Several times a year, we offer public seminars for small business owners ready and willing to work strategically on their business in a supportive environment here in the Sonoma wine country. I have been involved with these events the last few years and am consistently inspired by the entrepreneurs I meet. Their d...
More than a slogan The ubiquitous business slogan, or tagline, is familiar to everyone. From Nike’s “Just Do It.” to the classic “got milk?” of the California Milk Processor Board, we all carry these phrases around in our heads along with commercial jingles and corporate logos. But the USP (Unique Selling Proposit...
Time is just another word for life. —Michael Gerber As an entrepreneur, your time is your most valuable resource. But even with your best intentions and the latest productivity tools, it’s easy to end the day feeling like you didn’t get to what really matters. You’re not alone.
Fred Wittenburg spent over three decades running a successful—yet disorganized—business. When he had the opportunity to pass that business down to his daughter, Fred knew he couldn’t do it without first creating a structure to ensure the business lasted as he envisioned it would. Working with their EMyth Coach, fa...
My father was a diplomat and as a young boy I always thought I wanted to be a diplomat like him. But my mom, who had a clothing and textile business (which she started in 1971) always pushed me to work with her. In 1985 she finally won out and during my last year in university I decided to join her in her business...
I had been in the copy business for 18 years. My husband was in sales in the same industry for 10. I was looking for a new challenge, and we decided it was the right time to do this for ourselves. We named it after the place we enjoyed our honeymoon, and it has become much more than a name. Every year we take a fe...
Think about your own responses to the advertising and promotions you receive. Much of it probably goes right past you, deflected instinctively and even unconsciously by your Ad Filtering System. Yet some messages resonate with you. They connect somehow, in ways that you're not even aware of, and you respond to the...
What’s more important to you? A one-time purchase, or a customer with a long-term relationship with your business? Customers-for-life is the strategy and the hope behind all great brands.
We define business frustrations as a series of specific recurring events in your business over which you feel you have little or no control.
Almost every business owner wants more leads for their business. In fact, for many owners the need for a constant inflow of qualified leads often dominates their thinking. There are, however, many challenges to ensuring and maintaining that supply. And, in addition to the needs of today, growth objectives and prof...
The first step in any successful endeavor is defining what a win will look like once the project is complete. When an artist begins a painting, he typically has a vision in his mind of what the painting will look like when it is finished. When a football team takes the field, they know the definition of success—a ...
Hiring new employees is always challenging; but recruiting and hiring salespeople is even more challenging. The process is rife with great rewards along with potential pitfalls. What follows is both an introduction to the process involved in hiring high performing sales staff, but also a leaping off point for you ...
Lewis and Clark, Sears and Roebuck, Hewlett-Packard, the Wright Brothers. What do these names all have in common? Aside from being almost universally recognized, they were also incredibly successful partners. Despite the seeming preponderance of advice on the challenges and pitfalls of having a business partner, t...
If you want something done correctly, you’ve got to do it yourself, right? That’s a wonderful philosophy if you want to create a lot of work for yourself. But if you want to create a business that works for you, you can’t do it alone. You’ve got to enable other people to do at least some of that work—and you’ve go...
Owning and operating a business isn’t something you take lightly. It requires a huge leap of faith. It’s exciting to live your entrepreneurial dream but it's also innately scary because there's no guarantee you'll succeed.
I am a family physician in Old Saybrook, CT. After being in a group of four doctors for twenty-five years who had no desire or ability to deal with the business side of the practice, the practice dissolved. This required that we had to capitalize the dissolution with our families money. After 25 years of hard work...
In 1995, I was 24 years old and I had the opportunity to buy a martial arts school from the Master I was originally training with. The school was a year old when I took it over, and at the time the monthly revenue was about the same as the rent so I quickly realized that I needed to institute some things that woul...