Have you ever felt like sleeping in because you didn't want to face another day in a dead office? Did you wonder why you, as the employer, should somehow be responsible for motivating your unmotivated employees? What if you could add energy to your office? What if you could energize your employees, your customers and yourself? If you seek answers to these questions, today's story about Elmer and the lessons that follow may help you understand how you can add energy to your wo

Business owners are challenged with setting a profitable price for their goods and services. In today’s story, Paula struggles with the common psychology of pricing. You’ll see how she overcame her struggle to achieve success and how you can do the same. Paula was frantic! How did she get here? She'd worked so hard to build what she thought was a successful business only to watch it crash. What went wrong? She had more orders than she knew what to do with, and yet she was rea

Our character in today’s story is Brooke. Brooke has hit a ceiling of growth in her designer practice. She struggles to understand how she can get her million-dollar business to the next level. Brooke felt like she had done well to grow her interior design business, Brooke's Designs, to over $1,000,000 in annual revenue with only twelve employees. It had been two years and she was continually fearful that she would lose the ground she had gained over the past decade. She reme

The bank notified Michelle that she had insufficient funds for her credit card bill. She decided to pay the minimum payment once again so that she would have money in her checking account. Michelle knew that she could always get money from her husband but she didn't want to do that again. She didn't want to face her husband's criticism about her business one more time. She also didn't want to keep losing money. Michelle started a business from her hobby of creating custom mas

The alarm clock hadn't gone off; the sun was 3-hours from brightening the day; and Stanley couldn't sleep. It was 3:00 am and Stanley knew he wouldn't get back to sleep. Why not just start his day early like he had so many times before? His head was filled with thoughts of what he could do to get his business back on track. He might as well do some work since he couldn't sleep. Stanley owned an engineering consulting firm. His firm worked with municipalities on improving thei

Darius started out as a short order cook, then a head cook for a restaurant chain before he decided to open his own restaurant. Darius wanted his restaurant to focus on Greek Cuisine. After saving up $100,000 of his own money and finding a few eager investors who offered an additional $200,000, Darius was in business. He leased a place that was in a busy part of town and opened his doors with high hopes. As a startup, Darius didn't feel he could afford to pay his staff much u

Susan was furious as she hung up the phone. It was 3 O'Clock on Tuesday morning. Susan was told by her distributor that another shipment would be delayed. This late shipment meant Susan would, once again, have to pay penalties to retailers who would get their candle shipments late. She told her staff they needed to start meeting deadlines, or they would be fired. She reminded them again in the past week that the shipment needed to leave their dock by 12 noon on Thursday, if t

Today’s story is about Emily, a flower shop owner, who thinks she’s done all she can with her business as she finally gets out of debt. Emily plans to coast and is challenged by a new stranger in her life who convinces her that growth is a better option. Emily entered the bank for what she was sure would be the last time ever. She rarely went to the bank unless she had problems with her account. This time was different. This time, Emily was making the final payment on a loan

Every so often, I take stock of the blog posts I write and wonder if I’m making a difference in the lives of small business owners. Do people read them? Do they find knowledge or encouragement? Are business owners better off after applying the advice I give and experiences I share? Or Am I just rambling? Today, I’ll write something that will make a difference in your life. The title of today’s blog post comes from an excerpt from John 15 (New Testament NIV). John 15:1-8 goes

Invariably, in a business coaching session with a business owner, we talk about the employees who he/she manages. As most businesses grow, my client is compelled to either promote one of his or her own people to a manager; or try to hire a manager outside of his or her company. As you might imagine, most business owners want to promote their own employees into management positions. In some cases, they promote their employees who then fail in their new role as a leader. Why? B

I was an energy efficiency engineer for most of my professional career. When I entered a building, my wife would catch me looking at the lights in the building to see if they were using efficient lights. After selling my engineering firm six years ago, I’ve been a business coach. Within five minutes after meeting a business owner, we’re talking about ways they can grow their business. It’s hard for me not to be passionate about my profession and other’s businesses. In both m

Today, I want to cover a topic that is so common to small business owners, it comes up as a coaching topic with over 90% of my small business owner clients. The topic is “stop working “in” your business and start working “on” your business. I graduated in 1987 from Colorado State University with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. I worked as a field engineer for four years until I got hired as a sales engineer with Honeywell in 1991. I had worked in dual capacities selling a

Podcast When we were kids most of us were given stuff by our parents until we were old enough to work. A big motivator to get a job as a kid was that you could buy what you wanted instead of what your parents thought you needed. My first job was pulling gigantic weeds in Mr. and Mrs. Haas’s yard for $0.50. What did I spend my money on? Candy of course! I eventually graduated to higher paying jobs. By higher paying, I mean minimum wage jobs. These jobs gave me the ability to b