Looking for a GPS for Christmas?

Now that we are past Thanksgiving, that quickly moves us into the Christmas season. Time for giving. Christmas has become consumed with shopping, shopping and shopping for that perfect gift for your friends and loved ones.


One of the hottest gifts the last couple of years has been a GPS (global positioning system) for your vehicle. It has become a very helpful friend to those that do a lot of driving, both business and pleasure. It can be helpful in getting the kids to their destinations for soccer, volleyball and baseball games. It’s great for finding that out of the way business address in the dark of the night in a pouring down rain storm. It can also be a helping hand when traveling out of town, helping you find the perfect place to stop and eat. A GPS has been a good investment for many. That’s why they are so popular.

As most of you are aware, a GPS instrument is a pretty amazing and affordable piece of technology. You always have a clear destination, specific directions to get there, and know your progress along the way. Based on variable factors (speed, length of stops, etc.) it also continually calculates your expected time of arrival...pretty cool. As such, using a GPS for driving assistance is very similar to using a business coach to help you manage your business. Both instruments (GPS and a business coach) are affordable, objective, empowering, provide clarity of direction, and keep you from getting off course and lost.

Similar to a GPS, business coaching provides you with clarity of direction and confidence you'll get there. A business coach will help you define in writing your desired destination (ideal future)...where you want your business and life to be. Specifically, a coach will help you crystallize your dreams, desires, wishes, and goals. Possessing such clarity of direction and knowing your specific, desired outcomes empowers you and provides you with amazing confidence.

Note, neither a business coach nor a GPS will tell you where to go...you are the driver, in charge, and YOU get to decide on the destination you want. After all, it's your business and life...YOU should decide all such important matters. Never abdicate that power and privilege to others. Furthermore, an effective business coach (unlike a consultant) will not tell you where to go, what to do or how to do it...they will help you discover for yourself where you want to go and what needs to change in your business and life for greater results. Rightfully so, with a business coach as your GPS, you still remain in charge of your business and destiny...you simply have an engaged, valuable, and objective guide along for the ride.

Once you know your destination, a business coach, like a GPS, helps you map out a plan to get you from where you are now to where you want to be (ideal future). While the plan may not be a specific turn-by-turn guide, a coach will help you create a focused and strategic action plan to help guide you and gauge your progress. Our certified Growth Coaches will also insist that you update and adjust your action plan at least every 90 days. Such a vibrant and fresh plan will provide you with focus, discipline, and meaningful action steps...you will be on a path to greater success and fulfillment.

Next, a Growth Coach will provide on-going accountability to keep you on track for achieving the destination you want. Like a GPS, a business coach will also alert you when you get off course. Both will give suggestions to you on how to recalibrate, recalculate, and get back on your chosen course. Furthermore, both a business coach and GPS are objective and deal in reality...when you are off track, neither will hold back and both will let you know about it. Neither directional instrument plays games...you can't afford that. You need to deal in the truth, even if it hurts to hear it sometimes. Finally, like a GPS, a Growth Coach business coach will help you detour around any mental roadblocks (limiting mindsets, beliefs, fears, doubts, false assumptions, etc.) that are getting in your way. This is essential since business owners tend to interfere with their own God-given talents and success.

Here is one big difference, however. Unlike a GPS, a business coach needs to help you face reality about where you are right now...your starting point. A GPS knows where you are at all times..you only need to enter your destination point...it always knows your starting point. Not true for business owners. Most entrepreneurs DO NOT know where they stand right now...too busy to examine the truth and often playing a game of denial.

As such, owners need an objective business coach who slows them down, practices some tough love and helps them face reality (the good, bad and ugly) about their current situation. Such self-awareness and honest self-examination are essential so an owner knows their starting point. Standing on firm ground, the truth, is critical to any growth and progress. You need an accurate and defined starting point. A coach will help you with that.

Bottom line, both a GPS and a business coach can provide valuable and affordable directional assistance. Again, however, neither a GPS instrument nor a business coach does the driving for you...they simply act as objective and independent guides. It's still up to you to decide where you want to be and do the work to get there. Business coaching, like a GPS, is more about reminding and guiding, much less about telling and doing. I strongly suggest you get a GPS for your vehicle and a business coach for your company.

The Growth Coach, helping to drive your success and balance your life. Your GPS partner

What Type of Business Are You In?

