Making The First Hire: 4 Steps Business Owners Can Take to Manage New Hires Successfully
Entrepreneurs who have successfully launched a business will find themselves at a fork in the road.In one direction, there is the option to stay at the solopreneur level. This is a great option for those who...
Should You Make The Hire? Should You Keep The Employee? Three Simple Litmus Tests
In my coaching and consulting work with CEOs, the most common challenge is finding the right people. One of my favorite tools to aid in this important decision is part of the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), created by Gino Wickman. Information Experts implemented EOS several years ago. I frequently reach back to my EOS toolbox when helping other CEOs move forward.Whether you are an employee or an employer, chances are you have your share of nightmare stories about the fallout of hires that were not the right fit for a position, or the organizational culture.
9 Strategies to Avoid Business Partnership Purgatory
Partnerships are one of the most important – and messiest – parts of business. Right now, I am working with clients who:1: Are building a great partnership2: Are trying to get out of bad partnership3: Have narrowly escaped a seemingly good partnership gone badIn my own experience, I was the majority owner in a partnership at Information Experts (with my husband). With Successful Culture, I am contemplating bringing in a partner.To grow beyond a solopreneurship, a business owner often needs to enlist the help of a partner. There are many reasons for this including:
Ten Questions to Ask to Determine if Your Customers and Employees Really Understand Your Company
Business owners live and breathe their company missions. Often, their business identity plays a significant role in their personal identity. Naturally, they can effortlessly explain what their company does, why it exists, what it stands for, and where it is going.This is not often the case with employees or customers.Here are two sets of questions to help you determine if your two most important stakeholder groups – your employees and your customers – really understand your company.
Strengthen the Body, Strengthen the Mind, Strengthen the Outcome
I’ve been a hard core fitness enthusiast ever since I was 15, when I saw Linda Hamilton in The Terminator. I learned then that physical strength is not only beautiful; it is also essential to feeling confident and capable in all aspects of your life.Executing on a dream or vision to build a business is one of the most mentally challenging endeavors a person will ever pursue. Every day, we are faced with nonbelievers, seemingly insurmountable challenges, and 101 reasons to quit. But still we persevere.
Four Steps to Diffusing a Customer Disagreement
A client called me last week to coach her through a delicate situation with a customer. Her customer had entered into a legal agreement, and at the last minute, wanted to change the terms of the agreement without consent from the other party. This would have jeopardized the entire transaction. Furthermore, her customer insisted that she had told my client about her decision prior to signing the contract (which was not true). My client was on the hook to talk her customer out of a really bad decision, even though her mind was made up.
Four Easy Ways to Get Excited About Prospecting!
I coach a lot of small business CEOs with BIG visions. Visions of tremendous growth. Visions of huge impacts. Visions of organizations with amazing cultures. Visions of….delegating the prospecting to other people.
Four Steps to a Successful 360-Degree Hiring Process
A client asked me, “Marissa, should I involve my other employees in the interviewing process?” My answer was an enthusiastic YES. From the intern to the executive, the CEO should never unilaterally own a hiring decision.
4 Ways to Stretch Your Time & Money Through a Multi-Platform Marketing Strategy (And an Entrepreneur’s Super-Food)
The two scarcest resources that small businesses have are time and money. They lack the financial cushion and manpower that larger companies have to grow. At the same time, customers are overwhelmed with work & information, are time-starved, and have ADD. These three things get in the way of building trust, loyalty, and recurring revenues with customers.
Five Things to Do to Conclude Your Day
As a follow-up to last week’s column, “Five Things to Do to Start Your Day,” I’m sharing five things to conclude your day, and set yourself up for a fresh start the next day. Admittedly, I don’t have success every day with all of these. The idea is to Strive for Five. Doing one or two will make a huge difference in your anxiety levels, and maybe even improve your ability to get a good night’s sleep.
Five Things To Do Before You Start Your Day
Every day, life is going to throw you curve balls. It’s highly unlikely that you will ever have a day in which every minute, or every event goes according to plan. This is why it’s so important to spend a small amount of your morning setting yourself up for the ability to rebound and manage the unexpected. Here are the five things I strive to do every morning to begin my day in a place of strength.
