Far too often, a new business owner jumps the gun, trying to get buy-in from their clients before they’ve earned the right. People typically choose to do business with brands they know and trust, not simply because someone shoves a product in their face and asks for the sale. If we’re operating in a client-centric business (and who isn’t?) then …

Everyone wants to know what the trick is. What’s the secret sauce? Where’s the hack to jumpstart my business? There’s no real trick to success in business. The only difference between the successful business person and the failure is the commitment to show up day after day, and keep grinding until we reach our goal. You must either modify your …

Real professionals the ones who are doing the work for some other reason than the money. Yes, earning money is important, but it’s not the only thing that motivates a real professional. Real professionals view their products as works of art; something that’s being produced for the benefit of others. If we’re simply cranking out another widget for another paying …

Mindlessness and mediocrity are the currency of our internet age. To conduct transactions in this medium inevitably relegates us to the level of has-been, a second-rate business owner, a veritable Walmart of our profession. If we want to rise above the minutiae… If our goal is to be someone worthwhile… If we want to offer more then just another version …

It’s hard. It’s hard to start a business. It’s hard to build up a client base. It’s hard to create a worthwhile product. It’s hard to become a success in your market. Maybe the fact that it’s hard to do is a good thing. That means that most of your competitors aren’t going to have the guts to try it.

We often feel as if we’re falling behind. That someone else is doing better than us. That another company is moving ahead. That our competition is leaving us in the dust. But does any of that stuff really even matter? As long as we’re getting to where we want to be, what difference does it make what someone else is …

Don’t judge a book by its cover. George Eliot For as long as we can remember, we’ve been told that we shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover; that things aren’t always as they seem; that it’s what’s inside that really matters. But people make decisions based on outward appearances and first impressions all the time. If we’re walking down …

We spend a lot of our time worrying about things that we screwed up in the past. We spend a lot of our time planning the things that we’d like to do in the future. We spend nowhere near enough time working on the things we should be doing today. Instead of figuring out ways to waste time, maybe we …

No matter how long we’ve been working, how good we are at our jobs, or how many times we’ve done this before, we’re all going to end up having problems. It’s inevitable. Like the song says, troubles gonna come my way. So, what are we gonna do about it? Do we freak out? Do we freeze up? Are we going …

Maybe it’s because we work in a mysterious field. Maybe it’s because people really don’t know what we do. Maybe it’s because we (and everyone else before us) did a bad job of clarifying exactly what we bring to the table.  Regardless of the reason why we’re in this predicament, it’s up to us to get ourselves out of it. …