Have you ever been asked, “What type of business are you in?” How did you answer it? Was your response the same standard and customary “we sell widgets” or “we provide this type of service”? Delivering the same type reply, time and time again, has become second nature.

What if that same individual asked you this question instead, “How did you grow your business”? How would you respond? Not as easily to respond to, is it? It’s definitely not a normal question you would expect to hear.

Is it possible that the answer to each of these questions could be the exactly the same? Sure you could easily say “By selling widgets.” But is that the truth? You built your business by selling widgets?? Unless you have a very unique product or service that no one else has, the product or service typically isn’t the reason that most small businesses grow. Well, if it isn’t the product or service, what is the answer?

How about this, “I am in the RELATIONSHIP Business!” or “I grew my business by building RELATIONSHIPS!” Now, does that sound more realistic?

No matter what business you are in, it all comes down to building relationships that you can nourish and foster over a long period of time. Ask any business owner if they would prefer a large one time sale or multiple smaller sales over a long period of time. I would be surprised to find very many owners say they would take the large one time sale over the duration of smaller sales. Steady and consistent sales are the foundation that helps grow any business. Not only will those individuals continue to business with you, but most likely, they will refer others to you and, if you build a relationship with them also, they too can become long term customers.

If I could give one piece of advice to small business owners on starting or growing a business, it’s not what you sell or provide that is most important, it’s the relationship you develop with your customers or clients that is essential. Relationships will grow a business faster than anything.

That’s why I find it ironic that Bank of America Corp. announced this week that it would launch a new program to improve lending and services for small businesses. Bank of America is the largest bank holding company in the United States, by assets, and the second largest bank by market capitalization. It serves clients in more than 150 countries and the second largest non-oil company in the US (Behind Wal-Mart). In 2010, Forbes listed Bank of America as the third largest company in the world.

According to CNN Money, the program requires Bank of America to hire 1,000 small business bankers over the next year that would focus on companies earning less than $3 million in annual revenue. The first wave of bankers will be added in Dallas, Los Angeles, Baltimore and Washington D.C.

I guess my first question is, where has Bank of America been all along with small businesses? Why are they just now deciding to hire 1,000 small business bankers? Are they going to try to hire someone with experience in small business or are they just going to hire another banker and give them the title? Let’s put it into perspective, if they are the second largest non-oil company in the US, behind Wal-Mart, how has Wal-Mart helped you as a small business owner over the last 2 to 3 years? What makes you think Bank of America has had such a sudden “change of heart”?

As I stated above, relationships will grow a business faster than anything! That’s not to say you can neglect several other factors that are important to owning and running a successful business. Having established goals, a detailed plan on how to get there and the ability to see you as the CEO of the business and not as an employee are crucial to being successful. Having an established relationship with a good CPA, a true small business banker and a successful Business Coach are vital to ones growth and success.

Having a trusted connection to such professionals could mean so much more for you and your business. These individuals should be wealth of knowledge and experience in their own areas. I am very fortunate to have established relationships with two first-class and reputable business bankers; Heather Hurd with Frost Bank and Guy James with Community Bank. I have no problems referring business owners to either of these professionals. They both have huge hearts and want to see small business owners grow and succeed.

A Business Coach should be on your team as well.

Why is coaching so necessary and beneficial? Because there is always a gap between where you are now and where you want to be, both professionally and personally. The larger the gap, the larger the need for coaching. Furthermore, most owners DON'T have clarity about their future, let alone clarity about where they are right now...the good, the bad and the ugly. They have blind spots. Besides, we all play mind games of denial and seldom have the discipline to face reality and accept the truth on our own. That is how we get into trouble...we don't confront our problems or opportunities! An effective business coaching process will help you face and accept the truth...about your strengths, talents, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in all facets of your business and life.

Business coaching will also help you gain clarity about where you want to go. A proven coaching process will help you clearly define the outcomes YOU WANT, develop an action plan, hold you accountable for achieving those outcomes, and also help you tackle any limiting beliefs that might be holding you back from taking the right actions. While such a strategic-focusing process is powerful by itself, it is the on-going accountability and support that truly helps owners to change mindsets, behaviors, habits and results. That's how you achieve real and lasting change.

Don't worry, true business coaches, like The Growth Coach, will not tell you what to do or how to do it...that is old-school consulting. You are the expert in your business and industry; you don't need someone telling you what to do. Besides, you never want to give your power and responsibility away to anyone else. Isn't that why you became your own boss in the first place? As it should, business coaching puts you front and center and helps you discover the right answers and solutions for you and your business.

