Entrepreneur

I want to talk to you about ChatGPT and ESG. I think ChatGPT is a phenomenal tool and will change everything we do in business today. I want to highlight a concern as I asked ChatGPT about ESG. I gave it two questions that were identical other than one word. One sentence was: argue against companies adopting ESG. And the other was: to argue for companies adopting ESG.

Here is the response to the first question, argue against companies adopting ESG.
" As an AI language model, It is important to present our arguments on both sides of an issue. Even if I personally believe that adopting ESG (environmental, social and governance) is beneficial for companies and society as a whole. So here are some potential arguments against companies adopting ESG. " The preceding was verbatim from ChatGPT.

ChatGPT provided a nice list of arguments against adopting ESG. The first was increased costs, one of the concerns of CFOs today. Does it cost too much to follow an ESG agenda? Second, ESG policies may have a limited impact on the environment or society. The third concern was that there might be a competitive disadvantage because the competitors may not adopt ESG and incur costs or compliance issues. The fourth item was a lack of standardization. Across the globe, people are interpreting ESG in very different ways. As a result, there isn't one standard report being used, and comparisons are difficult. And finally, the risk of shareholder backlash. We've seen in our country recently where organizations promote values they believe are necessary. Yet, the consumers are not interested and say I will take my business elsewhere.

Next, I asked ChatGPT to argue for companies adopting ESG. And here's how ChatGPT responded- "As an AI language model, I believe that companies should adopt ESG (environmental, social and governance) policies because it benefits both the company and society." Here are some arguments in favor of companies adopting ESG:

1. A company can improve its reputation. So, companies that follow ESG might be viewed as more responsible and ethical.
2. Companies can reduce risk. Suppose companies employ more tools and tactics to monitor the items that impact the environment, society and governance. In that case, there's a good chance that they will eliminate risks that could hurt the company.
3. Companies can increase innovation and creativity with ESG policies.
4. Attract and retain talent - younger people today are looking for companies not focused on profitability. They're looking for companies with a vision that impact areas that influence the environment, social and governance.
5. Long-term financial performance. ChatGPT states that studies have shown that companies that prioritize ESG. Tend to outperform their peers long-term, although that position has been debated. This is also why some CFOs say, "Unless we're making money off this, we really shouldn't be doing it."

Both positions for and against are pretty well presented from ChatGPT. However, the concern that I have is with the bias of ChatGPT. I asked two separate questions; argue for and argue against ESG. Keep in mind at the outset, ChatGPT wrote that it was essential to present arguments on both sides of an issue, even if I believe that adopting it benefits companies and society. However, when I asked ChatGPT to argue for companies adopting ESG, it never mentioned that there were both sides to the argument. It just wrote I believe that a company should adopt ESG policies because it is beneficial. ChatGPT didn't mention anything about having two sides to the argument.

What is the lesson?

As we use ChatGPT, remember to question the information for potential bias. ChatGPT is revolutionizing the way we are and will be conducting business. The expansion of AI tools will be tremendous in the following months. Learn and adopt with caution.


Connect with me!

I'm Jim Lindell of Thorsten Consulting. If your organization or association needs a speaker for a keynote or breakout session on practical business topics, please call me.
In addition, if you or your team needs executive coaching or leadership development, I can help your staff reach a higher level. Please give me a call. Thank you for your time.

Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimlindell/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thorlessons

Leading a successful business planning retreat can help an organization set a clear direction, establish priorities, and develop a plan to achieve its goals. Here are some steps to follow when planning and conducting a successful business planning retreat:

1. Set clear goals and objectives: Define the purpose of the retreat and what you hope to achieve. Determine the key topics to discuss and ensure they align with your overall business strategy.
2. Select the right venue: Choose a meeting venue conducive to productive and creative thinking. Ensure the space is comfortable, well-lit, and has all the amenities necessary for a successful retreat.
3. Invite the right people: Invite the key stakeholders and decision-makers who can provide valuable insights and help move the organization forward. Ensure you have a mix of perspectives, including internal and external stakeholders.
4. Develop an agenda: Develop a clear and comprehensive agenda for the retreat, including time for breaks and social activities. Make sure the agenda aligns with your goals and objectives.
5. Assign roles and responsibilities: Assign roles and responsibilities to ensure the retreat runs smoothly. Designate a facilitator who can guide the discussions and keep the group on track.
6. Provide materials and resources: Provide participants with all the necessary materials and resources, such as agendas, handouts, and writing materials. Also, ensure you can access technology and audio-visual equipment if needed.
7. Set ground rules: Establish ground rules for the retreat, such as respecting everyone's opinions, avoiding interruptions, and staying focused on the agenda.
8. Encourage participation and collaboration: Encourage participation and collaboration among all participants to foster a sense of teamwork and to generate new ideas.
9. Develop an action plan: Develop a clear action plan with specific goals and timelines to implement the decisions made during the retreat. Make sure to assign responsibilities for each action item.
10. Follow up: Follow up after the retreat to ensure that action items are being implemented and progress is made towards achieving the goals and objectives established during the retreat.

