Where are we today in our business? Where is it that we really want to be? Whatever the difference is between these two answers is the key to reaching our goals.

New concepts, ideas, and materials are developing at an amazing rate, and it can be nearly impossible for us to learn everything that we think we need to know to compete. A far greater challenge is for us to develop the capacity to comprehend exactly what all these new inventions have to do with our industry so that we can …

We spend too much time trying to be perfect when all we really need to do is get a little bit better.

If we’re good at our job, one of the benefits is that we get to do it for a long time and enjoy a lengthy career. Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks of having a long career is that our job can become monotonous. And, when we’re bored with something we’re doing, it’s human nature for us to phone it in, …

Selling to someone, whether it’s your product, your service, or yourself, takes a lot of energy. It just makes sense to try and pinpoint our target audience, so that we can spend our time and energy selling to them and waste as little time as possible selling to someone who is not our ideal customer.

There’s a reason that drug company advertisements always start off talking about our pain. If they started every ad by telling us how great they are, how big their company is, or how much they’ve invested in R&D, we’d tune out immediately (and never buy the product they’re selling.) No, they start off talking about us: our pains, our troubles, …

Why are advertisers so successful in getting us to buy things we probably don’t need? It’s because they study human nature and know exactly how to touch our imagination. They know what we want and they figure out the best way to play off our desires. Being a student of human nature and knowing how to read someone’s verbal and …

Sherpas are a Tibetan people, traditionally nomadic, who are known for their mountaineering abilities, often attributed to a genetic adaptation to living in high altitudes. Historically, their access to schooling was limited, so for the most part they can’t be described as the most educated people in the world. While we probably wouldn’t hire a Sherpa to tutor us in …

It’s important to know what’s going on. We’ve all got an elaborate method devised to get the word out about out business, but many of us put little thought into how we get the word in. Staying up to date on all the big discoveries and little nuances of our industry is incredibly important, for our sake and our clients’. …

It’s a fairly common problem for many people in business: pricing our products too low. All too often, the problem lies with us. It’s quite likely that we’re afraid to charge more for our services because, deep down, we’re afraid that our product is not worth the money. If that’s the case, then there’s only one thing that we can …