Owning a service business can be tough, and running a service business day-in and day-out can be even tougher. For many service business owners, building a service business stopped being fun a long time ago and somehow it mutated into a “job.” Here are 4 tips to help you scale your service business and get your life back. 1. Recognize you’re in … Read More
How To Balance Work and Life As a Small Business Owner
Running a business is not easy. It requires a lot of time, hard work, and sacrifice. If you operate your own small business, you’re likely all too familiar with the never ending to do list. Maybe you’ve even given up weekends and burned the midnight oil to make sure everything gets done. But if you push yourself too hard, both … Read More
Five Tips on How To Find the Right Accountant
If you’re thinking about hiring an accountant, you’ve probably discovered that you may need one for more than just crunching numbers. Today, many accountants strive to serve as small business financial advisors. Many of them want to be there for you at every stage of your business’s growth. Helping to write your business plan, reviewing your inventory, looking for ways to … Read More
How To Build a High-Performance Business
Building a high-performance organization means successfully outperforming one’s competitors for the long haul. But…how exactly is this done? If you start by looking at key characteristics of high-performing organizations, a blueprint for achieving long-term success emerges. This can be mapped out in five steps, along with some commons traps to avoid. Step One: Ensure the organization understands and leverages its … Read More
Falling In Love With Your Small Business All Over Again
It’s the middle of summer, and you’re stuck behind the desk at your small business — working and sweating. Your friends’ Facebook feeds are filled with pictures of them happily enjoying a drink on some beach. It’s no wonder you’ve lost that loving feeling for your own business. Falling out of love with your small business can happen at any time, not just … Read More
Mentors Can Help Guide Your Business
Each new financial year is a common time for people to reconsider their approach to their business. Whenever we meet a business owner, we like to ask about their business model and what they are looking to achieve in the next three years. It’s rare to get a concise response which inspires confidence that they have a solid plan and … Read More
Things to Consider Before Changing Your Business
It’s important to thoroughly vet a process before going to all the effort of changing your business. Checking in with important stakeholders and customers is a critical step to undertake before the change effort. Sometimes we live in our own little world even though we’re surrounded by plenty of team members with whom we interact on a day-to-day basis. And a … Read More
3 Cost-free Team-Building Exercises
What’s a team without trust? Mary Scannell, author of “The Big Book of Low-Cost Training Games” and several other team-building books, says a lack of trust among team members is a major concern for many managers she consults. “Everybody’s just clamoring for ‘How do we build more trust on our team?’” she says. “Well, you need to create spaces for people to get to know … Read More
How Downtime Can Be Full of Opportunity
The dog days of summer can be a time for retooling and opportunity. Although it can be hard trying to keep a business running, there’s still hope for growth. Here’s a list of tips for small business owners who want to turn downtime into opportunity. Conduct a mid-year goal review As you approach the half-way mark for the year, taking … Read More