Want Great Customer Relationships? Know Your Deal-Breakers! Six Questions to Help You
I came across an article in The Providence Journal last month, when we were in Rhode Island for a family event. The article advised readers to identify their dating “deal-breakers” before jumping into the online dating world. The idea of “deal-breakers” came up again last week during a client coaching session, but this time I was discussing them in the context of customer relationships.
Building Employee Relationship Equity: Three Steps to a Great Weekly Huddle
One of the most rewarding aspects of working with small businesses is seeing them grow. Growth usually translates into new hires. For many of my clients, we’ve created processes and strategies to lay a foundation built on transparent communication, clearly defined goals, and aligned expectations.One of the most effective actions a company can implement is the weekly huddle. This time together ensures that all employees (and other valuable team members) are kicking off the week in complete unison. It is a time for the CEO to communicate weekly goals and expectations, and to learn from direct reports what employees have on their agenda.This is a high-level meeting, and is a two-way dialogue so that all attendees know that their contributions matter, and that their voices are heard. These touch-points create positive energy for the week, and build relationship equity among the team members.
Double Vision Versus Tunnel Vision: Which One Do You Have?
Vision without execution is just hallucination."Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.""The very essence of leadership is that you have a vision. It's got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion.”"The future belongs to those who see possibilities before they become obvious."Vision and leadership are two sides of the same coin. One can’t lead if they don’t know where they are going. I’m often asked how a leader can develop “vision.” There’s no simple answer.
How to Restore and Refresh for Greater Leadership Results
I’m writing this column from Bethany Beach, Delaware, which has been our family escape for 17 years. As we were packing, I checked quite a few times to make sure we had our chargers, my laptop, and my iPad which I loaded with several business books to read.Fast forward six days… I didn’t read one business book, and I responded to less than 20 emails. Instead, I picked up a great beach read that chronicled how the lives of three very different women interconnected.
The Seven Simple Secrets to a Successful Company Launch
So you’re finally taking the plunge. You’ve had it with fulfilling someone else’s dream, you know you have a unique value to bring to the world, and you’re ready to get it out there. The problem is, you have no idea what to do first.Here are the seven simple secrets to setting yourself up for success.
The Two Steps You Need to Take to Triage a Bleeding Company – and Five Things to Avoid
A very successful business owner who is going through a rough patch asked me, “Marissa, what’s the one thing you recommend I do to triage my company, and turn it around?”As the owner of a 20-year company that has experienced multiple government shut-downs, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the implosion of several industries, major contract protests, and even a lawsuit from an unethical subcontractor, I have a lot of experience with triage.
Six Strategies For Managing Toxic People
Can we be honest with each other? As much as we love our work, we don't always love the people we work with. What happens when you encounter someone in the course of your workday that can potentially suck the life out of you while you are trying to succeed in the workplace?In my coaching with dozens of CEOs, this issue presents itself over and over. Potentially toxic situations manifest with customers, vendors, employees, or other industry colleagues every day, in virtually every environment.
Riding Shotgun is Completely Over-Rated: 9 Steps For Taking Control of the Driver’s Seat
“I CALL SHOTGUN!”I’ve always been amused when kids fight over the front passenger seat. Maybe it’s because when I was growing up, I never had a shot at the front seat, since I’m the youngest of three, and the only girl. I was always relegated to the middle seat in the back with the hump. But that’s a story for another day.Kids are under the illusion that the “shotgun” seat holds more importance than the back seats. Actually, the only seat that really matters is the driver’s seat, because it’s the seat that controls the journey.In business, this is often the case as well.
Say No To FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)
When you’re in business growth mode, two ideas constantly rent space in your head:1: I need to get this done yesterday.2: I need to spend as little money as possible.This thought process actually undermines the decision process we desperately need to follow when building a business.In an ideal world, we would make all of our business decisions, carefully, slowly, and thoughtfully. We wouldn’t be driven by artificial deadlines or lowest price. We wouldn’t rush to quickly check important decisions off our list. We wouldn’t be attracted, like a moth to a flame, to offers that seem too good to be true. But entrepreneurs invariably are attracted to the light.