On most Saturday mornings I get up early. My school aged son watches cartoons for a while and I amble into the kitchen to start my batch of sourdough bread. I usually brew up a cup of tea and then start mixing the bread. It takes about 3 hours of on and off kneading and rising for the bread to be ready to proof. During that time I plan meals and order groceries for the week. (I’m a big Amazon Fresh fan.) It’s a slow, very domestic start to my weekend.  I tell you this to illustrate that, for me, Saturday (and Sunday) are times that I don’t work. Occasionally, (as in 4 - 5 times a year) I’ll pop into the office for a couple of hours on a weekend; but I try to spend every weekend off of my … [Read more...]

One of the things I say to new advisors who join our team is that clients always want us to fix “the team”. Clients tell us, “They [meaning their team members] have terrible attention to detail, they never follow through, they are always missing deadlines…” (the list goes on and on).  Of course they are right, the team does have these problems — and those problems are holding the company back from the growth that the owner is looking for. The question is, why do those problems exist? Is the problem with the team, or is the root of the problem higher up? Which is more likely? Have you built a hiring process that successfully screens for out the applicants who don’t follow through … [Read more...]

“How do you know you are doing a good job?”  Early in an engagement with a new client I usually go around and ask this question to each of the management employees in the company. It’s a simple question, but having employees who are clear about the answer is key to driving employee engagement and accountability. If you don’t know what success looks like for your job it’s hard to figure out how you are going to make it happen and it’s hard for you as the leader to know when it is happening.  When I ask employees at the beginning of an engagement they frequently respond with some mix of: “If there’s less yelling I’m doing a good job...” “No one’s complaining so I guess I’m doing … [Read more...]

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing. ~Abraham Lincoln. It’s likely that every person reading this email has some kind of system for managing their “to-do” list. On my computer I can identify at least 4 pieces of software that I’ve used at one time or another to track my to-dos and help me stay focused on “doing” the right things. Currently, I’m a Todoist fan FWIW. Yet I’ve never seen a gravestone inscribed with anyone’s checked off to-do list. Oh, I know some folks who try to turn their to-do list into some kind of badge of honor — they love to talk about how busy they are, about how many tasks they have on … [Read more...]

When a business can successfully and reliably generate leads then it makes the whole business run better. So how do we generate leads? The conventional wisdom today is to build a “lead magnet” on your website and then do a ton of outreach, advertising, and promotion to drive traffic to that “lead magnet” to build a list of leads that might be interested in your services. This method will work, as long as you are: a great direct response copywriter, who knows exactly what your market needs, who has the contacts and to do outreach, has the technical know-how, structure, and time to build and provide on-going support an online funnel, and has the budget to buy … [Read more...]

When we are looking to grow our business there are a lot of avenues we can pursue; better proposals, better presentations, sharpening our pricing, networking, advertising... But there's only one thing that's likely to consistently grow your business, and that's more leads. The more people you talk to who are actually interested in buying your services, who have a clear need (that you can meet), have a budget and a timeline, and who can make a decision, the more deals you will close. Yes, if your presentation is weak and your proposal stinks it's going to take more of those conversations than is you have the perfect pitch and proposal. But unless you can consistently generate … [Read more...]

Right now your business depends on you. In order for your business to remain healthy you need to be healthy. Yes, the goal is to have a day when that’s not true, when you can spend a month in the Bahamas and no one misses you, but today is not that day. You are still central to the life and health of your business. Since this is true, your health and well being are the most important asset your business has, and needs! This may seem obvious, but if you are sick, too stressed to focus, or so tired you don’t have the energy to make good decisions or compete key tasks, your business is in jeopardy. So when I hear stories of business owners who are pulling all-nighters, who are working … [Read more...]

Many business owners that I know will create job descriptions for their team members, but how many of us have a job description for our own job? We create job descriptions to set expectations with our team members. We want them to know what we expect them to do. Business owners need this too! I think one of the hardest things about owning a business is that there are about 1000 things for me to do, but I can only get 100 done (maybe less?). Which things should I focus on? Your job description should help you with that. So what should be included in the Business Owner’s job description? There’s 4 things that every business owner needs to do: 1. THE BUSINESS OWNER MUST SET … [Read more...]