Build a Business, Not a Job

Category: Small Business Help Topics

Reactivating Former Clients (a simple way to immediately boost your sales)

Dr. Kim had owned two successful dental clinics for over a decade by the time she became a business coaching client. Over the years competition had gotten stiffer, resulting in periods when one or both of her two clinics suffered low patient volume. Because there was no pattern to these ebbs and flows of patient […]

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7 Business Partnership Lessons Every Entrepreneur Must Master

Are you thinking about staring a business partnership? Or formalizing a strategic relationship? Here are seven of the most critical lessons to consider before you finalize the deal. Lesson One: Only bring on a formal partner if that is the only way you can gain the talent, resources, or other element from your prospective partner. […]

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Business Advice: The Top 20 Financial Controls to Protect Your Company from Fraud, Theft, and Embezzlement

In my last article I shared some business advice with our readers. Three time-tested, broad-stroke strategies to protect your company from fraud and embezzlement. Let’s dive deeper into the nitty-gritty details of financial controls. Here are the top 20 financial controls to safeguard your company and protect your bottom line. I’ve divided these powerful suggestions […]

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3 Time-Tested Strategies to Protect Your Company from Fraud and Embezzlement

Karl (not his real name) ran a successful medical group specializing in elder care in the Midwest. Smart and hardworking, Karl was like a lot of small business owners we know. He was focused on the operational side of his business, in his case the practice of medicine, and didn’t pay close attention to the […]

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Email Productivity: Tame Your Inbox with This Simple Technique

What if there was a simple email productivity technique that helped you process your email faster, saving you 30 minutes or more every day? What would that mean for you, reclaiming control of your inbox and freeing up several hours each week? First, let’s be clear, email is a massive problem. In a recent survey […]

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What’s Your Biggest Time Waster at Work (And How to Increase Productivity)

How to Increase Productivity What’s Your Biggest Time Waster at Work? What is your biggest productivity killer at work? Is it: A. Phone calls? B. Meetings? C. Email? D. Staff interruptions? If you are anything like the 353 U.S. business owners my company Maui Mastermind surveyed you’re likely answer is “email” (57%), followed by either […]

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Strategic Planning: 8 Powerful Ideas to Start Your Year Off Right

Leading your company is never easy. A key function is for you to craft a clear strategy and map for the coming year. Here are my top 7 strategic planning suggestions to help you start your year off in the most powerful and profitable way possible. 1. Clarify the business you are trying to build. […]

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6 Simple Tips to Effectively Cover Your Backside

In my last article on the power of your written trail to protect yourself and your company I shared the two key “filters” you need to pass your written paper trail through. I want to share more details on the nuts and bolts of documenting your business deals and relationships so that you see it […]

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The Power of the Written Trail: The 2 Key Filters You Must Write for When You’re Documenting Your Files

I wanted to follow up on an earlier article on the ten stupidest things business people do that get them sued with a simple practice that will help keep you safer – documenting your files. In the old world this often meant crafting “cover yourself” memos for your physical files, but in today’s world this […]

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What’s Your Biggest Time Waster at Work (and what to do about it)

In a recent survey of 353 business owners in the United States, my company Maui Mastermind asked them, “What is your single biggest time waster and interrupter in your business life?” The results were clear, email came out the single biggest time waster and interruption by a factor of three to one. 57 percent of […]

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Strategic Planning: 4 tips and 37 Questions to Start Your Year Off Right

I was talking with Jim, owner of a $50 million per year boutique private equity company that we coach about the coming year. As we clarified the most important initiatives and goals for his company this year what became clear to me was that every company needed to go through this same clarifying and focusing […]

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A Simple Insight to Help You Be a Better Manager

Are you a “micromanager”? An “abdicator”? Learn how to spot your management style and how to help your team produce more.

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Optimizing Your Gateway Funnel

Here’s a simple yet powerful strategy to create a compelling process to lead greater numbers of prospective customers into deeper, richer relationships with your company.

