Category: Success
-
Easy Is Always Better
One way to gain huge advantages in the minds of the human buyers and users is to make things simple. Einstein has been famously attributed to a reminder to us all that if we can’t explain it simply enough for a 5th grader, we don’t understand it well enough. This applies to Business, Finance, Economics,…
-
Story is EVERYTHING
You’ve likely heard it many times before, story is important to your brand. What is most fascinating is that it is less about the story you tell, and more about the story people say over and over within their own mind. You get to influence their story of you through the following: – content –…
-
Only Execute Fully-Funded Projects
A mentor talked with me about only executing fully-funded projects early in my career. I feel strong and confident every time I use this tip to make a decision about where to invest my energies. I have been burned every time I go against this methodology. As have countless others. One trick I have learned…
-
To Brand Is To Be Human
Your brand is critical to attracting ideal clients/customers, defining expected quality, overall business stability, growth opportunities, and personal wealth. Meaning: without a defined brand, all the above is extraordinarily difficult. It has always been this way! By always, I refer to dating of early branding irons that go back thousands of years. More crucially, branding…
-
Measuring Ideas
Some people talk about ideas in terms of being big or small. The idea itself is not measurable beyond a couple firings of neurons somewhere in our brain. What IS measurable is the impact of the idea – the number of people involved in it, the amount of #change it brings, the #value it creates,…
-
Better Questions
Great #interviewers and #entrepreneurs are often known for asking #powerful, simple, concise, #cutting, and BIG questions. While they do make their share of #assumptions from time to time, they are followed with more #questions. Better questions aren’t just about getting better #answers. They prime our #curiosity and #imagination, open our minds to #solutions, help us…
-
Movement follows value
There are many conversations growing today around ways #leadership, #management, #marketing, and #sales are changing as #technology and #information become ever-more present in our lives. In many ways, these aspects of business have changed dramatically in the past two decades. But as the headline suggests, not much has truly changed! #Humans are social creatures. We…
-
Build culture on purpose
Be #intentional. Sure, many business cultures are built on the fly, by accident, and without much deliberate thought. Sometimes they even manage to produce great #products and #systems. But the best cultures are built over time and under careful directives. They exist to #grow, #inspire others, protect themselves, and accomplish specific tasks. Be #mindful. In…
-
Dream with others
12 April 2018 One of the most powerful ways to appreciate another person is to #dream with them. This encompasses deep #listening, honoring their delicate #creativity, acknowledging their #skills as well as challenges, respecting their premature ideas, and #encouraging them to be themselves. Most of us don’t get that often enough and keep our #genius…
-
Transparency
13 March 2018 #Focus is about having a single-minded approach towards a known and supported objective. This allows #teams and individuals to act as independently or collectively as they see fit. It is as much about what we are NOT going to do (distraction of energies) as it is about what we ARE going…
-
Greatness lies beyond logic
6 March 2018 Logical and progressive steps will bring speed, #efficiency, and incremental #change. While beneficial, they are also predictable and therefore relatively easy to attain by others. To achieve #greatness, we must overcome the ordinary. #Innovation is the result of #creativity and #imagination. There is never any evidence it will work. Such deviations from…
-
Love Like The Sun
5 March 2018 One of my favorite poems, Hafiz writes; “Even after all this time, the sun never says to Earth, ‘You owe me.’ Look what happens. With love like that, it lights the whole sky.” #Share your gifts with others. It is how they grow. It is how you #grow. This is your platform…
-
Consider Your Audience
Why do most marketing, communications, and sales pitches fail? They lack connection to the audience. Sellers try to stay in control of the conversation and present what they think are the most compelling reasons to buy. Often it is the same reasons to every audience. Before my sales career began; I spent a couple years…
-
A Foundation for 21st Century Business
Whether we are ready to admit it or not; the way we do business today is different than it was 10, 5, even just 3 years ago. Buyers either seem to care about different things or care about things in a different degree. There are more competitors offering highly similar products and services. Consumers have…
-
How to Achieve 2x, 5x, 10x Growth
Everyone in business wants to grow! Some might see 20% or 30% as effective growth. Others might set their sights on 50% or over 75% growth. But from the viewpoint of earning a return on your investment (time, money, energy, talent, or any other resource), these are pretty paltry. Most businesses need to double their…
-
Profit is not an indication of Growth
Profits are great! And quite easy to figure out. They are simply the monetary surplus left to a producer after deducting all expenses (wages, materials, rent, etc.) from the total income or revenues. This can be calculated per transaction about as easy as it can be for a given time frame (month, quarter, year). While…
-
6 Benefits of Transparency
Transparency, authenticity, integrity and the like are not just overly-idealistic buzzwords for today’s business world; they provide long-lasting AND immediate benefits to those who invest time and energy to make it a prominent aspect of their business operations. Consider the image above: Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, CT. Construction was completed in 1949…
