Business Archives - Better Business Freedom

Ask a different question to get unstuck

Jean-Marc — Fri, 10 May 2019 07:14:44 +0000

Stuck? This 3 letter word could help…

One of the easiest and quickest ways to get unstuck in business is to ask a different question.

Most often we’re stuck because we keep asking the same question over and over hoping that at some point we’ll be inspired with a solution.

Moving forward though can be as simple as changing one or two words in your question. Or re-arranging the letters of a 3 letter word…

being stuck is an expensive pastime

As an entrepreneur, or business owner, being stuck is an expensive pastime,because how quickly you move forward is often the difference between capturing, and taking advantage of opportunities, or watching them pass you by. Equally when it comes to solving a problem, the longer it takes, the greater the cost and negative impact. Delays cost money and are expensive in many different ways.

If you’re capable and competent you’re even more likely to fall into a trap and get stuck.

This is because you’ve got oodles of experience to show that you’re good at solving problems and figuring things out. As a result you persist at trying to solve the problem on your own. People who aren’t good at solving problems don’t fall into this trap…

If you’re a competent person and good problem solver, the likelihood is that you’re asking yourself “HOW” do I solve this?

I see this with my clients and people that I help over and again. Competent people seem habituated to asking themselves “How”.

Usually what you should be asking is ” WHO” can solve this for me,

or “Who” can point me in the right direction.

So if you find yourself stuck, or slow in making progress, change “how” to “who” in your question and see if that helps you to progress a little quicker.

If you need support with a complex problem, or options, and you’re still feeling ‘stuck’, send me a message and I’ll do my best point you in the right direction.

————–

I help owners of service businesses structure their businesses to grow seven figure profits, working 30 hours or less a week, 40 weeks a year.

If you’re making 6 figure profits (or low 7) and want to grow to seven figures but are already working more hours than you care, I’ll show you how to use a Freedom Framework to grow your bottom line and achieve more whilst working less.

By using the right structure and playing to your own individual strengths, you can design your business to operate and grow, without trapping yourself in the process.

More Growth, More Freedom, Better Business!

Follow me at https://www.facebook.com/betterbusinessfreedom

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Habits for Productivity

Jean-Marc — Sun, 14 Apr 2019 11:27:46 +0000

I was recently asked for some advice on establishing a new habit. This was after someone had seen my Productivity Pyramid Framework and realised that increased movement and exercise was vital to improving their business productivity.

Unfortunately there’s too much focus on goals these days.

Our focus instead needs to be on cultivating successful habits. It’s our habits that allow us to achieve our goals after all.

Habits are critical to productivity, because habits require less energy to sustain than adhoc actions.

What I share below applies to creating a habit of exercise, but the same nine principles apply to any habit whether business or life related.

To help create a habit, create a ‘streak tracker’ to engage your inner stubbornness and competitiveness. A streak is a series of consecutive unbroken ticks (for each day you complete an action) on a calendar or piece of paper.

Set a low minimum achievable action to give your streak tracker a tick. Make your minimum action really achievable each and everyday. Something like walking your stairs 3 times in a row. You must be able to do your exercise at any time of the day regardless of weather, time of day etc. This means that there’s literally no excuse to break your streak even if it’s the last thing you do before bed.

Maintaining your streak will enhance your self esteem and your positive feelings about moving forward and making progress. You’ll feel great about honoring your commitment with yourself.

Build your habit into an existing routine or routines as far as possible. That way it’s easier as you are piggy backing off an existing habit. If you make a cup of tea or coffee in the morning then do your stairs whilst the kettle is boiling or the coffee is percolating.

Start tiny: Whilst something this small seems hardly worthwhile or unlikely to yield an impact, or would take too long to make a big difference, the opposite is actually true.

When it comes to change and impact, small consistent action trumps grand gestures! That’s why there’s great wisdom in “an Apple a day” but we readily discount this simple truth. Compare how much easier it is to agree with “a chocolate bar a day over many years will make you overweight”.

Experience shows that when you commit to just a very small achievable activity, then within days you’ll be doing more than your minimum, maybe not everyday but more often than not.

Getting started has the greatest friction and we can dramatically decrease the starting resistance by having an action that’s so perceptibly easy that there’s virtually no resistance to doing it.

Play the long game: whilst rapid results are motivating, most often they require grand or monumental efforts to create them, and these grand efforts are unsustainable over the long term and hence the habit and results don’t endure.

Start small and increase incrementally, focusing on small wins consistently that will amount to big impacts over 3 months, 12 months and 3 years.

We over estimate how much we can achieve in a year but underestimate how much we can achieve in 10 years with small consistent efforts. Use this truth to your advantage and adapt your time frames accordingly.

Success is the ongoing pursuit of a worthwhile goal. Don’t let arbitrary deadlines or failure to meet them deter you from continuing towards your goal.

Plot milestones not deadlines. Being a certain amount by Xmas is too binary. It’s a fail or succeed outcome. And why does by Xmas really matter if your long term objective is enhanced health month on month and increasing mobility month on month.

Reframe your goals so that you can’t fail. Because so long as you continue to persist towards an outcome, any ‘failure’ becomes a temporary setback rather than an outright failure.

Don’t overwhelm yourself by doing too much across too many areas at the start. Build another habit off the success and confidence of an already established one.

Success breeds further success.

You will naturally make other better choices as you succeed with the first small habit. Each successive choice and habit will become easier. A little more exercise will make you thirstier and you’ll drink more water. More water and exercise will help you sleep better. Better sleep will improve your impulse control and prevent you having as many low nutritional binges.

Like a snowball rolling down a hill It’s another compounding effect, so let momentum work for you in this natural effect.

