Do you ever feel lonely leading your own business? When I first started my business, I joined a group of new business owners, like me, in different geographies. We met up in an online forum where we could ask and answer questions, exchange advice, and learn what was working and what wasn’t. This group…
I’m excited to see some new faces in our Business Owner’s Slack Group. It’s amazing to have a place to go where folks are generous about helping one another. For example, I was researching the Jobs to Be Done framework for helping to identify the attributes of your service that clients are excited about and there…
“I’m trying to grow my business, but I don’t know what to do. There are so many choices, so many people telling me different tactics to try, what’s one thing that I can do?” It’s easy to get down in the weeds when you are trying to grow your business. Suddenly, every tactic looks tantalizing,…
I’m starting an occasional series where I talk about some of the lies I hear from the business owners that I speak to. They don’t always know that they are lying to me, but over time, I’ve come to hear these phrases as lies. Today we start with this one, “Sure, I’m a workaholic. I…
I got a lot of reaction to my post about sweating out payroll; it seems that a lot of us are anxious about getting our cash in the door. Here are five ways to improve the cash flow of any business! 1. Improve Your Payment Terms Setting favorable payment terms with your clients is the…
I could tell he didn’t want to sell his company. My client had supposedly called me to talk about selling. But right away, it was clear that something else was going on. You see, his business was doing great—it had grown bigger than he’d ever dreamed. The real problem was he was exhausted. I glanced…
There’s nothing that makes me feel more like a failure than when I don’t know if I’m going to have the cash to cover payroll. Vendors can wait, you can negotiate with bankers, even landlords will give you some leeway. But when your payroll is late you are affecting the lives and families of your…
My client called because he was going to have to skip his paycheck this week. Something that hadn’t happened in a long time. “Brad, I used to be able to keep track of my business in one spreadsheet. I had my pipeline on one tab, and my income on another tab and my expenses on…
Getting retainer clients who pay you a fixed fee every month is one of the best ways to make your revenue more predictable. It’s incredible to know that you’ve got $45,000 from 5 clients coming in on the first of every month! But there’s a problem with fixed monthly fees — what are you delivering…
“Well this is garbage, we’ll have to start this over from the beginning…” When I heard my client, Trish, say that to one of her team members my heart sank. I immediately looked at the designer’s face and saw that she was barely holding back tears. Trish was trying to be helpful. She didn’t see…