What is our level of responsibility? Whenever something goes wrong (and something will always go wrong), we try our best to deflect responsibility. It’s outside our scope. We couldn’t get to it. It was like that when we got there. Yes, it’s important to establish boundaries, to make sure that our clients know what it is we do and don’t …

Most of us are trying our hardest to serve the same people: the average customer. Most people are average. Most of them are searching for an average product. Most of them are looking to pay the average price. What if we want to offer more than an average product? The first thing we’re going to have to do is find …

It’s only natural that we feel a desire to share our stories of failure: to let our friends know when we’ve been wronged by fate, when karma kicks us in the teeth, or when bad luck follow us everywhere we go. That’s our natural response, to tell everyone our story. And it’s the easy way out. The hard work comes …

We’re all looking for success in our business, but it usually doesn’t come around right away. There’s often a delay between getting started and becoming profitable, and we’re often frustrated when that victory doesn’t happen overnight, struggling to figure out what’s going wrong. One way to deal with this situation is to use our imagination, projecting ourself two years into …

Think about it. We’re going to be in most relationships for the long haul. Business relationships; personal relationships; they’re both going to be around for a long time: years, often even decades. Maybe it’s time for us to start thinking differently about how much we need to invest into these relationships. If we’re going to be connected to someone for …

We all work within limits. Limits on the amount of time we can spend on each job. Limits on the size and scope of our work. Limits on the amount of investment we can make on each different customer. Limits on what we can and can’t do under the rules. The most successful business owners among us are the ones …

We all experience that scared feeling. It’s part of the human experience. Whenever we’re hesitant, whenever we’re nervous, whenever we’re scared, whenever we get that tied up, knotted feeling in the pit of our stomach, that’s the feeling. So, what the hell is that feeling for? Many, many years ago, that feeling protected our ancestors from getting thrown out of …

Being consistent in everything we do is vitally important to the success of our business. Consistently showing up when we’re supposed to. Consistently producing content. Consistently meeting our deadlines. Consistently taking care of our business paperwork. Consistently marketing to our target market. Consistently reading and educating ourselves on our industry. If being consistent and following through is one of our …

It’s not an easy place to reach, but it should be somewhere we’re all searching for. Once we know our clients better than they know themselves, we understand their needs, their desires, and their fears, and we’re able to provide the answers to their questions before they even ask them, we’ve found the keys to the kingdom and can punch …

We all want to be better: a better person, a better leader, a better business owner. In order to meet these goals, we need to do a better job of paying attention to what’s going on around us. If we truly want to get better, just doing a good job on the task at hand isn’t going to be enough. …