8 Personal Strategies For Winning With Relationships

Based on my years of experience in both startups and large companies, trusted relationships are more the key to success than a great business model, how smart you are, or how much money you have. Aspiring entrepreneurs who struggle in a corporate environment often can’t wait to start their own company, only to find that…

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How to Harness the Simple—and Free—Secret to Increased Productivity: Gratitude

Could your business benefit from: Increased loyalty? Higher productivity? Fewer sick days? A positive attitude? An important key to gaining these advantages is simple…and in many ways free: Gratitude. A Harvard Mental Health Letter summarizes the findings of several academic studies on the impact of gratitude in our personal lives and in the workplace, and overall, the…

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Show a Little Gratitude

I believe that gratitude is a brilliant marketing strategy. I’m astonished at how many businesses give their customers the distinct impression that they’re a little put out by having to sell them something. You’ve felt it – the grocery clerk who is too busy chatting to actually make eye contact. The phone rep that can’t…

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Improve Your EQ to Improve Your Business

“The customer is always right” doesn’t seem to apply to many situations anymore. It’s an artifact of a bygone era when daily life was slower and maintaining relationships with your regular customers at all costs was the most important part of your job. It’s still important to maintain relationships with your customers these days, but…

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Business-Focused, People-Centric

Often in understanding business leadership, people tend to focus on two extreme models of leaders. The first is the “It’s all about the numbers” leader. Typically, these are portrayed as hard charging, data driven, task and goal focused, and sometimes ruthless executives. The other model is the human/people focused leaders. These are portrayed as caring…

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Treat Your Customers with Respect

“Customers may forget what you said, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel.” ~Unknown So many businesses just do not seem to respect their customers. Some of the common issues I see that tell me this are when businesses leave an open sign in the window when they are closed and do not…

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Build, Encourage, and Recognize Your People

When John David Mann and I talk about “Building Your People” (Key #2 from The Go-Giver Leader) we mean that in a couple of ways: one is to teach, mentor, and coach them to becoming more effective, both in their defined role within the organization as well as in their own ability to lead others. Second is to make…

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