I recently met with one of my coaching clients who had just landed a huge sale. We took a little bit of time to recognize and celebrate the victory, and talked about what that sale (and future renewals) would mean for their business as a whole. My coaching client was of course on cloud nine the entire coaching session, and […]
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In a previous article, I shared with you four situations in which you should never use email, and we got a lot of great comments. So today I want to share with you five times that you should use email instead of an alternative. Because in today’s fast-paced remote workplace, there is still a time and a […]
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The perfect assistant will be able to read your mind. They will complete each task laid before them with precision, and always get them done well before the deadline. They will bring you coffee, just like you like it, and will screen all your calls and emails, giving you back hours and hours of your […]
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If you are like most of us, your e-mail inbox is a huge source of distraction and frustration. It’s a bottomless pit that constantly pulls you away from the high-value tasks you should be doing on your business. And, unfortunately, it isn’t going away anytime soon. A few years back my workplace did a survey of small-business […]
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It’s really easy to be a business leader when business is booming, but it’s a whole other thing to lead your team when your business is in crisis. That said, here’s a technique that I have taught thousands of business owners over the past 25 years to get their business out of a rut and […]
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For many small-business owners, sales is one of the toughest areas to master. This is especially true if you sell a high-ticket item that requires a significant time or financial investment on the part of your customers. That said, I want to share with you some of the most common sales objections and how I teach clients […]
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Ever since I was a young boy, I’ve been a sucker for a good to-do list. There is something so satisfying about writing down all the tasks that I plan to do for the day and then marking them off one by one as I complete them. But, if you are like most business owners, that […]
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As a business coach for more than 25 years, I have seen and heard it all. One of the most common things I come across is new leaders who have an unrealistic idea on how to set goals for their business. The majority of them overestimate what their teams or themselves as leaders will be […]
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Right now, a lot of business owners are struggling to find and keep good talent, and if you are in the market for a new salesperson, you may be looking for a way to stand out from the competition. One way to do so is to rethink your sales compensation plan to make your business […]
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I can’t tell you how many times I hear “everything would be better if I just had more sales” from business owners. Business is slower than they would like, and it brings them to the lead generation side of things. If you want to narrow down the problem in your lead generation process, it is […]
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When it comes to building your business, having a consistent flow of new customers is perhaps one of the most difficult things to achieve. Especially if you don’t have a sales and marketing background. That said, I want to share with you the top four selling strategies that I share with my clients who are small […]
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Being a good leader is a never ending journey of self-discovery. It doesn’t matter if you have been in business for a year or 20, there is always something to improve and work toward. As a business coach for the past 25 years, I have met thousands of leaders across various industries, and I want to […]
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You did all the right things. You put together a nice-looking website, you have great-looking photos, and you wrote clean sales copy. Still, your sales conversions aren’t where you would like them to be. Sound familiar? Many business owners struggle with this same issue. While there are several things that you can do to improve your […]
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When was the last time you celebrated a business win? Now, I don’t mean jotting it down in your notebook each time you meet one of your goals and then moving onto the next task. I mean really taking a moment to stop and take it in. Taking time out of your schedule to celebrate […]
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What’s the right pattern or frequency to get business training? I get this one a lot from business owners. Some think that if a little leadership training is good, a lot of leadership training is better. But usually, that’s not the case. So, today I wanted to talk about how often you should realistically be […]
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How did you decide on your primary client base? The answer to this may be key to success for your business — or the cause of its downfall. As a business coach for over 20 years, I am in the unique position of working with thousands of business owners each and every year. Every business […]
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When it comes to prioritizing tasks and staying productive, Mark Twain once said, “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.” That sounds like pretty good advice, and […]
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Shaping your company culture is one of the most important things you can do as a business owner. It is the invisible guiding hand that could make the difference between you reaching your goals or missing the mark. And for many business owners, they struggle with the company culture that they envision in their head, versus the […]
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It’s Friday afternoon and you are about to call it a day. You open up your project management software (or paper planner if you are old school) and you review your task list for the week. Despite your best efforts, and working overtime almost every single day, you still only managed to get about half the […]
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Every year, I talk to thousands of business owners across the country in various industries. Their pain points and problems may vary greatly, but there is one thing they have in common: a lack of accountability. The majority of business owners don’t have a formal process to hold themselves and their team accountable, and it limits […]
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Being a leader is stressful. There is a lot weighing on your shoulders, and this year particularly has been a rough one for so many of us. We have been faced with some new challenges, and even the most calm and collected among us are bound to experience some anxiety. This is normal. Your stress is […]
