If we only focus on our successes or failures, we miss out on so much A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to hear a talk by Kaleb Dahlgren, a young man who was a member of the Humboldt Broncos Hockey team that was hit by a bus in 2018. Sixteen of the…
Starting a small business is not as difficult as many fear If the job market doesn’t satisfy your needs, maybe it’s time to create your own job. How often have we heard people say there are no jobs out there? Or the jobs are all lousy and low-paid and don’t give you enough hours or…
While the rewards can be plentiful, the life is not easy Entrepreneurship and owning a business can be wonderful. However, the myths attached to the entrepreneurial lifestyle and business ownership are steeped in misconceptions. Owning a business is a licence to print money I shake my head when I hear people who work in government,…
Once burnout sets in, you’ll start making bad decisions A couple of years ago, I was engaged by a construction company owner who was struggling to take his business to the next level. He was working 60 to 70 hours a week and felt like he was carrying the company on his shoulders. While he…
Understanding what buyers are looking for is critical I sold my first business at the age of 23, and it was the right time. I sold another business venture at 40 and wished I had kept it. I sold my main business to partners when I was 52. For the past seven years, we have…
Letting people go is often the hardest task that business leaders have to do
There comes a time in every business leader’s life when they have to make tough decisions about who is going to be working in the organization. This decision can result from recessionary pressures leading to a lack of income, competition, lack of profits, inflation and rising costs which reduce the viability of the business, or…
Good body language skills can help you understand people’s emotions and motives
It was during the break of a Master Class I was giving on Body Language That Sells when the sales manager approached me. He’d hired me because he saw that the most successful salespeople were also proficient at displaying and reading body language, and he wanted to help his team develop this set of skills.…
What gets measured gets managed
A business guru once said, "What gets Measured Gets Managed!" and it's true. For example, a few years back, I wanted to find out our conversion rate in our retail store. To do this, we simply kept a pad of paper with three columns with the Date, Time and Number of people who came in…
But you must follow these best practices
Data analytics is receiving vast amounts of attention in the trade press, on many websites and at conferences. References are even spilling into the mainstream media. Can data analytics add business value to your organization? This topic is worth discussing in more depth because much of the literature talks about the value of improved decision-making.…
Five things you can do to get your customers to buy more often
One only has to listen to the news for a few minutes to hear doom and gloom about the economy. Yet as business owners, we only survive when we have customers buying products and services from us. Regardless of how the economy is doing around us, we need to find ways to get our customers…