Business Education

Feel Overly Distracted? You’re Not Alone and Here’s Why

You’re busy. No, you’re super busy. People might even say super-duper busy. As usual, there’s more to do than hours in the day. And, your schedule isn’t slowing down. You’ve got to do X before Y and then onto Z. But, you can’t seem to shake the notion you’re not actually get anything done. It’s not due to a lack of effort. However, it can easily be explained simply by distractions.

Top Focus Problems People Suffer From

Now, there are several things you can quit doing to be more successful. But, even the most self-disciplined individual isn’t immune from distractions. After all, distractions are everywhere you turn. No matter where you are or what you’re doing. And, it’s not just technology. Sure, smartphones, social media, and more are all culprits. What’s more, you’re not alone if you feel distracted. In fact, the average person’s mind wanders when doing a task between 15 and 20 percent of the time. That statistic, according to Canadian researcher Jonathan Schooler.

We created the labor-saving devices that catalyzed the unplanned explosion within which we live today. But as enlightened managers everywhere are learning, we can learn to manage what we created. When we learn how to take back controls that we’ve given away, we can get better at managing our attention and not surrendering it to every distraction. —Fast Company

Therefore, if a wandering mind is so prominent, what can be done about it? That’s a good question. And, the answer lies in identifying precisely the cause. You know you’re not a scobberlotcher, an idle person who just sits at a desk, twiddling your thumbs. But, you’re certainly not immune to distractions. Distractions break down focus. If you want to improve your productivity, you’ve got to key in on the cause. Here are the top focus problems people suffer from:

Lack of sleep. We all know what it’s like to work through a drowsy day. It’s uncomfortable at the very least. So, don’t let sleep deprivation be an obstacle. Get into a routine that helps you to get a good night sleep. Unplug from technology about an hour before you go to bed. And, be sure to go to bed at a reasonable hour.
No priorities. Okay, you have an end goal but along the way, there are many, many different tasks. Without prioritizing them, you’re creating a stressful, chaotic situation. And, it will typically result in a lack of focus precisely because there’s little to no prioritization. Give everything a priority and reap the rewards.
Stress. Speaking of stress, when you try to multitask, you’re inviting undue stress. Think about it this way, if you’re trying to do more than one thing at a time, would that cause you to feel more stress? Sure it would. So, put your focus on one thing at a time.
Lifestyle. Stress is just one factor; lifestyle is another legitimate cause. You can lose focus because you’re not eating a healthy diet. A balanced diet, regular exercise, and more all make focus easier. Plus, you’ll feel better when you have a healthy lifestyle.

How do you maintain your focus? What methods do you use to keep on task? Have you found different ways to deal with distractions? Please share your thoughts and experiences by commenting!

Interested in learning more about business? Then just visit Waters Business Consulting Group.

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5 Effective Ways to Increase Team Motivation

March 15, 2018 No Comments

Team motivation. It’s an ongoing challenge in some organizations. Team motivation is actually more about the role of management than employees themselves. In fact, a study by Harvard found that the majority of companies demotivate their employees. Now, that sounds strange at first but it’s completely sensible. So, let’s take a look at both team motivation and employee demotivation. Why Employees Lose their Motivation According to the Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, a full 85 percent of employees’ morale decreases after just six months on the job. (That survey included a whopping 1.2 million team members from 52 Fortune 1000 companies.) Perhaps most surprisingly, that same study reveals it’s actually management which is squarely to blame for the loss of motivation. There are a number of benefits to having highly motivated employees in your ranks but for business owners, all roads eventually lead to the bottom line. High levels of employee motivation are intrinsically linked to high levels of employee engagement, which is something that organizations are paying much more attention to these days, and with good reason. —Business.com That’s an incredible fact. And, it means you’re probably (albeit unwittingly) inflicting more damage than you are creating a productive workplace. It’s all about the dynamic between employees and managers, when it comes down to it. 5 Effective Ways to Increase Team Motivation So, how do you motivate your employees? What do you do to keep them upbeat and ready to tackle the next challenge? It’s really not that difficult. Team motivation just requires a bit of self-awareness and a few changes in your day-to-day work life. Here are five effective ways to increase team motivation: Forgo useless meetings. Did you know the average company wastes 3.8 hours every week holding truly unproductive meetings? That’s a significant amount of time that could be otherwise spent much more wisely. So, only invite the necessary people and keep the meeting on-track. Don’t micromanage. Micromanagement is one of the biggest demotivators in the workplace. One survey even reveals 38 percent of employees would actually prefer performing unpleasant activities than deal with a micromanaging boss. Provide them with a pleasant environment. There are a number of ways to create a more pleasant work environment. For instance, allowing pets at work. Or, giving employees more flexibility with their work hours. Simply put, the more pleasant the environment, the more happy your employees and that’s good news for everyone. Quickly forgive mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. It’s just part of life. And, it doesn’t help to ruminate over an error. It’s also unhelpful to go so far as to punish an employee for a mistake. Forgive mistakes quickly and move on with a healthy dose of encouragement. Pay employees what they’re worth. Here’s a disturbing statistic — 26 percent of productive employees report they’d leave their companies for just a 5 percent pay increase. The lesson, of course, is to pay your employees what they are worth. How do you motivate your employees? What methods make your team members more effective? Please share your thoughts and experiences by commenting! Interested in learning more about business? Then just visit Waters Business Consulting Group.

