The Small Business Health Check
Quarterly Tasks Every Owner Should Have on Autopilot Running a small business means living in the trenches. Folks like me love to espouse the need to work “on your businesses”
Ideas Worth Stealing
The Lean Marketing Machine: 7 Hacks to Grow Your Small Business Fast
Running a small business means you’re constantly balancing ambition with reality. Your marketing budget is tight, but your creativity abounds. The truth is, you don’t need a massive team or
Referrals Are Great – But Not a Growth Strategy
Why Relying on Word-of-Mouth Will Eventually Let You Down You’re doing great work, clients are happy, and then—bingo!—an email from a promising prospect pops into your inbox with the mellifluous
The Surprising Power of Strategic Inaction
Doing nothing may be the best move you can make? Most Problems Solve ThemselvesIt might sound lazy, but it’s based on experience. I first discovered this during the busiest period
Slippery When Greased: Making Business Flow Effortlessly
It’s no surprise, given where I spent a good deal of my career, that my go-to perspective is that of the salesperson. Even when in senior management, I spent a
Trust Your Gut
When Intuition Pays Off—and the Crowd Finally Catches Up More than once in my career, I’ve found myself the lone voice questioning what appeared to be the conventional industry wisdom.
Systems Thinking for Small Biz: The Case for SOPs
The Hidden Cost of Flying Blind I have a friend/client who owns a manufacturing business. By all appearances, this place really did run like a Swiss watch. She had a
Why The Owner Must Review Every Hire
New Hires: The Most Important Decisions You’ll Make Every small business owner has a story about the one hire they wish they could do over. Turns out the person had
Stretch Goals Shouldn’t Snap: The Art of Setting Performance Targets
In its heyday between the 1950s and the 1980s, IBM was widely admired for its disciplined sales culture. Their salesforce was rigorously trained, methodical, and relentlessly focused on results. It
Systems Turn Goals From Dreams Into Reality
Goals are OK. But systems rule. I wish I could lay claim to this concept, and I’m not sure who first came up with it, but I first caught wind
The Columbo: A Veteran Sales Tactic You Can Use Anywhere
The $10 Million Question I Almost Didn’t Ask We’d worked with a multinational retailer for years but had only ever landed a few crumbs of their telecom budget. The principal
Contractor vs Employee
Getting It Right in the Eyes of the CRA (and Your Wallet) When I was still in the corporate world, my employer had a number of individuals that we determined