When it comes to leadership, there are many tasks you have to stay on top of in order to help your business succeed, from continuously building and developing your team to fine-tuning your sales processes. But while these are undeniably important, there’s a more personal area that’s just as essential to give attention to: your leadership style. After all, how you lead can have a huge impact on your company’s culture and employee retention, which can ultimately influence your bottom line.
That’s where the concept of conscious leadership comes into play. It transcends the pursuit of mere metrics, placing greater emphasis on becoming an authentic and self-aware leader. By adopting this mindset, you can develop into someone who more employees want to rally behind and more businesses want to work with, enabling you to take your company to new and incredible heights.
First outlined in the 2014 book The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, this approach has since gained traction as a valuable means of becoming a more effective leader. Kelly L. Campbell, a conscious leadership coach, writes that “conscious leadership refers to guiding others with full awareness of the self and cultivating growth in organizations by supporting the people in them.” This means that conscious leaders delve deeper than simply achieving objectives. They focus on creating a “we” centered work culture rather than a “me” centered one, fostering an environment of trust and innovation that empowers their employees to thrive while under their supervision.
Given that this strategy is all about leading with a comprehensive understanding of yourself and your guiding principles, it requires a unique blend of traits:
Conscious leadership isn’t something that can be achieved overnight; rather, it’s a continuous voyage of self-discovery and development taken step-by-step. The first one involves becoming comfortable with the reflection necessary to grow and improve as both an individual and a leader. You must take the time to regularly assess how you’re directing your team and the impact your leadership has on them. Consider engaging in mindfulness techniques like journaling or meditation and gathering feedback from fellow managers, your employees, or even peers in your industry, which may yield valuable insights you can then use to improve. By enhancing your self-awareness and emotional intelligence, you can adjust your behaviors as needed and respond more thoughtfully to challenging situations.
It’s worth noting that with this level of assessment, you may naturally become more open and vulnerable in the workplace, but that vulnerability can be an asset. Sharing your own struggles and imperfections is often a powerful way to connect with people since they typically relate better to true authenticity. And through these deeper connections, you can gain more opportunities to empower those within your organization.
So instead of keeping yourself separate from your team, observe, listen, and engage with your employees to learn more about their goals and abilities and help them get to know and trust you in return. Then take measures to continually help nurture their strengths and support their growth, such as by providing professional-development training. After all, their individual successes will only help your business.
Another crucial step to developing conscious leadership is cultivating your purpose. It’s not enough to simply know your organization’s mission and vision—you need to internalize them and live them out through your actions. Only then can you help each team member see how their role contributes to the bigger picture, giving them something to continually work toward. This commitment to your purpose will also inform the future decisions you may have to make for your organization, which can better ensure that they’re aligned with its central tenets.
Ultimately, conscious leadership is a philosophy style that places the good of the whole above the good of oneself. These leaders recognize when something isn’t working and put in the effort to change so they can build a more positive and productive work environment for everyone. In this way, they don’t just lead people—they inspire and leave a lasting impact that extends far beyond the walls of their organizations.
TAKE ACTION:
Examine your current leadership style, and determine what steps you can take to become a more conscious and authentic leader.
It is said that money makes the world go round, and this is no truer than in the business sphere, where profits are the primary purpose. For this reason, it’s crucial to learn basic accounting as a small business owner—after all, you need to know how to keep stock of and manage your funds in order to captain a prosperous enterprise. Whether you’re founding a new venture or looking to accelerate your existing organization’s success, consider going back to the fundamentals to fortify your accounting knowledge and arm yourself to strengthen your business’s growth.
PayPal’s Business Resource Center states that “accounting is the process of calculating, documenting, and analyzing the financial transactions of a business.” In other words, it is the ongoing recording of how, when, and by what means your business makes and spends money and the use of such data to devise future tactics. You will need this information to perform many tasks, including “reporting income and expenses to tax collectors, drafting financial statements for investors, or providing stakeholders with balance sheets,” as PayPal adds. Understanding accounting is also vital for scoping out new investments, applying for financing, and conducting other business activities.
