One of the most painful truths I’ve ever encountered is that if I want to be good at something, I have to tolerate being terrible at it for a while. That feeling of not knowing what I’m doing is terribly uncomfortable – especially since there are many ways I could spend my time working within…
I knew I wanted to go to prom. It was going to be a big party with all my friends – one of the last times my high school gang would be together. I know I want to be there. But I need a date! Finding a date means taking the risk of getting rejected….
I’m part of a Slack community filled with agency owners, and last week one of the participants asked, “How’s everyone’s pipeline right now? Have changes in the economy impacted your sales results?” What followed was a deluge of reports; There are certain sectors where the story is different, and I have clients who are closing…
When I started my business, I was selling help with business operations for founders wanting to grow their businesses. That’s what I thought people wanted, and I had a track record of doing it. Sales are easy when you sell folks what they already want! I was riding a Trojan Horse. Talking about growth (what…
So far as I can tell, there are three ways of being in the world. One, I can decide that I’m fundamentally broken. So I try to hide my broken parts, shine up the acceptable parts, and only show people the parts they might like. This is what I call living in the false self….
The university’s President took the podium at my college graduation and said one sentence that has stuck in my brain ever since. But first, let me give you some context. I had a great time at college. Sure, I worked hard, but I also had fun! I was involved with a fraternity, a campus christian…
My chosen form of regular exercise is swimming, and most weeks you’ll find me in the pool 2 – 3 mornings. This last week I was doing my regular swim when I noticed the water in the pool was very cloudy. How cloudy? The line on the bottom of the pool that tells me that…
I’m an unabashed Ted Lasso fan. The first season was perfect for the pandemic. The second season had enough twists and turns to hold me on the edge of my seat with characters I cared about. We’ve had a rocky and uneven third season so far – but I trust Jason Sudeikis to land this…
Last week we talked about the three drivers of value, scale, scope, and uniqueness. If you want to grow your profitability, you can’t pursue all three – they have different trade-offs and strategies. You’ve got to pick one. Let’s look at those trade-offs to find out which path is right for you. Scale Agencies that…
Most of us agree that the value you can charge is directly related to the value you create. So to make more money, you must create more value. But how do you measure how much value you are creating? On a recent episode of Michael Neill’s excellent podcast, “Caffeine for the Soul” he talked about…