Many times we think that we’ve got to do something (or somebody else will). We reason that we should price our products cheaper than everyone else so we can get more business (or somebody else will). We decide that we’re going to take ethically questionable shortcuts to grow our clientele base (or somebody else will). We make up our mind …

Have you ever noticed that lots of people like to talk bad about their competition, degrading them, putting them down, trying to smear their reputation? What do we really know about someone that’s bent on using this type of negativity in their business? If we stop and think about it for a moment, this action is really telling us a …

Marketing. It’s something we all do, to varying degrees of success. Maybe it’s time that we rethink our approach: our website, our business cards, our fliers, our advertisement, our social media, our elevator pitch. Maybe the main purpose of our marketing isn’t to let people know we’re here; maybe it should be to make it abundantly clear that if they …

Many business owners despise the regulations imposed on them by the regulators. Why can’t I just do what I want to do? If we stopped bitching for a minute and looked around, we’d see that civil society is full of regulations. We go when the light’s green and stop when it’s red. We can’t take something from someone else simply …

Many new business owners freak out when their launch date finally arrives. They’ve been building it, working on it, and fretting about it for so long, that when at long last the date of their grand opening finally arrives, they lose their mind. It’s really not all that bad. We just have to remember, the launch is not an isolated …

As humans, we’re often at the mercy of our brains, subject to whatever crazy, irrational thinking is going on up there in our heads. The mind is an amazing thing, but sometimes it can “think us” into a bad place. One of those bad places is called The Sunk Cost Fallacy, which basically means that we’re hesitant to make changes …

We’re forced to make lots of decisions every day. Most of them are pretty benign: Where do you want to eat tonight? But some of them are much more important: What are you going to do about this problem? Many times, these decisions can have long-term implications for us and our future. All too often it seems, we default to …

We’re all looking for help. How do I get to where I want to go? What do I need to do to achieve my goals? If I do this right now, will I make it? What if what we really need isn’t the answer to our questions, it’s someone to tell us that we’re asking the wrong questions in the …

As a service provider, our job is to provide information to our clients. We’re paid for the words we say, so those words are very important. Say the right words, and everyone is happy and content, and our lives are full of joy! Say the wrong words (or even the right words not fully understood by our clients), and all …

We all want to market our brand. To get it out there. To make ourselves known to our potential customers. But what is marketing, anyway? Is it simply shouting from the rooftops, or it there more to it? Seth Godin, in a recent blog post, succinctly defined what marketing is: Marketing involves making a promise and keeping it. Marketers understand …