Jan 29: Getting Back on Track

On January 29, 2019, Kaise and Shennice welcomed Tom Ledbetter into the studio. Here are the show notes:

Introductions:

Dr. Kasie Whitener, Clemson Road Consulting & WBC of SC

Shennice Cleckley, Smart Cookie Coaching & WBC of SC

Tom Ledbetter, Center for Entrepreneurship and Educational Support at Midlands Technical College

Theme for the day:

Course Correction

Agenda review:

• Learn about Tom and the Center for Entrepreneurship and Educational Support at MTC
• Talk about Course Correction
• Tom’s Entrepreneur Check-Up (as presented at the Resource Provider Fair in the fall)

Segment 1:

Let’s start with the Center for Entrepreneurship and Educational Support. What is its function? Who are its clients/students? What are the strategic aims for that program in 2019?

Here’s a link to the website.

Tom, give us your background. Why entrepreneurship?

We met at 1MC and you’re good friends to Greg Hilton, of SOCO and 1MC and his wife, Katherine Swartz Hilton who Co-Founded the WBC of SC with me. It’s like you’ve found your tribe here with the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

What is it about entrepreneurship that gets you out of bed in the morning?

Segment 2

This week our WBC of SC coffee meet up (at The Local Buzzin Shandon on Friday at 8:30 a.m.) will be about course correction. We’re a month in to New Year’s Resolutions and there are a lot of bad habits people said on January 4th that they didn’t want to repeat in 2019.

Some of the things people shared were: erratic social media engagement, letting distractions lead their day instead of mission-focus, and making time to work on their business, not just in it.

Distractions are dangerous. They can derail your productivity. This articleon entrepreneur.com explains how allowing distractions can cost an entrepreneur precious time. It takes 23 minutes to achieve full focus on a project. So if you’re distracted more frequently than that, you might not ever fully engage.

Neil Patel shares these 5 Big Distractions that Sabotage Your Entrepreneurial Success:

1. Listening to too many people – can be a catalyst for self-doubt although getting sound advice from seasoned mentors is a good thing.
2. Mistaking busyness for productivity – we have an aversion to idleness, but is all that “working” actually working?
3. Procrastinating big, important tasks – we all put off the stuff that’s too hard or challenging, but those critical tasks have to get done
4. Politics overriding sound decision-making – when the endeavor finds itself at risk because decisions are leaning toward one person’s ego or need for control over the common good; keep everyone focused on the good of the enterprise
5. Saying “yes” to everything – you only have a finite amount of time and energy, spend it wisely, not on every request that’s made of you.

Then we have this list of ways to stay focused:

• Put yourself in distraction-free mode
• Set three main objectives every day
• Give yourself a shorter time frame to complete things
• Monitor your mind wandering
• Train your brain (the Pomodoro Method – set a timer and force intent focus for that time period)
• Take on more challenging work
• Break the cycle of stress and distraction

And this list adds:

• Have a daily routine
• Rank your tasks
• Stop multitasking
• Take time to regenerate

Segment 3

Last fall, during our Service Provider Fair — the first event of its kind in Columbia, happened during Global Entrepreneurship Week, and will be repeated during Small Business Week — Tom presented a workshop on The Entrepreneur Check Up.

Tell us more about that tool and how it works and why you think businesses need it.

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Start Something, Columbia! thanks the City of Columbia’s Office of Business Opportunities for its support.