One of the greatest myths in the business coaching world is that someone can teach you how to work very little and make a lot of money. The truth is that most successful business owners can work fewer hours and make more money because they are generally working too many hours and making too little money, but there are specific reasons for it.

Reason #1 – They don’t know how to let go. Letting go can become dirty words to owners that have been burnt by trying it without proper preparation. I even heard someone recently refer to it as “jumping off a cliff without a parachute”. My message…it doesn’t have to be that way.

Reason #2 – They don’t have the right education. I’m not talking about a “formal education” here, I’m talking about the kind of education that can come from self-learning and surrounding yourself with specialists and advisors you can trust.

Reason #3 – They don’t have the right perspective. When you change your perspective…your results will change. I had a client recently who was quite stressed about the impact the fall in oil prices was having on his business. As we began to ask ourselves better questions, and pursue the answers bringing both of our experience to bear on the outcomes, we uncovered more opportunities than we needed to “right his ship”.

Who do you know, who is working too many hours and not making enough money in their business?

Clint Best is a business coach and the founder of Kaizen Business Coaching in Kelowna, BC. Clint has been guiding forward thinking business owners through change and growth since 2002.

If you are experiencing a little push back on the changes you want to make in your business, I want to encourage you not to let that or other incidents dampen your enthusiasm or slow your momentum. There will be plenty of obstacles along the way to success – so the bigger your why is the smaller they will appear. Just lean in and lead through them.

At the same time as we want to be open to receive good feedback, if you are making a change that you believe is positive and necessary to reach your goals – you owe it to yourself and your team to follow through. Here are some tips on how to make it work:

1. Always lead with a strong why that is aligned with your values, goals, and current strategy.
2. Listen to understand and acknowledge feedback and concerns.
3. Consider where the feedback is coming from – if its fear based, it’s probably not very credible (refer to your core operating values)
4. Treat changes as a test and measure – agree to try it out (get their assurance that they will give it a fair chance).
5. Invite those who push back to come up with a better idea to get to the same outcome. In short – lead, follow, or get out of the way
6. If necessary speak with team members privately one on one, to ensure they are feeling heard.

A large percentage of employees – prefer “the devil they know to the devil they don’t” and are naturally resistant to change. They are also pre disposed to quietly “digging in their heels and staying the way they are”, so be mindful of that behavior if it shows up. Keep leading with good values and by example and trust that they will follow.

Clint Best is a business coach and the founder of Kaizen Business Coaching in Kelowna, BC. Clint has been guiding forward thinking business owners through change and growth since 2002.

It really bothers me when I see business owners who are working so hard, and sacrificing so much, and yet not making a decent return on their investment. Some clarity and discipline can go a long way to fixing that.

In the early days when I was learning the ropes and not making the money I needed to in my business I began to examine my ideal client profile, and found in some cases there were significant gaps. Some were not really open to changing their perspective, some were clinging to the past and weren’t committed to keeping an open mind, and still others were not willing to making quick decisions and learning from their mistakes.

Working with clients who aren’t a good fit makes growing your business hard work.

It was then, after much frustration and wasted energy that I set up my pre-qualification criteria and began to re direct those that didn’t meet them. I’m happy to share them with you in the hopes that you won’t have to go through what I had to go through to learn them.

In order to work with me a prospect has to:

1. Have a problem I can solve.
2. Be happy to pay me what I’m worth.
3. Be empowered to make that decision.
4. Be someone I want to work with.
5. Have a powerful reason to do something about their problem right now.

Otherwise we’re either not a good fit, or we simply aren’t ready for each other yet.

Looking to improve the client pre-qualification process for your business? Let’s have a conversation (and yes, that means you can see my pre-qualification process in action)!

Clint Best is a business coach and the founder of Kaizen Business Coaching in Kelowna, BC. Clint has been guiding forward thinking business owners through change and growth since 2002.

I love a juicy story with a powerful message. Here is a story about an old Sage and his young pupil with a lesson you won’t want to miss.

So an old sage is out walking in the forest with a young pupil, when they come across this little seedling that started to grow up out of the ground. The old sage says to the young pupil, “Take that little seedling from the ground.”  The young pupil reaches over and pulls it up out of the ground. Then they walk up to this small tree, and the old sage says to the young pupil, “Take this tree from the ground.” The young pupil pushes and pulls, and pushes and pulls. He goes and gets another branch and is trying to uproot the roots. Forty-five minutes later, drenched in sweat, dirty, hands bleeding, he finally gets the tree from the ground. And then they come upon this mighty oak. The sage says to the young pupil, “Take this tree from the ground. The young pupil can’t even see the top of this mighty oak. He turns to the sage and says, “There’s no way. That small tree was barely possible. There’s no way I can get THIS tree out of the ground.” And the old sage says to the young pupil; that is exactly what your habits are like. The longer you let them grow, the deeper their root system becomes. The taller they grow in your life; they might get to the point where you don’t even think it’s possible to uproot them from your life. Do not allow bad habits to grow in your life.

It’s best to catch bad habits before they take hold but it doesn’t matter how big your bad habit has gotten – you can still replace it with a better one. Take out a piece of paper right now and write down one bad habit you would like to get rid of. Then decide the related good habit you would like to replace it with. Now set about practicing the new habit in place of the old one for the next 30 days.

Clint Best is a business coach and the founder of Kaizen Business Coaching in Kelowna, BC. Clint has been guiding forward thinking business owners through change and growth since 2002.

Goals are simply a set of instructions to your brain on what to look and listen for as you move through your day. The problem is that your big goals are too ambiguous for your brain to make connections to day in and day out.

Instead, break it down for your brain. What’s the next milestone on the journey towards your big goals? Now what’s the biggest problem you have to solve or obstacle you have to overcome to get there? What do you need to learn, who do you need to meet, what resource do you need to acquire?

Feed the answers to those questions to your brain, and it will find you the answers throughout your day. You will learn that your brain has a search capability that is better than Google’s, but you have to input the right search criteria. The better your search terms, the better your search results – just like Google.

Create a new search query every day; you’ll be surprised at the results.

Clint Best is a business coach and the founder of Kaizen Business Coaching in Kelowna, BC. Clint has been guiding forward thinking business owners through change and growth since 2002.