I had been getting anxious emails from one of my clients for a couple of days. Each day the anxiety seemed to be getting higher and higher. She was worried about the future of her business. (Aren’t we all!) It seemed like every night she’d wake up, and her mind imagined another doomsday scenario that…
I started my business in April of 2001, 5 months into my new business’ life the US economy froze completely, and my fledgling business shut down with it. I was lucky that one of my clients needed an interim VP, and I spent nine months working for them before restarting my business. I spent the…
One of the consequences of living in a crisis is that our time horizon gets real short. It makes sense–the future is uncertain–it’s not clear what part of the things that we’ve adapted to are permanent, and which are temporary. Our clients and prospects are going through the same thing, so it’s not clear how…
Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great, tells the story of James Stockdale. As a POW in Vietnam Stockdale experienced almost continual torture with no way to know when it would end. When asked how he survived he said, “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end — which you can…
Running your own business can feel a little like being on a treadmill. You get up every day with a long list of things you could work on to improve your business. Then you get interrupted a dozen times and end up knocking very few things off your list. Uncertainty about “am I doing enough”…
“I’m trying to grow my business, but I don’t know what to do. There are so many choices, so many people telling me different tactics to try, what’s one thing that I can do?” It’s easy to get down in the weeds when you are trying to grow your business. Suddenly, every tactic looks tantalizing,…
Today is the day when more than half of American’s have given up on their “new year’s resolutions,” and the older you are, the more quickly you give up on them! I know that my clients don’t usually “give-up” on their business goals by this point in the year. But if you haven’t made tangible…
Do you have some big goals for this year? What are they? I know it’s early in the year, and these goals still have that January shine on them, but I’ve got some questions for you about your goals. How many of these goals were also goals you had last year (or the year before…
We all know that it’s hard to grow a business — if it were easy, everyone would be doing it. But just how hard is it? 80% of all businesses have no staff; they are just the entrepreneur and nothing more. If you’ve hired someone, you are already in the top 20% of US businesses! Only…
On Tuesday we talked about the process of picking out what’s most important for you to accomplish in a day, or a week, and blocking time on your calendar to do it. Did you know you can use a similar process to keep your whole business focused on the most critical challenges you face? When…