Though different industries and business types may require more specific processes, here are some general foundational steps to take that can help you dive into the world of accounting.
One of the most essential ways to help solidify your fiscal health as a small business is to establish a budget, which will better enable you to gauge your incoming funds and where to apportion them. If you don’t yet have a concrete budget, consider downloading a free small-business budget template you can fill in with your financial information. Continue to update it as you forecast, or predict future revenue and expenses based on historical data and anticipated trends. You can also perform what is known as a variance analysis to assess your monthly, quarterly, and annual budget adherence, allowing you to see where to make ongoing necessary adjustments.
Accounting involves keeping track of a heap of information, much of which can easily get lost if you aren’t meticulous. As you manage your business daily, ensure that you save important financial forms, including bills, receipts, and invoices, by storing them in a separate and secure location. To further reap the rewards of recordkeeping, arrange them neatly by date, type, and whether they represent revenue or expenses, which will make them easy to find later as needed.
Revenue and expenses are two pivotal figures to comprehend in detail. The former represents the money your business earns from selling products or services. Tracking your revenue streams separately by product or service type can offer insights into how certain goods are performing.
Conversely, your expenses encompass all costs incurred to operate your business. Categorize them distinctly as follows:
Documenting these expenses accordingly can assist you in better managing or reducing them so you can retain as much revenue as possible, which you can then invest or use to help fortify or grow your company.
These core forms act as the backbone of accounting, each providing a clear snapshot of your business’s financial performance. Here are the three main financial statements you should become familiar with.
Balance sheet
Capturing what you own and owe, this statement tells you where you stand with your assets, liabilities, and equity at a given point in time. Assets refer to any financial value held in items such as cash and inventory, whereas liabilities refer to financial obligations, including loan repayments and payroll. Equity, meanwhile, is the difference between your liabilities and assets, representing the total value you hold in your organization.
Income statement (profit-and-loss statement)
This form summarizes your revenue, expenses, gains, losses, and net income during specific time frames. Its overall purpose is to gauge how profitable your business is. Naturally, you should analyze this statement regularly.
Cash flow statement
Often considered the most comprehensive financial statement, this sheet tracks the streams of cash in and out of your business during a certain period, including its operating, investing, and financing activities. Reviewing it can facilitate your understanding of how you make and lose money, guiding you toward more effective cash management.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are additional metrics that evaluate your business’s success, indicating its current health and future growth potential. Common ones to monitor frequently include:
Inspect these KPIs in your accounting software or request them from outsourced services regularly to assess your organization’s progress toward goals and make strategic adjustments when necessary.
Dutiful accounting can aid in clarifying your tax obligations, including for sales, payroll, and certain industry-specific areas. Thoroughly recording your income, expenses, and deductions will also ease the general tax-preparation process, whether you decide to handle it yourself or enlist a professional.
Keeping and periodically reviewing accounting data can help you manage your organization with a keen eye and safeguard your financial health. You can certainly achieve this on your own, but for the best results, it may be worth purchasing business accounting software or requesting the assistance of a professional accountant, who can aid you in compiling necessary records.
If you prefer to stay in-house, there are numerous stellar DIY accounting tools to try, including FreshBooks and Zoho Books, each of which is accessible from any device with internet access. Enterprise systems such as NetSuite, meanwhile, are more appropriate for recordkeeping within larger organizations. Consider following online tutorials or seeking out other educational resources like manuals that can demonstrate how to take advantage of all these systems have to offer.
Utilizing such software or hiring a professional service can ease the heavy lifting of keeping accurate fiscal records manually while also offering you consistent, ongoing awareness of important data. Armed with these resources and a foundational knowledge of accounting, you can save yourself the headaches of financial confusion and help guide your organization toward overall success.
TAKE ACTION:
Familiarize yourself with accounting basics to organize your financial records and hone your strategies based on the gathered data.
Running a business is frequently compared to coaching a sports team and vice versa. And with fall being one of the best stretches on the sports calendar—baseball pennant races are heating up, football season is beginning, and basketball and hockey are not far behind—it’s the perfect time to get inspired by some of history’s greatest coaches and athletes. Take their wisdom to heart to help you stay inspired and win at business, no matter your industry.
