Planning for the future right now is extraordinarily difficult. We know that unemployment is at record high levels. High unemployment is a signal the economy is going to tank. When consumer spending drops significantly (like when lots of folks lose their jobs), the consumer companies get hit first, but pretty soon the whole economy suffers. Worse…
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…
Remember that first time you got paid by a client? You stepped out on your own, got some work, delivered on it, and got paid. I know for me it felt like magic. People were just giving me money! As my business grew I started adding some expenses, I built a website, I added a…
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,…
I know that running and growing your business is difficult. It can be a slog, like running in quicksand. You are working hard and not making the big bucks (yet). We’re on a journey to change that, but we need to take a minute to look at the map. Looking Back Now that we’ve bought…
We’re going to talk about, and work on, this process to help you to make more money for a while. But this might not be the perfect time in your life to do that. So before we get deep into this, I want to stop and check, are you all the way in? Even if…
On Tuesday we explored what courage can mean to a business owner. Courage is knowing that there’s danger, feeling the fear, and then going ahead anyway. But, being courageous is different from being fearless. When I look back at my career and think about when I was afraid, but pressed on anyway, those situations mostly worked…
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 –…
So 2016 has been a pretty solid year for Chicago economically. A lot of new jobs are being created, and interest rates remain low. If you’ve tried to hire this year, you likely had a hard time finding the right candidates. But what do we see coming in 2017? How will the change in administrations,…