In the end, with the Growth Coach process, our clients have greater awareness and clarity about where they are and want to go, possess a strategic and focused action plan to get there, and receive on-going accountability and support to make critical adjustments along the way to stay on track. Each client fills out our proprietary strategic planner and they review and update it every 90 days in order to make on-going refinements and course-corrections to get them closer to their dreams and goals.

Aren't you ready to make more money, experience more fun, and gain greater freedom and free time? Is so, take action below:

To see if you could benefit from business coaching, take our five-minute, confidential, on-line assessment.

Nobody sees your answers but you. You will be glad you took the time.

Who Becomes Wealthy?

I’m currently reading a book by Thomas J. Stanley titled The Millionaire Next Door: Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy. The book is based on more than a thousand individuals participating in a survey spanning for almost a year. The survey questions target areas such as household budgeting, financial fears, acts of kindness, purchasing and more. There were a total of 249 questions all together. “Who becomes wealthy?” Stanley asks. “Usually the wealthy individual is a businessman who has lived in the same town for all his adult life. The person owns a small factory, a chain of stores, or a service company. He has married once and remains married. He lives next door to people with a faction of his wealth. He is a compulsive saver and investor. And he has made his money on his own.” Stanley gives emphasis to that “Eighty percent of America’s millionaires are first-generation rich.” Stanley explains his discoveries as “building wealth takes discipline, sacrifice, and hard work.”

I find this book to be very interesting in the fact that many of my clients state initially that they are working very hard and sacrificing a great deal to their business. They feel like they are giving as much as they can and don’t seem to be getting anywhere. They often describe it as “being a prisoner to their business”. They sometimes wish they had a “job” instead of “owning a business”.

No matter what industry you are in, you should not be a prisoner to your business! If you are, you have it backwards. Your business should serve you and your dreams. It should give you greater freedom, not less. In fact, your business, properly designed, should function practically without you, not because of you. It should run predictably and automatically whether you are in the office or not, in the store or not, out in the field or not, on vacation or not. Your business should not depend upon your presence, personality, problem solving and perspiration for its daily survival. If so, your business does not work, you do!

Bottom line, you should run your business; it should not run you, your family or your life. Your business should work harder so you don’t have to. It should be systems-dependent and not owner-dependent or expert-dependent for its success. It should have its own heart, mind, and soul – it should not steal your vital organs and spirit!

Stop for a moment and think of the consequences. If everything in your business flows through you and is dependent upon you, then you are restricting dramatically the growth and profits of your company. As a single human being, there are natural limits to the amount of work, transactions, problems, and decisions that can flow effectively through you in a given day. Stop being a bottleneck or clog. Otherwise, you will continue to restrict the potential of your employees and business and ensure your persistent exhaustion. Stop missing out on greater personal freedom, money and happiness.

Let me be very clear, you are the expert in your business and industry. I am not and will never claim to be. My expertise is guiding business owners to unlock greater potential in themselves and their businesses. I coach and mentor owners/managers, like you, to define clearly and then reach their business and personal goals. To implement the changes they desire. I guide owners to become more effective, focused, productive and strategic. To face reality, identify solutions, and help them stay on track. I help overwhelmed owners/managers to work “on” themselves, “on” their businesses, and “on” their specific issues, opportunities and goals.

If you would like to achieve greater freedom, fulfillment and financial returns from your business, and move closer to becoming “The Millionaire Next Door”, please contact me.

Fort Worth Small Business Owners Swim Against the Trend to Sell Out Soon

The Growth Coach of Fort Worth Finds Exit Strategies Being Postponed

Fort Worth, TX – As the economy remains uncertain, baby-boomer small business owners ages 46 to 64 in Fort Worth area are delaying the process of selling their business, despite national statistics showing otherwise.

A recent study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers reported that one out of two small to large businesses will change hands between 2006 and 2016. However, according to a survey conducted by The Growth Coach franchise system in which Tim Fancher, local owner of The Growth Coach participated in, the recession has caused many small business owners in the Fort Worth area, claiming sales revenue under $5 million and less than 100 employees, to push back their selling plans and delay retirement. This is due to the negative impact degraded business performance will have on the near-term selling price of their business.

