Inflection Point Moment: Recent Episodes
Inflection Point Moment
Join Rhonda Peterson and Jeff Heyer-Jones for a weekly segment called Inflection Point Moment.
Jeff and Rhonda host a weekly series on various Inflection Points that all business owners face. They bring together their decades of experience into this fun and interesting weekly podcast. Designed especially for business owners that are small but mighty and looking to grow.
Working with your opposite allows you to stay in your natural role as a Visionary or Integrator™ while enjoying the benefits of both intuitive and systems-focused leadership. Jeff & Rhonda will share their own experiences as a visionary and an integrator working together on Inflection Point Moments as an example of how intuitive and systems-focused leaders can work together successfully – even if there are moments of challenge (and friction).
Visionaries and Integrators™ bring different, but equally valuable gifts to the table. A business needs both the vision and the action to be successful. You rarely find that in one person. Most of us are good at one or the other, and when you try to be both, it’s exhausting and ineffective. There’s no reason to get burned out trying to do it all—the other side exists!
What does it mean to invite your team members into the right role and then equip them to do their best work? Do they need to have specific tools? Do they need additional training? Equip, empower, and release them to do what they do best. Then get out of the way because they're going to do much better than you are in that area! Are you ready to let go?
What’s the difference between being a boss and being a leader? Just the question can make you laugh – or cry, depending on your experiences with leaders (or not) in your work experience. Join us to unpack the difference – and learn WHY it’s so important to lead your team instead of being bossy.
As we return from our Summer Break and Open Season 3 of Inflection Point Moments, join us to explore the value of Relationship Management, the final domain of Emotional Intelligence. Using an example from Rhonda’s life, we’ll explore the value of each of the five competencies of Relationship Management.
Self-management is being intentional about how you show up with your emotions. When you have emotional self-control, you respond to situations instead of reacting. You can choose your response to your emotions because you see options through adaptability, achievement orientation, and positive outlook. Creating a culture where emotions are legitimate frees us up to see new opportunities and lean into them, because we’re not captive to emotions run wild or unacknowledged.
Margin gives you the freedom and space to manage your emotions and find ways to achieve your goals in your current circumstances. It is easy to be flooded by your emotions. One way to combat this is creating margin in your calendar. Margin allows you to stay grounded and emotions won’t overwhelm you as easily.
You are in charge and driving the bus, not your emotions - emotions are just indicators. They are clues you need to notice, not a cause for immediate action. When you manage your emotions and practice seeing situations from more than one perspective, it strengthens your adaptability muscle and will help you discover new and better ways of doing things.
You are a business owner. Most likely you had to overcome fear to be a business owner. But does hidden fear underlie your decisions? Being aware of your emotions is one thing. Knowing what to do with them is another. Emotional self-management is key to harnessing your emotions for business and personal growth. Join us as we explore the HOW of harnessing your emotions, so you and your team can go further faster.
Using the RULER approach can help you and your team become more emotionally self-aware. As a leader, you need to make your business a safe place to process emotions by setting a positive example. Your team will know and remember if you consistently and thoughtfully respond rather than react
in the moment.
As a leader, you need a safe place to process your emotions. Vomiting them on your team is NOT the way to process them! Your “Corner 4” people build you up, give honest feedback,
and help you grow to your highest potential. They are the people you should go to with your emotions and figure out a way forward. Be fully present, ready to listen to their perspective, and open to learning from the situation. Then you can express your emotions appropriately with your
team.
Exploring what precipitated an emotion can help us understand what got us to where we are. Sometimes we don’t immediately know what caused us to feel a certain way or we develop a story that strays from the truth. Asking what questions, not why questions, will help you be objective, future-focused, and empowered to identify what caused our emotion and act on your new insights.
Learn to recognize and name your emotions. Stop suppressing your emotions and pushing them down. You need to feel them to recognize them. That doesn’t mean you have to act on every emotion you experience. It means you must acknowledge and identify them. Look beyond the three emotions people are generally able to identify. Don’t just
say you’re mad. What kind of mad are you? If you’re sad, are you more devastated or frustrated? Join us to dig into identifying emotions to become more emotionally intelligent.
While business acumen is critical for success, emotional intelligence can tip the scale for you from scratching out a living as a small business owner to thriving as you grow your business. Connecting and creating alignment around your business WHY motivates your team to achieve the company
vision.
For small business owners, EQ relates to the “soft skills” side of business. It’s so much more than being nice, which is a common misconception about emotional intelligence. It’s the way we understand ourselves and how we deal with our emotions while leading.
Taking on emotional Intelligence may feel overwhelming, especially if you’re a very transactional leader. But taking
small steps towards improving your self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management skills will put you on the right track. Are you willing to do the
work?
Your success level goes up when you’re focused on the work in your current stage of business. Join us to talk about making your life easier by focusing on the right things for your stage of business.
What markers are you seeing in your stage of business? If you get out of your space, don’t be afraid to go back into the stage of business where you need to be. Like moving up a ladder, you've got to have the foundation of level one before you can move on to level two.
Find people who can speak into you about where you are in your business growth. We all need to have other people come alongside us to support us in the parts of the business that we are not strong in. They can give you honest feedback and walk with you when it’s time to transition from one stage of business to another.
Understanding the different stages of business—startup, growth, scale, and mature—will put you on the
best path forward and make your life easier. A realistic understanding of the stage of business you’re in helps you stay focused on what you need to be doing now.
There’s an old saying, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. We choose far together. Your ability to sustain your growth and momentum as a business owner is
going to last a lot longer with the right business community. What does going far together look like?
When it comes to unpaid business communities, sometimes you get what you pay for. Likewise, a small business owner may get lost in the crowd among big corporate accounts in the wrong paid community. The Inflection Point Hub is just the right size for small-but-mighty businesses looking to
grow.
