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As a business owner, you know what it’s like to lie awake at 2 a.m. Maybe it has happened when you are excited and full of new ideas for your business. More often, it’s because you are worried about issues you will face the next day. Sometimes, it’s because you just woke up with the solution to a problem. I’ve experienced all those emotions about my businesses over the years. Awake at 2 o’clock? is where I share them with you, and hopefully help with answers that will let you sleep.
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Tag Archives: entrepreneurs
Too Busy to Do Business
Another tax filing season has passed, and the entire US accounting profession comes up for air. Of course, thousands of businesses and individuals have filed for extensions, thereby postponing the pain of calculating their final numbers for anywhere from a … Continue reading
4 Responses to Too Busy to Do Business
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Small Businesses Fantasies: Service
As an evangelist for small business, I am the consumer equivalent of the locally-grown food movement. I spend as much of my discretionary income as possible with the owned-and-operated businesses in my area. As a consultant and coach to owners, I also … Continue reading
Posted in Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Marketing and Sales
Tagged business ownership, business planning, employee performance, employees, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, leadership, management, marketing, media, promotion, public relations, sales, sales management, small business, small business advice
3 Comments
3 Responses to Small Businesses Fantasies: Service
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Even if you work on it every day, if you do not do it well the effort is still wasted.
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people have stopped investing in training and expect their employees to intuitively “know” these things. not possible. Really caring is just not that common.
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Service is a nebulous term. It has a different definition whether it comes from the provider or the customer. What supersedes service is the experience from the customer’s standpoint. Today’s independent business owner has a great opportunity to differentiate itself from its competitors. Unfortunately, many do not know how to do this.
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Time to Grow Up
Young industries no longer have the time to grow up. The cycle of maturation has long been accepted as a fact of life when a new concept becomes a business. There are a few pioneers (defined here in Texas as … Continue reading
3 Responses to Time to Grow Up
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WOW what are we doing in the TAB business? Are board meetings and coaching sessions obsolete? Maybe they should all be done on SKYPE! Is the ExitMap engagement a dream beyond the basic assessment, appraisal, and action reports – do they really have time or want a consultant in the process?
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Couldn’t possibly disagree more. I assume that’s the response you were expecting.
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Talk to Your Competitors
In my two decades of managing over a dozen peer groups, I frequently had the opportunity to sit in meetings with a business owner who competed with a member of another Board. I occasionally had to bite my tongue as someone vilified … Continue reading
2 Responses to Talk to Your Competitors
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Good article.
There is another reason to understand competitors. If you understand their methods, philosophies, and other aspects of their business, you can find other ways “Not to compete” with them. Since you are “different from the crowd”, perhaps your customer will conduct business with you without being price sensitive!
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As usual a great lesson,especially for small businesses.
I love the title. When I was more active in my consulting practice and looking for additional clients, my best prospecting time was tax season. Business owners were unwilling to wait for advice and guidance. As a result, they left their CPA do the tax work and looked to me for the lucrative strategic planning and implementation. I love tax season.
Excellent. Another thing to think about when I hear politicians talk about helping small business, and I know they have no concept of what small business is about.
Hi John,
Great posts !
Very interesting article thank you for posting !
Great post John! I actually had a very similar conversation with a business owner only a couple of days ago on this topic. In Canada, our tax deadline is April 30th, so we have another week of our accountants being unavailable. You also hear so much about them working 80 hours a week, getting no sleep, rushing to meet deadlines, that it also begs the question as to how many mistakes are happening? Not intentionally, but only because of the time crunch and the pressure of the deadline. Realistically, as everyone talks about “added value” in our industry, you know that at tax time, this certainly isn’t happening.
I agree with you that the governments need to come up with a new system for tax filing deadlines and not make it universally the same for every person. We’ve done it for businesses and base it on their fiscal year end, so why can’t it also be done for individuals?
Thanks for a great read!