The two things that are most likely to prevent you from having good ideas are simple:You find it untenable to have bad ideasYou are so focused on doing that you don’t invest time in dreamingYou don’t have to be the smartest person on the block to have good ideas, but you do have to invest time to think AND be willing to generate a stack of ideas that won’t work. Here are some things you could try…Schedule time for thinking…Take interesting people to lunch and learn more about them and their work…Ask your team for the most expensive solution for a given problem…Brainstorm ways to access an opportunity for free…Ask yourself what your competitor would do…Pick an obstacle/opportunity and make a list of 10 ideas every day for a week… Read a book about someone who died 100+ years ago…Make a list of everything you are afraid of…Talk to your dog about the problem du jour…Spend 5 minutes making a list of all the worst ideas you can conjure for a given issue…Imagine how your favorite movie hero would deal with a given circumstance…Make a list of ways to prevent someone else from solving the problem you are wrestling with…How can you make space for ideation this week?If you are feeling overwhelmed as a small business owner, you need to download my free Anti-Overwhelm Playbook today. It will help you find the clarity and direction you need to start redefining your relationship with your business.

Does anyone remember a professional basketball player named Michael Jordan?Look him up. He was really good. Rings on rings on rings good.He was an iconic, generational talent, and is regarded as one of the top two NBA players of all time on every list I could find. And he was very terrible at baseball. Minor league baseball.I offer this to remind you that you will be good at some things as a small business owner, and not so good at others.That’s okay!The mistake is in allowing the things you aren’t good at to keep you from the things you are.Being baseball Michael Jordan in one part of your business is just an opportunity to delegate so you can be basketball Michael Jordan in another.If you are feeling overwhelmed as a small business owner, you need to download my free Anti-Overwhelm Playbook today. It will help you find the clarity and direction you need to start redefining your relationship with your business.

I grew up in the 80’s and learned a lot of valuable lessons from sitcoms.Unfortunately, these shows also drove home a subconscious message that still haunts me to this day: nothing ever changes.That massive promotion that would change everything for our fictional heroes? Yeah, it never materialized.The winning lottery ticket? Yeah, that got lost in a series of comical calamities.In Sitcomland you can’t afford to change the formula, so characters flirt with a transformational moment, but in the end they just stay the same. Thousands of hours of consistent programming are hard to escape and I find it so easy to slip into a mindset that positions me as a pawn for the writers instead of the person crafting the story for myself.Maybe you can relate.But here’s the thing:  A “nothing changes” mindset doesn’t apply to us. We are not characters in a sitcom and we can fundamentally change ourselves and our small businesses any time we want.And unlike sitcom characters, we don’t have to wait for a plot contrivance to set us up for a fantastic opportunity, we can engineer these opportunities for ourselves.What is one thing you can do this week to take the reigns of your business more firmly and begin changing it for the better?If you are feeling overwhelmed as a small business owner, you need to download my free Anti-Overwhelm Playbook today. It will help you find the clarity and direction you need to start redefining your relationship with your business.

No delegation, no freedom.You know you need to do it, and I’m going to give you four ways to cancel your excuses and make delegation happen.Fix your processesOne reason delegating feels so difficult is that your subconscious knows that it’s going to be embarrassing to hand off a messy process.. Maybe it is riddled with workarounds that you need to solve, or maybe it’s shamefully clumsy and the idea of handing it to someone else is mortifying.This is your cue to fix it.If necessary, walk through it with someone else and get their feedback about what makes sense to them and what doesn’t.A clearly defined process can be documented, and a clearly documented process can be delegated.Prioritize documentationOnce a solid process is in place, you need a consistent way to communicate how it works to your team. SHOWING someone how a process works is a great idea, but it can’t be the only way the information is transferred because you will never explain it the same way twice and you will always be the one they come to with questions.Instead, write the process down in something like a shared Google Doc. Include pics or short videos where useful. The goal is to give them a reference document that can answer 90% of the questions they will have after you go home for the day.Don’t worry about capturing every imaginable detail. Publish a serviceable first draft and commit to updating these docs as new questions surface. Every minute spent documenting the answer saves you maaaaaaaaany more minutes not answering that question for eternity.Remember: it isn’t really faster to just do it yourself.Doing it yourself because you think it will be faster is problematic for a couple reasons.You’re wrong. It’s only faster if it only has to be done ONCE, and that isn’t even always true.You’re robbing your team of an opportunity to learn how to do it for you.Delegating will absolutely require you to spend time training others, but that is the up front cost that will save you so much more time in the future. Abandon perfection. It’s a noose around your neck.If you are convinced that no one else could ever do a given task as well as you, you’re going to be very busy for the rest of your days.Instead of holding yourself hostage to an unnecessary standard, force yourself to set a more reasonable standard, clearly document your expectations, and let it go.Entrepreneur and Author Dan Martell suggests that if someone can hit 80% of your “perfect” outcome without your intervention, you are WINNING.If you are ready to get serious about delegating effectively so that you can make your profitable small business work for you, check out my Make Your Business Work For You Mastermind that kicks off on April 10th. You, and a small cohort of profitable owners, will spend 12-weeks fundamentally redefining your relationship with your business and developing the processes and documentation necessary to start delegating more effectively. Join now at http://geoffwelch.com/mastermind.

