I'm sure everyone reading this is familiar with the 19th century expression, "The customer is always right." I'm sure many of you have even used it at one point or another. The idea was actually fairly innovative for it's time. When Harry Gordon Selfridge or Marshall Field (depending on who you ask, history is not completely clear on this) first came up with the quote and its associated business practices (unconditional...
Ahh complacency, the easiest trap for any business to fall in to. Let's say your business is up and running, you have a dedicated client base, and you're experiencing steady, or increasing revenue. Sounds pretty great, doesn't it? It certainly looks like success. Everything's going smoothly, money is coming in, your PIE is growing at a fairly steady rate. Sounds like a job well done. The problem is, at hitting...
Whether you're buying a product, engaging someone's services, or simply browsing a website, the last thing you want is extra work getting between you and your objective. Maybe it's filling out a ton of paperwork, or answering too many questions, or getting repeated upsell attempts; no matter the nature of the obstacle, every additional step is going to add to your frustration. Now, flip that around and come at it...
When it comes to business, there's a trap that it's all too easy for all of us to fall into. I've done it, you've probably done it, we've all done it at some point. That trap is this: that making money at any cost is the name of the game. And while that's mostly true (that is the point of owning a business after all), there are times where it...
Some of you may have noticed that posts have been coming a little less frequently around here. Over the past few months I've moved from every weekday, to Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to just Monday and Friday, in order to better accommodate my schedule (and to avoid burning myself out on writing this blog, which is something I think we'd all like to avoid). New posts generally go up between the hours...
I talk a lot about the importance of having a good team working with you. And with good reason. While there are plenty of business ventures you can undertake completely by yourself, most will require you to work with others in one form or another, and having a team as a part of your business (or businesses) is a smart move for a huge number of reasons. But what do you...
Hello everyone! By the time this post reaches you, I will either be at the airport, or on a plane on my way back from the Dominican Republic. Some of my team and I have been down here since Tuesday, enjoying a short working vacation. I'm sure some of you are now sitting there right now, looking outside in the cold and wind, maybe even snow, and cursing our names...
Picture this: you’re at your job, working on a typical day’s work. Your boss comes over and says that something major has happened, and the company needs you to take on an extra task. What do you say? There isn’t much opportunity for you to say no – in a very real sense, your job is to simply do what your boss says. Neither is there much opportunity to negotiate...
I have talked extensively about picking the right moment, not overextending yourself, choosing the correct path, all great advice, but all with an overarching theme. Waiting. Waiting, picking your spot, and then running with it, is most definitely smart business advice. As the title says, haste makes waste, and the last thing you want to do is pull the trigger on something too quickly and have it fail. But, and...
Black Friday has become something of a holiday season legend, known as the day when retail companies are back "in the black" - in other words, making a profit for the year. It's also the official kick-off of the holiday shopping season. But you know all that. What you may not know is that after the weekend, as people return to work, they don't stop shopping - instead, they log...