Have you noticed that when you are facing a big challenge, your productivity plummets? Let me give you some examples. In college, finals week was the time I’d choose to catch up on all my laundry. When I’m about to start a new project, the first thing I need to do is switch my task…
“Focus is a matter of deciding what things you’re not going to do” – John Carmack You are on a mission. You wouldn’t be doing this work if you weren’t. There’s something fundamental that you know is broken, that’s intolerable. Some opportunity, that, if you don’t grab it, someone else will. But it’s not going…
“Hi, my name’s Brad, and I’m a doomscroller.” It started with the pandemic. I wasn’t much of a social media consumer before that, but I wanted to stay on top of the news when the virus hit. Things were changing all the time, so I kept checking back. Then it was the protests, then the…
As I talked with one of my clients last week, he said something that blew my mind. Mike went to law school as a mid-career switcher. His background is in product development and engineering, but now he owns a law firm. We talked about how things have changed for him during the last few years…
When it comes to your sales pipeline, there’s just one thing you are in complete control over. You can’t control when people buy or who will buy, but you have complete control over the top of your funnel. And unless you’ve got something seriously wrong, the more qualified leads you put into the top of…
The sales funnel is a useful concept for helping us visualize the journey that a prospect makes toward becoming a customer. But the idea of the “funnel” makes the process seem more predictable than most of us find in practice! Just because someone is in your funnel doesn’t mean that they will buy, or even…
I’ve been trying to make an argument this week that it’s easier to grow your firm by narrowing your focus than by taking on a broad range of work from the clients that come your way. I wanted to end the week by talking about an example, a client who actually did this! Meet Robin…
“The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.” — Bruce Lee We all want to be exceptional. If to achieve my goals, I have to be exceptional every day, that’s going to be exhausting! I’m not sure I have it in me to keep that up day after day after day. But the…
When I talk to growing agencies and creative services firms, their top concern is lead generation. They are confident that they can deliver value, but everyone struggles to get in front of the right potential buyers. Because their pipeline is skinny, and they’re anxious about that, I see folks relaxing their qualification. Instead of focusing…
2021, I want to have a serious conversation about your performance. As you know, we brought you in to replace someone who had severe performance issues. 2020 started off on the wrong foot, then just a few weeks later, their decisions had a major impact on the whole organization. I’m a believer in second chances,…