#Smallbizchat is a weekly conversation where small business owners can get answers to their questions. The focus of #Smallbizchat is to end small business failure by helping participants succeed as your own boss. Each month different experts join the discussion, and the July 2019 #Smallbizchat LIVE was all about leadership, retaining top talent, and succeeding as a solopreneur.

Please join us live on Twitter every Wednesday from 8-9 pm ET. Here’s how: follow @SmallBizChat on Twitter and follow the hashtag #Smallbizchat and click here for directions to join the weekly conversation. 

This week on the July 2019 #Smallbizchat LIVE, our show featured three guests: How to Be a Better Leader in Your Business with Patrick Dougher, @BizSpotlighTV, How to Attract and Retain Top Talent in Your Small Business with Oginga Carr, @OgingaCarr, and How to Be a Successful Solopreneur with Pamela Slim, @pamslim.

I pulled three of the best questions from each of them to share with you. Every third Wednesday of the month, Smallbizchat LIVE is broadcast on my SmallBizLady Facebook Page, YouTube channel, and on Twitter @SmallBizLady.

Patrick Dougher is passionate about helping you build, grow, and scale a flourishing and thriving business by sharing proven and time-tested systems guaranteed to generate more engaged employees, increase sales, land more ideal clients, earning more profit. In the past 20 years, I have taught over 40k people these tools to help them create more success for themselves.  Patrick is an award-winning Contract Trainer and speaker, having worked with Zig Ziglar as one of his speakers.  His mission is to Mentor Leaders to activate their power so they can create their destiny. Learn more at www.DoerSuccess.com.

SmallBizLady: Where did you learn the principles of leadership that you teach?

Patrick Dougher: Where I learned the principle of leadership that I teach began first in college as the activities coordinator for one of the largest student centers at Texas A&M University.  In my career, I had several opportunities to continue to teach leadership because every professional position that I held I ended up with me in the sales training position of the companies that I worked with. My biggest growth in leadership actually came from a 3-Day event that I lead from 2000 to 2010. This particular program dealt with how to process pain rather than run from it.  How to find your purpose, your passion, and walk into your destiny. As a leader there, my job was to raise and mentor people that could replace me. I found I had a real knack for that.   The principles that I teach begin with what is the power center in a person’s life, their passion, their gifting’s if you want to call it. I found that if you understand someone’s gifts and then place them in the areas where those gifts become in their main job, they thrive and whenever you can nurture people in their power centers people create greater results.

SmallBizLady: What are the keys to mentoring employees to create dynamic results?

Patrick Dougher: The keys to creating dynamic results in mentoring people are to first identify what their primary motivational gift is. I found that there are seven primary motivational gifts. These tend to be:

1. Mercy
2. Teaching
3. Serving
4. Giving
5. Professing
6. Exhortation
7. Administration

I have a short test that I administer that identifies these easily in employees. Once you understand these principles and gifts, you can easily lead people by placing them in areas where their gifts thrive.

SmallBizLady: What should an aspiring leader do to great better results in the future?

Patrick Dougher: I believe aspiring leaders that want to create better results in the future have to be continuous learners. There are so many great mentors throughout the world that are teaching keys to success in business and life. A leader has to be a learner. You half to be open to learning new things every day. I believe there are three things that will take any leader to any level in their career.

1. The right information.
2. The ability to process information faster and remember more.
3. Take action.

These three steps will help any leader go to any level in their career.

Oginga Carr is an author, national seminar leader, organizational structure expert, and HR consultant. He brings 17 years of experience in Sales, Management, and Human Resources. His passion is in the dynamic of change; dealing with it, working through it, and preparing for it. Oginga focuses on productivity through structure and human capital development. He is the author of the book, Your Limitless Life. Learn more at www.ogingacarr.com

SmallBizLady: How do you attract top talent to your business?

Oginga Carr: It all starts with you.  We must have a vision for what we want our business to be and what the moving parts are for it.  Where do you want your business to be in 5 years? One Year?  Start there and work your way backward.  Business owners have to be able to envision the role that their employees or partners are going to fulfill.  Then we shape those roles and create positions that will help our businesses reach their goal.  Being really clear about our expectations in those roles helps us to attract high performers to our organization.  High performing talent is attracted to positions where they can make a difference.  When we are clear about defining that in our roles, we will attract the best talent,

SmallBizLady: How do you retain great talent in your small business?

Oginga Carr: Most employers make the mistake of thinking that money is the key to keeping employees.  You can’t pay your employees enough money to be happy.  Money is important, but studies show that whom they work with, whom they work for, and what they do are all more important than money to the average employee.  Money is important, but the environment is more important.  It’s all about creating partnerships within your business.  When you make your employees feel like they are partners, then they want to stay and are stakeholders in building your business.

SmallBizLady: What is the biggest mistake businesses make with their talent?

Oginga Carr: One of the biggest mistakes that businesses make is not communicating change well.  Change is a part of life. We will always face change in the way we access our customers, that we communicate with each other, and how our organization functions, but it is imperative that we communicate those changes well. When our talent feels like they are a part of the process, they stay.  So its best to communicate changes clearly and efficiently to avoid the feeling of “madness” that envelops many businesses.  When the team knows the adjustments, they can make them happen.

Pamela Slim is an award-winning author, speaker, and small business coach. She specializes in helping service businesses grow and scale their intellectual property. Pam and her husband Darryl opened the Main Street Learning Lab in Mesa, Arizona in 2016, where they work with diverse entrepreneurs to solve core business challenges and generates stories, research, and insight for companies and organizations who serve them. Find her at pamelaslim.com.

SmallBizLady: As a solopreneur, how do you juggle everything on your plate?

Pamela Slim: Managing solopreneur life means you have to make planning and focus a daily, sometimes hourly part of your routine. You must take the time to identify your critical priorities and deliverables, so you don’t get overwhelmed and behind. You also have to get really good at taking things off your list that is not directly related to your goals. Say no to non-strategic work so that you can say yes to work that will make your business grow.

SmallBizLady: How do solopreneurs know what to outsource?

Pamela Slim: When you examine all of your daily tasks, identify three things: 1) what is a recurring activity that I do not need to do myself? (bookkeeping or scheduling are common categories) 2) what are tasks that really annoy me and put me in a bad mood when I even think about doing them? 3) what are tasks that are taking me away from the work I love to do, am good at, and that generates income or visibility? Once you get your list, try a short experiment to outsource a tiny project in one of these task categories. Make sure to define and start and end date and manage the performance tightly.

SmallBizLady: How should solopreneurs deal with cash flow challenges?

Pamela Slim: Every business owner faces cash flow challenges. The causes are many, but the most common ones are lack of visibility into your finances because you have not prioritized bookkeeping, lack of consistent marketing actions leading to dry spells, and lack of savings and lines of credit as a backup for unexpected delays in payment. If you focus on improving these three areas, you will be much more likely to smooth out cash flow crunches.

Now that you’ve caught up with the July 2019 #Smallbizchat LIVE – would you like to be a guest on the next #Smallbizchat?

If you are a small business owner, author, or subject matter expert, we’d love to have you appear as a guest on #Smallbizchat. This chat is focused on educating our business community. Once your topic is selected, you will be required to submit 12 questions and answers in paragraph form to demonstrate your expertise. For details on how to submit your information to be a guest on #Smallbizchat click here.