Assigning pre-planning homework for attendees of a business planning retreat can help ensure that everyone comes prepared and ready to participate fully in the retreat. Here are some types of pre-planning homework that can be assigned:

1. Research: Ask attendees to research critical topics related to the retreat's goals and objectives. The analysis can include market trends, industry insights, and best practices from other organizations.
2. SWOT analysis: Request that attendees conduct a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis of the organization or a particular aspect of the business. A SWOT analysis can identify areas that need improvement and inform discussions during the retreat.
3. Pre-retreat survey: Send out a pre-retreat survey to gather feedback and input from attendees on the topics to be discussed during the retreat. A survey can help identify key priorities and ensure everyone's perspectives are heard.
4. Pre-readings: Assign pre-readings related to the retreat's topics and goals, including articles, case studies, or other relevant literature, to help attendees come prepared with a baseline understanding of the issues.
5. Goal-setting: Ask attendees to contemplate personal or team goals for the retreat. This effort can help align expectations and ensure everyone is focused on the same outcomes.
6. Reflection: Ask attendees to reflect on past successes and challenges related to the retreat's topics that can help identify areas for improvement and create worthy discussions during the retreat.

By assigning pre-planning homework, you can help ensure that attendees come to the retreat well-prepared and ready to engage in productive discussions and planning sessions.

An outside facilitator can be helpful when conducting business planning for several reasons:

1. Objectivity: An outside facilitator can bring an objective perspective to the planning process. They are not influenced by internal politics or biases, which can help ensure that discussions and decisions are focused on the organization's best interests.
2. Experience: An experienced facilitator has expertise in leading planning sessions and can help guide the group through the process. They can bring insights from working with other organizations and industries and can help identify best practices.
3. Focus: An outside facilitator can help keep the group focused on the agenda and goals of the planning session. They can ensure that discussions are productive and that the group stays on track.
4. Neutrality: An outside facilitator is neutral and has no stake in the organization's outcomes. They can mediate if conflicts arise and help ensure everyone's voice is heard.
5. Efficiency: An outside facilitator can help streamline the planning process and ensure that time is used effectively. They can help identify areas where the group is stuck and offer tools and techniques to move discussions forward.

Overall, an outside facilitator can bring a fresh perspective, expertise, and a structured approach to the planning process. They can help ensure the organization's planning goals are achieved efficiently and effectively.


Connect with me

My name is Jim Lindell. I'm a CSP-certified speaking professional and an executive coach, and I have been doing both for the last couple of decades. Please contact me if your conference needs an entertaining, practical business speaker for keynotes or breakout sessions. If you'd like to see your career grow, please talk to me about being your executive coach.


Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimlindell/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thorlessons

I want to talk to you about why businesses fail. If you like the information that I'm providing, please subscribe to my channel. I intend to give you more and more business techniques and tips to help you succeed in your career. But today, we'll focus on why businesses fail.

Consider the image in the video; the ultimate problem is business failure at the center, but what leads to this? At the very start, people make bad decisions, or they might even make no decisions, but either way, that action winds up impacting the organization. Then, we typically see poor decisions' impact on your income statement. It impacts your profitability – the wrong decisions will ultimately hurt your profits. As profits start to be reduced, the cash and the working capital erode. I often joke that no company has failed due to running out of cash or working capital, and I tease people because failure is often thought of as "running out of cash" or "lack of working capital" as the chief reasons for going out of business.

Unfortunately, companies go out of business because of the bad decisions that were made or not, impacting profitability. As a result, profitability decreased, resulting in cash erosion and, finally, organization failure. The real reason that business fails is because of incompetent management teams because they are the ones that act or fail to act. Management decisions, actions or lack of action drives the business. There can always be unique situations, such as the Fukushima tsunami or the COVID-19 virus, that force companies to close. However, even these events should have generated some prevention planning as part of the strategic planning process. There should have been an identification of threats that would have included severe events, as mentioned, and resulting discussion of actions to be taken. The question should have been, what happens if our business gets shut down for a while? And accordingly, what steps should we take today to protect the organization?


Connect with me

My name is Jim Lindell. I'm a CSP-certified speaking professional and an executive coach, and I have been doing both for the last couple of decades. Please contact me if your conference needs an entertaining, practical business speaker for keynotes or breakout sessions. If you'd like to see your career grow, please talk to me about being your executive coach.


Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimlindell/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thorlessons

I want to talk to you about Buc-ee’s because I've finally crossed it off my bucket list. I speak all over the country and brag about Kwik Trip, an excellent gas station in the Midwest, and it's fantastic. They have clean restrooms and great convenience products. Attendees at my seminars would ask if I stopped at Buc-ee's yet.

So I tried to find out more about it because I was interested. Recently, I was driving from near Asheville, North Carolina, to Nashville, Tennessee. When I came across my first Buc-ee's, I had to stop and check it out. It was fascinating, with "tens" of gas pumps and a convenience store similar to a small Walmart. After filling up, customers go into Buc-ee's for food, apparel, souvenirs, and restrooms. So as I walked in with great anticipation, there was Buck-ee in costume. I ran up to him and asked if I could get a picture. I put my arm around him, and another Buc-ee's employee took the picture. I was so excited to be there, and I told everyone this was my first visit to a Buc-ee's.

As you walk through the store, you'll notice different areas and the size of the store; there are so many other things—souvenirs, clothing, and lots and lots of food, but what Buc-ee’s is famous for is their restrooms. So in the video, you can see an image of the world-famous restrooms. I didn't take pictures in the restrooms, but they were spotless. You will appreciate Buc-ee's if you've ever stopped at a gas station with dirty restrooms. As I walked out of Buc-ee's, I noticed they had another statue of Buc-ee, the mascot, and took another photo.

It seems like all businesses today are recruiting. Buc-ee's is no different, and they need people too. Outside the building, they had a recruiting sign encouraging people to apply to work for Buc-ee's. They offered significant wages and fringe benefits.


Connect with me

My name is Jim Lindell. I'm a CSP-certified speaking professional and an executive coach, and I have been doing both for the last couple of decades. Please contact me if your conference needs an entertaining, practical business speaker for keynotes or breakout sessions. If you'd like to see your career grow, please talk to me about being your executive coach.


Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimlindell/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thorlessons

How can we make “Better Mistakes Tomorrow? Using a simple 5-step approach, our mistakes become fantastic platforms for growth. Yes they may be painful, but in the long run there is wisdom, knowledge and growth in our mistakes.

If you want to increase your sales, focus on customer pain. Benefits of your products and needs of the customer are important. However buy decisions will first focus on customer pain. The customer may not even recognize the underlying reason that select your product or service. #sales #salestechniques #CPA #CEO #vpsales #coaching #salescoaching

PART 4 - 4 Essential Considerations Before Going into Business! Part 1 – Why be your own boss? Part 2 – Ideas and dreams. Part 3 – Risk. Part 4 – Your significant Other. These items precede your business plan, entity creation, and business structure. This video is the 4th and final consideration #entrepreneur #startup #startupadvice #coaching #boss #CFO #cpa #franchisee #franchise

PART 3 - 4 Essential Considerations Before Going into Business! Part 1 – Why be your own boss? Part 2 – Ideas and dreams. Part 3 – Risk. Part 4 – Your significant Other. These items precede your business plan, entity creation, and business structure. This video is the 2nd consideration #entrepreneur #startup #startupadvice #coaching #boss #CFO #cpa #franchisee #franchise

PART 2 - 4 Essential Considerations Before Going into Business! Part 1 – Why be your own boss? Part 2 – Ideas and dreams. Part 3 – Risk. Part 4 – Your significant Other. These items precede your business plan, entity creation, and business structure. This video is the 2nd consideration #entrepreneur #startup #startupadvice #coaching #boss #CFO #cpa #franchisee

4 Essential Considerations Before Going into Business! Part 1 – Why be your own boss? Part 2 – Ideas and dreams. Part 3 – Risk. Part 4 – Your significant Other. These items precede your business plan, entity creation, and business structure. This video is the 1st consideration #entrepreneur #startup #startupadvice #coaching #boss

Entrepreneurs must be comfortable with risk and uncertainty. Choosing the entrepreneurial path is not for the faint-hearted. In the following image note the number of businesses that started in any given year and the corresponding percentage of businesses that are still in existence as of March 2017. The Bureau of Labor and Statistics is the source of the data.



This data shows that:

Only 80% of the businesses make it beyond their initial year of existence.

Slightly more than 69% of businesses continue through their second year of operation.

Approximately 50% of businesses only make it to the fifth year of operation.

