Chris Voss is an author, speaker, and businessman. But prior to that, he was an FBI agent for 24 years, most of that time working as a hostage negotiator. While doing that work, he noticed that the skills needed to negotiate with kidnappers and terrorists weren’t all that different from the skills business people need
If I were a prospective new customer for your business, would your website pull me in or turn me off?
We claim no expertise in website design. But we did come across a video of a workshop presentation featuring a guy who does claim some website design expertise, and we thought it would be worth passing along to you. Don Miller is an American author, public speaker, and business owner. His company, StoryBrand, is a
“I haven’t failed. I’ve discovered 10,000 things that don’t work.”
There are scholars who study group dynamics . . . that is, they study the way people behave and interact with one another in a group setting. These scholars sometimes talk about a thing called “the Messiah Complex.” This is a phenomenon that takes place when a group must confront a problem that is so
“Your company’s culture is defined by what it tolerates.”
Every organization has a culture. The only question is, has the organization’s culture evolved on its own without any real thought or guidance from the organization’s management? Or has it been carefully crafted and nurtured as a guide for how the organization intends to conduct itself? Most organizations will claim to have a strong corporate
7 Leadership Practices That Will Reduce Employee Turnover to a Minimum.
In our previous posting, we talked about the key role you and your management team play in retaining the best and brightest of your employees. We noted that the main reason, by far and away, that people leave their jobs is because they can’t stand working for whoever their boss is. That “boss” could be
Employee turnover is not a human resources issue. It’s a management/leadership issue.
The beginning of a new year is a time for reflection. It’s a time to consider what’s working and what’s not . . . what needs to stay the same, what needs to change. If there is one thing we did last year that we could do over again, what would that one thing be?
“You manage things. You lead people.” ~ Peter Drucker
Hamza Kahn is an award-winning marketer, successful entrepreneur, and keynote speaker. We watched a TED talk of his wherein he talked about Theory X vs. Theory Y. To be honest, we weren’t familiar with either one of these theories. But Theory X, he explained, holds that employees are lazy, can’t be trusted, and dislike work.
“The riches are in the niches.”
A common marketing mistake among small business owners is that they go after a market that is too broad. They want to cast their net as wide as possible in the belief that it’s a numbers game . . . that the bigger the market, the more potential customers there are, and with more potential customers,
It’s lonely at the top, isn’t it?
You may be (or you are) the smartest guy in the room, but are you smarter than you plus everyone else in the room? Collectively, your employees have more experience than you do, and because they’re immersed in the nitty-gritty details of daily operations, they know things about the business that you don’t. They know
Don’t produce a budget. Map out a Profit Plan. (Part II)
The blog below is a repeat, as were the previous two postings (September 4, 2019 and September 18, 2019). Combined, the three postings offer a template for developing a 2020 Plan. We are re-publishing these now because developing an Annual Plan is a critically important activity for any small business to undertake, and now is
