Two situations where you should quit

So, how do you know if it’s time to quit? Will your hard work eventually pay off?  Or are you on a path that’s doomed to fail? How can you tell if you should keep going – or cut your losses? A Plenty of Clients member asked me that on a recent coaching call. Here’s…

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Four buckets to simplify your business

A common ‘shock’ for corporate refugees who ‘open shop’ as a consultant, coach or the like: “I didn’t realize just how much there is to do.  When I was in corporate, there were all these other people taking care of so many things, but I just took it for granted.  Now that I’m solo, it’s…

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Tail-Wagging-The-Dog Thinking

It’s remarkable how many entrepreneurs are comfortable…  And unhappy. Yeah, you’d like your business to be better.  But you only go after it half-heartedly. Why? Because you engage in tail-wagging-the-dog kinda thinking. For example, a consultant making about $85,000 a year tells me he’d like to get to $250,000.  Or even more. “But my family…

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Sales IS a numbers game. Sales is NOT a numbers game.

There’s a lot of money to be made in taking an extreme, opinionated position. For example, get up and tell everyone that sales is a numbers game.  People will follow you.  You’ll be able to sell them stuff.  And you can build a business on that. Get up and tell everyone that sales is NOT…

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He finished a 6-figure project and… now what?

Consultant Scott Yankton finished another six-figure engagement, and asked himself “Now what?” Up to that point, all his clients came from referrals.  But waiting around – or begging – for referrals isn’t an elegant way to grow your business. Scott knew that it was time for a marketing system.  Something that would bring leads to him…

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Why men’s dreams get crushed

  A man from the neighborhood walked by with paint stains all over his pants and shoes. Seems he’s been doing painting jobs.  Nothing wrong with that.  It’s fine and respectable work. But I do remember how a number of years ago he had been all excited about an idea he’d hatched up for an…

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When you hit a wall with your marketing… keep hitting it.

At some point, you’ll hit a wall.  Everybody does. But will you be like a Roomba vacuum – bounce off and go in another direction – or like a pickaxe? When you hit a wall and the wall doesn’t instantly crumble – do you wonder if you’re doing something wrong? Do you start to doubt if…

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How Feynman’s phantom lab faked the competition into folding

As a teen, Richard Feyman, Nobel Prize winning physicist, worked one summer for the Metaplast Corporation. The company was started to metal-plate plastics and they needed a chemist. This was back around the Great Depression. Plastics and related technologies weren’t what they were today. You could say they sorta, kinda, sometimes knew what they were…

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Ever feel stuck?

I admit – this client was frustrating me…

I love him because he’s a GREAT guy. Sincere. Hard working. Always learning and genuinely wants to be coached. But for months we’d been talking about what he needed to do to attract his ideal clients. And no matter what I thought we agreed he would do –he always went off and did something else.…

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Video from Trump National Golf Club, lakeside

I spent most of this past week on the shore of beautiful Lake Norman in North Carolina. What for?  A multi-day seminar at the Lakefront Ballroom of the Trump National Golf Club. On Wednesday, I had a big ‘aha’ about why so many people don’t do the things they need to do to create a consistent…

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