Many small business owners start businesses not because they are fabulous business owners or budding entrepreneurs, but because they are passionate technicians. They have a particular skill that they know they can market and sell without working for someone else. But, for many of those business owners, that skill that sets their business apart can also be their Achilles Heel. It’s eas...

It’s hard to hear, but… any time something goes wrong in a business, the business owner is to blame. If you’re the owner of the company (or even the president of the organization) and customer has a terrible experience, it eventually comes back to you. For example, if a customer at a restaurant has a bad experience, it’s easy to blame the server or the chef, but your managers hired and t...

Running any business is hard, but when you’re running a family business, you face a unique set of challenges – it’s hard to leave work at work, it’s hard to manage the emotional entanglement of family and there’s more at stake than money when something goes awry. So how do you manage and grow your family business without fraying the relationship you’ve built with your loved ones? It come...

Networking takes time and, even for extroverts, it can be uncomfortable to talk about yourself and your business or career. But we have good news! Making a great first impression at a networking event actually requires a lot less talking and a lot more listening.When You Meet Someone NewIf you’re new to a networking group or you meet someone new, making a good impression starts like any ...

Company culture – and the importance of having great culture – has been making the news for a few years now. Great company culture can help you attract and retain top-notch employees and, as you look for the next batch of leaders, it’s important to note that the Association for Talent Development recently found that millennials desire a strong company culture more than anything else when...

At The Growth Coach, our coaches have worked with thousands of small business owners over the years. One of the most common challenges those business owners face is that, in addition to being the business owner, they are the lead technician. For example, if they own a cookies and cake shop, they are the one in the back icing cupcakes (sometimes in addition to everything else). They might...

At the beginning of the year, you set goals, you built strategic plans and you worked with your team to put those plans into place. Your team worked extremely hard, your business grew and you found ways to work ON the business instead of IN the business – but you didn’t meet all of your goals. As the end of the year approaches, it’s easy to be bummed about the progress that fell short of...

Have you ever gone into a haunted house and then spent the whole time with your eyes half-covered, pretending you weren’t seeing everything around you? You paid money to be there, you waited in line, you knew there would be frights, and yet you walked through the whole place half-blind, just looking for the exit.That might be one way to get through a haunted house, but it’s no way to wal...

Small business owners and company presidents have a lot in common – starting with how busy they can be. Being in charge of everything has benefits, but it also has major drawbacks, especially when it comes to work life balance. You should be able to work to live, not live to work, no matter how much you love your business or your career. If you’ve spent your whole summer at the office, i...

In late 2017, when Forbes outlined the Top 10 growing business trends that will drive success in 2018, there was one we weren’t surprised to see – Social Learning. In a way, The Growth Coach has been doing that for more than 20 years. With our Strategic Business Owner group workshops and Strategic Manager Coaching specifically, we’ve put a lot of energy into making sure our clients acros...