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How to say “No”

There’s one data point from my recent survey of business owners that’s still haunting me. When asked, “What would you consider your biggest personal challenge?” Almost half of all respondents said, “Setting my own priorities.” This was the top response for owners of all sizes of businesses, for new business owners, and people who had…

Graph of challenges
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No one knows how to set priorities for themselves (and we’re not getting better)

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…

Growth of Slack Users to 10M DAU
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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…

Who is your tribe if you’re not industry focused?
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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…

Simon and Siouxsie catch a snake
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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…