Steve Ballmer

Bad Leadership: What Small Businesses Can Learn from Microsoft

Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer seems to be taking the spot of Steve Jobs for bad leadership, but without all the charm and genius-like persona of Steve J. While it’s always easy to take pot shots at the biggies with billions, how are the leadership mistakes of Ballmer relevant to entrepreneurs and small biz leaders? Vanity […]

tree

Can Your Business Growth Rapidly Accelerate?

What if there were some sort of Miracle-Gro to accelerate your business growth? Recently I came across some statistics, and I was really surprised. It was about athletes. When an athlete starts marking down his or her achievements regularly, his success gets at least 20% greater! No extra trainings, no new equipment… nothing else changes […]

The Risk of Social Media Marketing for Executives

You’ve more than likely known for some time now that social sites and social networking aren’t just for chit-chatting. Used wisely, they’re a gold mine for businesses: for sales and marketing, as well as for managing customer relationships and company reputation. Like many business leaders, however, it’s confusing to know just how to participate successfully […]

Time Management for Effective Leaders

Time Management for Effective Leaders

Time Management – Getting a Handle on It Benjamin Franklin famously said (or at least is famously said to have said), “A place for everything, everything in its place.” Often, our busy moms and grandmothers quoted us this maxim in an effort to get us to clean our rooms. However, the saying applies to the […]

BusinessMenListening

Feedback: 4 Tips to Turn Criticisms into Collaborations

Constructive Criticism for Business Leaders Constructive criticism focuses on what people have done and can do, rather than targeting their character or personality. If people believe their failures result from personal, unchangeable deficits, they lose hope and stop trying. Let them know that setbacks and mistakes result from circumstances they can change. It’s not easy […]

Strategy-for-business-growth

Strategy vs. Tactic: Important Differences

I think everything we do in business needs to have a strategy behind it. I notice sometimes people struggle with the difference between strategy and tactic. “Our strategy is to build up an email list through social media and webinars, then drive people to our webpages for web sales.” Those are all tactics, not strategies. […]

Email-etiquette

Email Etiquette: Do We Need a Few Rules?

Email Etiquette: 5 Tips To Stop Email Overload Information overload is an understatement. I hear complaints every day from clients: people are drowning in email. I’m wondering if there’s any sort of email etiquette for offices to follow. I read somewhere a statistic that the average 17th century Frenchman had as much information stored in […]

Business Entrepreneur

How Is a Rock Star Like a Business Entrepreneur?

It’s funny how you can pick up lessons on leadership and entrepreneurs from all sorts of people, isn’t it? Leadership expert Steve Farber (@stevefarber) sent me this YouTube video of Jay Jay French, founder of the band Twisted Sister. This so-called “glam metal” band started in New Jersey in 1972 and is still performing. Now, […]

Business Growth Perfection BS

Business Growth: Progress not Perfection

Business Growth – Don’t let perfect be the enemy of progress. I like this saying. It’s actually a distortion of Voltaire, who once said, “The best is the enemy of the good.” Do not approach your business growth with the idea of perfection. It’s something that I think every business leader needs to keep in mind. Often, […]

Roadwork

Keystone Habits: How One Little Change Leads to Big Results

Complaining is easy. We’re predisposed to see what’s wrong. Neuroscientists call this the “negativity bias.” When you’re perceptive and have a few miles on your career path, you’re good at spotting the potholes in the road In the work I do as a business growth consultant, I listen to a lot of complaining. It’s my […]