Last month marked the completion of my first year of writing for this blog and my second year of blogging in general. Looking back over the last twelve months, it’s hard not to feel a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction regarding the opportunities and relationships I’ve attained as a result of writing for my website. As this milestone also coincides with the year’s halfway mark, I also saw this as a good opportunity to review how much progress I’ve made in reaching the goals I set out for myself at the beginning of the year.

In some ways, it felt odd to be performing such an exercise in the middle of summer, especially when one considers the downtime most companies are experiencing right now thanks to vacationing employees and customers. As it turns out though, the summer downtime actually provides an excellent opportunity for businesses and their leaders to review their team’s efforts, in order to assess how much progress has been made in reaching their shared goals. By performing this review during the summer break, leaders will develop a better understanding of where to focus their team’s efforts when they return to full force at the end of summer.

Of course, in assessing the efforts made so far by your team, it’s important that you Click here to continue reading »”Using The Summer Downtime To Assess Your Organization’s Direction”

I was invited recently by serial entrepreneur/business columnist John Warrillow to review a complimentary copy of his new book “Built To Sell: Turn Your Business Into One You Can Sell”. While I was intrigued to read his book because of its subject matter, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Warrillow chose to use a fictional story in which to outline the steps one needs to take to transform your business into a sellable one. It was also interesting to note how many of the ideas shared in this book can also be used to help business owners gain more freedom from some of the daily operations of running a company, even if they have no interest in selling their business.

“Built To Sell” tells the fictional story of Alex Stapleton, the owner of a small marketing agency. At the start of the book, we find Alex jumping through hoops to cater to the whims of his agency’s biggest client, getting news that his best designer is leaving the firm, and once again trying to figure out how he was going to pay for all his bills thanks to an unsteady cash flow from his customers. After putting eight years of his time and effort into his business, Alex finds that it hasn’t lived up to the vision he had for what he’d gain from being his own boss and so he decides to sell his business and move on.

Not knowing how exactly to go about doing this, Alex approaches his friend Ted Gordon, an entrepreneur who had successfully sold a number of his businesses, for advice on how to sell his agency. After listening to Alex describe both his business and asking him questions about his current operations, Click here to continue reading »”Looking To Sell Your Business? Read “Built To Sell” First”

With the holiday celebrations now at an end, many of us are returning to our usual daily grind – refreshed, rejuvenated and ready to dive into the tasks at hand.  On the heels of celebrating the start of both a new year and decade, most of us have also been making plans or resolutions for what we’d like to accomplish over the next 365 days, and possibly beyond.

It’s only natural that we’d be motivated right now to create these lists of goals, as the start of a new year often inspires that feeling of a new start; of turning to a fresh page that’s filled with the promise of new opportunities and possibilities for our future.  Indeed, this sentiment is quite beneficial as it encourages us to take time for some personal self-reflection, of creating these aspirations of what we’d like to change in ourselves or what areas we’d like to further grow in.  The only point we need to remember though, is to include in this exercise the process of reviewing the events of the previous year, of taking note of what we endured, learned and gained from those past experiences so that we have a solid foundation on which to build upon as we move forward.

Of course, in developing these lists of goals, we should also consider Click here to continue reading »”How to Make Your Resolutions Have A Bigger Impact”