-
Re-Defining MISTAKES
MISTAKE: A moment of great learning, discovery, or insight; often described as powerful, emotional, and/or life changing. Synonyms: error, mishap, failure. We celebrate our educational achievements with all the pomp and circumstance of graduation. From university down to pre-school, educational programs seem more significant when they come along with some form or certificate of completion.…
-
Technology and Connection Drives Entrepreneurs
Just the other day while getting my hair cut; my barber told me about a new hire he is excited about making in 12 months. A longstanding client of his just quit her job and took HIM to a coffee conversation about the next chapter of her career. She was interested in going to school…
-
Design-Build Your Reputation
Though the fundamentals of building a reputation – personal or business – hasn’t changed much in the last couple thousand years; we are in a time of rapid technological change that is impacting many of the specific details of how our reputations are both built and experienced. Thank you to reader August Lizarraga Jr. for…
-
Personal Connections
Building valuable connections is not a complex process. All you really need to do is take the time to show that you sincerely care about building them. These connections are the result of investing and sharing something personal – regardless of the format. It starts with a smile, genuine compliment, pat on the back, eye contact…
-
Fairy Tales, Architecture, and Business
We share fairy tales with children as a method of imparting sound advice in a way they can easily remember. It seems that the one about Three Little Pigs building houses is particularly well-suited for business. In case you forgot: One pig builds out of straw, another out of wood. These two enjoy the benefits…
-
Embracing Non-Sense
Businesses are too dependent on our 5 physical senses (which are inherently flawed). To grow and succeed; businesses need to build a culture that embraces nonsense! What do I mean by our senses being inherently flawed? Our senses of taste, touch, sight, smell, and sound are all constantly ‘on’ – sensing things and relaying that…
-
Powerful Communications: Grammar & Timing
Last week we discussed the power individual words have on your communications and how a simple exercise can help focus your communications. But great communication is not only a matter of what words you say; it is impacted by the manner in which the words are composed, as well as the how they are delivered. In this…
-
Words Have Power
The purpose of communication is to help someone else to understand something in your mind. At the beginning of 2013, I started the foundation for my own communication strategies when I published Law Of Communication. I suppose this time of year is ideal for me to think about communications. While few other animals have sophisticated…
-
Purpose Simplifies Critical Decisions
Decisions are powerful tools of transformation. Before a decision is made; everything is possible, yet nothing is done – a blank canvas that overwhelms and terrifies many people. The moment a decision is made ideas begin to take both shape and form (even if only to apply, or not-to apply gesso). Though they might seem…
-
Motivation vs Inspiration
As both words indicate a cause for action; they are often used interchangeably. May this be a simple guide that helps you choose between them. Motivation is an external influence – typically from a person with authority or power. In marketing; we often use tactics like discounts, sales, gift-with-purchase, and loyalty programs to motivate customers…
-
Satisfaction vs Loyalty
At one time; satisfied customers must have been a meaningful statistic. Why else would we make such a big deal about such surveys? Today however, a satisfaction is more synonymous with a lack of disappointment. There is a big difference between not disappointing and actually satisfying – an even bigger difference stepping up to building…
-
Music Theories In Business
Even without coherent words; music is a powerful communication tool. Composers throughout the ages have expressed and communicated complex emotions through this invisible, yet tactile medium. Throughout my entire life; I have been exposed to music. My formal education began when I was young and I have been playing music consistently for nearly 30 years.…
-
Completing the Service
A couple weeks ago; I enjoyed a perfect summer evening at Louisville Slugger Field – one of the best ballparks in the entire sport. There was a good crowd (always helps when you go with friends) and though we lost; there were plenty of hits, runs, homers, as well as some errors to keep the…
-
A Good WHY Leads To The Best HOWs
Just over two years ago I decided I was going to enjoy living a healthier lifestyle. I specifically remember it NOT being a difficult decision; and it was not about making abrupt radical changes. However, it is important that the decision was made and WHY it was made. I wanted to improve my physical health,…
-
Imagination and Belief; Missing Elements in Business
The business world is changing; and I think is is safe to say that we all know and recognize this. The first stage of change is always a decline. As we try new things, we slow down a bit, make errors, learn a lot, and make rapid adjustments that eventually level the decline. As we…
-
A Difficult Decision
Creativity is inspiring. It encourages people to think, present ideas with the hopes of moving the business forward; employees are more engaged; customers can easily tell the difference and are likely to talk positively with their friends. But creativity, by its nature, is messy, emotional, difficult to manage, and nearly impossible to predict – it…
-
What IS your Brand?
