Stephen Scoggins, founder of The Journey Principles Institute is an entrepreneur that has paved a path for long term success in his countless endeavors within the business world. Encountering unique adversities from a young age led him to muster the courage to build a diligent work ethic that would guide him in all areas of his life. Stephen is a best-selling author, award-winning entrepreneur of multiple businesses with multi-8-figure revenues, a motivational speaker, and the creator of the proprietary Life-Mastery Framework affectionately named, “Transform U.”
He is a well-respected and nationally recognized business and life-mastery leader, Stephen continues to challenge and uplift people to break down the obstacles setting them back to reach their full potential. Stephen has taken over three decades of setbacks, failures, and losses and transparently incorporates those experiences to provide simple-yet-effective step-by-step lessons to help others reclaim their hope and proceed with their dreams.
The strategies he uses may seem simple on the surface, but are incredibly powerful. This is largely because they are so powerful. Here is what he has learned after over 20 years in business and coming from the most humblest of beginnings. It is a short acronym to help remember to respond rather than react to any person, challenge, or situation. Stephen discovered there are 4 phases to transform any situation into something helpful and He calls it (G.R.O.W). “It is so effective that I have even gone through the trouble of trademarking it .”
Step 1
GAIN PERSPECTIVE — More often than not, we react to a problem rather than responding to one. And the scarier it is, the quicker we seem to react to it. Unfortunately, this costs us dearly because we are not able to take a step back and see how that reaction may cause a chain reaction of unfortunate events. For example, when COVID began to surface as a mainstream topic, many people went into fear. As a result, they made knee-jerk reactions with their families, careers, and personal financial picture. I quickly gathered my team to begin to brainstorm how we could grow our business rather than shrink it. I wanted to be able to view the market, the customers, and team from as many viewpoints as I could. I wanted ideas on the streamlining process, innovative ideas, and ways to reward the team as we were doing it. Our approach lead us toward growing our business rather than shrinking our business. I was able to pick up top notch talent that we did not have previously because of this growth.
“The more perspective you have, the more power you have at any point and time.”
Step 2
REMOVE ROADBLOCKS — As a life and business strategist for the last several years, I’ve been able to help thousands of people who were once like I was by helping them identify the roadblocks standing in their way. We all bring our best of ourselves and the worst of ourselves to our businesses daily. I discovered that my first company’s — Custom Home Exteriors — success was not because we were better at doing business than anyone else; it was because we were different from everyone else. Here is what I mean. C.H.E was not a construction company, it was a personal development company masquerading as a construction company. As a result, we were able to objectively view personal roadblocks in ourselves, in our team members, and, as you can imagine, it translated into roadblocks in the marketplace.
“I have taught my team that road blocks are not to be feared, but be leveraged.”
No matter the situation, there is always a way forward. Having faith in that, we will leverage a roadblock to learn from. This takes the fear out of them in the first place. Using the same COVID example as before, one of the greatest roadblocks was fear, and operating in and out of fear will always lead you towards a bad place. So, we pulled the team together and communicated that there was no need to fear. We communicated that we had a good 90 days of operating capital for them even if we had no more revenue. We also communicated to them our trip wires, and the actions we will take should revenues slow down to such a point where the decisions we would have to make would become increasingly more difficult. Because we were honest we removed the roadblock of fear, which allowed the team to work at an optimal level.”
Step 3
ORGANIZE A PLAN — Here is where I see a lot of people and business owners get it wrong, and unfortunately increase their stress. They jump into a “fix it” mind set rather than taking the time needed to use step 1 and 2 to their advantage. You can not organize a plan until after you have taken the time needed to gain perspective and look for potential roadblocks. However, once you do, you are setting yourself up for the best possible outcome. Your plan should clearly lay out the defined outcome you want. Work from the end backwards, regularly look for more perspective, and any roadblocks that could get in your way. It should include the opportunities, threats, discussion of fears, team unity, etc. Once you laid out the steps, you should then move to the next step.
Step 4
WORK THE PLAN — One of the biggest mistakes I used to make is staying stuck in “analysis paralysis,” and again it all comes back to fear. For instance, the fear that it won’t work. But, what I have learned is that if I do the first three steps to the best of my ability, then I can have confidence in taking a step. At that point, you simply have to get to work. Sure, you may not get every result you want, but you will have the tools needed to pivot and adjust.
If you want to take any situation and make it work for you instead of against you, then you have to learn to respond rather than react. And the only way I have been able to do that consistently is to use the 4 phases of transformation — G.R.O.W.