Lots of people start their own business in order to get away from having a boss, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Even if you’re working by yourself, with no other employees in the picture, there’s still a boss involved. It’s you. We’re the person that we’ve got to answer to. If we’re a good boss, and we …

We’ve all got a choice to make. Do we do more, or do we do less? We could do less (any most people and businesses do). We could put in less effort. We could use cheaper materials. We could figure out what’s the bare minimum we have to do to get by and do that. Or, we could do more. …

We hear a lot in the news about creatures that are going extinct. It’s often sad that a cute little animal won’t be around anymore for future generations to enjoy, but it’s a harsh fact of life: things that are not able to adapt to changes in their environment get left behind. This rule applies to our businesses as well. …

We’ve all seen sci-fi movies where things explode in space. In reality, if a traveling spaceship exploded, there would be no sound, as there is no air in space to carry the sound waves. So, it would be a silent explosion. But, in the movies, there’s always a noisy explosion. We’ve come to expect it. Even though it’s not technically …

Many of us have complex jobs. We’ve got to translate the vast amount of information that we’ve accumulated over the years and package it up so that our clients will be able to understand the points we’re trying to convey. That’s the essence of our job: to be able to make someone (who doesn’t have our level of subject matter …

When we first start working, we’re like the line cook, working step by step to follow the recipe. Once we start to get it, we become intimately familiar with the recipe and start to understand exactly why it’s written the way it is and how all the ingredients fit together. Eventually, we become the chef and have the ability to …

How many times have we wished someone would step up to the plate and make things better in our industry? Why isn’t there someone who manages this stuff? Things could be so much better around here. Managers (if we even have such a thing in our job) are limited to doing only what they’ve been authorized to do by their …

All things are difficult before they are easy. Thomas Fuller Change is a hard thing to wrestle with. Everyone would love to enjoy an untroubled life, untouched by stress. There are very few people who actively seek out discomfort, but if we ever want to make progress, if we ever want to learn, if we ever want to grow, we …

But it’s got to be perfect. Many of us, especially when we’re starting something new, get caught in the perfection trap. We convince ourselves that we’ve got to have every “I” dotted and every “T” crossed before we roll out our new thing. We tell ourselves that we’re doing this because we want everything to be “just right” so that …

Most things in our lives are pretty simple. There’s usually an easy explanation for why things happen. We’re late for our appointment because we hit the snooze button three times this morning. That customer is upset because we didn’t make sure that he understood what was happening before we left the jobsite. We’re stressed out doing our taxes because we …