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Ted and George Wolf were featured in the April 2020 Lititz Record talking about The School of Biz and their behavioral-awareness smart app, Growth Factors. 

To read the full article in the Lititz Record, please visit this site and select 4/14/22 in the date dropdown.

Article TEXT:

Lititz-based family business develops behavioral-awareness smart app designed for entrepreneurs

A father-and-son team from Lititz has launched a new behavioral-awareness app designed for entrepreneurs.

Ted Wolf and his son George Wolf developed the new Growthdrivers App through The School of Biz, an online business school co-founded by Ted 68, and George, 28. The School of Biz is an online startup offering informal business classes.

“We worked out of two rooms in our home for the past two years during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Ted Wolf. “Now we are growing the concept and looking to offer entrepreneurs access to a new app that integrates logic, emotions, and actions so users...

How do you see your 2022 unfolding?

I imagine most of you are saying that it has to be better than what 2021 has been.

There is no way around it, it's been a challenging year.

But the calendar flipping to a new year doesn't automatically mean the fortunes of your business is going to change.

You have to be the driving force that creates that change and you have the ability to do so but...

There is one dilemma that trips up many business leaders.

Efficiency or Innovation? 

Most business owners are stuck between these two priorities...

Do I focus my energy and time on reducing costs?

or...

Do I focus my energy and time on looking for growth opportunities?

It's a false choice that I find entrepreneurs falling victim to.

To succeed in 2022, you need both efficiency AND innovation!

The difference between efficiency and innovation is RISK.

Do you risk cutting too many costs, which will reduce revenue over time?

We all know cutting too much of the sales effort will reduce revenue...

Remember the movie “Groundhog Day?”

Bill Murry is in Punxsutawney, Pa for the annual “Groundhog  Day” event, and for some reason his life gets stuck on that day.

Every morning he wakes up to find that it’s “Groundhog Day” again - all because he can’t change his beliefs and behaviors.

By simply changing some beliefs and behaviors, he discovers he is free to make each day different.

We all have our “Groundhog Days.”

For many entrepreneurs it’s coming to work and experiencing the same event’s, day-after-day. 

Like when you start a project and without any warning an employee interrupts you.

They ask for your help with an unhappy client and since they don’t know what you want them to do, you take the time to solve the problem.

When you get back to your office, another employee asks for your help in solving some other problem. 

These interruptions, distractions, and the fires that need your...

This might sound sacrilegious, but…

Fire some clients.

Let your competitors waste their time, effort, and resources on them while you go out and find more value producing clients.

Think I’m crazy?

It’s a fast way to reduce costs, increase cash flow, and force you to find better clients.

Everyone preaches the customer and client is king.

But only if they are a good, promising client where you can make a respectable profit.

We all have clients that for some good reason we make concessions to.

We make concessions to keep employees busy, gain more buying power to reduce costs, or keep a marquee named client who makes you stand-out and look good for prospecting.

But do you know when they’ve outlived their usefulness?

It’s easy to ignore asking the question because you need the cash flow and then there’s that emotional attachment which makes you want to avoid conflict.

But you have to remember those past experiences where you’re having a good...

How many people are in control and heavily influence your business?

Bill Gates was quoted as saying at one point when President of Microsoft, that if they lost 20 of the right people, the entire business would be ruined.

That’s scary.

20 people controlling the fate of your business.

You just have to wonder what that says about all the other employees and how many resources are being wasted or underperforming?

A more important question to ask is: “What controls your business?”

Is it people, rules, or purpose?

Many entrepreneurs and leaders are very control oriented, which leads them to hiring people who are weak and won’t threaten their control.

It causes a continuous ‘dumbing-down’ of the business, and that’s a formula for anarchy.

People who lust for control can be a self-serving cancer to your business.

A cancer where only the few get the rewards at the expense of many employees.

When “the chosen few” control the business, the...

Everyone talks about finding your “Why” and purpose, but so few people actually are able to define it, let alone understand how to use it.

First, ‘finding’ your Purpose is work, and through this work, you actually discover and develop your Purpose.

Many entrepreneurs and leaders believe that their purpose is simply making money, but that doesn’t keep you on the razor’s-edge of determination when times get tough.

It also doesn’t make you a better human being who can lead people in a way that’s in everyone’s best interests.

Besides, scaling a business takes even more work if you aren’t grounded in a strong and compelling Purpose beyond money.

Strong and compelling to you, your employees, and your prospects and clients.

But many businesses ‘succeed’ and have no apparent purpose.

So is it really needed?

The Average Answer: No, it’s not needed - but you are limiting your level of success without a...

We all know high-performers who are destined for leadership roles in their careers.

Their future is bright and exciting.

But then something happens…

That spark of urgency in their eye has faded, if not disappearing completely.

The boomerang effect just claimed another victim.

And as a result, everyone in the office becomes busy putting out self-inflicted fires, trying to solve self-created problems, and are so emotionally frazzled that the business suffers needlessly.

In businesses like this, competition doesn’t have to do a thing to win, because business is its own worst enemy.

It is the people in authority that have a lot of self-sabotaging behaviors.

It’s like a boomerang.

Their own bad behaviors and management styles come back to haunt them.

It’s how they create the circumstances they find themselves in.

And they can’t even see it.

Emotional violence is a good example.

I worked with many leaders who were very nice people, until…

Someone...

Ever get in the car and just drive - with no destination in mind?

It can be fun and exciting, giving you a sense of freedom in not knowing where you are.

It’s just you and the open road!

You don’t even need a map to do this because you have all the time in the world.

But after a while, you still have to ‘pay the bills.’

It’s like that in business.

You start the business or a new product line and feel excited, adventurous, and experience a new sense of freedom not knowing all the possibilities.

Until you have to pay the bills.

Then you need a map, and your financial reports become that map.

Like any good GPS, all you have to do is tell the financial statements where you want to go, and they’ll tell you where you are today and what you need to do to get to your destination.

As you begin learning to read the financial map, a whole new world of awareness opens up to you.

But why do so many entrepreneurs still experience so much stress, anxiety, and...

If you’re like most entrepreneurs, you love doing parts of your job, but really don’t like other parts.

The parts you love, you do well, and it's easy to make time for.

The other parts you don’t like, well, you do because you ‘have’ to, but you can’t wait until you're done doing them.

Guess what - the people around you feel the same way; if you’re not happy I guarantee they aren’t happy.

Now picture this:

The business is about to miss its quarterly goals.

You think it’s because you aren’t disciplined in how you spend your time.

So you make the extraordinary effort of time-blocking to get more work done.

This time-blocking works for a few days, but eventually old habits come back, and holding to the new schedule just doesn’t work.

So you beat yourself up and rededicate to time-blocking again.

It feels like you’re living the life on a hamster wheel!

How you spend your time is the one topic that drives...

Ever play “telephone” when you were young? The game where one kid whispers something into her friend’s ear and he whispers it to the next kid and then on down the line until the last kid says what they heard out loud.

We all know the outcome: most of what is said by the last person sounds nothing like what was said by the first person.

Usually, what ends up being said by the last person is funny. But today, in business, we call it the rumor mill. And funny is the last word you’d use to describe it. 

In fact, it’s one of the biggest competitors an entrepreneur will ever face. Often, they ignore it but at their own expense or peril.

Don’t believe you have a rumor mill to contend with?

Then why were you surprised to learn that many of your employees think you’re going out of business — only to find out it was because one person told another that you’d lost money over the last two months due to COVID-19 when in fact you...