Getting started is the most difficult part of documenting your processes and workflows.To help you get started, here are 5 things you should document right away…The simplest process you can think of. Jump start your progress by documenting something that is so easy to capture that you can’t contrive any reasons to wait.The most mission critical process in your business. When in doubt, start by documenting the thing that is absolutely essential to your success.The thing that everyone gets wrong. If you’ve ever grumbled under your breath about something that was forgotten or done incorrectly AGAIN, did you also ensure that you had rock solid documentation detailing what you expect?The process that is repeated the most. If it happens over and over again, it had better be done correctly and efficiently.The thing you absolutely hate doing. Every documented process is an opportunity to delegate, so the quickest path to not having to do something you hate is to ensure you have documentation in place so someone else can do it for you.What is one process you will document this week?If you are ready to get serious about documenting your way to delegation, check out my Make Your Business Work For You Mastermind that kicks off on April 10th. You, and a small cohort of profitable owners, will spend 12-weeks fundamentally redefining your relationship with your business and developing the processes and documentation necessary to start delegating more effectively. Join now at http://geoffwelch.com/mastermind.

I want to share one of the most profound things I have learned in nearly 20 years of small business ownership: the workaround is not the solution.In the heat of battle you are likely to find short-term workarounds to get a project completed. You are going to use duct tape and bubble gum to make things work in a pinch. It’s not going to be pretty, but it’s going to save the day.Unfortunately this short-term workaround is sometimes left in place and becomes the de facto practice.Here are 6 questions to ask yourself when you know a process or workflow is sketchy, but don’t know exactly how to start making it better.Is part of this process shrouded in mystery?A simple way for a process to break down is when a part of the process is a mystery to the end users. The team knows to push the button or turn the knob, but no one understands why, or what to do when these actions stop working.Who might have a helpful insight as I evaluate this process?Is there someone internal (or maybe even external, like a friend or a customer) to whom you could demonstrate the process in order to get their feedback? Insiders and outsiders will have very different perspectives and both can be invaluable as you look for weaknesses.Why? (but ask it at least 5 times in a row)LEAN methodology espouses the “Five Whys,” a practice in which you ask WHY (at least) 5 times to move beyond the superficial causes and discover contributing factors that need to be addressed. The problem of routine paper jams in the printer might have nothing to do with the printer itself and everything to do with how the paper is stored prior to being used…Why am I avoiding this?If you find yourself actively avoiding a busted workflow, the reason why may be incredibly telling because it will teach you how to combat it. The “Five Whys” should be incredibly useful here, too.How would my competitor deal with this?We know all of our own imperfections, but often attribute an unrealistic genius to our competitors. So, use that to your advantage. Imagine how they would handle the problem or ruminate on why they wouldn’t have the problem in the first place.How could I simplify this process?Instead of thinking of the solution as additive – what do I need to bolt onto this process to make it work better? – consider the possibility of removing something. Is there a way to accomplish the desired outcome with fewer steps, fewer people, or fewer tools? If you are ready to get serious about troubleshooting and improving your processes so you can make your business work for you, check out my Make Your Business Work For You Mastermind that kicks off on April 10th. You, and a small cohort of profitable owners, will spend 12-weeks fundamentally redefining your relationship with your business and developing the processes and documentation necessary to start delegating more effectively. Join now at http://geoffwelch.com/mastermind.

