It seems like every article and marketing email coming into my in-box these days is playing some variant of the “it’s so hard” song. Whether they’re harping on how hard it is to do some specific thing, or how hard it is to focus on doing anything at all, it seems like “it’s hard” is the current Hot Marketing Trend. I don’t buy …
Don’t accept your labels – especially if you like them
Labels are tricky things. You can learn a lot about yourself from labels. Personality styles, for instance – everything from Myers-Briggs to the Enneagram and a host of others – can provide powerful insights into why you do things the way you do, what you might enjoy and excel at, and even into what’s most important for you. Personal attributes are …
Sandwiches or salad? Goals matter!
At a party earlier this week, the hostess handed me a cutting board, knife, and a half-dozen tomatoes to be sliced. “What,” I asked, “is the goal?” She laughed at me. “Sandwiches!” I asked for a good reason, no matter how funny it might have sounded. If she’d said, “Salad!” I would have cut the tomatoes in different shapes than I …
What does it take?
Driving home this afternoon from having lunch with two of my favorite colleagues and friends, I was thinking … what does it take to be successful? We’d talked about this at lunch – not directly, but indirectly in the things we said about our own businesses and about the people we meet at different types of networking events. What does …
Your Mom Was Right (and why that’s relevant)
There are things almost every mother ends up saying to her children. We recognize these pieces of advice and instruction as amusing mom-cliches simply because they’re used so routinely. And like most cliches, these bits of motherhood wisdom hold a certain kernel of truth. I noticed recently that many of them also apply to running a business. So whether or …
The potential cost of poor communication
I got an email from American Express on Thursday. Seems my account had been compromised and there were fraudulent charges on my card. Theft, in other words. But this isn’t a story about theft, or even about my overwhelming curiosity about how in the world did they know those charges aren’t mine? (Kind of creepy, really, even though it’s nice that they do know.) In …
Why ask why?
There’s an old saying: when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Of course it’s obvious how ridiculous that is. Anyone knows there are also screws as well as nails – and that screws don’t respond well to hammers, but work quite nicely with screwdrivers. But as obvious as it is when we look at hammers, …
Three Strategic Threesomes: 3 you need, 3 you don’t, and 3 ways you struggle
I was talking with a friend and colleague – and sometimes client – this morning about strategy. He’s a Vistage chair here in San Diego. (If you don’t know what Vistage is, you can check it out at http://www.vistage.com.) We were talking about the difference between strategy and tactics, and why some people struggle with making day-to-day tactical decisions that align with …
Got time for that?
“Not enough time” is a reason for not doing an enormous number of things. I’m convinced it’s 99% untrue. Seems to me … we do what we really want to do. So don’t tell me what you don’t have time for. Tell me what you do have time for. ShareShare
Strategy. It’s sexier than you think.
Strategy. After asking around a bit, I’m pretty much convinced that most people don’t really know what it is. I’m also pretty sure that a lot of small business owners and independents secretly believe it’s not necessary. That it belongs in big corporate boardrooms and gets developed on expensive corporate retreats … and that it ultimately doesn’t amount to much but …