THE LIFESTYLE ENTREPRENEUR

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Quarter recaps

I just returned from a week on San Antonio sharpening the saw and connecting with my fellow EOS® Implementer community in our annual gathering - we do this each quarter, and it’s grown to be one of my favorite things about being a business coach.

There’s a few reasons for this gathering - community building, connecting with colleagues, sharing information, sharing and building culture and esprit de corps - but a big reason is to take a break on our practices, reflect on the previous quarter (or year in this week’s case), and get focused on the next quarter.

This is exactly the cadence we teach our clients - we call it the 90 day world - where every 90 days we pause from the hustle of building our business, review how the previous quarter went, set our priorities and financial plan for the next quarter, and dive back into the quarter.

This allows us to work with greater focus over the next 90 days knowing our priorities. It works for companies, and it works for individuals too.

If you haven’t adopted some kind of quarterly planning process, I’d highly recommend adopting one.

If you’re not part of a professional community, I’d also highly recommend joining one. As an entrepreneur I got very lonely, and would have benefitted greatly from being more connected with like-minded individuals going through the same things I’m going through.

In fact that’s one of the biggest benefits of going to these quarterly gatherings - a reminder that everyone in my community has gone through the same things I’m going through.

It’s extremely comforting to be reminded this - as when I’m in the day to day hustle of building my coaching practice - it’s easy to forget this fact.

Highlights

I always come away with learnings and insights that will help me be a better coach, business person, and person in general. Some are very specific to the work we do with leadership teams, but others are relevant in general. Here, in no particular order, are some of the learnings from my past week:

• Uncommunicated expectations are premeditated resentments - that’s a mouthful of a saying, but I found it beautiful in expressing the heart of communication among individuals and teams. How many times have we expected something from someone, but never communicated those expectations?

• On leadership - “We need to be the leaders our people deserve” - This was spoken about traditional leaders within organizations, but it’s relevant to me as a coach who embodies the life I want my clients to live. It’s also relevant for parenting - since great leadership = great parenting.

• On purpose - “I serve one client, one person, one team, at a time” - We often get hung up on our numbers, our revenue and profit, as the primary driver of our businesses. But in my business, the core of it is simply serving one person or team at a time. If I serve them well, great things will happen.

• “Stick to your niche, become bloody rich” - A wonderful quote related to defining a company’s Core Focus, which is made up of their purpose/cause/passion and niche

There were many other learnings, but those are a few I thought you all would enjoy.

The snow is melted in Minnesota - is winter over?

We’ll see, I hope you all enjoy your weekend.

Talk to you next week,

Mike