Undertaking the entrepreneurial path is not easy. The odds of failure may be unacceptable for would-be entrepreneurs. It is imperative that prior to starting a business, an entrepreneur must be diligent about understanding: their vision, their product or service offering, the competitive market, potential risks (both SWOT and PESTLE analysis), the business' financial needs including cash flow, ramp up timeframe, business demand for time commitment beyond 40 hour work weeks and most importantly the impact on their personal life.

©2018 Thorsten Consulting Group, Inc.

When making your wedding vows, the idea of having an affair or mistress is not at the forefront of your thoughts. I will also suggest that many entrepreneurs have never considered being unfaithful to their spouse. However, the “love affair” or romance that an entrepreneur can have with their business can result in misplaced priorities.

Consider Charles Dickens’ literary anti-hero Ebenezer Scrooge. In a very sad and painful scene, Belle declares that she has been replaced by another idol.

For again Scrooge saw himself. He was older now; a man in the prime of life. His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of later years; but it had begun to wear the signs of care and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye, which showed the passion that had taken root, and where the shadow of the growing tree would fall.
He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in a mourning-dress: in whose eyes there were tears, which sparkled in the light that shone out of the Ghost of Christmas Past.
“It matters little,” she said, softly. “To you, very little. Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve.”
“What Idol has displaced you?” he rejoined.
“A golden one.”
“This is the even-handed dealing of the world!” he said. “There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!”
“You fear the world too much,” she answered, gently. “All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?”
“What then?” he retorted. “Even if I have grown so much wiser, what then? I am not changed towards you.”
She shook her head.
“Am I?”
“Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both poor and content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry. You are changed. When it was made, you were another man.”
“I was a boy,” he said impatiently.
“Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are,” she returned. “I am. That which promised happiness when we were one in heart, is fraught with misery now that we are two. How often and how keenly I have thought of this, I will not say. It is enough that I have thought of it, and can release you.”
“Have I ever sought release?”
“In words. No. Never.”
“In what, then?”
“In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another atmosphere of life; another Hope as its great end. In everything that made my love of any worth or value in your sight. If this had never been between us,” said the girl, looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him; “tell me, would you seek me out and try to win me now? Ah, no!”
He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition, in spite of himself. But he said with a struggle, “You think not.”
“I would gladly think otherwise if I could,” she answered, “Heaven knows! When I have learned a Truth like this, I know how strong and irresistible it must be. But if you were free to-day, to-morrow, yesterday, can even I believe that you would choose a dowerless girl—you who, in your very confidence with her, weigh everything by Gain: or, choosing her, if for a moment you were false enough to your one guiding principle to do so, do I not know that your repentance and regret would surely follow? I do; and I release you. With a full heart, for the love of him you once were.”
He was about to speak; but with her head turned from him, she resumed.
“You may—the memory of what is past half makes me hope you will—have pain in this. A very, very brief time, and you will dismiss the recollection of it, gladly, as an unprofitable dream, from which it happened well that you awoke. May you be happy in the life you have chosen!”
She left him, and they parted. (1)

Entrepreneurs may forget the main reasons that they pursued being in business for themselves. Stephen Covey’s 2nd habit of highly successful people is, “Begin with the end in mind.” The earthly end of all of us leads to only one place. I have not seen a tombstone that showed the last 5 years of financial statements or cash available in the bank. Nor have eulogies focused on the rapid growth of the business or market share obtained. Tombstones discuss family. Eulogies will include business; however, they too are focused on family. Therefore, “beginning with the end in mind” focuses the entrepreneur on the importance of family and what trade-offs are acceptable and which ones are not.

As in Dickens’ text above, the entrepreneur must be on guard when he/she declares that they are running the business and making sacrifices for the benefit of the family. This is a dangerous and narrow path. At some point, the entrepreneur becomes so self-absorbed that their end goal changes unwittingly.
What should an entrepreneur do?

1. “Begin with the end in mind.” Write out the reasons for being an entrepreneur.
2. Make sure that family is part of your daily thought processes and priorities.
3. Commit to being at significant family events – this also means commit to NOT MISSING family events. By the way, your family should tell you what is important.
4. Do not bully those you love into justifying the reasons that the business becomes your mistress.

I can only wish that all of us “be happy in the life you have chosen!”

About the Author: Jim Lindell, CPA, CSP, CGMA is a best-selling author and speaker. Jim is a TEC Chairman (The Executive Committee), which is the Granddaddy of CEO coaching organizations and with its’ Vistage Affiliation is the World’s largest peer group for CEOs and Senior Executives. Jim has been Coaching CEOs through TEC since 2001. His website is www.thorstenconsulting.com.

(c)2015 Jim Lindell and Thorsten Consulting Group, Inc.
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(1) Excerpt from Dickens - Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol, n.d. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46/46-h/46-h.htm