I’m gettin’ too old for this. My favorite example of rethinking your entire business is a shed business that I learned about. The owner of the business had been building sheds for years and decided to get out of the day-to-day of construction life. The shed builder had years of knowledge, experience, and business tools…
Don’t be jelly. As a creative professional, I have heard it my entire career. “Oh that’s neat, I wish I was creative like you”. Professional artists have hijacked the term. Even if you don’t see yourself as “a creative” (noun), you are absolutely creative (adjective). I have come to learn that everybody is made in…
It’s almost too simple. In the early 2000’s, Prince was a household favorite despite not having published a hit album of new music in over a decade. In 2004, however, Prince released an album called Musicology which became his best-selling album in quite some time, with over half a million sales in the first 5 weeks. This…
Athens, Greece. Summer of 2004. The Olympic Games are in full swing. Matthew Emmons is now one of the most prolific marksmen in American shooting sports, but at the time it was his first chance at Olympic glory. It was the men’s 50m rifle three-position final, and Emmons had a glaring lead. All he had…
A quick win can generate momentum. Don’t take my word for it, it’s called “science”… According to the Harvard Business Review, There is a human response called “Completion Bias”, where we gain mental momentum by completing tasks. When you have a big project at hand, you might tackle a small task right off the bat just…
Imagine, if you will, a funnel that you would use to fill a gas can. Or a pour-over coffee. Or a mason jar. (greetings, fellow pickler) It’s wide at the top to easily capture liquid, and then it guides that liquid into a tighter space as it goes down. A simple, genius device… what did we…
Automation: according to IBM, it’s “the application of technology, programs, robotics or processes to achieve outcomes with minimal human input.” Automation sounds expensive, complicated, daunting – something that buildings full of engineers work on. But automation is accessible to every single business… For example, automation can be as simple as recording your onboarding training so that you (or…
It ain’t easy. It is not easy to be a small business owner, and it is even more difficult to run a successful business. If you are looking for freedom and low stress, you won’t find it in this arena. A business owner’s mind is always thinking about the business. When wondering “why am I…
I didn’t know until I was almost 30 years old. That’s when I read “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” for the first time. It blew my mind. I had been stuck on the poverty hamster wheel my entire adult life to that point, scrapping and clawing my way through building a financial future. Despite meager hourly…
“Check your blind spots.” I can still smell the Ben-Gay cream wafting over from my driving instructor, reminding me that I need to have my head on a swivel, seeing as how we’re hurdling onto the freeway at what felt like about a million miles per hour. Little did 15-1/2 year old me know that…