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Look beyond the resume for the best hire
As a small business owner in the private real estate lending arena, hiring is my most dreaded task. Unlike a large company, hiring for a small business can ultimately make or break a company.
Operational excellence and reality
In the beginning, all five or 10 of you move in the same direction, inspired by the entrepreneurial spirit and the founder’s clearly articulated and personally delivered vision. As you grow to 50 people, 300 people and maybe beyond, you inevitably become increasingly removed from day-to-day operat...
Top 10 acquisition considerations
Successful business acquisitions are difficult to achieve. In fact, the prevailing wisdom is that 50 to 90 percent of all transactions fail to achieve their underlying value proposition. Here are 10 tips to help you close the next deal.
Profiting from play
I was fortunate to spend 20 years helping grow Kinko’s. In our “formative” years, we had lots of fun. Perhaps too much fun. However, many of us were willing to work obscene hours partly because we had so much fun with our co-workers. We had an annual event called “The Picnic” where we flew thousan...
Business development: All in, all the time
In today’s fast-paced, competitive business landscape, one of the more common mistakes business leaders make is to treat business development as an afterthought by “accomplishing” it in their spare time. Unfortunately, this happens all too often, and in this scenario, securing business deals becom...
Think tank experts
Currently 27 million men, women and children are being held as slaves around the world—more today than in any other time in history. About 80 percent of those slaves are women and girls–many of them victims of sex trafficking. There are a number of amazing organizations that are helping to rescue...
The beauty of a routine
Routinized work has gotten a bad reputation. I readily admit I couldn’t spend all day on an assembly line and be happy. Even a trip to a guru on a mountaintop wouldn’t persuade me. I worked in a warehouse in college doing manual labor (the same task, night after night) and made good money but hate...
Perks and benefits of outsourcing
Public sector job growth is prompting many businesses to turn to outsourcing as a viable alternative to increase workplace efficiency, convenience and savings. According to the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp., 2014 is expected to experience employment growth of 2.7 percent. Although many b...
When passion drives profits
Profitability stems from service to our communities and employees. It’s a circle of life, and I appreciate those who are dedicated to making Colorado “business friendly.” As we look where to grow, there are actually states we have skipped because of their “unfriendly” business policies. The fact t...
Top 10 goal-setting mistakes
Most managers fall short in their goal-setting process. Consequently, their teams are much less likely to achieve their goals. Here are 10 common goal-setting mistakes and how you can rectify them. Imposed: The command-and-control manager shoves goals downward, not trusting the employee to draft g...
Making pigs fly
A friend expressed frustration with his company the other day. When I queried him about his frustration, he summed it up by saying that they had started to focus on “metrics over mission.” In this particular example, concern for improving the lives of their customers is starting to take a back sea...
If you have a strategy – tell me what it is!
“Why will people buy from you versus your competition?” I asked a CEO. He recently went through a “strategic planning” process, so the question seemed reasonable. He couldn’t answer it. Some of you reading this can’t either. More often than not, CEOs believe they have a strategy, but when asked to...