From Surviving to Dominating

July 30, 2026 No Comments

How Waters Business Consulting Group has helped transform many commercial landscape companies into more profitable, scalable businesses Every commercial landscape company eventually hits a moment that defines what happens next. For some, it’s growth outrunning the systems meant to support it. Revenue climbs, but profit doesn’t follow. Labor costs creep up. Cash gets tighter. The owner is working more hours and feeling less in control of the business every month. What used to feel like success starts to feel like an endless string of problems to solve from employees, field operations, customers to cash flow. For others, the challenge shows up faster and with more urgency. Margins have already eroded. Operations are inconsistent from crew to crew. Leadership is stretched too thin. Customers expect more, and the company doesn’t have the structure or financial visibility to respond. In both cases, most owners reach for the same fix: more sales. But more sales don’t automatically fix thin margins; the exacerbate them! With fuzzy accountability, inefficient processes, or an owner who’s become the bottleneck. Usually, what the company actually needs isn’t more revenue. It’s a better business. Waters Business Consulting Group has worked with commercial landscape maintenance and construction companies across the country, including Pleasant Places, Blue Star Landscaping, Genesis Landscape Solutions, Sun Country, and Creative Environments, to find what’s really limiting their performance and build practical paths toward stronger profitability and cash flow, tighter operations, real leadership capacity, and long-term value. Our goal was never just to help these companies survive. It’s to help them build what it takes to lead and increase the the value of their business asset. Struggling doesn’t always look small Some of the most challenged companies we’ve worked with had real revenue, loyal customers, experienced crews, and a strong reputation in their market. From the outside, everything looked fine. Underneath, the same familiar warning signs kept showing up: revenue growing while profit stayed flat, the owner still involved in nearly every major decision, labor costs nobody could quite explain, crews performing inconsistently from job to job, estimates that didn’t reflect what jobs actually cost, financial reports arriving too late to act on, managers held accountable for results they had no real authority over, cash flow swinging unpredictably, and roles and processes that were never clearly defined in the first place. These problems rarely show up alone. A bad estimate turns into a margin problem and project losses. A margin problem turns into a cash-flow problem. Weak reporting means leadership doesn’t catch it until the financial damage is already real. And without a capable leadership team in place, the owner becomes the answer to every question and the fix for every problem. Over time, the business ends up running on effort instead of systems. Our approach starts by understanding how these challenges connect to each other, then figuring out which changes are actually likely to move the needle in a lasting way … in the same way we moved the needle for Pleasant Places Landscape, Blue Star Landscaping, Genesis Landscape Solutions, Sun Country, and Creative Environments. Clarity comes before transformation You can’t fix a business you can’t see clearly. That’s why we look past the top-line revenue number and into the operational, financial, and organizational factors actually driving performance: profitability by customer, contract, or service line; labor efficiency and crew productivity; how accurate the estimating really is; direct costs and overhead; pricing strategy; cash flow and forecasting; org structure; leadership capacity; roles and accountability; the sales pipeline; operational processes; and how dependent the business is on the owner. We’re not trying to hand leadership another binder of reports. We’re trying to find the small handful of constraints actually driving performance, the levers, so leaders can stop treating symptoms and start fixing what’s underneath them. Pleasant Places: turning rapid growth into stronger profit Pleasant Places was already a real success story by the time the company partnered with us. Founded in 1984, this commercial landscaping company had grown fast, taking annual revenue from roughly $10 million to nearly $18 million in just two years. But that pace of growth had created its own problems. Margins were under pressure, processes and procedures needed real work, accountability was inconsistent from department to department, and the organization simply didn’t have the infrastructure to operate efficiently at its new size. We worked with the Pleasant Places leadership team to strengthen the financial, operational, and organizational foundation underneath all that growth. That meant digging into historical financial trends and building a model to evaluate cost of goods sold, margins, and breakeven performance; putting systems in place to track labor hours and materials against estimates; refining pricing to hit target gross margins; implementing real purchasing controls; identifying gaps in leadership and org structure; clarifying roles, responsibilities, and who reported to whom; supporting a management transition from father to son; establishing real performance metrics; and researching and implementing an ERP system to give the company far better operational visibility. The results speak for themselves. Pleasant Places gained real visibility into projected revenue, gross margins, profitability, and cash flow. Pricing discipline, tighter labor and material cost controls, and real leadership accountability helped push gross margins up from low 20’s to an average of 42%. Revenue grew past $35 million, and the company came out the other side with a stronger leadership structure, clearer expectations, and a healthier culture. The lesson here is simple: growth gets a lot more sustainable when financial discipline, operational systems, leadership accountability, and org structure grow right alongside revenue instead of trailing behind it. Blue Star Landscaping: building profitable growth, and a successful exit Blue Star Landscaping came to us with a different set of problems. The company needed to improve profitability, tighten up its pricing, get real control over labor and material costs, develop its leadership bench, and build a clear plan for growth. The team had solid industry experience, but they needed a more disciplined way to connect strategic growth to financial forecasting, pricing, cost control, and actual profitability. We worked with Blue Star

