Some owners lament that they made more money when they were smaller, and they make less now. Why is that? One reason is their inability to build a strong, dynamic, nimble organization that operates as well as the owner could on his or her own. To scale your business effectively, you have to successfully scale your organization, and this requires... read more
In my business lifetime, I’ve experienced many innovations that changed the way I worked: the copier (yes, I’m that old), the computer, the laptop, the Internet, the cell phone and the smartphone. These technologies were all once considered groundbreaking and are now the norm. In the five short years since I started a technology company, I can see firsthand just... read more
I’m often tasked with putting together integrated marketing communication plans that encompass several platforms across a variety of media. Growing up in the green industry has given me a lot of experience with different platforms. I’ve learned some marketing and advertising endeavors are “tricks” and several platforms can be “treats.” Tricks 1. Home service websites. The good thing about these... read more
Have you ever noticed how some salespeople are quick to give a discount? I experienced this personally when shopping for a Mother’s Day gift for my wife. She hinted that she wanted a Le Creuset cast-iron cooking pot. I knew I’d better not buy it without her, so we went together to pick it out. When the owner told us... read more
Even the most astute contractors struggle to understand and manage pricing. There are clear principles you can apply—with some amount of science and art—that can help you handle this more confidently. The principles are: Pricing is a function of item costs (labor and materials) plus a markup and a profit margin. All overhead is recovered through markups on item costs... read more
For those old enough to remember Y2K, and the worry that came along with it, the recent buzz around the General Data Protection Regulation Act (GDPR) and Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal may have you feeling a bit of déjà vu. While we made it through 2000 without our computers coming alive and terminating us, the recent changes to the GDPR—and... read more
