I recently surveyed over 100 business owners about how their business and job changes as they gain experience and their business grows. The full report is going to take me a while to collate and write, but the answers to one question stuck out at me. When asked, “What would you consider to be your biggest personal challenge?” The most frequent answer is “Setting my own priorities/Time Management”. That wasn’t so surprising; I see a lot of business owners who have trouble with that. What stuck out to me is that this was the top answer, no matter how I sliced the data. It was the top answer for new business owners, and for business owners with 10+ years of experience, for owners of … [Read more...]
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How not to be stupid (like I was)
A few weeks ago, I had a day packed with good things! That afternoon I was meeting with a new coach, I had a client meeting, and I knew she had experienced some breakthroughs in her business, I couldn't wait to hear. But my morning meetings had run over, and I just had a few minutes to grab lunch. So I dashed down the street to my favorite falafel place, and found a parking spot right out front—perfect! I went to jump out of my car, and that’s when my car door met a passing truck. You can see the results below. So much for my day! I canceled the rest of my meetings that day and dropped $5,000 getting my car fixed! How could I be so stupid? Not long after, I came across this … [Read more...]
If you’re going to be stupid you better be tough
After I wrote about “How not to be stupid (like I was)” I had a reader write to me with her father’s corollary, he would say: “If you're going to be stupid, you better be tough.” At first, it made me chuckle. Toughness can indeed be a short term way to mitigate the effects of stupidity. But I started to think about how business owners feel about toughness, and I realized I’ve seen this happen in real life. “I lost money the last two years, so I’m running lean to get myself out of that hole. Yeah, I’m working until 2 AM, but I’ll get through it.” “My last two account manager hires bombed, so I’m just going to do that account management myself for a while...” “We’re WAY … [Read more...]
Are you on Slack (or another messaging platform)?
There’s been insane growth in the use of Slack as an internal messaging platform to reduce the volume of internal emails and from what I’ve seen from companies who adopt it, it has passionate fans! Those fans have driven incredible growth in their user base. What’s interesting to me is how much Slack has grown outside of their core use case of intra-office messaging. In the last 12 months, I’ve seen all kinds of special interest groups, from leadership chats, to online course participants, to fantasy football leagues take to Slack as a way to organize discussions between members. So I’m curious — are you using Slack (or some other messaging platform) and if so how? Hit reply … [Read more...]
Who is your tribe if you’re not industry focused?
In our last conversation, we talked about choosing an industry, or vertical specialization, as a way to find your "people like us," but what if there’s not one industry that fits your business? One of my clients, Diane Yetter of Yetter Tax, helps people with their most difficult sales tax problems. Though we think of sales tax as being primarily a retail problem, the most difficult challenges in sales tax apply to manufacturers, e-commerce sellers, hospitality chains, people who sell through dealer--the list goes on. Her work doesn’t fit well within a vertical specialty. To make things more difficult, only the very largest of companies have more than one person who works with sales … [Read more...]
How to find your “people like us”?
In our last conversation, we talked about how “people like us, do things like this.” How identifying your tribe, and then acting in ways that show you are a part of that tribe, can significantly accelerate the growth of your business. Which begs the question: who are your people like us, and how do you demonstrate you're part of the tribe? Pick an industry The easiest way to specialize is to pick an industry to focus on. I know a banker who specializes in working with dentists, a lawyer who specializes in breweries, an IT company who works only with distributors. The simple formula is "I help X with Y." This is called “vertical specialization,” and it has some significant … [Read more...]
People like us do stuff like this
You know when you are in a “tribe” because you do the things that your tribe does, you wear the things that they wear, you sound like them, you look like them… Seth Godin, in one of his most popular blog posts, called it “People like us do things like this.” So when you think about your ideal target market — that buyer that you are 100% sure you can make a big difference for — what tribe are they in? How do they talk? What words do they use differently from the way the rest of the world uses them? Where do they go (online and IRL)? What kinds of things do they do when they are there? What are the signals of trust and status that they display? If you can answer those … [Read more...]
When you are afraid, but you do it anyway.
In our house, there’s only one show that the whole family watches religiously the moment it's available and that’s Snake City. Snake City is a show that follows a South African snake catcher (Simon Keys) and his assistant/girlfriend (Siouxsie Gillett) as they drive around Durban catching poisonous snakes. (Durban is loaded with venomous snakes!) Simon and Siouxsie are experts at what they do (caching venomous snakes), but they are also very aware of the danger involved. Simon recites all the ways that the venom of the snake he’s currently hunting can kill him while he searches for each snake. It makes for an edge of your seat tension in every episode. But Simon has taught me about … [Read more...]
The best way to get “unstuck”
In our last conversation, we talked about The U-Curve, the predictable path that business profits take as your business grows from “just you” to “you and your team.” The most important feature of the U-Curve is the flat bottom. That’s the zone where profits are slim, growth is hard, and a lot of entrepreneurs stall out. One of the indicators of entrepreneurial success is to move through that flat bottom of the U-Curve quickly. But what if you found yourself stuck in that dreaded flat-zone, where margins are low, sales growth is a slog, and you’re thinking “there must be a better way”? If that’s you, there are two things you need to do right away. The way to get unstuck is to start … [Read more...]
Where are you on “The U-Curve”?
Remember that first time you got paid by a client? You stepped out on your own, got some work, delivered on it, and got paid. I know for me it felt like magic. People were just giving me money! As my business grew I started adding some expenses, I built a website, I added a “business phone”, then bookkeeping help, and Admin help. By the time I got to hiring an associate team the feeling I was getting from cashing those checks went from “magic” to desperation! OK, now I can pay this month’s bills, whew! Where’s the next check coming from? When we start out in our business that first check is pure joy; in part because it’s pure profit! But, as we grow our sales, expenses also have a … [Read more...]
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