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Anchor Advisors offers small business consulting in the Chicago area. Our advisors help businesses to grow with confidence and make better decisions.

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Why Isn’t My Business Growing? Is Fear Holding You Back from Scaling?

By Brad Farris Leave a Comment

Why isn’t my business growing? If you are asking this question, we have the answer to why businesses stop growing. But you may be surprised what it is. Fear.

Are you overthinking your way to growth? You’ve got to the point where you need to scale your business to grow your business. But something is holding you back.  When you first started your agency, you had nothing to lose and everything to gain. That dynamic has changed. You want to grow your business, but you have much to lose. Everything you have built your firm to be. Your income, your status, and your reputation. The thing is unless you take action to scale your agency, then you will never break free of the position you are in. Your business will rely on you. What if you are ill? What if you want to get away for a few months? How do you reap the rewards of the success you … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Process

Demystifying Scale: What It Means to Scale a Business, and How to Achieve It

By Brad Farris Leave a Comment

What is scaling in business? For many owners of creative agencies, scale in business is a mystery. What does it mean, and how can you use it to deliver sustainable business growth?

How to Scale Your Creative Agency for Sustainable Growth So, you want to scale your creative agency. Companies scale to add revenue to their business operations, right? I mean, you’ve heard others talking about business growth and how scaling is the path to successful customer acquisition and increasing revenues and profit. The thing is, it’s still a mystery to you. What does scale mean in business, and what do you need to do in order to scale? In this article, I introduce you to scale, and answer three questions that our clients commonly ask when we discuss scaling a small business: What is scale in business? What does scaling a business mean? What are my … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Process

How to Say No to a Customer: Tips to Stay in the Helicopter

By Brad Farris Leave a Comment

It’s hard knowing how to say no to a customer without saying no. This is why we have written this guide to say no effectively.

Saying No When You Need to Can Enhance Your Reputation and Revenues Saying no to a customer is not always easy, but it is necessary. When you hear a client’s requests, you need to take a step back and think about the consequences of saying yes. Start by asking yourself, how will this impact our firm?  If you always accommodate every client request, you will run out of time and resources. You’ll fall out of the helicopter.  You need to take a step back. You must learn how to say no to a customer without damaging the relationship.  The typical day of an ‘always yes’ leader As an ‘always yes’ leader, you aren’t controlling your firm. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: People

Confidence Is Important in Leadership: How to Be a Confident Leader

By Brad Farris Leave a Comment

Let’s discuss self-confidence in business and why leaders need to be confident. What are the signs of a lack of confidence, and how can you build your confidence as a leader?

What Is Self-Confidence in Business? Confidence is the foundation of success. Confidence makes you feel like you can do anything, be anyone, and achieve anything. However, so often, we are our own worst enemies. We put ourselves down and believe that we aren’t good enough for any position we want or need to fill. In this article, I answer the question, “Why do leaders need to be self-confident in business?” I also outline some strategies for building self-confidence in business (and in your life). Why is confidence important in leadership? Leaders must possess skills such as problem-solving, decisiveness, and communication. You need to be a good coach and mentor, hold … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Purpose

The Power of Saying No and the Ability to Walk Away as a Business Leader

By Brad Farris Leave a Comment

The power of saying no in business and as a leader is huge. It helps you to focus on what is important as a leader and for your business. In fact, saying no in business is imperative.

When You Say No to Something, You Say Yes to More As the leader of a creative agency, you are constantly bombarded with opportunities from often unexpected sources. So, you take on projects and tasks, fearful of losing out on revenue. It can be difficult to know when to say no and walk away. However, there are times when saying no is a wise decision. The power of no allows you to focus on what is most important to improve the overall health of your business. The benefits of saying no are numerous: it reduces stress, increases productivity, increases happiness, improves innovation & creativity, reduces the possibility of business owner burnout… need I go on? Benefits of saying no in … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Process

Does Your Long To-Do List Make You Feel Like a Failure? It’s Time to Start Delegating

By Brad Farris Leave a Comment

A long to-do list will dent your confidence, and damage your ability to lead your business effectively. Thus, delegating tasks is a key skill for agency business owners to learn.

Simple Steps to Effective Delegation Dealing with too many tasks? Too much stress? A long to-do list is a common problem for owners of creative agencies.  Your cluttered desk filled with unfinished work, inbox with thousands of unread emails, and task manager full of overdue items is taking up too much mental space! It’s distracting. Then you start to procrastinate, lose focus, your productivity drops, stress increases. You’re spiraling into business owner burnout. It's time to take back control of your work! The one thing that you can do to ensure that you have the time and energy to complete your tasks is to get on top of your to-do list. How to do this is no secret, … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Performance Measure

What Does a Successful Business Need? Long-Term Rules for Success

By Brad Farris Leave a Comment

The difference between a successful business and one that’s struggling to survive is leadership. What rules for success should you be following?

Sustaining Growth for the Long-Term. When you first started your creative agency, it was new and exciting. You built it up, created the systems that worked for you, and each new client added to your profits. Now, as your business is growing, you’ve found yourself asking how to create long-term success. How does a growing business maintain momentum? Is itinancial acumen? Great systems? Top-knotch People? State-of-the-art business premises? 12 Leadership rules for a successful business You want to know how to lead and sustain a successful business? I’ve put these rules together to help you. Focus on business strategy and getting the most out of your team In order to … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Performance Measure

Profitable Growth: How to Maintain Profitability During Periods of Growth

By Brad Farris Leave a Comment

As your agency expands, it can be hard to maintain profitable growth. You’ll travel the U-curve. Come out the other end, and your growth is limited only by your imagination.

An Introduction to the U-Curve Remember when you first started your creative agency, and you got your first client? Best feeling in the world. It was proof that your business could be successful and profitable. That’s a high that is hard to recreate. Maybe it’s why so many first-time business owners go on to become serial entrepreneurs. As you add more clients early on, profitable growth is easy to achieve. But as your business grows further, there is danger ahead. You may be there already, or coming to a tipping point. In this article, I’m going to describe the U-curve. It’s vital that you understand this principle. If you don’t, you could make a big mistake … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Process

Working ON the Business, Not IN the Business: What It Takes to Be a Leader

By Brad Farris Leave a Comment

The only way for a creative agency to grow its sales is for the business owner to work on the business, not in the business. That’s why a business dashboard is key.

Moving from an Individual Contributor to a Leader in Your Own Business You’ve taken the big first step to exponential growth. You’ve decided to get out of your own way. You’re going to stop struggling to do everything yourself or be involved with everything yourself. But you haven’t quite got there yet.  Though you have reduced your workload, you haven’t yet got to the magical pivot point where you work on the business, not in the business. You’re still involved in the day-to-day operations.  Why is this? How do you work on business, not in it? Changing to Working on Your Business Not in Your Business Though you are doing less yourself, you … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Process

Growth Strategies for Creative Service Firms – How to Scale Your Creative Agency

By Brad Farris Leave a Comment

Your creative agency is stuck. Sales aren’t growing. It’s tough in an unpredictable world. Which is why you need to employ these growth strategies for professional services firms.

Four Keys for Growth Creative agencies require the management of sometimes unpredictable people and services. But this doesn’t mean you have to suffer unpredictable sales growth. Despite the uncertainty and variability that you have accepted as part of your business, there are growth strategies for creative service firms like yours that will produce a steady upward trajectory for revenues and success. I’ve condensed these into the following four strategies for growing professional firms: Know what business you are in and what drives your success. Deliver consistent high-quality services that provide terrific value for your clients.  Have a consistent and … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Process

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