Write It Don’t Wing It
Since I have been talking about objectives recently and also since we are getting ready to do a call on the subject as well, then we definitely need to talk about the power of committing what you are doing to writing. A big problem for business owners when it comes to staying focused is their desire to just wing it rather than writing important things down. Let me start by saying that I can sympathize with business owners who don’t write things down. I get that people don’t want to feel like they are put in a box and that written goals can feel like you are sacrificing your ability
How You Separate The Wheat From The Chaff In Your Business
It’s easy to get caught up in the not-so-important details of your business. This shows up when business owners swear their e-mail box needs to be open at all times of the day. It also shows up when an employee swears that they needed to redesign a new fax cover sheet for the office. I mean, come on, the old cover sheets were ugly! Separating what’s important from what’s not important is essential in your business. This Bible idiom of separating the wheat from the chaff is so appropriate in business. When your operation starts to grow, it’s easy to get lost in the minutiae of the day-to-day operations. Keeping
The One Person Most Likely Sabotaging Your Business’ Culture
I just wrapped up a high level workshop with a group of great business owners that covered setting the right strategy for your business as well as coaching your employees for high level performance. One of the questions that I get a lot in any workshop that I do, and this last one was no different, centers around business owners’ concern with how employees handle their work. Most of these concerns center around where employees lack in the areas of productivity, goal setting and overall organization. The question is always, “How do I make these employees better?” For some business owners they may be talking about the single employee that
The Easiest Way To Get Things Done
The easiest way to get things done….Don’t do anything….The end….You’re welcome. OK seriously, you can’t just curl up in your house and do nothing all day. Well I guess you could but if you are reading this, you are probably not the kind of person who would do that. So back to getting things done, more specifically the easiest way to get things done. I have a specific weakness in that at times I can burden myself with tasks that I keep in the back of mind. I know these tasks need attention but I don’t make the effort to address these specific tasks. Two primary things happen when I
Smart Business Owners Know How To Use Relationship Capital
When you are starting out, you can spend all the money in the world on a fancy, optimized site, the latest marketing techniques and create the finest product ever created and find out that none of it matters. Without relationships, you’ve got nothing. Smart business owners know how to use and manage their relationship capital. Smart business owners know that without a team to implement their ideas, their ideas are meaningless. If they don’t have the right circle of influencers to help them spread the word about their product or service then no one know about it. Think about the relationships that you have had in your life, what was
Build Business Relationships By Asking The Right Questions
There are obvious reasons why people don’t buy a product or service. Price, time, trust, etc. There are also a whole set of other reasons that people don’t buy our product/service that never come up in normal transactions. So how do we uncover these hidden reasons? Yesterday I shared 6 questions that you should ask people who are giving you testimonials. The first question to me is the most important. What was the obstacle that would have prevented you from buying this product? Don’t get me wrong, I like to hear about the things that people loved but those answers are always more obvious. When people share with you the
A Step-By-Step Beginner’s Guide To Blogging
Blogging is a tough thing for business owners to wrap their minds around and get excited about adding to their business. Blogs can be a great tool for reaching out to your clientele and building lifetime relationships. Blogging done right can be a tremendous asset to your business. For that reason I give you my step-by-step beginner’s guide to blogging. I have talked about the numerous benefits of writing as a business owner. There’s the benefit of writing for clarity as well as utilizing blogging as a bootstrap marketing tool. Ultimately, blogging is a great tool for building intimacy with your clients that create lifetime relationships. This post is going
Book Review: Business Model Generation
Business Model Generation really exceeded my expectations on so many levels. The Use Of Our Socially Networked Society The book had 470 contributors in 45 countries. While there were 9 core contributors on the book they had influence from all over the planet. Traditional Publishing Not Needed When you look at how beautifully this book is put together, you can’t believe that it didn’t come about through a typical publishing channel. This book was financed and put out independently. The Content is So Relevant For Business Owners Beyond the fact that this book is one of the most stylishly laid out books that I have ever seen. The content is
The Underrated Marketing Tool
Business owners spend a lot of time worrying about bringing in new business and rightfully so. As we sit and worry about these customers we haven’t met, we often forget about the customers we already have. Introducing customer service, the most underrated and underutilized marketing and sales tool that a business owner has at his/her disposal. In the 1950s, Peter Drucker said that “there is no business without customers”. It seems as if we forget that in this day and age. We have all heard stories of good customer service, good and bad. The big question that so many have is, “why can’t businesses get customer service right?” This
How Can You Do Better?
Ever sat back and asked yourself that question? I’m sure that you have at one point and time. I ask this question today as it pertains to leadership and your role as a leader to get the best out of the people around you. The central question in leadership is how can we do better? When looking at doing better the first thing you need to examine is how you are being as person. Before you can change your actions you have to make a commitment to yourself to change the way you are and also be willing to see your world through a different lens. Leadership can be a
