Hard vs: Long Work As the long days of summer become the shorter days of Autumn, how are you spending your time? Are you working hard or just working long hours? Long work is done by the lawyer who bills 14 hours a day filling in forms. Hard work is what the insightful litigator does…
Thinking “outside the box” is a popular idea in the business world today. People and organizations are told to think outside the box to stimulate creativity when they need to solve problems, streamline production, establish a new product, or develop a new process. And it’s true that unconventional thinking often sparks creativity and innovation. But…
Business: The $20,000 phone call When a business receives a phone call, who answers? When a new prospect or customer arrives at your business, how are they treated? Your marketing has finally paid off, all your hard work starts to materialize, something you did created action, and now it is time to turn that prospect…
The 10 Elements of a World-class Company Highly successful organizations have certain definable qualities in common. These universal distinguishing characteristics separate good companies from great companies. Each of these qualities, these pillars of a great company, is as important as the others. Together, they create the culture of the organization. The following are the 10…
Business is full of mysteries, but none is greater than this: What are the elements that contribute to a company’s success? Executives have spent 100 years guessing about what makes a company succeed–and usually guessing wrong. In the best of times, most don’t fully understand what they’re doing right. Even fewer really know how to…
Leadership involves introducing change, but what is a leader to do when faced with ubiquitous resistance? Resistance to change manifests itself in many ways, from foot-dragging and inertia to petty sabotage to outright rebellions. The best tool for leaders of change is an understanding of the predictable, universal sources of resistance. Once the source has…
The phone rang. It was Sharon calling. She sounded glum, and there was no energy or life in her voice. “What’s wrong?” her coach asked. She explained that business was slow. She wasn’t finding any opportunities, and she wasn’t making any money. Her boss, to make matters worse, had just told her that if she…
Believe in the possibility. Stand in the belief that you and your team can find a better way to do anything you put your minds to — Practice CANI: Constant and Never-Ending Improvement. Always question what you do and why you do it. All too often tasks and projects that aren’t necessarily in line…
What are you measuring in your business? According to Peter Drucker, and the experience of all my clients, “what gets measured, gets managed”. If you are not achieving the results you want in your life, organization or business ask yourself, “What exactly are we measuring?”. Maybe you are measuring nothing at all. Our clients will…
One of the things I enjoy about watching a good basketball game is the commentator’s use of statistics. I’m amazed by the wide range of statistics used and the conclusions drawn in the commentator’s analysis of the game. Statistics, in many ways, really tell the story of how the game was won or lost. In…
To be a business that is, a commercial, profitable enterprise that works without you — your business must give a good return on investment plus a full wage for every hour you spend working in your business. You can then pay someone to do your job and the business profits are not affected. The quote…
A Business Coach Reveals the client to themselves The more aware anyone is, the better choices they can make for themselves. Part of what a Certified Business Coach does with clients is to help them discover their gifts, talents, desires, values, needs and dreams, as well as comes to understand what motivates and inspires them.…
As a Business Coach, often business owners ask if it’s true that 80% of new business may fail within the first 5 years. And what of those that still exist after the first 5 years? What is the main reason for these failures? Most importantly, what is the secret of a successful business? It’s not…
Breakeven analysis is a tool used to determine when a business will be able to cover all its expenses and begin to make a profit. For the startup business it is extremely important to know your startup costs, which provide you with the information you need to generate enough sales revenue to pay the ongoing…
Technology in sport today has become increasingly sophisticated and enables monitoring of individual and team performance to levels unheard of even 10 years ago. Basic scorekeeping is taken for granted and we now see an instant array of data available for immediate analysis and magic eyes to challenge the decisions of human scorekeepers, umpires and…
How important are your roots? At the Watson Lake Sign Post Forest in Canada’s Yukon Territory you can see over 70,000 hometown signs planted by people from all over the world! Business Lesson to be Learned: Even if you never go back, it’s important to acknowledge from whence you came!
Who said: ‘Work Smarter…Not Harder’? This phrase has been attributed to Allan F. Mogensen, the creator of ‘Work Simplification’. And what is Work Simplification, you ask: “the organized use of common sense by everyone involved to find easier and better ways of doing work” Business Lesson to be Learned: Keep an open mind and listen…
In Greek mythology, Goddess Athena used an owl as her emblem. With its focused, silent gaze, the owl gives the appearance of deep thought and knowledge. Actually… The owl’s brain is quite small, relatively speaking, and its unrelenting stare comes from the owl’s inability to move its eyes. Owls can, however, turn their heads completely…
Adoxography was a term coined in the late 19th century. It refers to highly skilled writing about trivial subjects. In effect, it’s wasting great skills and ability on things that don’t matter. And yet the ancient Greeks, who were otherwise pretty smart people, would engage in Adoxography on purpose, spending hours in praise of things…
Attention Business Owners: COACHING It’s Not just for GOLF! Let’s talk about the development of your golf game. Your game has likely improved over time through the advice of others: the buddies at men’s night and the friends from work. Maybe you’ve read magazines or watched an instructional video you bought on the Shopping Channel. But what if…
In today’s busy world, one of the best ways to create more time for top-priority projects is to delegate lower-priority work to someone else. Many people are reluctant or afraid to delegate work. Do any of these statements sound familiar? “Nobody can do this work as well as I can” “If someone else does this…
When you hear people talking about sales goals, they’re almost always referring to gross sales, i.e., “I want to do $1,000,000 in sales. But what is more important — gross sales or net profits? Increasing net profits, the money you keep after paying expenses, should always be the goal. Doubling sales does not necessarily mean…
The last thing you want your marketing copy to be is a features-laden description of your products or services. Most clients and customers base buying decisions on perceived benefits, not features. Think of the feature as the description and the benefit as the result. Then rewrite your feature statements into benefit statements. You’ll save prospective…
Are you lucky? What is the definition of luck? For my clients, luck happens at the fork in the road where preparation and opportunity meet. Kent Boehm Business & Leadership Coach 403.690.8363 or kent@ninebusinessgroup.caonbusinesscoaching.combusinesscoachingcalgary.com
Think about your last significant purchase: what steps did you take before deciding to buy? Now watch this three-minute video. Times are changing, and so are the behaviours of your clients. Have your marketing strategies adapted? http://www.youtube.com/user/driveconversion Kent Boehm Business & Leadership Coach 403.690.8363 or kent@ninebusinessgroup.caonbusinesscoaching.combusinesscoachingcalgary.com
Riding Dead Horses: A Common Pastime The tribal wisdom of the Dakota people, passed on from generation to generation, states that when you discover you’re riding a dead horse, the best thing you can do is dismount. However, in modern corporate North America, a vast range of far more advanced strategies are generally encouraged: Buy…
Business and Baseball Detailed job descriptions can actually make or break your business. Is this an overstatement? Think of it this way: it is a beautiful spring day and the baseball team is ready to play. The players are the best that money can buy, but someone sneaks into the dugout, mixes up everyone’s gloves…