About a year ago, I started experiencing some foot pain. One of the doctor’s recommendations was to try some different shoes with wider toe boxes and better insoles. I tried a bunch of things with varying success until I broke down and tried a pair of Birkenstocks. Why did it take me so long to…
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…
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…
Just like children, businesses grow through predictable phases. We start life as baby startups, then progress to raging growth companies, before settling into a more stable “adult” phase. But as we cross each of those growth stages things change — and if we don’t change with them our growth can get stuck. Here’s my version…
Just like children, businesses grow through predictable phases. We talked about start life as baby startups, that progress to raging growth companies in our first email. Then we talked about the adolescent crisis that leads to specialization. Today, we finally reach a more stable “adult” phase. Here’s my version of this story focused primarily on B2B…
Just like children, businesses grow through predictable phases. We talked about start life as baby startups, that progress to raging growth companies in our last email. Today we reach adolescence, before settling into a more stable “adult” phase in our next email. Here’s my version of this story focused primarily on B2B service businesses. See if you…
Following up on my post about how focusing is essential to growth I got a question from a fellow business owner, Paul asks; Hi Brad, I love this Venn Diagram; in fact, I have a copy hanging on my office wall! The dilemma occurs when the intersection of something we do well and don’t love…
Finding your core service that is valuable to your ideal client and focusing on that means that you are going to do a lot of similar assignments. For creative people, this sounds like a kind of death. “You want me to do this thing over, and over, and over, and…ARUAGHHHH!” Well, yes, and no… First,…
We’ve talked this week about how to position your firm as the “costs more, but worth it” provider in your niche, and about the huge advantage a unique expertise to solve those big, scary problems that your prospects face can be. It’s a lot of work to develop that positioning — both in your mind…
To get a premium price for your services it’s important to be positioned as the “costs more, but worth it” provider. Your prospects need to see you as substantially different from your competitors. And not just different like you “dye your hair orange” different, different in a way that makes you uniquely qualified to solve…