I usually hear this from clients right after they hire a new person. “I’m pulling my hair out! After spending three months interviewing candidates, and checking references, I thought this person was going to be PERFECT for this job.” “But it’s their first week and every single thing they’ve done has been messed up…and it’s not the big things — their strategy is good. It’s the little things that they miss.” The way they wrote that email sounded so annoyed, can’t they see how the client will feel reading that? They started the project without one key piece of information from the client — now we’ve got to do it all over. They nailed the project, but they gave it to me to review … [Read more...]

I got a call from a client who ran an agency that billed mostly fixed monthly fees.  Her management team meeting had just ended, and it was a disaster. Her team was adamant that they needed more people. Everyone was busy, working overtime, and getting burned out. Raises have been paltry, and their best people were threatening to leave. At the same time, even though revenue is growing, margins are shrinking.  “What can I do?” Diagnosing the root of the issue Digging through the facts, it became clear that as the margins declined, she was hiring more and more junior team members. Those junior folks took more time, and more revisions, and more direction, from her already stressed … [Read more...]

“Sure, Brad, this mastermind thing sounds great. But I can just get 4 business owner friends together and make my own Mastermind…” Six months ago I was talking to a business owner about how much she needed to make changes in her business. She realized that time was running out. Her lead generation efforts were not bringing in business, her contracts were running out, she had already made a list of people that she’d have to lay off. As we talked through her challenges she told me that she’s had a hard time focusing, the anxiety of her situation overwhelms her some days and she gets nothing done. She told me that to have accountability and community would be a game-changer for her. But … [Read more...]

When I learned to drive, we watched a series of videos that taught us some simple “rules” for good drivers. One of those rules was “Aim high when driving.” The instructor was trying to keep us from looking right at the end of the car instead of watching further down the road and trusting that the nose of the car would follow our gaze. Business owners make this same mistake.  Let me explain.  Pop open your calendar for the last week. Did you spend most of this week focused on things that were happening in this week or month? How much time did you spend on client deliverables? How much on following up sales leads? Contrast that with how much time you spent thinking about what needs to … [Read more...]

We talked on Tuesday about how “doing the thing” holds you back from the changes you need to make to grow your business. If you want to make substantial changes to your business (you know, the kind of changes that scare you), you need to let go of delivering services to clients. Let one of my Mastermind Group member's stories inspire you to make this shift. I highly value privacy for all my clients, so we'll call him "Joe." From Fixer to Captain Joe realized he was the bottleneck in his business’ growth. His team is small. He has five employees and a couple of contractors. There have defined responsibilities, so everyone knows what they need to do. That part worked great. Trouble … [Read more...]

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with others. When your business was young, and you just had a small team, you needed to “move fast and break things.” Your ability to get things done, your energy, and hard work was what enabled your success.  But your business has grown out of the start-up phase. And your team has grown with it, both in size and in capabilities. Throwing the project on your own shoulders and dragging it across the finish line isn’t working as well. It’s not (only) up to you We’ve been talking about the big goals you set for 2020, and how you are going to have to do things differently this year in order to get different results. One of the … [Read more...]

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 progress by now, if you haven’t booked time in your calendar, sat down with your team, mapped out how you are going to accomplish them, the likelihood of success is dimming fast. For some of you, that’s fine; just having the goals keeps you focused on making some progress, and whatever you can squeeze in is fine. If that’s you, delete this email and go on with your day. But if that’s not you, if … [Read more...]

One of the questions I ask clients when we’re talking about making plans for important initiatives in their business is: If this initiative fails, who gets yelled at? Who loses their job if you don’t make progress on this? It might be a negative way to think about it. But I’ve found that if there is a clear answer to this question, then it’s much more likely that the initiative will have a positive outcome.  As we talked about Tuesday, many of the issues that you need to resolve to achieve your goals have been around for a while. It’s typical that I’ll see the same goals from business owners two or even three years running. If these were easy problems to solve, we’d have solved them … [Read more...]

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 that)? How many of the ambitious goals that you wrote last year got accomplished in 2019? How is this year going to be different? I don’t want 2020 to be another year that starts with high ambition and ends with a mad dash to holidays. I’m guessing you don’t either. Will you stop for a minute and think about the following question? Give it some real consideration. What support do you need to make your … [Read more...]