A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard…
As business leaders, it’s our #1 job to make decisions. We want to make decisions quickly, but also in a way that eliminates risk and gets our team on board with the final decision. In our last message, we talked about how using “gut instinct” worked fine for decisions we have made a million times,…
One of the challenges of owning your own business is that you are both the CEO, responsible for the day-to-day decisions and direction of the company AND you are also the principal investor responsible for the long-term health of the business and interested in improving the equity value of the firm. To use a sports…
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…
In the almost 20 years I’ve been working with business owners one of the most frequent desires/needs/dreams/goals that I hear from business owners is that they want to make more money. So, I want to have a real talk about making more money. Maybe it’s crass, perhaps it’s too straightforward — but it’s on your…
This week we’ve talked about evaluating the performance of our team and having difficult conversations when needed. Now its time for the hardest evaluation question… Who has difficult conversations with YOU? Business owners wear a lot of hats! First and foremost, you are the CEO! You set direction, manage performance, and guide the business toward…
Walter Miller, who runs a terrific bookkeeping and outsourced CFO firm responded to my prior email about doing vs. being and I thought his reply was insightful enough to share with you all (with his permission): I am constantly having to pare down my to-do list. I’m trying to focus more on the to-do’s that move…
You know the one. She’s late a lot; not just to the office, and to meetings, but her work doesn’t even show up on time. Usually, when you call her on it she blames someone else. The truth is she’s going in 100 different directions at once, and all the things she’s doing are important….
It could be said that business leaders have one job, and that’s to make decisions. The decisions we make affect people’s livelihoods, their careers – not just our employees – but our customers, our vendors, our community. I wonder how often any of us sit down and think about how we make business decisions –…
A small business is the sum of its people, not the sum of its parts. ~ Jill Salzman Small business ownership can make the best of us act a little weird. Put any normal person into a situation where there are lots of terrible things that can happen (many of which can get you sued,…