I go through this exercise with every client. Sometimes it takes days or weeks to arrive at the answers to the questions below. Getting these right, and then staying within the bounds of the answers given will be the key to long term success.

1. In one sentence, what does your business do?

2. In one sentence, who is your ideal customer?

3. What does your business do in an extra-special way to please your ideal customer? (Think ...
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If you want to do something to improve your business, start giving recognition to your best performers. If someone steps up and assumes a task or responsibility, recognize it.

I don't understand why this is so hard for managers to do but it apparently is. Crazy. The return is huge if the praise is sincere.

What's it cost? What's the benefit?

Chris Reich
TeachU.com

I spoke to someone yesterday who told me he had hired 20 sales people over the past year and they all failed to produce. Then he asked me what it was he was failing to teach his new hires. Teach? Give me a break.

Repeating the same mistake 20 times tells me that person would be better off getting a job rather than trying to run a business.

Hire the best you can find and afford. ...
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There's a lesson business can learn from government and certainly government needs to learn from business. Non-profit organizations especially need to pay attention.

Let's start with a question. Is a little internal friendly competition a good thing? Think about your response.

I say that very little and very infrequent friendly competition can be a good thing ONLY if the stakes are very low. Generally I do not like internal competition. It is destructive.

Why? Doesn't competition in the ...
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