One article consistently stood at the top of the list of “Most Read Articles” on the New York Times website in 2017: Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person by Alain de Botton. In it, de Botton argues that we are looking for an ideal partner (without flaw or conflict), while ignoring the fact that, as human…
Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen. ~ John Steinbeck Entrepreneurs are starters; we love to begin something new! We also see opportunities that others don’t see. So as we live our lives we are always coming up with new ways…
Recruiting great creative talent is hard. The best, most talented creatives are always in demand and have their choice of where to go work. Good creatives have high standards! They aren’t going to work just anywhere. If you need top creative talent you need to build a culture that allows them to do great work….
“Change leads to insight more than insight leads to change” ~Milton H. Erickson Sometimes you just have to give things a try. I’ve spent many hours with clients trying to help them to understand a new or different concept that I’m confident will help their business. I want clients to “understand” the concept. Understanding a…
(ACTUALLY? Not a whole lot.) I work with a lot of service firm owners and there’s one thing they all hate, and that’s writing proposals. They love meeting with prospects, identifying the problems the prospects are having, and talking about how they can help. But then they get back to their office and the work…
As the business owner, the job of business development for your creative agency has been yours—from the beginning. But the thing is, you don’t like it. Maybe you don’t feel good at it, or successful as a salesperson, or maybe it just feels icky. But none of that matters now, because there’s a solution. You’re…
“Oooh, I LOVE that,” one of my clients said to me, “She worked half the night to finish that project. She’s a superhero! How do I find more people like her?” The only thing small business owners love more than telling stories about how hard they are working, is to tell stories about how hard…
It could be said that business leaders have one job, and that’s to make decisions. The decisions we make affect people’s livelihoods, their careers – not just our employees – but our customers, our vendors, our community. I wonder how often any of us sit down and think about how we make business decisions –…
The turning of the year is, for many of us, a time of reflection. What happened in 2017? What was good? What was not so good? And what do we WANT to happen in 2018? It also just so happens to be the time when most business owners are planning and budgeting. It makes sense…
“I’ve tried that, it didn’t work…” I was having a discussion with an owner of a B2B creative services firm about his business development process. He had a strong business that he’d built by leveraging his personal network, but he wanted to see more growth. This is a business owner who’s aggressive and isn’t afraid…