Tag: business leadership
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Burnout is no badge of honor.
If you squint your eyes just enough, tilt your head at the right angle, and hold your breath for a count of 10, you might see burnout as the result of lazy, incomplete, ineffective, and bad business design. We hear a lot of ‘success stories’ about founders and CEOs working 12-16 hours each day, providing…
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Give More TIME
FACT: We all have the same 24 hours each day. What we get largely comes down to how we allocate those moments. Let me be clear, “Give More Time” is NOT about giving all of your time away. It is about establishing ways to be selective about where you invest your time so that you…
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Profitability is Key to Sustainability
Sustainable business IS profitable. Let’s start with simple explanations of 2 key concepts with 7 words each. PROFIT: calculation of total revenue less total expenses. SUSTAINABILITY: The ability to continue operations perpetually. In order to continue operations, businesses need to collect more than they spend. Each business has a unique pattern to the sources, timing,…
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Limits of Product Design
It is nearly impossible to design and build a product that will sell itself millions of times over! Great product design IS important. But Sustainable and growing revenue streams are built by stories, connections, and relationships of marketing, branding, and sales professionals. Period. Revenues can be generated without them. However, the default arena is PRICE – which is heavily slanted toward…
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How To Prioritize
Ever come out of a strategic meeting with TOO MANY PRIORITIES? It might be a sign that they actually aren’t priorities and might benefit by a system. Feel free to apply, adapt, and/or share this simple one. 1: GET PHYSICAL: not like fisticuffs! Write the following down on paper or whiteboard (avoid software as much…
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Always Add Value
When business is booming… When things are slow… When you are absolutely confident… When you are in doubt… Find ways to add value to whatever situation you find yourself! Here are some common ways to start adding value. Listening and attention Compassion and understanding Sincere compliment Smile or tasteful humor Hope, new options, or a path forward Education or…
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Uncertainty is the result of unclear VALUES.
Decisions are made nearly sub-consciously and are absolutely driven by emotions. Even the big decisions that are supported by mountains of data and have sweeping impact on thousands of people. Having clear values – whatever they might be – helps align information and resources to ease the decision-making process. They also help bring consistency to decisions made…
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Leading from Chaos
All your thoughts, beliefs, actions, and reactions have brought you to where you are today. It might not be the depiction of Strategic Mastery you would like it to be. It is likely the most accurate depiction of “learning curve” and represents huge investments in developing emotional boundaries, physical dexterities, understanding others, situational awareness, and…
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What is Leadership in Marketing & Sales?
-It is building authentic connections with customers, clients, and users; as well as teammates, other departments, and internal competitors. – It is helping those in your sphere grow, benefit, find joy, minimize pain. – It is sharing knowledge and skills while constantly learning from others and trying new things. – It is about facilitating communication and trust. (notice that it is NOT…
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An Upward Spiral
By their very nature; innovation and creativity are not very predictable or consistent; they do not scale well; and there is virtually no way to calculate an ROI. While many innovative or creative ideas are VERY scalable; the process of creating something new takes huge investments of time, materials, passion, training, mess, and support. On the other hand, by…
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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…
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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…
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Traditions
Over the holidays, we often take time to reflect on what is important to us and share in a variety of traditions; a particular meal only served once-a-year; curling up on the couch to watch a holiday movie at 2:00 pm; the way we decorate the house; and the opening of gifts. Like the holiday…
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Illuminate Sales
Many businesses sell a commodity item – something that has ‘one hundred and one’ of uses, or ‘that everybody needs’. There is a portion of your audience who will buy it because it is available, and a portion who buy it with a specific use in mind. Let’s say it is a candle. If you…
David R Frick 