There’s deep truth in the statement that Rome wasn’t built in a day, but rather one stone at a time!

You can achieve great things by building one habit upon another.

In summary:

– Start small

– Have an achievable minimum action for every day

– Create a streak and see how long you can grow it

– Piggyback off other habits

– Play the long game

– Eliminate resistance

– Reframe your goals so that you can’t fail

– Plot milestones not deadlines

– Let momentum be your friend

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Are You Mad?

Jean-Marc — Thu, 11 Apr 2019 03:07:14 +0000

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Maybe it’s time to break free of your madness…

Figure out what your business goals are and then set about finding a NEW way to achieve them.

Start by asking yourself these questions:

Do I have a planning system that pulls my long term strategic goals into my weekly and daily tasks and actions?
Is my business deliberately designed and structured for Freedom, or is it restricted by design?
Do I have a Strategic Roadmap that provides me with clarity, confidence and certainty around key decisions and choices?

Do something about it now… don’t wait for insanity to strike again!

#BetterBusinessFreedom #Freedom #BusinessFreedom #BusinessPlanning

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Have you got what it takes?

Jean-Marc — Thu, 27 Sep 2018 05:17:25 +0000

Have You got what it takes?

Do you have it in you?

If you’ve never asked these questions then you probably haven’t gone after anything challenging enough or chased a really big goal…

For those of you that have dared to reach beyond, or to the very end of your current capabilities, you’ll be no stranger to these questions.

As a business owner there’s a high chance that you’ve not only asked these questions but that you’ve asked them in the context of:

“Can I create a business that offers me greater Freedom so that I can live life on my terms?”

It’s a big call isn’t it, especially when it’s out there in the light like that?

I’m not sure how you’re progressing with living life on your own terms? Is this ambition:

Front and centre, part of your current day to day thoughts and activities?
A distant fuzzy vision, far off in the future, that raises its head from time to time?
Pushed back into the deep recesses, afraid to be pondered because it feels so impossibly unachievable at present?

3 short cuts to help you to make your Freedom ambition a reality

If you’ve contemplated the ambition then regardless of where you are now, here are three short cuts to help you to make your Freedom ambition a reality in a much shorter time frame;

Use a planning system that pulls your long term strategic goals into your weekly and daily plans and activities. Ideally your system will keep your top strategic goals front and centre as priorities, without them falling prey to the urgent and unplanned ‘busyness’ of business.
Deliberately design and structure your business for Freedom using a Framework proven to create Freedom not just growth. Your framework will need to include the foundations, pillars, focus and performance areas that allow you and your team to attract and convert customers, deliver services and manage the business without you (or any other person) being the central cog.
Create a Strategic Roadmap for Business Freedom, that provides you with clarity, confidence and certainty around key and important decisions and choices. This will allow you to halve (or more) the time you take to achieve your Freedom by avoiding the costly decision delays and distractions, that needlessly cripple your path to Freedom.

These aren’t silver bullets, they won’t create overnight success and they will require effort… but then again anything of value and substance will too.

P.S. If you’d like some help getting started with these 3 steps feel free to get in touch or take our Freedom quiz to highlight which areas you need to focus on.

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Why Freedom?

Jean-Marc — Sun, 19 Aug 2018 23:39:45 +0000

It’s often said that people don’t care about how much you know until they know how much you care…. So it seems sensible to start with what is important to me and what I care about….

Lots of coaches and business owners look for a single phrase or strapline to define them like “The Million Dollar Coach”, which is cool, but money is only one freedom and having a focus solely on that won’t allow you to live life fully in your own unique way….

I like Freedom, no… I’m completely enraptured by Freedom and especially with understanding what each person’s unique ‘flavour’ of Freedom is. Your Freedom has unique ingredients and unique proportions of those ingredients that are just right for you… don’t let anyone prescribe their ingredients or ratios for you.

We’ve all seen that image or maybe even remember the science experiment. You know that one where light is split by a prism into it’s constituent parts and you see a rainbow of light.

Freedom is multipart, it’s just like white light. We speak about it as if it’s one thing, but in reality there’s a combination of every light colour combined to form white light. The whole rainbow. Freedom is just that, but more complex because unlike light, the proportion and importance of various elements differs from person to person.

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Living a good life?

Jean-Marc — Tue, 24 Jul 2018 01:18:18 +0000

What does living a good life mean?

It’s a question that many people have pondered and one that great minds have debated and written about…

Clarity

Often it’s said that on our deathbed in our final days and moments, men and women possess a sense of clarity about what it means to live, and to live a good life. So much can be learned from these moments from the regrets that people hold in their final moments. If we’re wise we can find ways to minimise these potential regrets in our own lives. This way, when you reach your final moments, whenever that maybe, you can look back with contentment and peace on a life well lived…

From Bonnie Wares book the 5 Regrets of the dying there are 5 key regrets:

I wish I’d lived a life true to myself not the life others expected of me.
I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
I wish I had the courage to express my feelings.
I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends.
I wish I’d let myself be happier.

What do these mean to me:

Do what you feel called to not what others and society expect of you – be honest with yourself
Work is important but not at the cost of health, relationships and happiness
Say what you mean in a kind and loving way and ask for what you really desire in a respectful manner.
Don’t let the busyness of life get in the way of maintaining relationships (see 2 above)
Let go of the ‘should’s’ and ‘shouldn’ts’, let go of past hurts and anger, by transforming them into learning’s. Accept life as it is in this moment and focus on changing the things you can, accepting the things you can’t, and develop the wisdom to tell the difference.

Live your best life, today not tomorrow, this week not the next… don’t choose to allow your business to keep you from truly living.

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