You know the one. She’s late a lot; not just to the office, and to meetings, but her work doesn’t even show up on time. Usually, when you call her on it she blames someone else. The truth is she’s going in 100 different directions at once, and all the things she’s doing are important….
When you started your business you wore all the hats. But as your business has grows you have to give up some of those hats and instead take on the job of the “manager” or team leader. This is one of the toughest transitions for people to make. You have to change what you do,…
I have a friend who owns a farm. It’s a small farm, but still; he’s got chickens, sheep, goats, pigs, cows, and produce in the summer. I went up to visit him for a weekend and we spent the better part of the weekend building a chicken coop. Just the two of us, with some…
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…
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…
“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…
The stereotype of a business owner is the ever optimistic ball of energy who’s working hard, playing hard and enjoying life; and I meet a fair number of business owners who fit that stereotype. Over the last couple of years though I’ve noticed that a growing number of the folks I’m meeting fit in a…
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…
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…
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…