Is your profit margin average for your industry? Is your revenue per customer in the middle of the pack for companies like yours? How about your growth rate as compared to the industry? Statisticians like to point to averages as a way to explain trends and define an industry. And we oftentimes think that we are lucky if we [ Read More ]
Not all company growth comes from selling more. Wes Gipe, Founder of Agil IT, agrees, saying he experienced this within his own company: “I had been so externally focused. I was focused on growing the business," he says in this video. "I really didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the success of the people within the organization.” [ Read More ]
“People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it,” says Simon Sinek. Stacy Sheldon, Managing Partner at POMIET, agrees, saying that having clarity on POMIET’s why has helped their sales team attract more of their ideal type of customers. (POMIET provides customized web and mobile solutions in the healthcare space.) “What we realized early on is that [ Read More ]
It was the first time in 13 years as a business owner that Barry Chandler had faced this kind of emotional challenge. For the first time ever, Barry was feeling a sense of loss. It had been two years since Barry sold his subscription services and marketing agency. He had built the organization from the ground up. As part [ Read More ]
“There is a difference between positional authority in a company and pure leadership,” says Clay Mathile, Founder and Chairman at Aileron and Former CEO and owner of The Iams Company.Leadership, excellent decision-making, and great ideas can come from anywhere in the company, when you train and empower everyone to make decisions that serve the company’s strategy. That’s why Clay says, [ Read More ]
In 2008, Nick Sarillo’s team at Nick’s Pizza & Pub made the decision to abandon its expansion plans for a third restaurant, and refocus on its existing two. (Based in Illinois, Nick’s Pizza & Pub is one of the top ten busiest independent pizza companies in per-store sales in the nation. Today, it has margins nearly twice that of [ Read More ]
When she first launched Student Maid, Kristen Hadeed would create long, comprehensive to-do lists for all her employees. Student Maid is a cleaning and concierge company, but not your typical cleaning company: they only employ students, helping team members grow into self-managing professionals who value flexibility, accountability, and autonomy. With the best of intentions, Kristen says she was doing all the discretionary [ Read More ]
We sat down with Ed Baker, author of The Symphony of Profound Knowledge, to talk about the motivation behind writing his latest book, including what he says was the most challenging and rewarding part of the process. “This book provides a framework to think differently about organizations, in contrast to what business schools teach,” Ed tells us. “Living is [ Read More ]
How do you know when it’s time to add new members to your board? Tony Schroeder, CEO of Choice One Engineering, says it really comes down to how much value a board member is providing you, the business owner. (Tony is also a Business Coach at Aileron.) “When I can predict what the board member is going to say, [ Read More ]
Every business owner has something that’s kept them up at night. For Bernard Dalichau, President of Lavender Home Care Solutions, it was the thought of losing his employees. “I put so much effort into hiring them, and I put so much effort into developing them, the fear of losing people was a huge anxiety point I had,” he says [ Read More ]
“The great thing about a partnership and having a sounding board is you may not have tunnel vision completely go away, but at least your ‘tunnel’ is expanded from a few other points of view,” says Stacy Sheldon, Managing Partner at POMIET, a company that provides customized web and mobile solutions in the healthcare space. “[With multiple owners,] hopefully we're [ Read More ]
Planning and setting direction for the future of your business is integral to professional management. As a result, succession planning and sustainability are a natural part of implementing the DOC model.Even though many business owners/founders produce a forward-looking vision for their company, fears or uncertainties can hold back the process of planning for a successful exit. If you don't figure [ Read More ]
