When your business first starts to grow, hiring is a necessity. There’s work that needs to get done and you need people to do it. You want folks who will be a good fit, sure, but mostly you need work done. Once you get to 10 – 15 people you need more than help to…
When I was in the business of buying entrepreneurial companies, the first thing we’d look at to determine the value is the cash flow. If you want the option to sell your business someday — it might make sense for you to pay attention to your cash flow now! Most businesses are valued based on…
For the better part of a decade, I worked for a family-owned conglomerate and looked for businesses for them to buy. We’d look seriously at ten or so businesses a year, where we’d build a financial forecast, build a valuation, research their customers and market dynamics, meet the key leadership team, etc. Of those ten,…
You know what I mean when I ask, “How many adults are there on your team?” Right? How many people on your team …without being told to do it? Stop for a minute and go through your team: Is he an “adult”? Is she? When I ask business owners this question in a team of…
A week or so ago, I used the example of choosing an accountant to do your taxes to demonstrate the advantages of focusing on a specific target market that has predictable and expensive problems. Let’s look at that again. Pretend that you met two accountants who could help you file your taxes. One was the…
I was listening in as a client of mine conducted an initial phone call with someone who was interested in her services. The call was going well and the prospect came out with, This all sounds really great, how do we get started working on this together? To hear that sentence from a prospect is…
There’s no doubt that he’s stuck. We got on the phone and he told me about his business challenges. So I ask him about his target audience and what he offers. What’s different about his agency? What does his team know more about than the agency down the street? Brad, it’s our creative! Don’t you…
If you’ve been on this list for any length of time you’ve heard a few messages from me over and over; You need to do less. Serve fewer audiences. Offer fewer services. Find one thing that you can do again and again and again until you get really really good at it. You need to…
I’m in the midst of building a brand new arm to my business: mastermind groups for business owners. I’m in the middle of a beta test for these groups and have spoken to colleagues, past clients, prospects, and anyone who might have an interest in hearing about it. (One of my core business growth tenets…
“I always say, “Be so good that they can’t ignore you.” If someone’s thinking, “How can I be really good?” people are going to come to you…” ~ Steve Martin Last week I told you the story of my client who tripled her business and only added five employees, by focusing on a specialty and…