In the silence of the night when everyone else has shut down and you are left with your decisions, that’s when you become an entrepreneur. Someone said to me once that to be an entrepreneur you have to have a spouse with a full-time job and while that anecdote is funny it’s also a bit sad. The very essence of an entrepreneur is a risk-taker, however unfair that risk is to the … [Read more...]
Buy and Get Out!
As entrepreneurs sometimes we get so preoccupied with making sales that we forget to take care of the customer. Sadly enough that seems to be the rule rather than the exception the bigger the company. I had one such experience with the vendor Verizon Wireless chose to insure their devices. My company moved to Verizon less than a month ago and as a consultant I get paid by the … [Read more...]
Marketing Your Company, Not You
As I stumble through this minefield of entrepreneurship, I have learned that there has to be a significant switch in your thinking. We start businesses for a variety of reasons, mostly because we are really good at something specific. What happens is that you quickly realize that you cannot be the person that runs the business and the person who does the work. There has to be … [Read more...]
Are you the reason you’re business is failing?
It has taken me 15 years, an MBA, starting my own firm, acquiring and firing partners and staff to understand one infinite business fact. Your gut is always right, no matter what situation no matter who the players. That knot in your stomach that tells you something isn’t right, never lies. So as I come out of a difficult situation I find that I am not doing something that I … [Read more...]
Business Advice for Dummies
As a business owner particularly when you are starting out, ‘constructive criticism’ is something that you get in spades. Some of the criticism is great, it tells you things about yourself and your company that you didn’t know. Other times it can feel like a direct attack, so how do you know the difference and how do you find the silver lining? Consider the source Sometimes … [Read more...]
For Love of the Game
This morning I had the privilege of attending an Executive Breakfast that focused on employee engagement and what that actually means. It was a timely discussion because I hear the phrase employee engagement in just about every explanation of what’s wrong with an organization. But what is it really? What does employee engagement mean and why is it important to your business? … [Read more...]
The Ties That Bind
In the past year I have found myself talking about partnership an awful lot. As one partnership crashed and burned this week and several other began, here is some advice I have learned. Understand your value When you are starting out I don’t care how much you think you know, you don’t know as much as someone with 10 years of experience on you. If you don’t have all of the … [Read more...]
The Rules of Engagement
In business, relationships are everything. It’s who you know that can help you get where you want to be and all that hard work will come to fruition on that magical moment when you meet the right person at the right time in the right place. Until that time the most meaningful relationship you can have is taking care of yourself as a CEO and here's how you do it. Reward … [Read more...]
Building Bridges
The worth of an entrepreneurs is in their ability to bring create solutions and to build relationships. What hinders small business is that we either don’t use our networks enough or we only use our networks. What small business is most guilty of is not networking because they could be doing something else. The thing is that having coffee or lunch with a contact is something … [Read more...]
How to Make Being a CEO Work for You
As an entrepreneur I can’t lie it seems like we have a lot of perks. We think that it’s great because we make our own schedules, we don’t have to answer to anybody and we can set our own fees but let’s be realistic here. The truth is we have none of those things. We do answer to someone, they are called clients and they determine if we will be around to answer to anyone else. … [Read more...]