My knowledge of SpongeBob SquarePants is incredibly limited, but here’s one thing I’m certain of: Mr. Krabs loves money. He knows exactly what his business exists to do FOR HIM and he’s a model for the rest of us. When you have complete clarity about what you want from your business you can better contextualize the difficult days (because there WILL be difficult days) and accurately measure the true effectiveness of your business.The financial reports are ONE measure of the success of your business, but your satisfaction as a small business owner likely comes from more than just financial reward. In fact my only beef with Mr. Krabbs is that identifying money as the ultimate goal is one step short of the final answer, because money is just a tool. So what do you really want? Is it something money provides, like security, power, luxury goods, travel, access to quality health care, early retirement, support for your favorite charity, the house, the car, or exclusive access?Or maybe it’s control, self-expression, or something else entirely?When you’re ready, complete the following sentences and review them regularly. Doing so will serve as a visible reminder that your business has a job and, like any other employee, you have to hold it accountable. My business makes it possible for me to…Designing, documenting, and delegating processes ensures that I never have to…The clearer you get about what your business makes possible FOR YOU and what your business protects you from, the easier it will be to optimize your business for those outcomes. If you are ready to get serious about clarifying exactly what you want from your profitable small business, check out my Make Your Business Work For You Mastermind that kicks off on April 10th. You, and a small cohort of profitable owners, will spend 12-weeks fundamentally redefining your relationship with your business and developing the processes and documentation necessary to start delegating more effectively. Join now at http://geoffwelch.com/mastermind.

Making your business work for you is going to fundamentally change your relationship with your business for the better, but how in the world do you keep yourself from being held hostage by all of your commitments?Here’s one way: stop saying “yes” to things you shouldn’t say “yes” to.Instead of instantly agreeing to take on another exciting new opportunity when it walks up to you during a networking event or taps you on the shoulder at the grocery store, adopt a “no now, yes later” approach. You can always say “no” in real time if you KNOW an opportunity isn’t a good fit, but a “yes” requires more due diligence. All you have to say is, “This sounds really interesting. Let me check in with my current commitments and see what I can do. I’ll get back to you tomorrow.”Once you are in a position to give the opportunity some thoughtful consideration, there are two tests it should pass before you say “yes.”Does it align with your priorities?Is there room on your calendar and to-do list?If it doesn’t align with your priorities, it’s dead on arrival. Time to reply with, “Unfortunately I can’t make this work…”The same applies to a priority-aligned opportunity to which you can’t find a way to allocate time.If it aligns with your priorities AND you feel comfortable with the necessary investment of time, energy, and focus, you can parse the opportunity further to confirm your interest, but you are on the path to a “yes!”(Notice that I said you should “feel comfortable” adding this to your calendar, not that you can find a way to cram it into your calendar like 10 pounds of sugar in a 5 pound sack. The goal is to not hate yourself later.)If you are ready to get serious about de-escalating the chaos in your profitable small business so that you can kick overwhelm in the teeth, check out my Make Your Business Work For You Mastermind that kicks off on April 10th. You, and a small cohort of profitable owners, will spend 12-weeks fundamentally redefining your relationship with your business and developing the processes and documentation necessary to start delegating more effectively. Join now at http://geoffwelch.com/mastermind.

“You didn’t come this far to only come this far.” -The internet is undecided about who said this first“What got you here won’t get you there.” -Marshall GoldsmithThese two inspirational lines have been on my mind lately.It’s easy to roll your eyes and dismiss them as cliches – unless you hear them spoken aloud by Denzel Washington – but they are symbolic of a deeper meaning of which I want to remind you:Change is unavoidable.As you progress through life and nurture your business, you will find moments of satisfaction about a goal you’ve achieved or the way all your systems are finally working with seamless precision.  Unsurprisingly, these moments will be short lived and scattered throughout a dense and unending forest of change.The market will change. Your team will change. Your tools will change. Your dreams will change. Your best customers will change. Your best products and services will change. The economy will change. Your competitors will change. The best way to reach your customers will change.This reality can be a blessing or a curse. It’s up to you.If you regard the change that is coming your way as a nuisance, impediment, or injustice, you will experience a great deal of frustration.If you regard the change that is coming your way as wholly inevitable and an opportunity, your business will be positioned to thrive in ways you can’t currently conceive.The change is coming whether you like it or not. You can to learn love the change or be crushed by it.