You deserve a community that fits your needs and to be surrounded by people who build you up, give honest feedback, and help you grow to your highest potential. You are not joining a group to fill a slot and fit into their box.
There are a lot of business communities out there, and this is key to finding the right one for you. They are not one size fits all. Once you’ve identified your needs, make sure they are met!
Work/Life Balance has been a buzz word for many years. Often the reality doesn’t match the vision. How do you find a balance that works for you, taps your ROE, and sets the tone for your whole team? How does the 80/20 rule apply here?
Once you understand your definition of work, it's time to look at your work style. Knowing yours and understanding the work styles of others on your team reduces team friction while allowing for business growth.
Have you ever stopped to consider your definition of work?
Understanding this seemingly simple 4 letter word drives your ability to lead your team, grow your business, and focus on the places where you will
have the most impact.
Productivity experts focus on time management. What if you focused on
energy management instead? Return on Energy (ROE for short) is the
starting place for more sustainable impact and growth in your business
Season 2 kicks off today! We’re excited to bring you this new season
to start the new year, starting with Return on Energy in January. We have
big news coming this month! 2023 is going to be a great year. Join us to
experience it together.
In the middle of the holiday season and end of year hustle and bustle, how can you possibly think about rest? What if you made an intentional decision to carve out time for rest in this season? What do you think would happen in your business? Is that real? What is the story you tell yourself about rest?
Celebration is a habit we often don’t think about. In this season of many celebrations, we’ll dig into why the habit of celebration is important for us personally and in business.
The habit of consistency is critical when building and scaling your business. It’s the foundation of your company brand. Having systems that keep you aligned with your customers' expectations allows them to trust your business to always deliver the level of quality and service they depend on from your company.
Practicing Gratitude starts with you as an individual noticing and being thankful for things big and small. Practicing gratitude with your team, vendors, customers, and community strengthens relationships. Join us to talk about building your gratitude muscle for business growth.
James Clear says in his book, Atomic Habits, “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems." What habits do you need to create to make 2023 a successful year? How can you habit stack to make the new habits stick?
How can you develop the discipline and create new habits to work the plan. Daily results lead to weekly results, that lead to the monthly, quarterly and achieving the annual result!
How do you identify what your bullseye looks like for 2023? What will success look like? How will you determine what this looks like in 90 day sprints?
While Jeff is celebrating a milestone birthday, join Rhonda and Teresa McCloy to explore a different perspective on planning – How do you live from rest not rush while still maintaining a thriving business? Teresa’s new book, “Do What Matters”, comes out next week. I’m thrilled to see my friend’s dream come true as she shares a way to make an impact while living from rest not rush using her trademark REALIFE Process(R).
Let’s talk more about planning, how do you go about assessing the successes, challenges and opportunities that have presented them self in 2022? Let’s get some clarity on assessing the good, the bad and the ugly.
Beth Menduni, owner of Video Story Studio, shares her expertise in message mapping and using video to share your message. She’ll help you understand the importance of this medium and why it’s SO valuable for small-but-mighty business owners. We’ll also explore the lessons Beth has learned about business on her own business growth journey. If you have questions about video storytelling, post them in the comments and Beth will answer them live on October 3.
4th Quarter is a busy time with holidays coming up towards the end – so there is no better time than now to talk about planning for 2023! Join us for a discussion on results & reflection on 2022.
Maritza Nelson, who provides sophisticated legal counsel for serious entrepreneurs, will provide us with insights into the opportunities and traps in contracts. Both Jeff and I know and trust Maritza’s expertise in small business law. Maritza’s style is NOT dry lawyer talk. She’ll keep you listening with her stories!
Erin Longmoon, CEO of Zephyr Connects returns to talk about the challenges of hiring in today’s market. You won’t want to miss this discussion, based on the struggles I’m hearing from business owners.
Murphy's Law strikes again! What happens when your best laid plans are waylaid by life - illness, accident, unexpected events you have no control over?
We discuss our favorite quote from Michael Gerber of E-Myth Revisited and why we believe that being a business owner is bigger than having a job in your business.
No matter how carefully and diligently you plan, things don’t always go the way you expect. Then what? Join Jeff and Rhonda to explore flexibility and resilience when things go sideways.
Being a business owner comes with a lot of responsibility and you need an appropriate outlet for the stress that comes from those demands. Having a community where you can express those concerns provides sustainability for you, allowing you to be healthy and present for family and friends.
Being part of a peer advisory community, provides the resource of fellow business owners’ expertise and experience. The wisdom at your disposal is vast and immensely valuable. We’re all capable of going online and reading endless information on a topic. Even if you can decipher the good from the bad, it’s time consuming. Everybody benefits, however, in a peer group where others in the same position can share their experiences.
These are people who are real with you and fully in your corner. This concept comes from Dr. Henry Cloud, author of “The Power of the Other”. Corner 4 relationships build us up and celebrate the good with us. They also give honest, constructive feedback when things aren’t good. We all fail at something along the way. Our Corner 4 people help us pick ourselves up, learn from those failures and move forward.
Sustainability means many things. It's important for our planet, your business, and YOU as the business owner. Join us to talk about the importance of creating sustainability as the business owner. How can you take time off? How did we manage it for our businesses in the past month? Why is it important in avoiding burnout?
Do you have the right resources in place to provide the services for more customers? This often feels like a chicken and egg dilemma – which comes first? As you project and plan for business growth, how will you meet increased customer demand? Do you have capacity to grow into or will you need to hire?
Growth can come from either a narrower focus or diversifying your product offerings. Which version of growth is the best fit for your company?