How to Avoid the Funeral After a Big Breakthrough
Okay, forget all this organic growth stuff. Let’s say you hit the big time and suddenly dozens, hundreds, even thousands of people are flooding toward your business. Exciting, isn’t it? Sure, exciting as a funeral. If Your Business Isn’t Ready, This Could Be The End It’s easy to want to hit it big. But the […]
Is Opt-In an Evil Gimmick?
In a post yesterday someone I respect highly, Chris Guillebeau wrote an engaging, passionate post on Why People Hate Marketers. In it, he laid out a whole bunch of things about marketing that I totally agree with: marketing is about trust and building relationships. That using scarcity marketing to push people and manipulate them doesn’t […]
Spouses Working Together
This morning I found an email from a client who asked this painful question about working together as spouses: We are happy at work together, inspired, having fun, working to help people in a real way. But…there are things to be done at the clinic, big and small things, and from my perspective done well […]
Stepping Back From the Urgency Ledge
On the verge of facing another day of urgent deadlines and unending tasks, I came across a newspaper article reporting that David Kellerman, Freddie Mac’s recently promoted CFO, was found dead in his basement. He apparently hung himself. A colleague of his was quoted as saying, “‘He was just a nice guy. . . . […]
How Spiritual Teachers Make a Living
How can you charge for spiritual teachings! They should be free! It’s all the rage to use spirituality and other ‘intangibles’ in your business, especially in service businesses- which seems to be provoking some rage from folks. Like the email a friend of mine received at the beginning of this paragraph.
Luddite Offline Marketing
In our community The Business Oasis, Tenter Kate Jones (that’s what we call people who hang out in the forum- “The Tent”) posted the following, and I asked her permission to share it on the blog, because I loved the point she made, in this internet-mad world. So, without further ado, here’s Kate: Luddites, in […]
Should Your Business Be the Expert Or the Friend?
Our online community, the Business Oasis, has been rife with some great debates recently. One centered on whether, when you write articles or blog posts, you should talk to your readers as a friend and peer, or as an “expert” speaking down from on high. You can be a friend to people and share the […]
Operating by the Books; It Does a Business Good
Throughout 2008, we had an interesting, uh, adventure in hiring, before we found our infrastructure queen, Kate Williams. Kate is blogging the Insider View, as previously self-employed and now working with us. I expect that she’s going to embarrass the crumb out of me. The intention, however, is to be as transparent in our business […]
Wrestling to Anchor Our Infrastructure
Throughout 2008, we had an interesting, uh, adventure in hiring, before we found our infrastructure queen, Kate Williams. Kate is blogging the Insider View, as previously self-employed and now working with us. I expect that she’s going to embarrass the crumb out of me. The intention, however, is to be as transparent in our business […]
Competition with Suck-Swallow-Breath
Considering the vast number of core spiritual teachings available, one I’ve spent a lot of time on is about competition and comparison. As in, don’t do it. Don’t compare, don’t compete in business, it’s a non-issue. That said, I get caught up in it lots. The most recent time is the most embarrassing, because I […]