You may have heard this statement before — “luck is when preparation meets opportunity.” Profound. These six words offer incredible clarity about a complex question — “how can we create luck in our businesses?” Like many, I use this time of the year to reflect on how things have gone over the past year and make new, bigger plans for [...]
If you are like many business owners, this time of year is a mixed bag of regrets over what you didn’t accomplish during 2009 and renewed energy to make 2010 your best year ever. In your dark moments, do you feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day…doomed to live the same day, with the same [...]
“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter” is a quotation from T.S. Eliot. I agree that it is hard to boil down big ideas and concepts into brief statements. But the process is so valuable. Not only that, the output is exponentially more valuable the shorter it gets. You can’t [...]
Isn’t funny that so many powerful tools boil down to just a few simple concepts. I am constantly reading books on business, leadership, self-improvement and the like. At least for me, the most profound insights are the ones that make you go “duh — why didn’t I think of that?” It may sound backwards, but [...]
I get some “pushback” on this point — the idea that setting your marketing strategy should come a whole lot earlier than “step 3.” Some of it is symantics — of course establishing a Vision for your business 1 year and 5 years down the road is a fundamental step in refining your existing business [...]
The simple question I help my clients tackle is “How do I grow my business?” That’s a pretty big question though, you have to admit. It’s a big question because making a REAL change can set you on a completely different path. Don’t fall into the trap of just working harder! Any problem or challenge is [...]
I was privileged to attend a leadership summit here in Danville, CA over the weekend that drew about 1,500 people from Northern California and beyond. The event was put on by a local job-seeker networking group, but went far beyond just a “hang-in-there” message for those caught in the middle of this economic crisis. It [...]
Do you know where you are taking your business? Have you determined a destination? Let me put it this way, if you want to go on a vacation, you first have to decide where want to end up (on the slopes in Tahoe, or sipping a tasty cocktail by the beach or pool). Only after [...]
