A child seldom needs a good talking to as a good listening to. Robert Brault Stay in business long enough, and we’re all bound to have problems. Not every customer will be happy. Not everything will break our way. Not every transaction will go off seamlessly. Eventually, we’ll have to deal with problems. Our first inclination is always to defend …

Our lives are full of things that frustrate us: friends, family, clients, coworkers, government, entities that hold sway over our professions. We often find ourselves angry about these things, wanting so badly to change the way things work, hoping to make things better for ourselves (and everyone else) in the process. We’ve got to remember that we can’t make our …

One of the main goals of any business is to make money. We need money to live: food, clothing, shelter, etc. Without making money, there’s no business. But we can’t make money the entire focus of our venture. If we only drive all the time, and never stop to take care of the engine, our car will soon stop running. …

Competition. Our business would be king of the hill if it wasn’t for all those other guys. So, what do we have to do to ensure that our clients choose us over all our competitors? This process goes by many names: lead generation, customer acquisition, seeding, getting them into the funnel, but it all boils down to one thing: marketing. …

We’ve all got good ideas. There’s no shortage of things we’d like to implement. We all know exactly what we need to do to make things better. And we think about it. A lot. No shortage of ideas here. Just a shortage of action. Until we decide to take that first step towards putting that idea into action, it’s just …

There are a lot of businesses out there, and a lot of competition (especially around pricing). Most companies, especially new ones, try to hold the line on pricing, to stay consistent (or cheaper) than their competitors. The general consensus is that people won’t pay extra for their product. And they’re right, people won’t pay extra for the same product. Then …

We all strive to become better at what it is we do. We like to tell others that “we’re experienced.” While it’s certainly important to have experience and to know what it is we’re supposed to be doing, there can be a downside to being experienced as well. We can become full of ourselves, thinking that we know everything there …

All businesses create a product, be it physical, digital, intellectual, or some combination of these three. The question then becomes, if we’re the ones making this product, what’s our ultimate goal? What are we hoping to achieve with our creation? We could be looking to make money, simply doing the bare minimum needed to turn a profit. We could be …

We all seek to serve our audience; to be interesting to them. We’re all interesting, in one way or another. Whether that translates into business, whether our potential audience shows an interest in us and our product, well, that’s another story altogether. It’s up to us to grab their attention; to do something worth taking notice of. Whether they notice …

Anxiety is experiencing failure in advance Seth Godin We’re often paralyzed by anxiety and fear. It keeps us from trying something new, or doing something better than what we’ve already done. Fear shouldn’t be avoided. We shouldn’t cower from it. It shouldn’t be something we run from. We should embrace our fears, rejoicing in the fact that we’ve now got …