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…
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…
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…
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…
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 he took on over the past few months ended up way over budget or late. When I delved a little deeper into the problem, I realized that he…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…