future.

by Scott Ballard , October 18, 2020

Page 1 of 7

12…7