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“Hello, I am currently out of the office, returning Friday, the 13th. If you need immediate assistance, please contact … “ We have all used auto-reply messages or auto-responders at one point or another. And with the majority of us still working from home, I see them more often than ever before. In the past, I […]
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A few weeks back, we talked about some key things you should think about before promoting someone to your executive team. Today, I wanted to expand on that concept and add one more: emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is someone’s ability to identify and manage their own emotions, as well as the emotions of others. Which, […]
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As a business coach, I have talked to thousands of business owners across all industries over the last few months of this pandemic. Many of you have risen to the occasion and found innovative ways to serve your customers and your employees, while others, understandably, are struggling to settle into this new normal. One thing […]
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Webinars are a great way to connect with your customers, teach, and sell your services. And given the current travel restrictions, being able to host a webinar and do it well has become crucial to the success of businesses no matter what the industry. I don’t claim to be an expert in the webinar space, […]
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For many of us, working remotely is now the new normal. Your team has been doing it for a few months now and you likely have discovered a few issues or areas where your communication channels break down. In my 25 years of experience working remotely and helping others do the same, most businesses fall […]
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We are all spending a lot more time on Zoom calls these days and as such, I have seen a lot of conference call faux pas. Here at Maui Mastermind, we have been working virtually for over 10 years so while we may be pros, it’s understandable that for many this is a completely new […]
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Marketing in times of crisis can be a difficult thing for business owners. On the one hand, you have the urge to retreat and cut nonessential spending to protect your bottom line. But those cuts can end up hurting your business in the long run, which is why it’s crucial to learn how to mitigate […]
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There is nothing I love more than a good strategic plan. A carefully considered quarterly or yearly action plan can really help propel your business forward and put you on the path for success. But even the most dedicated business owners have only 24 hours in a day to get it all done. But the really successful […]
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As a business owner, your plate is already really full. Your to-do list is several pages long, and your calendar is full of meetings and phone calls. Throw in a few fire drills throughout the day, and it’s a wonder that you get anything accomplished. It’s no surprise, when I bring up productivity with my […]
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Being a business owner is never an easy job, but if you add on the past few years of stress, the vast majority of us are overwhelmed. There are so many things on our plate, and it just keeps piling up. As a business coach, I work with leaders every day to help them feel […]
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As a business coach for more than 25 years, I get the unique opportunity of talking to thousands of business owners every year. I get to hear what is working for them and what isn’t, and over time you start noticing patterns that can help predict whether someone’s business is on the right track for […]
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I have seen the scenario play out a thousand times before: Your to-do list is pages long and your email box is overflowing, yet you keep finding yourself being pulled into YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. You know deep down that you should be working on more important things, and that time is in short […]
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Finding yourself short staffed right now? You’re not alone. Millions of business owners across the country are struggling to keep their businesses running while dealing with a large number of call outs from their staff. While this certainly makes business more difficult, there is something that you can start doing right now that will ease […]
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It’s hiring season, and for many of us that means that it’s time to look for a few new employees. You have the budget ready, and the job descriptions have been carefully crafted and you are ready to start making offers. But before you do that, I want you to take a pause and look […]
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This past year, we leaders learned how to grow and scale our businesses during some really difficult challenges. We struggled with supply issues and we dealt with long lead times and increased prices. Most of all, we learned just how difficult hiring and retaining good talent can be. I have spoken with many business owners over this past […]
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I was recently talking to a business owner who was struggling to meet his project deadlines. No matter how hard he tried, it seemed like every project that he took on over the past few months has ended up way over budget or late. When I delved a little deeper into the problem, I realized […]
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If you have a service business, the chances are very high that you are losing money to scope creep. What is scope creep you ask? It’s when a project starts off with a defined set of parameters, and by the end of the project it has morphed into something completely different. Often costing you a […]
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Running a business can be really challenging, and managing a team of employees is perhaps one of the more difficult aspects of the job. Not only do you have your team with widely different personalities, learning styles and strengths and weaknesses to contend with but you have your own management style and tendencies that can […]
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Negotiation is one of those things that a lot of business owners struggle with. And it’s also one of the most often used skills in a business owner’s arsenal, whether it is negotiating salary and benefits for your new key team member, trying to get better pricing or terms with one of your vendors, or […]