The client on the other end of the phone was on the verge of tears: “My employees are driving me crazy!”Carrying the weight of small business ownership is no small feat and you can’t do it alone. Even if you don’t have W2 employees, you likely still employ contractors to make your enterprise work.Unfortunately, every person you hire (or contract with) brings their own set of quirks and idiosyncrasies with them to the party.But here’s where you can do yourself a favor and, quite likely, eliminate a great deal of the frustration you experience with the people who work for you:Tell them what you want them to do.Specifically, clearly, unapologetically. Just tell them.I’m sure this seems ridiculous on the surface but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had the following exchange with a client:THEM: this person always [insert frustrating behavior here]!ME: What did they say when you told them you wanted them to stop [frustrating behavior] or [insert desired behavior]?THEM: …You’re the owner. You get to dictate how things get done. Be compassionate and don’t try to control every aspect of their work, but it’s okay to say, “this isn’t working for me, I need you to…”Being direct affords you the ability to assess their progress toward an outcome you have voiced clearly instead of constantly being frustrated by their performance and your tacit acceptance of that performance.Now it’s up to them.I can’t guarantee that every employee will rise to the challenge, but you will likely find that many actually want to do the best job possible and now have the insight to be more successful.There are myriad reasons why employing people will drive you a little crazy, but it cannot be because you don’t tell them what you want.

I don’t know if I’ve ever been “cool,” but I know for a fact that any chance I had is in the rear view mirror.How can I be so sure? Well, one of my favorite things is to have the laundry done before I go to bed on Friday.Yeah.But here’s where that decidedly uncool pastime can help you and your business.In an effort to ensure I had every opportunity to get the laundry done by “lights out” on Friday, I started loading the washing machine before I left the house on Friday morning.I wasn’t keen on running the machine when no one was home, but I wanted it to be fully ready to go as soon as I arrived home in the afternoon.I knew that when I returned home I’d be greeted by a dozen distractions. The dog would want my attention, I’d have my hands full of things I’d collected throughout my day, I would want to change my clothes, the Yankee game would need to get thrown on the TV, and I’d probably need to go to the bathroom. In light of these distractions, I wanted to front load (laundry humor!) the activity that was my biggest priority.Instead of coming home and having to decide in what order I would do all of the above, including grabbing the laundry hamper and tossing a load in the machine, I just needed to press START on the washer and move on to any of the other things vying for my attention.I call it doing the first thing last.When you are ending a work session, or ending your day, just consider where you will want to start when you return and take the first step.That could mean putting the appropriate tools in place for your next phase of work, opening your notebook to the notes you will need to start your work tomorrow, or removing distractions that may make it more difficult to focus on the next thing.In the same way that one relay runner is trying to pass the baton to the next in the most seamless fashion possible, making the ending of one task the beginning of another sets you up for smoother transitions and less wasted effort.

I heard a story recently about a mysterious sound reported by the Swedish navy in the early 80’s. The sound occurred frequently in the waters along their coastlines and the military set out to determine what sort of threat might be behind it. They suspected submarines and literally dropped bombs into the water to destroy this mystery threat. Nothing worked. For more than a decade.In the end, after biologists were enlisted to join the military investigation, the sound was found to be fish flatulence.What does this have to do with your business? In the same way that the military immediately believed this unusual sound to be a threat and focused on very specific causes – and the biologists had a completely different focus – you are prone to see the obstacles and opportunities in front of you through a very specific lens.The paradigm through which you see the world, your business, and every day problems can be so entrenched that it is invisible to you. Instead of seeing all the possible solutions to a problem, you focus on a tiny subset. We all do.This is why you need people in your network from a variety of backgrounds and skill sets. People you can ask, “hey, what do you think about this?” People who will offer you the most remarkable and unexpected solutions, not because they are smarter than you, but because they see the world differently.The next time you are struggling with a challenge you just can’t seem to overcome, ask for input from someone who lives far away, works in a different industry, or who has a radically different background.You might be surprised at how they are able to highlight possibilities you simply couldn’t see on your own.

