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Have You Fallen Into the Gap?
I met with a restaurant consultant last week who will be working on the same project I am—his role is to help restaurants along the main street survive construction of a light rail system. He’s visited some of them already, and what struck me about what he found was The Gap: the gap between what’s possible, and what’s actually happening. Every business suffers from this problem. Some more than others, but small businesses seem to suffer worst. We’re already working as hard as we can. How could we add even one more activity into our...
read moreWorking Your Mistakes
I’ve been making a lot of mistakes lately. I hang out with people who make lots of mistakes, too. We’re not stupid, we’re just trying out a lot of new things, and when you do that, you inevitably goof up. Most of my friends and colleagues react the same way I do to mistakes. We all beat ourselves up. Last week, for instance, I was working with someone like me, who responds to his mistakes with shame and self-condemnation. In his case, though, I could clearly see how his mistakes were necessary to the evolution of his...
read moreYes, You Too Can Market Your Business By Speaking
In the US, there is a lot of debating going on. The presidential election is this year, in November, in case you haven’t been following. One of the Republican presidential debates was held last Wednesday night in my hometown of Mesa, AZ. I hung out with the crowd outside the theater. There were at least 20 different groups marching around (or standing behind tables), campaigning for various causes, many wildly divergent from each other. It made me proud to be an American. Political Debates…Horrible Punishment or Just...
read moreWhat Is The Why?
What’s Your Customers Why? I’m coaching a client whose reputation, a good one, is spreading rapidly via word of mouth. Potential clients are calling. This is good. But these calls make him forget that he needs to ask “Why?” This is the question that he and the rest of us should be asking, even when our ideal customers are already calling. He, and the rest of us need to know the problem driving these people to call for help. Why Do People Call You? Why do people call you for help? Why you, instead of the guy...
read moreHow Do You Do It?
Pema Chodron wrote a book called “When Things Fall Apart“. The premise of this book (I think) is that happiness can be found, moment by moment, by leaning into everything that happens, including and especially the seemingly “bad.” I was writing this morning about why people decide to do business with someone. It’s almost always because there’s a problem. The person has finally decided that doing nothing is no longer an option (see yesterday’s post). The person who called for help has finally decided to...
read moreWho really is the competition?
One of my Small Business Warrior groups met today. The members of this group happen to all be healers of various kinds. Today’s subject was competition. Who is it, really? For the people in this group, is it other therapists or healing practitioners? In other words, is it other people or businesses who do the same thing? That’s certainly the obvious choice. But I don’t think that’s the whole picture. One of the biggest competitors that we don’t often think about is doing nothing. In the case of therapists, trainers, coaches,( and...
read moreDo I Have to Spend Money On it To Make Sure I Do It?
My gym offers free Pilates classes. (Actually, they’re included in the membership, which means “free” in my book.) Not much gear is involved in these classes–a mat or a small inflatable ball—but you get a great workout. They also offer smaller classes where a trainer leads the group in doing Pilates using machines called “Reformers.” These classes are good, too, slightly better than the “free” ones, but they cost extra money. Guess which classes I actually show up to? Yep, not the free...
read moreWhy Mistakes Are So Awesome
A man’s errors are his portals of discovery. –James Joyce I’ve made a few mistakes lately. Frankly, it’s an everyday occurrence. I bet you make mistakes every day, too. Most of mine aren’t catastrophic: Forgetting to pay a bill, running an orange light, staying up too late (my one resolution is to have a reasonable, consistent bedtime). Most of us make mistakes every day. We’re designed that way. It’s how we learn. It’s a cliché, but true–mistakes–if you pay attention–are...
read moreSilence and R & D Time
Two recent articles in the New York Times caught my attention. The first was an economics story in the New York Times Magazine that talked about research and development and how the U.S. is no longer spending enough on R&D. China is poised to run us over. The second article was an opinion piece entitled “The Joy of Silence,” by Pico Iyer, about a business meeting in a a luxury “black hole” hotel, which had no Internet access, TV or cell phone reception. Instead of being constantly interrupted by technology, people...
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