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 different category. They are still optimistic and full of ideas, but their energy is more muted, sometimes edgy. As I talk to them I notice that they’ve been fighting and clawing to get their business going for a number of years, and though they don’t really think about it—they’re tired—maybe even exhausted. On the outside they’ve still got the positive, optimistic vibe going, but on the inside … [Read more...]
Small Business Articles on People
Read small business articles from the Anchor Advisors team for best practices on management and employees. Go back to all Articles »
Learning from Failure: Things don’t always work out perfectly…
“We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.” ~ Samuel Smiles I was listening to Alex Blumberg interview Nina Jacobson on the podcast WithoutFail when she mentioned the idea of a failure resume. She said she was inspired by a professor who found that “failures sort of define who you are and what you’ve learned and how you’ve really sort of been impacted in many respects more than your successes do. And that owning those failures and embracing them is sort of a critical component to successful people.” That professor is Tina Seelig and she’s the ED … [Read more...]
More Ideas Than Time
I have more ideas than time! My team is so frustrated. We are loaded with good ideas—ideas that will make us money! But we can't even get the work done to execute on the services we already have going! When my team sees me roll in with another "great idea" their eyes shoot daggers at me. How do I decide what we should execute on, and what we should delay? Should we just work harder? What do I do with these ideas we can't get to? When a business is just starting out, the most important question that a business owner is asking (and they ask it a lot) is "Will this thing GO? Can we survive?". When you're facing survival, trying everything is a rational strategy. You don't really know … [Read more...]
Why You Will Hire The Wrong Person
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 beings, we all are deeply flawed and often a little bit crazy. In summary he says, “Marriage ends up as a hopeful, generous, infinitely kind gamble taken by two people who don’t know yet who they are or who the other might be, binding themselves to a future they cannot conceive of and have carefully avoided investigating.” To me this sounds like the way most of us make hiring … [Read more...]
A Recipe for Recruiting and Managing Creative People
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. I’ve seen a few strategies that do just that. Preparation Start by bringing in fresh client challenges. These are challenges that don’t have easy, “textbook” solutions and will require the best out of your current team in order to succeed. Make sure that these clients really need great solutions—that they won’t settle for “pretty good” —because the challenges that they face are … [Read more...]
Don’t just think about it—do something!
“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 new concept helps them to accept it; and can also give them the resilience to persist even if the early results aren’t what they expect. I’m happy to put in that time. But I’ve been doing some reflecting on when I’ve made the biggest changes in my life; and they mostly weren’t driven by great insights, or sudden new awareness or information. The greatest changes … [Read more...]
So you think your agency needs a salesperson…
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 going to hire a salesperson, and that’s going to fix everything. It makes perfect sense. A skilled and experienced salesperson would (likely) know exactly what to do in order to increase sales. A skilled and experienced salesperson would handle the clients better, write better proposals, and close more of them…You’re asking yourself “Why didn’t I do this sooner?” before you even have … [Read more...]
Regular business success beats heroic efforts every time.
“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 their team is working. Get them started and you’ll hear about all-nighters, about 100 hour work weeks, and travel stories that go on and on—and they’ll be bursting with pride the whole time. I have a different reaction to those stories. Sure, it feels great when someone delivers 150% effort on your business’ behalf; but at what cost? When I hear about someone who worked all night, or who took a … [Read more...]
Who’s your “teacher”? Who’s your mentor?
When I was a young executive in a corporate job I met a woman named Marylin Dyer Blair. Marylin had a PhD in Industrial Psychology that she had earned in the 70’s. She was barely five-feet tall, with short gray hair—the kind of person that it’s easy to underestimate. But to do so would be a mistake! Marylin had great wisdom and insight into people, communication, and culture. She was a tremendous advisor to me in those days. At that time I had a lot of opinions about—well, everything. But the ones I had (and couldn’t help sharing) about how the business should be run were getting me into trouble. Marylin helped me to tame my mouth. She helped me to make some tough calls and face up to my … [Read more...]
The power of slow
We live in a world obsessed by action and success. And in a world hooked on action, the only way to be different is to stop. ~ @thelazyguru Hi, my name’s Brad. And I’m a workaholic. For a significant portion of my career I lived my life with my foot on the gas—and the pedal pushed to the floor. I wanted to get IT ALL done. So I got up early, and stayed up late. I made the most of every minute. I was an early adopter of portable computing devices so that I could work anytime, anywhere. When I started my own business I took that work ethic up a notch and did even more. While there are definitely parts of me that drove this behavior, I also absorbed a lot of messages about how business … [Read more...]
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