Work Smarter Not Harder and Fast Track Your Business

  My definition of a successful business is a commercial profitable enterprise that can work without you. I want you to think about this. If you haven't written down your dreams or goals, most likely you are helping others to achieve theirs. This reminds me of the childhood story "Alice in Wonderland". Do you remember the point in the story where Alice came to the fork of the road and she didn't know which way to go? She looked up and up into the tree and she saw the Cheshire Cat. She then asked, "What road should I take?" The Cat replied, "Well, where exactly are you going?" Alice responded by saying, "I'm not sure." "Well, in that case, it doesn't really matter which road you take." Over my many years of coaching, I found that there are lots of businesses that are not exac tly clear on where they're going with their organization or with their businesses. They don't know what they are creating or are even aware ...

Everyone knows that creating a plan is going to help you become more efficient and more effective. If we know that having a plan is going to help us be more effective then why do most small business owners do not have a plan? Most of us we have at least a to-do list to make sure that we're going to get the most urgent tasks that we have to get done on that particular day. But unfortunately, the most important urgent tasks aren't necessarily the most important task. We're spending most of our time just really putting out fires rather than doing what's most important that's going to be moving us towards reaching our goals. What decides whether a task is important or not is our goals. If your goal is just to get through another day doing the most urgent task on your to-do list, that will just get you by. If your goal is to create a successful business or a commercial profitable enterprise that can work without you, then you have to have clarity of how you want it to...

  Do you and your leadership team find that you're overly busy putting out fires and gently running around and not getting to any of the strategic things that you really want to be working on? In this business tip, I'm going to guide you to understand how to set and execute your most important priorities. Senior Leadership Teams seem to always be super busy. Unfortunately, it's not on the strategic priorities. They're putting out fires and dealing with issues that pop up all day long so they are just being reactive instead of being proactive. In most cases, this is because we have not set clear priorities for our organization. I know what you are thinking. " We have priorities... we actually have tons of priorities". Well, let me be clear -- if everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. You might be just going too wide and not deep enough into the issues to gain momentum. In this tip, I want to guide you understand how to set clear priorities. First, sta...

  I keep hearing the same thing out there these days. From business owners and managers, it's all over the media. You might even be asking it yourself. It's really simple. I keep hearing it. It is “ I just can't get good people. " And you know what? You're probably right. The US Department of Labor reports that two out of three new hires proved to be a mistake within the first year, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars for each departing employee. Hiring mistakes negatively impact your productivity and erode your company's profits. If you can't find good people, what I'm going to suggest is let's change the question. “ How can I get THEM to find ME? ” Jim Collins, landmark study and book “Good to Great” states three things. He says: Good to Great Leaders Understood Three Simple Truths. (1) If you begin with WHO rather than WHAT, you can more easily adapt to this changing world. (2) If you have the right people on the bus, the problem of how to...

The last few years have been very crazy for entrepreneurs. Some were going out of business and are just keeping their heads above water while others are really truly thriving out there. Well, some of my clients are having some of their best years ever. So the business climate out there seems to be getting better, but we're not out of the woods yet. It seems like the government and the economist out there keep throwing that “R” word around… Recession , right? So why do some businesses thrive while others implode during these economic recessions? This remains puzzling to too many business owners and entrepreneurs out there. But I'm here to tell you that not all businesses have to suffer during a down business cycle. An overwhelming majority of my clients, as I mentioned, not only survived but thrived as well. In fact, one of my clients likes to introduce me by saying that " If it wasn't for Steve, we'd be out of business. " So what separates these successful b...

Stop Selling!... Build relationships! What makes a sales call a success or a failure? Are there really secrets to sales success? With today's economy, relationships count more than ever. Only the truly professional salespeople will survive in an unpredictable economy. If you look at your industry, there are probably enough people still wanting to buy your product or service to keep you busy all year long. Your challenge is, how do you increase your market share or "unfair share"? Sales are tougher to generate in a bad economy than in a good one. Nevertheless, why does it seem that some salespeople seem to do well in all types of environments? When the economy is good, it's relatively easy for even bad salespeople to make a living. In a good economy, often, salespeople make sales by just contacting a high volume of prospects without developing any relationships. There is so much "low-hanging fruit" out there that just about anyone can make a sale. So what is...

When we look back at our life growing up, it's filled with a lot of memories. The first day we went to Kindergarten and then Elementary School, the first day we went to High School, the first day we went to College or a Trade School, the first day we got our first job. But what is more important...those first days or our last days? Those last days are our milestones. Those were days we had celebrations and parties. The day we graduated Kindergarten, Middle School, High School, College, Graduate Schools. Those graduation days were milestones in our lives that we looked forward to, that we worked towards. Graduation is not an end of a journey but the beginning of a new one. But then something happened... Once our schooling and education ended, it seemed that our graduation days ended as well. I would like to suggest that it doesn't have to be that way. What if we could just insert new graduation days into our lives like when do you want to graduate from your business? I posed ...