Are you & your business ready for the spotlight?

Happy Friday! We’re well into Quarterly season so we've had another absolutely packed week... And If I am honest, I am exhausted!

Fortunately all my EOS sessions this week were with family businesses that I adore – WE Accounting & Endless, so it was a joy to touch base with them, celebrate their successes & get the team re-focused for the quarter ahead.

I often talk about managing your entrepreneurial energy & how crucial that is for the long-term health of your business (& yourself!). You can’t expect to do your best work when you’re running on empty.

I know what works for me, my sweet spot is between 50–60 hours a week in the office (not including the time I think & strategise about the business when I'm not officially working). Anything above that I start to get exhausted.

In fact, I think it's really more like 50-55 hours physically in the office before I start to get tired.

With Jen sick all week, my week has been a bit north of 60 hours in the office / session room, not including travel time, because I have not only had to run the sessions for the 5 days but also set up, organise suppliers, manage all the admin & clean up at the end of the day. As such, I’m very much looking forward to some R&R this weekend!

I’m grateful to truly love what I do, but I do need to be mindful & replenish my energy for next week as I'll be travelling down to Christchurch for more client sessions (this time professional services businesses) & the national conference for Life Education Trust, of which I am a long term trustee!

I'm also looking forward to having Jen back in the office feeling 100% & getting stuck into our next quarter.

One thing I have learned is that having good systems & processes is invaluable. We have documented all of ours, which meant I was able to rope my husband in to help with some of the additional work... And even as an Actuary, he now knows how to set up & clear up after sessions... Now we just need to find someone to take over if Jen is ever sick again - I think I'll be pushing my luck to get Steve to do it again... Plus he told me how much he wants to charge me per hour so I can't afford him ??

So, advice to all us business owners - get systems in place & have backup staff!

Here’s this week’s business tip, life hack & find of the week… And don’t forget the inspirational quote, which you can download as a wallpaper or lock screen for your phone.

As always, if you find great things that you’d like to share then feel free to email me for inclusion in one of my weekly newsletters.

BETTER BUSINESS : 1 Visionary + 1 Visionary = 1 Vision?

A question we get asked all the time is “Can we have two visionaries?”

And sometimes the team don’t need to ask, I can just see it in their dynamic.

Well, the short answer is no...

The long answer is this article written by Mark Winters, the co-author of Rocket Fuel.

A Visionary is the heart & soul of the business - the bank of endless ideas, the strategic thinker with a pulse on your industry, the one who sees the big picture & connects all the dots.

They create & hold the company vision – essentially the creators of the business itself. Because they specialise in ‘what’s next’ for their business & industry, they often have 20 ideas a day.

Now can you imagine that doubled – 40 new ideas thrown at the team, every single day! With no one to cull & curate which ideas should be pursued and which ones should be put to bed.

The team will seriously struggle to keep up, ending up directionless, exhausted & confused. They lose focus on the important tasks for the success of the business & can get disheartened when their hard work doesn’t seem to be paying off.

That’s why instead of two Visionaries, you need the perfect counterbalance of the Visionary’s energy & natural talents – an Integrator. They coordinate the team to bring those ideas to life and give clarity & direction.

With an Integrator, the Visionary’s incredible vision becomes an achievable, step-by-step plan that can & will be followed by all.

Read the article to find out how to choose exactly one Visionary & also foster leaders who don’t fit the Visionary or Integrator role: https://www.eosworldwide.com/blog/can-we-have-two-visionaries

BETTER LIFE : Does your family business have the support it needs to prosper?

As you know I work with a lot of family businesses - I’m really passionate about helping families live a better life through building a better business & creating lasting legacies to make the world a better place ??

So I’m always living by the EOS values of ‘grow or die’ & learning as much as I can about family businesses to give more & more value to my clients.

I completed the first part of my Family Business Advisor Accreditation and also attended the Family Business Insights Conference last week.

Family Business Insights is an annual conference run by Family Business New Zealand (FBNZ) that brings the family business community together to connect, share & grow.

If you haven’t heard of FBNZ, they’re a non-profit membership association that focuses on helping family businesses succeed.

Our community consists of family business leaders, the next generation, family members, independent directors & advisors across all industries.

At this year’s conference, keynote speakers covered succession planning & transitioning to the next generation, corporate social responsibility, and what measures to put in place to create a sustainable business & lasting legacy.

I loved the opportunity to learn together - sharing knowledge, stories & experiences so that we could all better understand what it takes to be a successful family business & how we could support that journey.

For those working in or with a family business, I highly recommend attending both the Insights conference & getting involved with FBNZ. You & your business can never have too much support!

You can see the agenda, topics covered & speakers here:

Find out more about the organisation here: https://www.familybusiness.org.nz/

FIND OF THE WEEK : Are you capitalising on your natural

abilities?

I recently did a podcast with Alicia Butler-Pierre & she was just full of golden insights!

She is the owner & CEO of Equilibria Inc, an operations management firm that specialises in designing business infrastructure & processes.

She didn’t start out in business though & actually began her career as a chemical engineer, working in steel-toed boots at oil refineries & chemical plants.

They had equipment run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, just non-stop. But then the team would be asked to cut production by 50% one day, shut down completely the day after that, and then run at full speed the following week.

To her, it just seemed so manic.

She came to realise that she didn’t understand business at all. She didn’t understand what was driving these decisions, the concepts of supply & demand and how that can impact the day-to-day operations. So she went back to school to learn all about business.

In the years that followed, she came to another realisation - that all our lives, we're taught to actually work for someone else, to become a good employee.

But we aren't taught on how to capitalise on our natural skills, talents & abilities so that we can CREATE opportunities for ourselves.

She thought deeply about what she was naturally good at & took action.

"It's my customers who tell me exactly what they want. It's my job as the business owner to listen, and to act accordingly. And that is the story in a nutshell of how Equilibria came to be."

Now Equilibria has been running for about 17 years & she never imagined it would evolve into what it is today.

Listen to the full episode to find out how she capitalised on her natural abilities & created opportunities for herself, here.

And you can find out more about Alicia on her website: https://aliciabutlerpierre.com/

BONUS QUOTE :

“Don’t wait for the right opportunity: create it.” – George Bernard Shaw

You can download this as a wallpaper or lock screen for your phone, here.

CALL TO ACTION :

If you’d like to learn more about any of these tools or would like to find out how I can help you achieve a better life through creating a better business then book a free Discovery Call with me - https://calendly.com/debra-chantry-taylor/eos-vth

Debra Chantry-Taylor

Professional EOS Implementer | Entrepreneurial Leadership & Business Coach | Speaker

You can check out previous newsletters here - https://debrachantry-taylor.com/newsletter/