Blog

Last week’s blog post focused on Trello, which is the platform I most often use for task-oriented assignments related to project management and workflow. The team in my music businesses generally uses a different tool (Asana) that I was originally introduced to through G Suite. I have explored quite a few free project management tools over […]

My hope is that over the last few weeks, you’ve been thinking about improving processes in your business or clarifying instructions on how specific tasks should be handled. We covered several related topics over the past few weeks, including the hiring and onboarding processes. We also covered the importance of developing your staff, specifically establishing a […]

When you hire new people to join your company, what do you teach them first? Second? Do you have a master list of everything they need to be shown, practice, and master—or at least achieve a level of competence in before you allow them to spread their wings and fly on their own? Did you have […]

The subject of this post will stretch across two weeks. Today’s, the first part, focuses on the sales process, whereas next few week’s post will cover the processes for training/cultivating talent (staff), and back end/administrative processes. People often ask me how I manage to keep all the balls I’m juggling up in the air without dropping […]

When I was in my early twenties more than a decade ago, I was already doing pretty well financially. I was making over $100K/year, I had bought my own apartment (a co-op that I’d financed with a private mortgage), and I was living well within my means. It was then that I decided to take a […]

How many times a day do you find yourself saying, “There aren’t enough hours in the day”? Or maybe you think, “If only I didn’t need sleep, I might catch up on everything I need to do.” If only…as if sleep were the problem. How many times have I been asked, “Can’t you sleep less […]

Last week, I gave both a basic overview and an example of margin and markup.  As promised, I’m going to discuss sales mix this week.  Let’s say you sell apples, oranges, and bananas, and they all have different margins: 50 percent on apples, 40 percent on oranges, and 80 percent on bananas. What would you […]

I read The Hartford’s business newsletter pretty religiously. Some of the issues focus on articles about specific business topics, and others contain BuzzFeed-style lists. This past week’s newsletter contained one such list, which left me wanting to elaborate on a number of topics. I’ve written about being financially literate before, but the #3 Business Mistake in […]

I hope that at the conclusion of today’s blog post, you have come to recognize why in today’s economy, it’s so difficult to hire people for entry level jobs. There is certainly a lot of confusion about the causes of this worker supply-and-demand crisis, and you may disagree with my own take on the situation. […]

I’ve alluded to this idea a number of times in these weekly postings: There is something fundamentally more important than products or sales. I’m talking, of course, about people, especially the people who work for you.   Some large companies today believe that overhiring is the best road to success. It is thought that high turnover and […]