2020 started with protests in Hong Kong, then bushfires in Australia. In the US, we had impeachment hearings and an over 1000 point drop in the stock market. Then came COVID and shutdown/quarantine, which sent millions of workers into a long work-from-home (with children “e-learning”) experiment. That was just the first quarter. Since then, we’ve…
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…
Whenever I work with a team on strategic planning eventually someone says, “Yeah, well, this is all well and good, but halfway through the year we’ll have forgotten all of this and be working on like a million OTHER things…” The sad part is, they aren’t wrong. They’ve likely seen that pattern played out a…
I started this year with some big goals for my business. To accomplish these goals, I: All of that while recording a weekly podcast, serving a dozen or so active clients, and having a life too. It was a busy year. I’m happy to say, with two months left in the year I’ve fully accomplished…
For the better part of a decade, I worked for a family-owned conglomerate and looked for businesses for them to buy. We’d look seriously at ten or so businesses a year, where we’d build a financial forecast, build a valuation, research their customers and market dynamics, meet the key leadership team, etc. Of those ten,…