Owners

It's bigger than revenue growth. TL;DR - Progress means you get what you want FROM your company. But you must build the right foundation before you can be strategic. When I first started coaching I knew people hired me because…

Time Skeleton is a tool for planning your year so you don't get too busy before a critical event.

Levers will. NOTE: You should use your CEO Time to think about this because Revenue Streams are a component of Strategy. Let’s Define Terms. “Make Money” means profit, not revenue. It’s best measured by an aspect of free cash flow…

How to document your 3 year vision for your company.

Even though you think you can. I know it’s not a great idea to tell your audience that they’re wrong. But in my experience of working with hundreds of SMB owners it’s true. We aren’t really working on our companies…

A presentation I made to Sagan Passport about the best metrics for a company.

It's a Planning Tool not a Halloween Costume. This is an update of a blog post I did in 2019. Source. One of the two great tensions in life is between the short term and the long term. Another way…

That's a weird way to say it. Here's why. If I'd asked, "WHAT are you working for?" I'd be inquiring about the results (the outputs) you intend to produce. If I'd asked, "When are you working?" I'd be inquiring about…

It involves a genie! The most important output of your company is not profit, free cash flow or even satisfied customers. It's what your company provides to you - the owner. Why is that the most important? Because it's why…

Maybe not. But if so, here's how to make one and use it. ( NOTE: This is a revision of a post I did 2 years ago. I’m revising it because I have many more subscribers and this is when…

Is it better or worse to have a plan? Yes! One method is putting one foot in front of the other and as long as each step is taking you higher, you're doing OK. The other way is to develop…

How you get where you want to go. I didn't coin the term TRAP ZONE but have talked about plateaus of profitability and the cash crunch valleys that come between them. I prefer the concept of plateaus rather than peaks,…

As your company grows it becomes different not just bigger. Most people track company growth by revenue. One generating $10M in revenue is twice as big as one generating $5M. That's not very useful as the are many things that…

Yes. Sort of. But that's where the money is. This post is a long answer to a question raised by Tim Ludwig - @tsludwig on Twitter (now X). Tim asked: If you were developing a scorecard or checklist to assess…

Output Thinking to transform your business. My book is now available on amazon. I’m posting some video interviews my friend Jon Matzner did with me about the book. Besides being a great guy, Jon thinks about business systems as much…

Why? Because they make a manager's job harder. These are not magic words that you can sprinkle over your company to get amazing results - despite what some consultants will try to tell sell you. These are words that if…

Don't Fall for Entrepreneur P0rn. It's exciting to dream of being a billionaire or disrupting an industry. But to accomplish anything you've got to wake up and get to work. Here's what growing a company looks like. You sell something…

Do You Have to go Through Them? No. At first all the activity in a company is outward focused - finding and serving customers. If this works you get a lot of business. Some recurring, some re-occurring depending on the…

It's the Mother of all Systems! And like any system planning has an output. The output is THE PLAN. Why Do a Plan at all? If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you will keep getting what you’ve always…

Just answer three questions. Strategy answers "Where are we going?" A Plan answers "How are we going to get there?" As the saying goes - if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. But the…

Crafting mission, vision, and values statements are very lucrative - especially for the consultants who run these sessions. But do you need them? Like most things in life, it depends. In this video you'll learn what each of those things…

"I will show people anything you want to do, do it. Don't listen to anyone. Chase your dreams.". That's advice from a guy who tried to run on water in the contraption pictured above from Florida to New York. But…

Lessons from CEOBootCamp.com about how to avoid some of the pitfalls of growing your company. Learn why you might not want your company to grow and what to expect if you do. For business owners and entrepreneurs of privately held…

Here is the lens through which I view companies. A company is an organization of people that performs a number of different functions designed to create and satisfy customers in a profitable way. Let's take that apart. A company is…

What Can You Control? On the road of business (and in life) there are things you can control and things you can't. I recently found out about Steve Jobs' approach to this dichotomy. When he promoted someone to VP, he…

Scenario Planning is a tool to use to plan for an uncertain future. Usually we plan based on the past and we have some ability to predict the future within a range of possibilities. But when the future is unlikely…

Uncertain future? That’s us. . We can’t extrapolate from other pandemics because with current medical technology and global transportation, this one is so different. We can’t look to other recessions because this one is caused by a health crisis not…

As bad as they are, we’ve dealt with recessions before. This is different. This is three kinds of crises that build on each other. A health crisis. There’s a war on and the virus is trying to kill us all.…

One of the major tradeoffs in life is between the short term and the long term. Another way to think about it is the tradeoff between the urgent (usually short term) and the important (usually longer term). If we devote…

Scot MacTaggart of Pitchwerks had me in for a podcast. We talked for about an hour and his crew edited down the best 30 minutes. Listen Here.

Asking “Should you take VC?” is like asking “Should you play in the NBA?” The answer is NO. Of course the answer isn’t no for everyone. But both of these options only make sense for very, very, very, few people.…

It’s critical that a company have a mission. Having a mission STATEMENT? Not so much. A mission is the reason that a company exists. It doesn’t have to be worthy of a nobel prize. “We make the best damn pizza…

They tell the story of two young fish who were swimming up the stream one morning when an old fish came swimming by. “Good morning fellas,” said the old fish, “How’s the water?” and he swam off. One of the…

In my experience, there are 3 reasons why small firms stop growing. I’m talking about companies with up to 100 employees or so. I don’t know about larger companies, I suspect at that scale the dynamics are different. . Reason…

A friend asked how to split equity with a technical person she’s bringing on in her startup. Here are some thoughts in no particular order. Coincidentally, Steve Blank published a great article that’s relevant. Are you considering equity because you…

There’s a Lot Going on in Connecticut. In my work, I see a lot of companies looking for investment. At the AIF (Angel Investor Forum) where I’m president, we screen a few hundred companies per year, ask a couple dozen…

It takes commitment to build a business - or for that matter, to build anything. But what exactly does that word mean? I've been thinking about it lately and I've come up with this short cut. Commitment is not measured…

A change map is a way to understand the ramifications of a change in your organization (or your life). It could be a change you’ve already adopted, or one you’re considering. It’s a great tool to bring together the smart…

Imagine you’re climbing a mountain and the fog rolls in. You can’t see the trail as far as you’d like, but you know you’re trying to reach the top. So you figure as long as each step takes you higher…

What makes a SoloPreneur is not the lack of employees. Some companies without employees contract everything from sales, to production, to answering their phone. They are functionally equivalent to one of the other groups because the management frustrations you face…

Companies at this stage have employees doing different jobs. But usually they lack formal departments or managers of those departments. Most employees wear several hats and do what’s needed at the moment. This is not always a bad thing. In…

This is a critical stage for a CEO. For the company to grow you need to stop acting like a one-man band, and more like a conductor. But with a difference. An orchestra conductor makes none of the sound him…

Can you go away for a week? A month? As your firm grows beyond 50 employees the CEO spends less time dealing with day to day situations and more time planning for the future. That means you need systems and…

Every start-up by definition is a small company and they all have the same problem: They don’t have enough revenue to pay for ongoing operations. However there are different ways to solve this problem and choosing the right one depends…

And why that's a good thing! Just like a bicycle built for one doesn't usually grow into a bicycle built for two, there is not a linear continuum from small company to big company like there is from little kid…

It's a statistical fact that people with bigger feet are better at spelling than people with smaller feet. Why? ... They tend to be older! Sorry for the bad joke, but ask yourself what's the difference between big companies and…