Stress Points Entrepreneurs Should Avoid

May 24, 2017 No Comments

Being an entrepreneur means being able to pursue a dream, to fulfill a passion, and to realize your full potential. It’s also a stressful role, even for the most intelligent and resourceful. Though we like to think of stress as just an inconvenient emotion, it can take a substantial toll on your health. It’s linked to heart disease, obesity, depression, headaches, gastrointestinal problems, and more adverse health conditions. It’s also one of the most common conditions in starting a new venture or continuing to build a business. However, it doesn’t have to get the best of you. Stress Points Entrepreneurs should Avoid Stress is actually a biological response to certain conditions and situations. It consists of releasing hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol, which cause the body to physically and emotionally respond to its environment. In an entrepreneurial role, you’ll have a lot invested, which can include your personal savings, time, and effort. What’s more, you’ll be responsible for managing others. That’s certainly conducive to causing stress and you need to be equipped with the right response to make the right decisions. In the business world, there’s a certain cache attached to being able to soak up all that stress. But people can’t keep putting themselves under a lot of pressure for a long time without consequences. Eventually something’s going to give. —Entrepreneur.com When you’re an employee, you deal with stress but it rises to a whole other level when you are running your own business. After all, it is you that’s “calling the shots,” and you are at the helm of the enterprise. Stop to think about the entire situation and it can be practically paralyzing. You’ll definitely have a lot to deal with when you’re running or starting a business and one of the single biggest challenges to overcome is how you deal with stress. Because of this, you should know the most common stress points and how to cope with them effectively: Capital. Money is essential to business, but there will definitely be times when cash flow is anemic. You should learn to use free and low cost resources when money is lean. For instance, you can pay a freelancer that’s just starting out, or, can take-on a little more personally to keep costs down. Promises. As a business owner, you’ll make promises on a regular basis. When an unexpected event takes shape, it can seriously throw-off your working timeline. When possible, you should rearrange your schedule and revisit your priorities to make good on your promises. Commitments. Alongside promises are your commitments. When starting or running a business, it’s often tempting to fully load your schedule to help build your brand. This can take its toll, so, think about what’s most important and only commit to these. Clients. While clients are the lifeblood of your business, early on, you’ll probably take anyone who comes across your radar. Over the course of running your business, it’s helpful to reexamine which clients are worth the effort and which are making your journey an agonizing proposition. Talent retention. Having talented people on your team is key to success but this comes with a cost. Said cost rises as time goes on and you’ll face one or more moving-on sooner or later. Instead of fretting over the loss, look at it as an opportunity to forge a strategic partnership. Though these are all real and can be large problems, one stress point is particularly painful: the unknown. As the saying goes, “you don’t know what you don’t know.” That however, is true with just about everything in life. Instead of letting it worry you, look at it as a new opportunity to embrace. Even if you fail at this or that, it serves as a lesson learned which helps to make you a better leader. Remember, we learn far more from our failures than our successes because it’s easier to deconstruct. Want to find out about what a business coach can do for you? [shareaholic app=”follow_buttons” id=”26833294″]

Feel Overly Distracted? You’re Not Alone and Here’s Why

Top Focus Problems People Suffer From

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