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The 10 Most Essential Sales and Marketing Controls

If you’ve ever felt yourself scrambling to oversee your sales or marketing efforts and team, here are 10 must have “controls” to put you back in the driver’s seat…

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The Six Direct Response Marketing Secrets Every Marketer Must Know

Here is a short list of time-tested, market-validated marketing principles you must know to effectively grow your company…

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7 Tactics to Guaranteed to Increase Your Conversion Rate

Follow these 7 simple sales strategies and increase your company’s closing rate…

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Business Coach Tip: 7 Simple Steps to Escape the Competency Trap and Free Up Your Time

Here is a simple 7-step game plan to escape the Competency Trap and build an organization that is stronger, more scalable, and less reliant on you…

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5 Concrete Sales Strategies to Immediately Increase Conversion

Here are 5 concrete strategies guaranteed to give you an immediate boost to your income. 1. Up Front Agreement An up front agreement is a formal or informal oral contract that you and your prospect both agree in which you both agree to give each other a clear decision – yes or no – whether […]

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Ask The Business Coach: 10 Techniques to Combat Customer Attrition

Here are 10 tips to retain more of the customers you bring in so that you can increase your profitability.

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7 Tips to Lower Your Outstanding Receivables and Collect More of What You’re Owed!

Charlene (name changed) was an attorney with a sterling reputation as a business attorney in Chicago. She was also struggling with cash flow challenges, which is what had prompted her to hire my company as her business coach. It was Charlene, one associate attorney, and one paralegal, and collectively they were billing roughly $600,000 per […]

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What’s Your Exit Strategy?

Which of these three exit strategies is right for you and your company? Tom had spent years working 80-hour weeks to grow his company. It started as an innocent hobby, just buying and selling used electronic parts online out of his house. He loved the challenge of finding a pallet of used parts at a […]

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22 Simple Tactics to Increase Profitability

We all have our reasons why we started the companies we did. For some it was a higher social purpose, for others it was the challenge of creating something new, and for you it might have been a different reason altogether. One thing we all have in common is the need for our companies to […]

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8 Sales Controls to Protect Your Company as You Scale

Wayne, a business coaching of my company, complained about how much time his sales team took for him to manage each week. “David,” he lamented, “They just do the craziest things. They make prices concessions when they don’t have to. They promise our customers unrealistic delivery dates. They even make up things to say about […]

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Coherence – A Secret Ingredient to Aligning Goals, Priorities, Actions, and Attention

What if there was a magic concept that you could employ that would powerfully align your company’s goals, priorities, actions, and culture? In other words, your company would invest its best resources in alignment with its top goals. And each of your team would act daily in accordance with these priorities, letting these priorities and […]

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The False Dilemma – Control or Chaos

Cheryl, a business coaching client, ran a $1.5 million per year glass company. She worked hard, typically 70 hours a week, and she was scared to death to empower her team to “own” functions and responsibilities within the business. “David,” she said, “I’ve tried that before. I delegated to my team and asked them to […]

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Creating Your “Strategic Structure” to Make Smart Choices and Execute to Get Results

How do you consistently get your company to invest its time, talent, attention, and money on the right things in the face of so many demands and urgencies crying out for its resources? You lean heavily on the strategic structure you’ve built for your company. At its most basic form, your strategic structure is how […]

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Financial Pop Quiz: Do You Have the Financial Savvy to Run Your Company (Take this short quiz and find out)

Here is a simple 10-question quiz to see if you have the financial savvy to effectively run your company.

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5 Sales Secrets for Companies Who Are Scared of Sales

Here are five of the most important sales fundamentals for your company especially if your company is a little “sales phobic”.

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Gross Profit Margin: The Secret Financial Indicator Most Business Owners Ignore

It gives you deep insight to pricing… to production costs… and to profitability… and 9 out of 10 business owners don’t understand it and how to use it…

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5 Sure-Fire Ways to Increase Your Profitability

Here is a quick-list of my 5 favorite ways to increase your company’s profitability.

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The 5 Integrity Habits

Here are the 5 most essential habits every business leader must cultivate to inspire and positively impact his or her team. How do you stack up…

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How “Tomorrow” Is Costing Your Business (and 5 ways to get started now)

If you’ve ever put off doing what you know is the right decision or strategy to grow your company, here’s what really was going on (and 5 tips to deal with it.)

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You DO Have the Time

You’re already working enough hours; you just need to carve out a small percentage of them to invest in higher order activities to help you scale your company.

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Feed Your Winners; Starve Your Losers

Gain an immediate boost to your cash flow by deliberately redirecting your time, attention, and money from your lowest producing marketing to your best tactics. Here’s how…

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The First Step to Making the Time to Scale Your Business

If you feel overwhelmed and at a loss for making the time to grow your business, start here.

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The Secret Ingredient to Making the Right Strategic Decision

When you have everything on the line your key strategic decisions matter greatly. Learn the secret ingredient to making the right strategic call in your company.

