When customers like — or better yet — love your business, they give you their patronage and share their glowing recommendations. Business owners who want to create enterprises that survive challenging times and thrive in easy times should endeavor to create raving fans of their customers. Over the past two plus years, I’ve encountered business […]
Business leaders intent on moving their companies to ever higher levels of efficiency, effectiveness, profitability and success constantly look for ways to improve operations. This requires a discerning awareness of what is — and isn’t — working. There’s a potential pitfall, though, if leaders focus only on what they perceive as wrong. While this approach […]
Change is a reality in business whether we want it or not. Business environments and economies change. Team dynamics changes. Technology changes rapidly. Life in general is about change. If we resist change, we limit the potential of all that’s available to us professionally and personally. Many people resist change because they must change as […]
How often are you so excited about your business you can’t wait to start the day? How often does just the opposite occur and you dread even the thought of going to work? Are you inspired and energized by your business or burdened by what feels more like drudgery? Be honest here. When you love […]
As I reflect on my youngest daughter’s graduation from high school, I remember the excitement in the eyes of the 240 young people dressed in their caps and gowns. No doubt, some were ready for school to be over. But others were looking forward to the next chapters of their educations. Whichever path these young […]
One of the biggest challenges business owners face in building a team of top performers is a lack of credible and unbiased information. What you don’t know really limits your ability to hire, place, manage and develop the team members who contribute to your success. Are you looking for a way to hire correctly the […]
There’s a commonly held belief business success is the result of selling as many products or services as possible to as many customers as possible at the highest prices possible while paying the lowest wages and material costs possible to make as much money as possible. This is a limiting perspective of success that, when […]
Exceptional companies stand out in the hearts and minds of their customers by delivering high-quality services on a consistent basis. Consider your recent experiences as a customer. Out of your last 10 experiences, how many companies stood out as exceptional? How many were mediocre? And how many were downright poor? Most likely, the majority of […]
Tremendous time, energy and effort go into running a business. With everything there is to do, it’s easy for those who own a business to sacrifice many — if not all — aspects of their personal lives in the pursuit of success. Your business is only one aspect of your life. You also have important […]
Trust encourages loyalty in team members: If you have my back, I’ll have yours. Anytime trust between you and a team member is broken, any loyalty that existed is damaged. Once seriously damaged, it can be a lengthy process to rebuild trust. It could be impossible. If you’ve been in business for any length of […]