When you are just starting out in business the strong temptation is to work with anyone who knocks on your door and offers to pay you, no matter how far off it may be from what you were planning to do. If you started a house painting business but someone sees you have a ladder…
I recently completed my training for a private pilot’s license and am now certified by the FAA to go fly an airplane all by myself. I can even bring passengers! Which is, honestly, a little terrifying. But the more I fly the better I get and one day I probably will be able to talk…
Yesterday was National Bosses’ Day and as a result, I got lots of nice well wishes and cards, etc. Which was great! But also, I hate it. Let me explain. I am very glad that the people who work here think well of me! But the word boss just seems weighted down to me with…
When you get into the world of entrepreneurship you are constantly bombarded with stories of amazing tenacity and never-say-die spirit that carry people to success. Everyone will tell you that there is no get-rich-quick and most overnight successes are normally ten years in the making. The good news is this can really help sustain you…
A lot of figuring out business for me seems to come down to asking questions and then understanding the right answer and using it to drive decision-making. And a lot of times, the questions themselves seems pretty simple at first pass. Like the one in the title. What does your customer really want? Seems like…
If you’re thinking about how to fix your business or ways you can improve it, then one thing I think can be really helpful is to find the spots in a conversation where you make yourself cringe a bit. Let me explain 😊 Suppose you decided to sell your business and as of tomorrow a…
The first job I ever had was as a paperboy – a position that doesn’t even exist anymore. I would deliver paper seven days a week and then once a month go around and collect as much as I could from the subscribers. I had a fixed amount I had to pay the paper, the…
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard a business owner wish for more time, I wouldn’t need to run my current business! I get it – it seems like there is never enough time in the day to do all the things you’d like to do and still have any kind of…
There are a ton of business books out there and new ones come out every year that try and teach you how to be better at business. Some are useful but many more are not especially helpful. But this is not going to be a reading suggestion list. You probably don’t have time to read…
Years ago, when we were much smaller, I used to tell myself the goal I wanted to reach was having 10 bookkeepers. I figured that if I had that many, then if I suddenly lost one to an illness, competitor, or whatever else, then I could redistribute the work among the remaining nine and it…