When we think of bad hiring mistakes, we often zero-in on specific hires such as the sales guy who couldn’t sell or the accountant with math issues or even the customer service specialist with bad people skills. Those bad hires always tend to haunt us. Sometimes, they even prevent us from wanting to make future Read more about Revenue Per Employee: How to Avoid the Worst Hiring Mistake[…]
My wife and I purchased our first home in May 2014. At the time, we couldn’t be happier. Open floor plan, updated finishes, big yard; this house had it all. However, after two years, we learned that home ownership isn’t exactly what it’s cracked up to be. Dealing with the constant cleaning and landscaping, pesky Read more about Business Lessons Learned from Selling a House[…]
“A Tale of Two Owners”, by Patrick Ungashick Many of my Vistage members and consulting clients have business partners. It seems really easy in the beginning to team up with a best friend, an old college roommate, or maybe even a family member. You have shared responsibilities. Each of you invest some amount of time Read more about Book Review: A Tale of Two Owners[…]
My story, as it relates to indirect competitors, started over 20 years ago, while I was operating a small retail travel agency in Homestead, FL. It was a tough business to make money in, but the perks and free travel were great. Our clients were both business travelers as well as individuals taking personal vacations. One day Read more about Indirect Competitors: Do You Really Know Who Your Competitors Are?[…]
My first “great boss” was my dad. I worked for him every summer while I was in college. He was as tough on me as he was on anyone else. When I wanted to work inside the nice cool office, he instead put me outside in the warehouse which was like a poor man’s sauna Read more about Book Review: How to Be a Great Boss[…]
“Managers are not responsible for the thoughts, feelings, attitude, morale, performance, or behavior of any employee. These are all things managers cannot control… Your responsibility is to facilitate employee behavior and performance. You are expected to create an environment that fosters the employee behavior and performance that your organization requires. You then hold employees accountable Read more about The Carlson Management Philosophy[…]
It’s easy to feel very stressed or even depressed over what’s going on in the world today. Highly partisan politics. Hate crimes. Unemployment. Wars on multiple continents. Climate change. And the list goes on… There is one author that helps me the most from time-to-time make sense of this crazy world we live in. He Read more about Book Review: Thank You For Being Late[…]
Do you remember the game show “The Price is Right”? Show participants were asked to guess the price of certain retail products. The closer they guessed to the actual sales price, the greater their chances to win prizes. Fun game to play and watch. I like to simulate this game in the SBDC GrowSmart classes Read more about How Much is Your Hot Sauce?[…]
There are thousands of marketing books written every year. Topics include the use of social media, advertising, sales, and so on. Try to find a book on pricing. There are very few. And yet, pricing may be the most powerful marketing tool of them all… and perhaps the least understood by many. Hermann Simon is Read more about Book Review: Confessions of the Pricing Man[…]
It seems to becoming harder and harder to predict each year what will happen next. Whether it’s politics, the economy, or even sports (see Falcons, Cubs, Villanova, Roger Federer, et al); guessing the future of anything is not getting any easier. With that said, here are my fearless predictions for small business in 2017. I Read more about 6 Fearless 2017 Small Business Predictions[…]