“I always tell kids, ‘You have two eyes and one mouth. Keep two open and one closed. You never learn anything if you’re the one talking.’”
– Gordie Howe, hockey legend
Have you ever found yourself getting caught up in your own business know-how while running your company? If so, heed Mr. Hockey’s advice. Listening to your team members, from newcomers offering fresh perspectives to the trusted sounding boards in your C-suite, can help expose you to potential pitfalls in your decision-making along with possibilities you may not have considered. Either way, when you seek outside insight, it can open the floodgates to positive outcomes for your business.
“Individual commitment to a group effort—that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”
– Vince Lombardi, Hall of Fame NFL coach
The five-time champion coach clearly knew from firsthand experience how to lead a winning football team—and that it required going beyond the Xs and Os. In Green Bay (and his other coaching stints), he didn’t just teach a game plan but inspired a collective buy-in from his players about it, with each understanding they played an important yet singular role in its success. His legendary quarterback Bart Starr concurred, humbly stating, “I was just one part of a great team.” Imagine the rewards your company could reap from your employees adopting that same mindset.
“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”
– John Wooden, UCLA men’s basketball head coach
Perhaps the most successful and respected coach in history, Wooden is as known today for his wisdom and influence on business leadership as he is for his success in the arena, all thanks to his best-selling books. A huge part of his philosophy is the idea that doing things the right way will lead to success. His words above typify this: by prioritizing character and integrity, you can better focus on what you can control and let anything outside your purview take care of itself—an especially important lesson in today’s world of social media.
“Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.”
– John Wooden
Coach Wooden followed his own advice throughout his career, notably tinkering with his famed Pyramid of Success (applicable to all areas of sports, business, and life) when need be. In fact, “alertness,” or being open-minded to learning, is one of its foundational principles. For business owners, it’s easy to fall into a “my way or the highway” mindset. But while it is essential to hold fast to your purpose, Wooden also emphasizes the value of reinventing your business to account for changing times, which can help ensure its long-term success.
“Believe me, the reward is not so great without the struggle.”
– Wilma Rudolph, record-setting Olympic sprinter
Starting a business isn’t easy—if it were, everyone would do it. As an entrepreneur, you’re likely familiar with the constant roadblocks that appear on the path to success, whether they’re internal (e.g., doubt) or external (e.g., raising capital). This legendary Olympian faced struggles on her path to glory, but rather than become defeated, she used her challenges as stairs to climb to the pinnacle of her sport. Embrace a similar mindset in the face of your own hardships, and they can enable you to become stronger and more capable in every area of business.
“I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
– Michael Jordan, six-time NBA champion and five-time MVP
It seems appropriate to conclude with a lesson from pro basketball’s GOAT: the key to winning is to face down any fear of failure and replace it with the courage to take chances. Business owners are well aware of both realities. Trepidation can lead to decision paralysis and overconservative choices, stunting a business’s growth potential. In contrast, corporate history, from Ford to Apple to Google, shows that blazing forward smartly and fearlessly can forge an unparalleled path to business feats—even changing the world as we know it.
For these all-time greats, success wasn’t handed to them; it was earned through hard work and ambition. Use their words as your go-to inspiration for leading your team to new heights in the months ahead and beyond.
TAKE ACTION:
Reignite your entrepreneurial fire by reading inspirational quotes from your favorite athletes or coaches or reading one of their books.
In today’s modern age, social media can be critical for both attracting new clients and keeping existing ones. At the same time, however, maintaining a highly visible presence can quickly become a resource black hole, draining your time and money. The good news is that by leveraging a few efficient tactics, you can streamline the management of your brand’s social media to help ensure that it benefits rather than overshadows your other vital business functions.
While a winning social media strategy necessitates consistency and frequency, it doesn’t have to monopolize your focus. An AI tool like ChatGPT or Google Gemini can enable you to streamline your approach by automating repetitive tasks such as writing social media posts and captions. In turn, you can free up time for bigger-picture projects or engaging with your audience, potentially maximizing your impact and boosting your results.