I once leased a very expensive software product and then abandoned it because our operation wasn’t in a position to integrate it in a productive way.It still makes me mad that I paid THOUSANDS of dollars for a software product that was never put to use, but I couldn’t afford to waste more time and money trying to make a square peg fit in a round hole.It was a costly failure that left me with two choices:Rehearse the failure as a sort of punishment for my bad judgement orInterrogate that failure for anything it could teach me about how to make better choices moving forward It probably seems painfully obvious which path is more profitable, but there’s a decent chance you’ve chosen option 1 a time or two in the life of your business.There is no CTRL-Z. You can review your mistakes, but you can’t revise them. You only have what’s next.Instead of reliving your least favorite decisions as a way of reminding yourself of your fallibility, what if you interrogated your mistakes by asking…What can that experience teach me about myself, my business, the market, etc.?How can that experience have a positive influence on what I am doing now/next?And ultimately, can I find space for gratitude?There is no going back, only pressing forward.

One of the most hilarious and poetically perfect videos on the internet is a clip of 90’s rockers Rage Against The Machine playing live on the BBC.  The clip focus on the ending of their song “Killing In The Name,” which features frontman Zach DeLaRocha sing-screaming “F*** you I won’t do what you tell me” seventeen times on the studio recording.During this live performance DeLaRocha omits the not-ready-for-prime-time word the first eight times through, but as the music climaxes he raises his middle finger to the camera and lets the F-bomb fly on repeat.Moments later the feed is interrupted by a commentator saying, “Sorry…that suddenly turned into something we were not expecting. Well we were expecting it, and asked them not to do it, and they did it anyway.”So, the BBC invited a band who might have been best known for their “F*** you I won’t do what you tell me” attitude…and were somehow caught off guard that they, in fact, did not do what they were told.Here’s the thing: while you are shaking your head at how obvious this outcome seems, you likely have systems and processes in your business that you KNOW are broken (or at least iffy) but will leave you speechless when they fail at exactly the wrong moment.You will likely never perfect every system in your business, that’s not the point, but you should never be surprised when something works the way you built it.I’m guessing that you just thought of a system or a process that needs some work. Take a moment to capture it and identify what you need to do to shore it up.(Need some help? Let’s jump on a discovery call to see how I can help you fix those busted systems before they betray you.)

I was watching John Wick Chapter 2 the other day and the opening sequence features John laying waste to an army of henchmen in a warehouse.As he is cracking skulls (and being struck by vehicles) below, two crime bosses discuss what makes John so absolutely terrifying: “John Wick is a man of focus, commitment and sheer f***ing will.”Nothing about how strong he is, how fast he is, how good he is with a gun, or how smart he is.Focus, commitment, and will make him uniquely dangerous and nearly impossible to kill.You may not have access to all the resources you would like. You may not be the smartest business owner around. You may not be an expert in all the latest marketing tactics. You may not know all the right people.But you can choose to be more focused, committed, and driven than absolutely anyone around you.What if those are the traits that will help you advance your business in ways that your competitors can’t match?Take a minute to make a note of a goal or outcome you want to realize. How would someone who was wholly devoted to that outcome spend their days? What would they do? What WOULDN’T they do? How would they maintain their focus on accomplishing that goal? What would keep them awake at night? How would they invest their time and their money? How would they navigate distractions?How devastating would they be to their competition?Go be that person.

If you are like a great many people, you likely just made a list of resolutions or goals for this brand new year.Fantastic!Here’s a way to make that list even more effective: add at least a few things you will STOP doing.It is likely that you won’t realize the resolutions and goals you’ve outlined if you don’t also identify the habits and behaviors that will get in your way.-You may want to hit the gym every morning, but first you need to STOP snoozing that alarm clock.-You may want to reach out to new customers each week, but first you need to stop wasting time on YouTube.-You may want to delegate more, but first you need to stop buying into the idea that it will just be faster if you do it yourself.What you DO matters. A lot.But so does what you DON’T do.

In my new podcast, Your Business Is Not Your Boss, I will share insights from nearly a decade as small business coach and nearly two decades of experience as a small business owner to help other small business owners overcome overwhelm and redefined their relationship with their business so they can regain relaxed control.This podcast is for you if: - you want to have greater clarity about exactly what you expect your business to do for you- you want to develop more effective systems inside your business- you want to have a complete repository of documentation for all your processes and workflows- you want to empower your teams and delegate like a boss- you want to be able to review your progress clearly to ensure you keep your business in its place