Episode 156: The Bottom Line - What Are Your Priorities?

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable?

That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers.

I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Welcome to The Bottom Line, a new weekly podcast series that we drop every Thursday to complement our weekly Monday podcast interviews with the industry leaders. These podcasts are going to be designed to give you short, impactful, and value-driven information that you can start using right away in your business. I value your time and attention and will do my very best not to waste it.

Just get what you need and go.

So with that, let's get into today's episode.

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Hey team, so wanted to share with you, hopefully this is going to serve you over the next few weeks. I'm going to do a series, I'm actually going to do it over 5 weeks. I'll be sharing this on each one of the Friday episodes upcoming, and it's going to be 5 different key questions to ask yourself as a business owner. And I started to share this because I mentioned this, uh, to— on one of the episodes not long ago, but I shared that I was going to be starting to write my book and, um, called The Rainmaker's Dilemma. And the subtitle is going to be The 5 Key Questions Every Business Owner Should Ask. And so I'm going to share all of that with you all this week, or at least share with you the questions, and hopefully it serves you. These are 5 key questions that I think as you do them in order and begin to kind of reflect on yourself and on your business, hopefully we'll be able to help you along your journey. And so this week we're going to do question 1, and then next Friday we'll do question 2, so on and so forth. And so the very first question, these are the things that if I was going in and was going to consult with you and talk to you about your business after we exchanged pleasantries and talk and, you know, sports and weather and family and all that sort of thing. Eventually, we'd get down and I would ask you this very first question, and I would say, well, tell me about your priorities. And what I mean by that is, is some of you may say, well, you know, what are your goals? I've actually talked to a lot of different business owners that do not have and don't operate with goals. And gasp, some of you may hear that and say Somebody doesn't actually put goals in their business? No, they don't. Not everybody does. If you're listening to this, you're probably a growth-minded, growth-orientated person, and so you probably do. You always start with setting goals of where you want to go in your organization, but for many people, they don't. And so for those of you that do, or those of you that don't, let me share with you a little bit more around what I mean by priorities. Whether you do or don't set goals, you have some priorities, some things that you are wanting to accomplish in your business. You're wanting to sell more, you're wanting to make— bring in more top-line revenue, you're wanting to bring in more bottom-line profit, you are wanting to be able to work fewer hours in the business, you are wanting to have an engaged a great culture where everybody's working together. You want to be able to have a bigger impact in the community. And some of you want all of those things and a lot more. Some of you want to be able to get the business to a certain place so that you could pursue some other business entrepreneurial endeavors. I would ask you, at the time of this recording, getting to the end of 2022, What are the priorities that you have in your business? If I was there and I was able to just sit down and talk to you, and this is the value of having, uh, a coach or just somebody who can ask you some really great questions, is what would you say to that question? Here are the priorities that I have for my business. And then the follow-up question that I would have to that is, tell me why those are important to you. Because if you can then explain the why behind the what. And now I think some of you may initially come up with, well, I can tell you exactly what my priorities are. Here are the goals that I have for my business. And that leads me to the next part. I think that there are really two different levels of setting priorities or goals for the business. I tend to not use goals. I have bought into the idea that goals for me often become synonymous with a wish. I really want something, so if I want it, then I'll just say it's a goal. And that never comes with a plan to actually make that happen, or at least it hasn't for me in the past. So I tend to shy away from goals. And people say, what if you shy away from goals? What do you use? I'll say targets or outcomes or vision. And so I would ask the question, and first of all, I would ask the question just the way that I have it. And oftentimes someone would answer that almost every time with, well, this is the priorities, these are the goals that I want to accomplish in my business this year in a 1-year period of time. I would then follow that up if they did that, and I would say, well, lean out 3 years from today and it is 2025 and we're having this conversation then. What needs to happen both personally and professionally for you to look back over that period of time and be really happy with your progress, both personally and professionally? Full credit, that is from Strategic Coach and Dan Sullivan. I love that question. And so most of the time, it's important that people start out with saying, these are the goals, or these are my priorities I want to accomplish my business right now. And maybe they'll share, this is what I want to do this year. When it starts to lean out more past a year, it's where it gets really fuzzy. You get a lot more generalizations, and I like to say generalizations kill clarity. So if you're answering that question, what are the priorities? What are the priorities that you have for your business right now? What are the priorities you have that you set out for this year? And where do you want to be in 3 years? Do you have a 3-year vision of where you want to take that organization? Of all the things that cannot be delegated— there's a lot more that can be delegated to your executive assistant, to somebody on your team, than what we actually think, but that's not for this podcast or for this, um, message. There is one thing that can never be, and that is the vision and the direction of the business, of the organization. You can never delegate that ever to someone else. That is your responsibility to be able to, number one, codify what it— what is it, and then be able to communicate it to your team on a regular basis so that they could share it back with you. If you hear them say, this is where we're going, not just this year but over the next 3 years, then you know that they're starting to actually get it. They're taking it from knowledge into an understanding. I'll share this. This has resonated with some people. If you're an insurance agency owner listening to this, you may have gotten in the rut of instead of having— say you've been doing it 10 years— instead of having 10 years of experience, you ever feel like you've repeated the same year 10 different times? It becomes in some ways Groundhog Day. And I think that when I've shared that with people, they say, yeah, I get it. That's exactly how I feel at times. It's the same year repeated over and over and over again because you get in the habit of setting targets and outcomes and goals, if we want to use that, for this year. And again, nothing is inherently wrong with that as long as it's backed up on the backside with an actual plan to make that happen. And that's the part. That ultimately usually is not there. I'm going to do a solo episode about building the plan again at some point down the road, maybe after this series, because again, goals to me become synonymous with wishes as opposed to this is really what I want to accomplish in the business and this is the plan to make that happen. So back to the same year repeated 20 different times or 10 different times or 5 different times. I think that's where a 3-year vision and saying these are the priorities, this is where I want the business to be in 3 years, really come in handy. Because even though one year ticks off and we set targets for that, how did that help you get closer to where you want to be in 3 years? Now, I am personally doing— I have not worked with people on this yet, but this is— I'm personally doing some work around Who do I want to become over the next 10 years? I don't know how— where that lands in terms of the business, but I think it becomes— the further out you go, the blurrier it gets for sure. But in the tighter time frame, certainly you're going to have a tight, much tighter plans in place to make that happen. Even 3 months is easier to predict than certainly a year, let alone 3 years out. But I am beginning to, to write down, um, in 10 years I'll be 50, so what is that, what's that going to look like for me? Who's, who, who is the man, the person that I want to be in 10 years? And then beginning to kind of think about that relating back to the businesses. But for here, what are your priorities? Question 1. That's the question I would ask if I was sitting in your office talking to you. I'd say, tell me about your priorities. And you would mostly share about this year and kind of where you are right now. And then I would want to know, where do you want to take the business over the next 3 years? So hopefully that serves all of you. Next week we will dive into what's question 2. If that's question 1, what's question 2? And then we'll go through over the next few weeks. All right, everyone, till next episode, lead well.

If you're listening to this podcast, I know you're someone who has a growth mindset.

You probably want to be able to grow your book of business as well.

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