Brands are usually associated with a unique mark or logo emblazoned onto an item. But your Brand is way more than your logo. It represents a structured system of beliefs about the company, the products, the people, the customers, and the experience they can expect across all interactions. This structured system of beliefs can help reduce…
-
Becoming Attractive To Your Audience
To YOU, this deep sea Anglerfish might not be particularly attractive. Under this light, is likely not very attractive to the fish upon which it feeds. But these anglerfish live so deep in the ocean that sunlight doesn’t reach. To stand out among the darkness, the fish use an appendage just above the large mouth…
-
Change The World With Vision
Visionaries change the world. They always have, and always will. There is something special about them; the way they think, act, talk, and enroll others. The ones who win us over, only do so through sheer determination (not determination to prove being right or generate great wealth or fame; but a determination to contribute to…
-
A Carpenter’s Perspective on Building Business
I have always been handy with tools. Combine that with a strong sense of curiosity to understand that I easily adopted a DIY mindset early on in life. It began by taking things apart after they had ceased ‘working properly’ to study the innards and how they were assembled. As my knowledge and skills increased;…
-
Building Innovation
We know that lightning strikes the earth about 100 times each second. We even know that nearly 70% of lightning occurs over land in the tropics where the atmospheric convection is greatest. But we still don’t know where or when it will happen. We don’t know what the results of each strike will be. Perhaps…
-
What Is The Structure of Your Business?
Arches distribute weight loads over a span – providing windows, doorways, tunnels, and all sorts of internal volume. They are one of the oldest and most widely recognized aspects of architecture and are defined as a curved masonry construction for spanning an opening – consisting of a number of wedge like stones, bricks, or the…
-
The Other Side of FEAR
My first ever attempt of public speaking happened during freshman year of High School. The assignment was to give a 3-5 minute speech on any subject that excited us. I honestly do not recall the topic I chose; but I remember vivid details about the way I presented it. We were presenting in alphabetical order…
-
Advice For College Students
Yesterday I was fortunate to participate in my 3rd Sales Alumni Panel at University of Louisville College of Business. 6 other Alumni gave their morning to share wisdom, advice, and experiences to attentive students about to graduate. My 3-minute story began with… “I remember this program when I took this class and how the panelists…
-
Marginal Impact – How A Change In Operations Becomes Great Marketing
The dictionary refers to marketing as the total of activities involved in the transfer of goods from the producer to seller to consumer or buyer, including advertising, shipping, storing and selling. Marketing is not something that is done TO a product; it should be part of every aspect in business. Years ago, I was working…
-
Brand Foundation
Does your brand have a solid foundation? Does it have a structure that supports its growth both vertically and horizontally? We know how important it is to have a proper foundation for construction projects; yet often fail to consider the same consequences when it comes to our businesses. Before we can build better brands; we…
-
Catapulting Your Business
Some months ago, my best friend built a trebuchet to offer his sons a physical (and fun) demonstration of various engineering principles. We spent a sunny autumn afternoon launching golf balls and tweaking the system to maximize its performance. Recalling the event, it also demonstrated several business lessons. Build A System A system is more…
-
Awesomeness
Most see awesomeness in its finished form – a 5 layer decadent chocolate cake with molten core and a hand-made icing – but they don’t recognize its simple, almost everyday, commodity ingredients of flour, sugar, eggs, cocoa, etc. The magic of awesome rarely comes from the ingredients. Instead, it comes from the human elements of…
David R Frick 