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The Coach’s Playbook
My ultimate goal is to write useful and relevant content about everything related to creating success and getting you to the Next Level™.
Sometimes however, I do find myself just blogging about things that need to be talked about, so don’t be surprised by what you find popping up here. I always welcome all useful comments, suggestions and critiques. So come often, bring a friend, and stay as long as you’d like!
There are countless analyses you could run on your business, and countless tools promising to help. Most of them you don't need. I've deliberately kept my own toolkit narrow, and when it comes to genuinely analyzing your organization – as a whole or in pieces – two tools cover the vast majority of w...
Part 2 of a 2-part look at defining and sizing your target market.
Knowing exactly who you're selling to is only half the battle. You can have the most precisely defined target market in your industry and still capture none of it, because a defined market isn't a claimed market – it's just the fiel...
(Part 1 of a 2-part look at defining and sizing your target market.)
Ask most business owners who their target market is and you'll get an answer somewhere between "everyone who needs what we do" and a shrug. Here's the deal: "everyone" isn't a target market. It's the absence of one. And a business...
Do you schedule a physical for the week you feel great? Or do you wait until something is “off”? It’s not uncommon to only go in when something already hurts, when the symptom's been nagging long enough that you can't keep ignoring it, or when a number on a routine test finally scares you into actio...
Your status updates are perfect. Your feedback loop doesn't exist.
You can run a flawless ticket – fast response, clean resolution, zero errors – and still lose that client six months from now, because somewhere in the middle of all that good work, you never once asked them how it actually felt to ...
(Part 4 of a short series on essential business tools.)
Second only to how you select and hire talented people, the Core Competency Matrix is the most important tool you have for building a real, robust people process. Not a motivational poster. Not a vague sense that, "We have good people." An act...
(Part 3 of a short series on essential business tools.)
Every business that properly analyzes their situation on a regular basis ends up with what I call the big laundry list – the pile of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, problems, and half-formed ideas that surface once you start paying atten...
(Part 2 of a short series on essential business tools.)
Smart people screw this up constantly. Not because they lack intelligence, but because they mistake having an opinion for having done the work. Somebody arrives at a conclusion, feels good about it, and never stops to ask whether that conclusi...
(Part 1 of a short series on essential business tools.)
There's an old saying that a carpenter is only as good as his tools. I'd push that a step further: a carpenter who spends all his time shopping for the perfect hammer never actually builds anything. At some point, you pick up what's in front o...
A full talent pipeline still fails without a system to keep who you find.
You can build the best talent pipeline in the business and still lose the hire within the first 90 days. Or you can never build a pipeline at all and hire in a panic from whoever answered the ad fastest. Either mistake ends t...
(Part 4 of a 4-part series on the tenets of business and management.)
The vast majority of businesses operating today have no stated Vision or Mission beyond "make money." No Roadmap. No Strategy. Just momentum and hope. If that describes where you are, I'm not here to shame you. But I am here to t...
(Part 3 of a 4-part series on the tenets of business and management.)
A business really is a machine. You put resources in one end, turn the handle, and the customer puts money into the machine and holds their hands out under the chute to collect the output. Simple, right?
Except most businesses a...