To get the most out your preferred AI helper, work on honing the prompts you input. Be very detailed about what you’re looking for, including the format; otherwise, you might end up with something potentially not useful, such as a bulleted list. For example, if you want to post about an open house for your real estate listing, you could type “Write a paragraph about my open house on Saturday, September 15, from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. A few of the home’s best features are its four bedrooms, two full bathrooms, updated kitchen, hardwood floors, and fenced backyard”—and it will spit out a post in seconds.
From there, you can send follow-up prompts asking the AI tool to make additions or adjustments. If you want hashtags, simply type “Provide relevant hashtags for this post,” and it will give you a few to consider, such as #OpenHouse, #UpdatedKitchen, and #MoveInReady. Gemini will even categorize the hashtags into groups like “Property Specific Features” and “Target Audience” to help you pick the ideal ones for your purpose.
Another option is to upload a photo of the home’s front exterior, requesting a caption for it. You might get something like: “Entertain in style in this stunning home featuring a sparkling new kitchen and four spacious bedrooms. #FamilyHome #EntertainersDream #FencedBackyard.” Not bad—you could keep this caption if you like or tweak it to best serve your needs.
In addition to AI, there are numerous tools you can use to make creating and posting content a breeze. Consider, for instance, a social media management platform like Buffer or Hootsuite that serves as a central hub from which you can schedule and publish posts across multiple accounts at once. This way, you can prepare content weeks or even months at a time for maximum efficiency. (Just make sure to revisit your schedule periodically to add or adjust any timely content.) These platforms also offer AI helpers that can write posts and hashtags, monitor the engagement of your posts on each of your accounts, and alert you when you get new followers or comments. With such simple and automated features, you can fine-tune and modify your strategy in the span of minutes.
One of the more difficult aspects of content creation is constantly having to come up with fresh ideas. To work in a break for yourself and your team now and then, develop evergreen content, or social media posts and reels that can be used any time of the year and don’t expire. These can be slipped in among your timelier content whenever you need to fill your posting schedule.
For example, you can create TikTok videos highlighting your most popular products or blogs outlining how-to tips relevant to your field. If you’re a financial professional, focus on helpful pointers for retirement planning; if you’re a landscaper, offer your best advice for keeping a lawn green. You could then use this evergreen content repeatedly across multiple platforms as needed, being sure to allow a significant amount of time to elapse before reposting it.
Besides creating new content, you can also look over your old content to determine what can be recycled into new blogs or social media posts or videos. Naturally, it’s best to reuse content that previously had high engagement; review your Google Analytics or Meta Business Suite’s Instagram and Facebook insights to identify top content to repurpose.
Once you have your starting point, assess how best to convert the content to new formats. This is another great way to use AI. Take the platform Lumen5—in mere minutes, you could create an engaging video from a popular blog post about how to lower insurance premiums. Simply paste the URL for your post into the prompt box to receive a professional-looking video complete with royalty-free images and music. Then all you have to do is post it to the social media platform of your choice, whether it’s LinkedIn, Facebook, or YouTube.
If you find you’re still struggling to balance your social media management with your other duties, contracting a marketing company to create and post engaging content for you can be a big time-saver. This option can free you from the hassle of having to continually research trends and generate ideas, potentially giving you the flexibility to devote your resources to other business areas. You might even find outsourcing your social media to be less expensive than hiring your own personnel for these purposes.
Managing social media can sometimes feel overwhelming, but by embracing AI technology and scheduling tools and seeking assistance when needed, you can establish a robust online presence that complements, not consumes, your business.
TAKE ACTION:
Pick an AI tool of your choice, and experiment with ways you can use it for social media to free up your valuable time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Luke Acree is an authority on leadership, a lead-generation specialist, and a referral expert who has helped more than 100,000 entrepreneurs and small businesses grow their companies. He hosts Stay Paid, a sales and marketing podcast, and has been featured in Entrepreneur, Forbes, and Foundr.com.