Based on survey responses, less than 10 percent of baby boomer small business owners in Fort Worth are planning to sell their business in the next five years. That indicates the vast majority of small business owners are planning to delay an exit strategy until beyond 2015.

“We coach dozens of baby boomer small business owners annually in the area, which helps us analyze various small business trends in the market,” said Fancher, owner of The Growth Coach in Fort Worth. “This latest Business Barometer survey indicates that despite what national statistics report, the uncertain economy is forcing small business owners to re-think and delay a potential business sale until bottom-line results improve and are sustained for several years.”

The Growth Coach survey also indicated that of those baby boomer small business owners in Fort Worth thinking about selling their business:

• 25 percent of their business coaches report that the primary reason for wanting to sell their business is to cash out and collect the equity.
• 23 percent simply desire to retire.
• 28 percent agree that small business owners are setting aside at least two years to properly prepare their business for the selling process.
• 28 percent are looking to sell to third-party buyers that are not competitors.
• 14 percent are looking to sell to family members.

The baby boomer generation has been one of the most entrepreneurial generations in U.S. history. During the last 30 years, more than five million businesses with annual revenues ranging from $1 million to $75 million were founded. The majority of these business owners are now 50-years-old or older.

The Growth Coach specializes in providing affordable group coaching workshops to business owners and executives utilizing its proprietary Strategic Mindset® process. In addition, they provide face-to-face coaching, Coaching Club (tele-coaching), as well as coach entire sales teams and management teams to be more effective with a strategic-focusing process. All initial coaching services come with a 100 percent money-back guarantee. The coaching process helps clients gain clarity about where they want to go, develop continuous action plans to get there, and receive on-going accountability to stay on track. For more information, please visit www.TheGrowthCoach.com/tfancher

About The Growth Coach

Founded in 2002, The Growth Coach is the only pure business coaching franchise system with the single purpose of helping drive the success and balance the lives of business owners. Their goal is to help clients gain greater focus and leverage so they can work less, earn more and enjoy more fulfilling lives. Clients include small business owners, franchisees, self-employed professionals, high-end sales and financial services professionals and managers from businesses of all size. Through an expanding national accounts program, The Growth Coach serves franchise systems, dealer networks and associations. With a presence in more than 150 markets across North America, The Growth Coach encourages diversity within its franchise system, as well as the development of small business and franchising worldwide. Currently, The Growth Coach is a member and/or affiliated with the following professional organizations: International Franchise Association, SBA Franchise Registry, VetFran, Minority Fran and is listed in Bond’s Minority Franchise Guide, 2010 AllBusiness.com AllStar Top 300 Franchises, and Entrepreneur’s 2010 Franchise 500®. For more franchise opportunity information, visit www.TheGrowthCoach.com.

Do You Belong to a Social Network?

Are you on Facebook? Do you tweet? What about Blogging? Or do you believe that this entire social media is just a fad that will eventually fade away? No matter what your beliefs, here are some interesting facts concerning Facebook and Social Media in general:

• By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network
• 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
• Years to Reach 50 million Users:
• Radio - 38 Years
• TV - 13 Years
• Internet - 4 Years
• iPod - 3 Years
• Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months
• If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia.

 As you may have heard numerous times, the numbers don’t lie. With statistics’ such as these, it’s hard to believe that Facebook and the social media blitz is just a fad. Many have described it as a “Social Media Revolution”. Describing it more as a fundamental shift in the way people communicate.

 

Whether you are a business owner, a manager for a large corporation, a soccer mom or even a married couple trying to make ends meet, the way you communicate is very important. There is no doubt that our society has lent itself to always being on the go and little time to effectively communicate. Therefore, to become more efficient, the way we communicate must change. This is why social media has become so popular. It’s fast, effective (communicating to hundreds or thousands at a time), it can be done virtually anywhere with the advances in cell phone technology, and best of all, it’s FREE!

It might be as simple as keeping up with old high school friends, communicating with relative’s miles away, advertising specials that your business is offering, connecting and communicating with your church group or even posting pictures of your new grandchild for everyone to see. It doesn’t take long to get up and running with social media and the cost couldn’t be better.

So if you are not part of the Facebook crowd, or you and/or your company is not on LinkedIn, take a few minutes to learn more about what they can offer you. Although I typically work with small business owners to become more strategic, I encourage everyone to explore the fast growing universe of social media.

