Winning Impossible Games
Chuck Norris can win a game of Connect Four in only three moves. It’s easy to play it safe in business. We set safe goals. Make what we think are safe hires. Playing it safe can only take us so far. To stretch yourself and your business, you need an impossible game. Having an impossible game and stretching yourself shouldn’t be confused with being reckless. If your impossible game is to jump off a ten story building and live, well, good luck with that. That’s extreme but impossible games are those projects that just don’t seem reachable for us. You may lack the knowledge to get it done or the
Make A Simple Plan For Your Business With Three Questions
If you’re reading this, you may not be much of a planner. In fact, for most people setting plans and goals sucks. So with that being said, thanks for reading this far. Planning can be difficult as you sit and try and figure out what the right goals are and not make those goals feel arbitrary. For you haters of planning, here are three simple questions to get you started. Answer these and you are well on your way to having a plan that will make your year better. These questions are questions that we ask ourselves and our clients frequently. It’s also part of our Alignment Blueprint that we
Success This Year Starts At The Core Of Your Business
As another year comes to a close, this is the time where we start to reflect on the past year. What went great. What didn’t go so great. Where we would like to improve. We then put together a plan or a set of resolutions on how next year will be different. Before you finalize your plans for world domination, I have one piece of advice, don’t ignore the core of your business. What’s the core of your business? The core of your business consists of why you exist, where you are going and what your business values. You may know the core of your business by another set of
The Best Time To Work On Your Business
When I work with a business owner, one of the first things that I cover with them is their schedule. Specifically, I want to know when they work on their business. Most of the time, I just get a blank stare that lets me know that we are going to have to work on developing some habits. The best time to work on your business is in the morning. Before any calls. Before any employee interruptions. Before you get your day blown up by an angry client. This morning time for me is called a power hour and I use my power hour at times to ensure that I am
What Influences Your Decisions?
Business owners are faced with making tough decisions every day. The stressful thing about moving forward is the uncertainty around the fact that we aren’t sure if our decision is the right one. Are you a business owner making decisions without a tool to hold those decisions up to? The question is what influences your decisions? Is it money? Fame? Family? Ego? What is it? Ask yourself honestly what drives your decision making process. Chances are you have an internal mechanism inside of you that helps guide your decisions. For now, we will call it your “gut”. How do we take that internal mechanism and create something external that not
The First Step of Your Marketing Plan
Most entrepreneurs are eager to start marketing their business and make sales even if they are not sure how to go about doing it. There’s a lot to be said about sell first, ask questions later when it comes to building your small business. Before you do anything with regards to a marketing plan for your business, make sure that you have the right foundation in place. The foundation for your marketing plan consists of a couple of items: your mission, vision and values and your overall business plan. Without this basic foundational knowledge of how you want your small business to operate and where it is going, your marketing
Make Your Business Relevant
Yesterday, I covered 3 questions to ask if your business is struggling. This morning while I was doing some social media work, I ran across a great video by Michael Gerber, author of the E-Myth, that also provides great insight on how to ensure that your business stays relevant. The first point that Michael makes in the video is that your small business should be focused on growth. He states that if your business is not concerned with growing, then you should shut it down. In the talk, he also gives 2 essential ingredients for your business: Is it scalable? and Is it transformational? One way to kill a good
The Fallacy Of “The Path of Least Resistance”- Blogging Edition
Bootstrapping, creativity, maximizing resources…All of these things describe how a business owner survives in their initial stages of business. However, there is a fine line between being resourceful and not preparing yourself for the long term. Blogging is one of those areas where small business owners try to cut corners and travel the path of least resistance. Unfortunately, small business owners learn the hard way that, in some cases, the path of least resistance is a fallacy. It seems like I have been getting tons of questions about blogging lately and a lot of it is coming from inside my own house. My wife has a business and she started
One Thing That You Need To Improve Execution
Achievement and execution are always a hot button issue in our society, we are always asking questions like: How do we get higher level achievers? How do we achieve more professionally? etc etc. Getting better at execution means getting better at one thing and that one thing is setting goals. Part of the reason we haven’t achieved at a higher level collectively, which we are now as a society starting to look, has to do with an archaic look at achievement and where are focus should be. The other reason has to do with the fact that it’s difficult to execute nothing. When you don’t set goals and commit them
Difference Between The Successful and Unsuccessful
Success in life is a hot topic. People are so obsessed with unlocking the key to success that a huge self help movement was created around the subject to assist people in taking control of the lives they supposedly lost. What really is the difference between successful and unsuccessful people? This particular topic has been on my mind recently due to the fact that I have been reading Geoff Colvin’s excellent book, Talent is Overrated. In it, the author talks about what really separates high achievers from average performers. One thing that I found particularly interesting is in the mindset that average achievers have around how success is achieved. Average
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