Over the past couple of months I have been working with two semi-group coaching programs, called the the Business MasterClass. One at my office in Albany and one in Greenlane. Participants are well through the early modules and already seeing the benefits of coming on-board. I knew from my experience that participants would receive tremendous…
I had a great meeting with a client this week. We are a couple of months into our 6 month Business MasterClass with him and were going through our second 1:1 meeting. We were covering some specific marketing tactics he will be implementing, and also reviewing the foundation strategies from earlier meetings. His comment, “I…
Having the right culture in your company is vital to its success. The culture that exists in a company can make or break it, so it is important to make sure the right culture is proactively developed. By not taking a proactive approach the culture will simply evolve in a random way by usually drifting…
In Africa, there’s a saying: If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go with a group. Does this apply to learning as well? Why would you want to learn with a group? Why share the experience you have gained through so many years of the school of hard…
If you have been following this series of posts on building a solid marketing machine for your business, you will know that we have so far been focusing on putting the 3 critical foundation legs in place before going any further. Those 3 legs are: segmentation (focus on your target), differentiation (stand out from your…
In this third posting of the series about building a marketing machine for your business, we introduce the third of our foundation strategies. Imagine a tripod or 3-legged stool. All the legs need to be solid and of equal length to be effective. The same applies to our 3 key strategies in our marketing machine. You…
My last post introduced the issue of the Tradesmen’s Death Spiral and how building a systematic marketing machine was ONE way to help arrest the downward spiral and start to build a better business. In step 1 we discussed FOCUS. Pick who is your ideal target. Study their needs, fears and aspirations in great detail…
There is a problem in the building trade. It has affected many business owners in recent years and although the horizon is looking a little brighter going into 2013, the problem still exists. A typical story goes like this: You miss that job you thought you would get. The phone is not ringing as much…
The renowned business strategist and author, Tom Peters visited NZ a few years ago. Typically his writings are aimed at bigger businesses, however this time he presented a paper in which he outlined 56 ideas that any and all companies should consider incorporating into their culture, to create a sustainable aim of EXCELLENCE. Here are…
When you think about it, renovating a house is much like what I do in helping you improve your trades business. And when you look at it this way, using an outside advisor makes sense. How so? Scoping. When you look at a reno project you visit the site (I hope) and check it out. …