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I was recently talking to a business owner who has really been struggling to get ahead. They have been working 80-plus hours a week and burning the candle at both ends. They weren’t sleeping, they barely saw their family, and, as time progressed, they appeared to make even less progress each week than they did […]
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As a business coach for more than 25 years, I have heard a lot of business advice from leaders and other business coaches in the industry. And much of it, while it may seem well intentioned, is actually pretty bad advice. And there are a few pieces of it that I have heard over and […]
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There is no shortage of business owners with dreams of growing and scaling their businesses. Almost every owner I talk to has a vision of what the future of their business should look like, whether that is growing to a point where they make a significant amount of money on their exit, or maybe they […]
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I was recently talking with a new business coaching client who has struggled to scale their marketing efforts over the past few years. They have had some big wins and some losses, but for the most part they have remained rather stagnant. And they weren’t really sure what steps they should take to get to […]
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As a business coach, I talk to thousands of leaders every year. Great business owners who have built and scaled businesses to serve their industry and their customers. Yet almost everyone I talk to wishes that they could be a better leader in some aspect. Whether that means being able to coach and support their team members, […]
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As a leader, accountability (or lack thereof) can have a huge impact on how you grow and scale your business. It is one thing to plan for growth each quarter and lay out the steps needed to complete a certain task or project, but it requires a completely different skill set to take those steps […]
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When I hear something along the lines of “I have decided to promote Linda to our executive team. She has been with us for over two years and I feel it is time” from a business owner, I immediately follow up with a series of questions. Mainly, it’s to find out if they have thought through the […]
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As a business owner, there are a lot of tasks or projects that need to get done to grow your business that don’t require a full-time employee. Especially when it comes to things like graphic design, technology help, and maybe even some sales and marketing projects. So for many, it makes a lot of sense […]
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As business owners, the world as we know it is rapidly changing and evolving. Every day we are confronted with new information, regulations, and choices. How we handle those choices, and how we mitigate risk during this time will be the difference between success and failure during this coronavirus crisis. One of the big things […]
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Hiring is tough. Depending on the position in question, you often have a lot of competition and time constraints to deal with coupled with an already ever growing to-do list. In the past month we have talked a lot about how to streamline the hiring process and narrow down your candidate pool. But today I […]
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“What are your summer plans?” Every June, I pose this very question to my business coaching clients. And about 65% of them go on to tell me about the trips that they have planned, the cruises they have booked and the weeks or months that they plan to step away from their business and spend […]
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Chances are you’ll receive a new email, text, or instant message before you’ve finished reading this article. Your phone will buzz or your computer will ding or your watch will vibrate. Probably all three. Will you check your email or stick with this article? In our work coaching thousands of business owners, we’ve found that […]
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Years ago one of my business mentors Roy shared with me on a rafting trip how time away from his business was one of the key tactics that helped him scale it. Over the past 20 years as an entrepreneur scaling companies has taught me that a business owner can cast a pretty big shadow […]
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For several years now, I have shared some of my favorite growth and leadership tools with our Inc. readers. Things like the 1-page action plan. Tools that can help you gain focus and clarity on the things that make the most difference in your business and help you grow even faster. Today, I wanted to […]
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Recently I was working on a tool to help our coaching team internalize the best practices we’ve developed to handle the most common business challenges. While the document I eventually created dealt with 12 key challenges, here is a summary of four that I’ve observed are most common to small businesses we coach ($1-25 million […]
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When it comes to drop points in your funnel, it’s important to know that many of your biggest drop points happen before you even know your customer’s name. For the majority of businesses, having a 50%+ drop rate on key pages isn’t uncommon and they can go as high as 60-70% if you aren’t taking an active role […]
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Now I might be dating myself by saying this, but I remember a time where telephones were used exclusively for making phone calls. I know that time has passed. And I laugh now when I see my wife spend 90% of her phone battery texting or using various apps and not actually talking on the […]
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In a world that is going further and further along the technological spectrum, there are some low-tech things that once upon a time would be considered “old-school” but have now become the new “cool thing.” Think about music. It used to be that people would always want digital, that was the cutting edge. Now there’s […]
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I’d say most business owners spend about 45 hours finding and hiring a new staff member. And it often takes another 40-some hours to onboard and train that individual, depending on their position and responsibilities. Which means that each new team member could take up to two weeks to get fully trained. And unfortunately for many business […]
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As a business coach, it’s my job to hold business owners accountable. Every day I talk with leaders who have aspirations to scale and grow their businesses, and we work together to get their businesses to the next level. At the end of each session, we part with a list of action steps that the business owner can […]
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