How many times have we wished someone would step up to the plate and make things better in our industry? Why isn’t there someone who manages this stuff? Things could be so much better around here. Managers (if we even have such a thing in our job) are limited to doing only what they’ve been authorized to do by their …

All things are difficult before they are easy. Thomas Fuller Change is a hard thing to wrestle with. Everyone would love to enjoy an untroubled life, untouched by stress. There are very few people who actively seek out discomfort, but if we ever want to make progress, if we ever want to learn, if we ever want to grow, we …

But it’s got to be perfect. Many of us, especially when we’re starting something new, get caught in the perfection trap. We convince ourselves that we’ve got to have every “I” dotted and every “T” crossed before we roll out our new thing. We tell ourselves that we’re doing this because we want everything to be “just right” so that …

Most things in our lives are pretty simple. There’s usually an easy explanation for why things happen. We’re late for our appointment because we hit the snooze button three times this morning. That customer is upset because we didn’t make sure that he understood what was happening before we left the jobsite. We’re stressed out doing our taxes because we …

It’s tough to grow a small business. If we’re good at what we do, it means that sooner or later, we’re going to be overwhelmed. We’ll be faced with more work than we can handle, not only doing the thing that we do for a living, but also dealing with all the other tasks that come along with running a …

All the great football players have coaches. And the best tennis players. Golf pros have people who work with them on their swing. Multi-platinum singers have voice coaches. Richard Branson, Tony Robbins, and Oprah Winfrey all have coaches. Cambridge online dictionary tells us a coach is “someone whose job is to teach people to improve at a sport, skill, or… …

If we’re in business long enough (usually a few days or so…), we’re going to run into problems. We’re going to have to deal with a customer who’s not happy with how things went. As I’ve said before, it’s usually best to pay them to go away as quickly as possible and move on with our lives. But that doesn’t …

Decisions. It’s a word that most of us spend our lives avoiding. Making a decision is hard. It forces us to choose. It compels us think about our options. It obligates us to figure out which direction we’re going to take. Commitment is difficult. It’s intimidating. It’s exhausting. It means we’re on the hook for the results. And we don’t …

New business owners are often frustrated by the amount of competition they’re faced with when starting their companies. They (erroneously) think that things would be so much easier if there weren’t so many other companies out there contending for the same business. And they would be wrong. Unless we’re creating a brand new industry that’s never before been invented (and …

It doesn’t take a large monetary investment on our part to be nice to our clients; to provide exceptional customer service. No, we’re not required to go out of our way to make sure that everyone feels taken care of, to verify that they understand what we’re trying to tell them, or to make certain that they believe they’ve gotten …