6 Traps That Cause New Businesses to Fail
There are six common traps that founders and entrepreneurs unknowingly fall prey to during the early days of their new business. The first step to avoiding them is knowing that they exist.
Keeping Your Business in Top Form for the Long Haul
As humans, we grow up, reach our prime, and then walk the road of wisdom as a simple function of time. In other words, we grow old. However, businesses don't face the same sort of mandatory aging. Instead, your business can, in theory, stay in top form for as long as you'd like. Here's how you and your business can defy the laws of gravity for as long as you (and even your successors) would like!
Why We Know but Don’t Do
As a business consultant and coach, some of the most powerful and transformational moments I've experienced have been the simple act of telling a business leader or executive team something that they already know. Reflecting on this made me ask why we so often know the right thing, but fail to do it.
Do You Want to Struggle for Growth, Slow Your Growth, or Scale Your Growth?
How fast do you want to grow your business? As your business progresses through each stage of growth, you will need to strategically decide whether you are willing to make the changes necessary to keep growing.
Who is Better Than You?
I like to ask myself this simple question from time to time, “Who is better than you at something very meaningful to you?” It’s a great question. It highlights selfishness and pride quickly. It also improves my perspective instantly and keeps me from getting too big for my proverbial britches.
Five Ways to Take Your Leadership Team to the Next Level
If you are a Founder or CEO of a $1M+ business, you've probably come to recognize how important your senior leadership team is to your success. You can't do it on your own. You can't make all the decisions or manage all the people. You need strong leaders who can share the load.
Have You Lost Your Passion for Your Business?
Passion is the primary source of fuel for founders. It's what gets them through setback after setback in the early days. It keeps their unwarranted optimism afloat long enough for it to become warranted. But what happens when you, as the founder or even the CEO, lose your passion for your business?
Where Does Business Growth Come From, Incremental Gains or Quantum Leaps?
Where does growth come from, incremental gains, or quantum leaps? There are so many articles written on this question, and they come to virtually every single conclusion. I'd like to take a moment to try to explain why the answer is "YES" and what that means for your business.
What Do You Do When a Leader’s Role Outgrows Them?
The #1 reason founders (who want to take their business into Predictable Success) never make it there has nothing to do with the value of their product, the size of their market, or their capacity as a leader. In this article I’ll show you exactly what it is.
Is Your Org Chart a Joke? It May Be Costing You Dearly.
If your business growth was once booming but has since slowed, where do you think you should look first? Pricing? Nope. Costs? Nope. Marketing content? Nope. You may have problems in all three of these areas and probably have a lot of problems in other areas too.
The 3 Things That Are Guaranteed to Drive Your Culture
Culture is what you communicate, celebrate, and compensate. Culture is not your cleverly word-smithed statement or aspirational values or wall art or a well paying corporate job for your local screen printer. It is not some credo crafted at an offsite convention. Culture is much less glamorous and much more relevant than that.
4 Remarkably Simple Steps to Achieve Your Long Term Goals
Though spikes and disruptions will hit and the future is far from clear, many businesses would benefit from taking a step back to reassess not only their long-term goals but also the process by which we establish those goals. This is one of those areas that, if was as leaders are not intentional, we could end up suffering from a side-effect of COVID-19 for a very long time: a heightened emphasis on urgency.