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8 Ways to Upgrade Your Business Peer Group

The myth of the “lone wolf” entrepreneur is simply just that – a myth. The top business people all have a powerful peer group to help them success. Here’s how to form yours…

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6 Tips to Manage Business and Reduce Your Costs

Here are six simple tips to better manage your company’s expenses and increase your bottom line.

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5 Simple Ways to Increase Profit Margin

Too many companies only focus on top of line growth. Savvy business owners know that often the easiest path to growth their profits is to focus on their margins. Here are 5 concrete ways to improve your margins and earn more money.

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6 Clues Your Pricing May Be Too Low

Too many companies charge far too little for their products and services. Here are 6 clues that you need to take a deeper strategic look at your pricing.

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6 Tips to Make Smarter Strategic Business Financial Decisions When Scaling Your Company

One of the highest leverage places to focus your time as a business owner is on the big picture strategic decisions you make. Here are 6 tips to make smarter strategic financial decisions to help you scale smarter.

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7 Ways to Use Your Vendors to Finance Your Growth

Growth always sucks up cash. Here are 7 little-known strategies to leverage your vendors to fund your growth.

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5 Ways to Collect More of What You’re Owed

Here are 5 tips to tighten your collections system so that you collect more of what you are owed.

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8 Strategies to Make Your Cash Flow More Predictable and Consistent

Ever felt the anxiety of not knowing what your income or expenses would be from month to month? Here are 8 strategies to make your cash flow more predictable and consistent.

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Why Women Make Better Business Owners than Men (and the most costly pitfall that holds female entrepreneurs back)

Ever wonder why women owned businesses are 1.7 times more productive than male owned businesses? Here are 3 reasons why women make better business owners than men.

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Your HR Scorecard: Grading Your HR Pillar on the 9 Most Important Variables

If your team is your top resource, then systematically scoring your HR function on these nine essential variables is a must.

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A Simple 9-Variable Scorecard to Rate Your Company’s Sales and Marketing Pillar

Check out this simple scorecard to grade your Sales/Marketing Pillar on the 9 essential variables.

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A Simple 10-Item Scorecard to Rate Your Company’s Finance Pillar

Check out this simple scorecard to help you incrementally improve your company’s Finance Pillar so you have a stable base upon which to scale.

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5 Ways to Get Your Non-Sales Staff Selling for Your Business

Your non-sales staff is likely scared and unsure of how they can help sell. Here are 6 simple ways to get your non-sales staff adding to your company’s revenues.

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The Best Place to Find More Time

To create more time you don’t need to work nights or weekends. Here is the best place to find more time…

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Top 6 Apps for Business Owners (and how to leverage them to save you time)

Here is a short list of my top 6 apps and how I use them to better run my business.

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The Biggest Mistake Most Entrepreneurs Make when Implementing Business Controls

Ever wondered why you’re trapped working for your business? Here is the single greatest reason why most entrepreneurs fail when they try to let go of control.

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5 Biggest Management Mistakes

Here are the 5 biggest management mistakes and how you can avoid making them. We’ve all seen it, the business leader who hovers over his or her direct reports smothering them with a real time barrage of corrections and “suggestions.”  The result is a frustrated and impotent team who grow to become dependent on that […]

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8 Tips to Control Your Staffing Costs

8 concrete suggestions to control what for most companies is their largest expense – their staff costs.

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What You’re Facing as Business Owner – The “Stats”

Here are the core stats on the real challenge facing business owners today – how to get growth without sacrificing your life to do it.

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Using Strategic Expenses to Enhance Your Cash Flow

Here’s a simple distinction to help you make smarter spending decisions to better scale your company.

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David’s Interview on Entrepreneur’s M&A Journal

David and Jim talk about David’s book Scale. We get a glimpse into the book as David shares nuggets of information to help people position their company to be more valuable and more marketable.

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The 3 Biggest Excuses that Keep Business Owners Stuck

Which of these three common excuses are holding you back and trapping your company in the owner-reliance trap?

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The True Secret to Getting More Done in Less Time

What are your distinctions around time? Here is a breakthrough new tool to help you see time and your use of time in a wholly new way. We call it the Time Value Matrix…

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The 5 Most Costly Hiring Mistakes (which of them are you guilty of making?)

Which of these 5 expensive mistakes is hurting your company’s growth? Read through this concise list and evaluate your company’s hiring practices.

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