Another interesting fact: The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females.

Can You Leave Your Business for Seven Weeks?

This Growth Coach business coaching blog will be quite simple. It will consist of a series of fifteen tough business coaching questions every small business owner should answer for himself/herself. Be brutally honest and face your current reality...not what you wish it were. If you can't answer "YES" to a vast majority of these questions, you should seek some coaching help so you can learn how to work less, earn more and enjoy a richer life.

After these fifteen questions, you will meet a business owner on a short 3-minute video who discovered a powerful coaching process that allowed him to say "YES" to each and every one of these questions and dramatically improve his business and personal life. In fact, with the proper structure and systems in place, he was able to leave his business for seven weeks and came back to find it running as prosperously as when he left. Could you do that now with your present business? If not, set a goal to make that happen.

Here are some tough-love business coaching questions for you to answer honestly:

• Are you constantly growing as a leader and owner?
• Have you sufficiently differentiated yourself from your business and established a proper level of separation?
• Are you working more "on" your business than "in" your business?
• Have you taken yourself out of the "business details" and replaced yourself with systems and other people?
• As an owner, are you able to work mainly on the things you truly enjoy and are good at doing?
• Have you learned to dramatically reduce your working hours?
• Have you learned to dramatically increase your free time and family time -- time away from the business?
• Have you increased your overall enjoyment of life and business ownership?
• Do you regularly pull away from the details of the business and properly reflect on the big picture?
• Do you regularly and systematically slow down, face reality and set new business/personal goals?
• Do you have the proper discipline, structure and accountability in place to achieve such goals?
• When you leave work at the end of the day, does your work truly stay at work?
• When at home are you truly "at home" and in the "present moment" with family and friends?
• Can you leave your business for seven weeks and return to discover that it continued to prosper in your absence? (that's truly having a systems-dependent instead of an owner-dependent business)
• Do you have the proper structure, systems, people, and delegation mindset in place to provide you with true flexibility and freedom?

Watch this 3-minute video to the very end to discover how a business owner was able to finally answer "YES" to all the questions above after he learned how to work less, earn more, and enjoy a richer and fuller life >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfOF2LcPAJQ


Click here to learn more about our business coaching services, particularly our group-coaching workshops.

Something Eating Away at Your Business?

I heard a statement recently that made me stop and think. Did you know that termites do more damage annually than hurricanes, fires, floods and tornadoes combined? WOW! I never knew that. But then again, I never thought about it either.

Hurricanes, fires, floods and tornadoes obviously get much more media attention than a colony of termites invading some ones home or business. We glue ourselves to the television watching coverage of the devastation and damage caused by such powerful wonders of Mother Nature. We have a tendency to be creatures of curiosity when it comes to news about disasters.

As I thought about the fact that tiny little termites cause more damage, I started to think about the last time I worried about termites. And that was…… never! They have never been on my to-do list and I have never held a meeting or conference call where they were the topic. I’ve got a lot more to concern myself with than a bunch of tiny, creepy-crawly things. Not even on my radar.

As a business owner, do you find yourself getting caught up in the day to day “stuff” and don’t even notice the obvious things that are eating away at your business one bite at a time? Do you find yourself being more concerned about things that drive you nuts and not observing what you customers are experiencing and feeling? Then at the end of the month, you stop and asked, “What happened?”

One of my favorite quotes is “If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always gotten”. Doing the same thing, day in and day out, will lead you down the same path, time and time again. Getting caught up in the day to day “clutter” will consume your time and energy and take your sight off of the things that are slowly and unbelievably eating away at your business.

There is no time better than the present to start breaking the chains that are holding you back from becoming more tactical and deliberate in your efforts. Becoming more strategic and focused and concentrating on the things that a business owner should be focusing on will not only improve your business but will help you free up more of your time. You will start to see the things that are negatively impacting you operations and allow you the time to put a plan together to change them.

Think of it this way, it is easy to kill a termite. You can just simply step on it and it’s finished. But, if you never see it in the first place, he’ll continue to eat away, bite by bite, day by day, year by year. Leaving you with a pile of nothing at the end. Taking the time to focus on the things that are most important to your customers and your business is much more strategic than worrying about what might happen tomorrow. Stop worrying about the things that you cannot change and concentrate on the things that you can and that will have a positive impact to you and your business.

Start stomping out the things that are eating away at your business, one step at a time!