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Most small business owners I know want to grow their business, but most don’t take the initiative to build the systems of their business. Your job is to build the system and let the system grow your business. Without a defined system, everything you do is haphazard. You are required … Read More

This post is a part of a series to help you define processes in your business Hopefully, at this point, you’ve started to glimpse the importance of creating systems in your business and you’ve decided to take ownership of overseeing the development of these systems. We are off to a … Read More

This post is a part of a series to help you define processes in your business In order to grow your business, you have to implement processes. These processes make sure your company can run without you. They allow you to scale. While we all want to scale our business, … Read More

I’ve written quite a bit on using leverage to grow your business. Leverage has a root word — lever. A lever is a simple machine that relies on a fulcrum to multiply input which increases output. One critical area you can use leverage in your business is in creating processes. … Read More

“Most people never pick up the phone. Most people never call and ask. And that’s what separates sometimes the people who do things from those who just dream about them. You gotta act. You gotta be willing to fail. You gotta be willing to crash and burn. With people on … Read More

As small business owners there is always going to be a percentage of tasks that we have to do that we really don’t want to do. But as I’ve aged in years, I’ve started to pay close attention to my energy levels. When I start craving substances like beer or … Read More

“Real Artists Ship”~ Steve Jobs I’ve written here and here and here about the benefits of limits. Learning to leverage limits in our business and life can lead to incredible results. We have a choice about what we believe. When we encounter limits, we can be frustrated about these constraints, … Read More

We all want more leads, and so marketing seems like where we should put our time. But marketing should be the byproduct of deep customer knowledge. I argue that this knowledge comes from having empathy for our customers. When we focus on marketing without first having a true understanding of … Read More

Effective Immediately!! No more typewriters are to be purchased, leased etc., etc. … We believe the typewriter is obsolete. Let’s prove it inside before we try and convince our customers. Michael Scott (Apple President in 1980) Computers are so common today that we forget that at one point, people used … Read More

I’ve heard it said that entrepreneurs work 80 hours for themself so they don’t have to work 40 for someone else. Why do we subject ourselves to this type of torture? Because we want to be in charge of our own destiny, to blaze a new trail. We are always … Read More

In my previous post, I highlighted a video from John Doer about attributes he looks for in leaders. The concept of mercenary vs missionary in business has had a tremendous impact on me over years. Partly because of my personality and upbringing, I have this desire to serve and make … Read More

I believe one of the most beneficial long-term strategies to grow your business is found in trying to serve your customers better. If you continue to get better at serving your customer over time you will continue to ensure that you are learning and growing, which is the key to … Read More

It was midnight and I was ready to give up. My son Caleb was in the 4th grade and was participating in his first science fair. As a parent, I was still naive about the time it takes to make your experiment a success. I mean you don’t want to … Read More

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it” – Warren Buffet After six months of hard coding, my team and I were at the end of a large software development project. I thought things were going great, but as it turned out the customer … Read More

strat·e·gy /ˈstradəjē/nouna plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim. Oxford’s English dictionary Strategy is a very important topic for small businesses. Oxford’s dictionary defines strategy as a plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim. There are a couple … Read More

It was 2008 and I was holding onto my business for dear life.  A few years earlier I had started selling websites and programming services.  We won some larger contracts so we took a risk and hired 3 employees and moved into a nice office space.   Then the recession hit … Read More

So far in our small business strategy, we have covered the various forms of intention planning. You have created your missional intent and then have set up your strategic intent by creating 12-month objectives. The next step was to create your implementation intent by establishing your leading activities that are … Read More

“Never mistake activity for results” John Wooden Business strategy overall is hard to apply in the context of small business. The key to making strategy work for you is all about intention planning, which when done right increases your likelihood of achieving your goals by 100%. The first step of … Read More

Most business strategy is developed within academia targeted towards large companies. While there can be some good knowledge you can glean from these resources, small business strategy really needs its own approach. The first step for you the owner is to develop a long-term perspective in the form of your … Read More

Sales, employees, profits, procurement, delivery. We all have a long to-do list of things we need to accomplish to make sure the wheels don’t come off. It is a tornado whirling around everything we do and sucking us into its vortex. This vortex is spinning everything and constantly twirling and … Read More

In an episode of Little House on the Prairie there was a particularly cold winter. The snow piled so high and visibility was so poor that Pa had to tether a rope between the house and the barn to make sure he didn’t get lost. This is what is it … Read More

When planning for the future of your business it is very easy to think through extremely abstract long-term goals. This type of strategic planning falls short because there is no way for you to predict the future. A good small business strategy must be very action-oriented and it must be … Read More

A couple of years ago, my wife and I started training for a marathon. We came across an old book from Jeff Gallaway that we used for our training program. Jeff says that the major reason people don’t finish a marathon isn’t because of lack of motivation, but because of … Read More

An intention plan is a specific strategy of what you will do, where you will do it, and when you will do it. There is research that shows that an intention plan like this can increase the likelihood of achieving a result by 2x. In a study on weight loss, … Read More

Think for a minute about the biggest issues you face in your business. Many of you would think about lack of sales, or a key hire that you need to make or maybe you are in a cash crunch. Each of these problems are real and pressing, but I would … Read More

ful·crum (noun) – The point on which a lever rests or is supported and on which it pivots. Oxford Dictionary For thousands of years, humans have learned to use simple machines to help them do more work. One of these types of machines is a lever. The key component that … Read More

As business owners seeking growth, we will hit points where progress slows down. It is easy to resort to working harder or to throw more capital at a problem to solve it. These are forms of leverage, but they are to be used only to scale what is already working, … Read More

A fulcrum is the point on which a lever rests or is supported and on which it pivots. As small business owners, we wear all sorts of different hats — technician, salesperson, operations manager, and accountant. The daily grind of all these roles is exhausting and leads most entrepreneurs to … Read More

It would be amazing if customers just called you and immediately wanted to buy your product or service. Unfortunately, that isn’t how things work. Before someone is willing to buy, they go through a customer journey. As the customer progresses through this journey, they have different needs and are asking … Read More

It would be amazing if customers just called you and immediately wanted to buy your product or service. Unfortunately, that isn’t how things work. Before someone is willing to buy, they go through a customer journey. As the customer progresses through this journey, they have different needs and are asking … Read More