As a rebellious young adult, I attended Easter service out of respect to my mother. As the offering plate came closer, I realized I didn’t want to appear cheap, so I reached for my wallet. When I realized I only had a $10 bill, I dropped the ten in the plate and palmed a $5 bill in return. I was […]

A recent article by RevCycle Intelligence states that 80% of CFOs believe that business revenues have or will decline due to COVID in 2020 and beyond. Challenging financial times can cause a business to pivot and realign spending priorities and profit margin. It takes ingenuity to flex a business to be profitable in challenging times. Profit margin is not the […]

At an event I attended the speaker had some great stories, but they were all sports related. As I looked around the room, I realized that most of the attendees were female. While leaving, I wondered if the speaker’s stories connected with the entire audience. Then I heard several women complaining about the sports analogies. Story telling is a very […]

There are industries that are trained to never say they are sorry for their mistakes, often due to legal liability. The irony is lawsuits often arise because someone didn’t hear the words, “I’m sorry.” Imagine your frustration if someone driving a company vehicle ran a red light and destroyed the side of your car, but they refused to say they […]

According to past studies, at least 30% of annual giving comes in the month of December. This year Giving Tuesday falls on December 1st, giving the final fundraising push for the year a good boost. One reason December is such a big month in giving is due to the generosity of small business owners. As they determine their profitability for […]

Cyber Monday 2019 was reportedly Amazon’s largest sales day in their history, up to that point in time. This year it’s expected that over $9 billion will be spent on ecommerce on Cyber Monday! Only 26 years ago, online sales were almost nonexistent. Then Jeff Bezos had a vision for a startup called Amazon that many of us at the […]

In the 1960s, it became popular to refer to the day after Thanksgiving as Black Friday. It was common that for retailers the day after Thanksgiving began the turn to profitability―or what has been called “being in the black.” This year will be a dramatic shift for retailers who have grown accustomed to Black Friday being their most profitable day […]

Likely one of the first American business coaches was a Paxtuxet Indian named Squanto. You may remember the first Thanksgiving story from your childhood. In 1621, the Pilgrims were dying from hunger and disease. Squanto, an escaped slave that understood English, coached these struggling settlers on how to build a farming and fishing enterprise in this new country. Even though […]

Jack had a problem. One of his top salesmen was stirring up trouble, again. This salesman was a know-it-all that was constantly being argumentative with the rest of the team. Jack and I discussed possible solutions. But, when we discussed terminating his salesman if it didn’t get any better, Jack became anxious. “He’s my top salesperson. I don’t think I […]

Prior to the pandemic, my son, was working for a sheltered workshop. His role was to assemble laboratory kits and scan information for a local laboratory. When the pandemic forced the sheltered workshop to shut down, the laboratory could not complete their promised shipments to their customers. They understandably chose to pull their business from the sheltered workshop and move […]