There are as many different “types” of entrepreneurs as there are businesses, but there are some common traits I see that many of us share. We don’t mind hard work, we like to start things more than we want to finish things, and we have a nose for opportunity. These three traits are a cocktail for distraction! When the excitement of an opportunity has turned into the drudgery of slogging through the solution, it’s easy for us to daydream about the next “opportunity.” And we will find it whether that is looking for a new project, inventing a new service, or fixing some annoying glitch in our billing system. Answering the siren call of new, exciting things to save us from finishing … [Read more...]

In our last conversation, I talked about two ways to grow your business, a high-intensity, hard-working, risk-loving environment, and a more planned, lower-stress, environment. I pointed out that some of us are hard-wired for the former — we love “living on the edge”; but the wiring of most of our employees is different. (That’s why they are employees!) So how do we bridge that gap, is there a way for those of us entrepreneur types to learn to thrive in a more cautious, planned environment? There’s a magical middle that can work for everyone. Leaders break things; employees fix things Entrepreneurs are pioneers. We want to go where no one has gone. We see opportunity where others see … [Read more...]

I walked into my client’s office, and you could feel the excitement and tension in the air. The business owner had been out at speaking gigs the last three days and came back with a fistful of business cards to follow up on, and she’s been tearing into those. In the meantime, her operations manager is trying to figure out how to deliver on the work that’s already committed. The owner has been making promises, and he's left filling gaps right and left. He tries to get her attention as she breezes through the office, but she brushes him off. "I need to do my follow up; we can talk later." The look on his face as her door closed was pure frustration! As we walk into the conference … [Read more...]

Let's go back to some homework I asked you to do roughly a month ago. Do you remember? I asked you to write out the WHY you want to make more money in your business. If you weren’t with me a month ago take a minute to go back and do that homework. If you were with me, pull that page out and take a look. How does that homework look now? Do those reasons still resonate with you a month later? Are they still motivating enough for you to make changes — or have you lapsed into comfort with the situation you have now? Remember, you don’t have to achieve all this in one month, or one year. These are just the reasons that you want to make changes to your business that make you more … [Read more...]

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 doing is a service that is super-high in margin, and akin to “printing money”.  In other words, a disliked cash cow.  Typically, in our business, these are mindless, repetitive projects that become a chore for anyone who works on them.  But, they generate a lot of profit.  And no sane company would turn away an opportunity like this because it is repeatable, “subscription”-type revenue which is sticky … [Read more...]

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, if you are growing your business, you don’t have to do that assignment over and over. Your team will do it. Plus, each assignment brings new challenges. The client is different, the situation, markets, etc. are all different. But here’s why you want to focus on doing something similar over and over.  1. You get good at it. The first time you do something you will likely be terrible at … [Read more...]

We’ve been talking about raising prices for a few weeks as one of the easiest ways to make more money right now. Today let's study a real-life customer story of someone who finally started raising her prices.; "I know you’ve been telling me that my prices are way too low, but I still have a mental hurdle charging more.  "Recently I was looking at a proposal for one of my favorite clients that I’ve had for a long time and I knew my price for this work was too low. I have worked with them for eight years and have never increased my rates. So I called the client and brought it up to him. The client was extremely open with me about prices and told me that I was one of their best facilitators … [Read more...]

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 and in the client’s mind — so you don’t want to undermine all that effort with this one, very common, mistake — desperation. When a prospect sees you as unique and exceptionally competent to fix their problem they assume that you have done it lots of times and have a good book of business doing that! We can see that you have testimonials and case studies showing happy clients — you are … [Read more...]